How to Create a Unique Dice-Based Card Game

Jason Hsieh (00:00)
Welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed. Today we’re joined by Joe, a co-creator of Ward Trading Card Game, a game that’s shaking up the trading card industry with a fresh take on the battle system. The game isn’t just a typical trading card game. It’s a game where the creature truly fight back powered by intuitive dice-based system. he and his brother has started the company as a passion project, but you have quickly grown into something much bigger.

So thank you so much for joining us on the podcast day, Joe.

Joe Casey (00:30)
Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Jason Hsieh (00:31)
So before we dive in to understand a little bit more about the background and the product line, can you tell us a little bit about the story behind the company? How do you create this trading card games system that you currently have?

Joe Casey (00:43)
Yeah, so this is kind of a fun, a fun story we’ve told a bunch of times now, but basically the way it happened is, me and my brother and a couple of my cousins and friends during the middle winter, we live way up in Minnesota, like Northern Minnesota, close to Canada. So in the winter can commonly get down to like negative 20, negative 30. Yeah. the crazy people we are is we will pick one of those weekends in January where it’s going to be really cold. And we go to our family cabin inside Lake Minnesota.

Jason Hsieh (01:00)
Oh woah

Joe Casey (01:10)
And what we’ll do is we will kind of unplug from the world a little bit. Well, there’s no Internet, no running water, none of that. So it’s basically just board games, card games. We do have power. mean, we’re not going to die out there. We bring some old Nintendo’s and stuff. so the way Ward fits into this is a few years ago, I had kind of messed around by making some goofy cards on a Microsoft Paint.

then I kind of slapped together a game and the game was supposed to be something that we’ve always wanted there to be. Um, cause we played a lot of trading card games and there was always this feeling like I just wanted my creatures to feel like they’re actually like fighting back and forth essentially where most games right now it’s essentially you have more attack than them and their, card just dies. So that’s where I kind of added in this, um, dice rolling battle system. it’s not too far off from a whole lot of other like

tabletop role-playing games rolling to hit for damage. So anyway, I bring the game out to the cabin and convince everybody to give it a try. So we all play it. And before we know it, that’s the only thing we were playing all weekend at the time we didn’t have a name for it, but that was essentially when Ward was born. So basically fast forward a couple of days and, my brother, Tom, who is my co-owner in the business here for Ward LLC.

He calls me up and he says, Hey, that game was pretty fun that we played this weekend. He’s like, and you made that. I’m like, yeah, I made it every aspect. I designed the cards and everything too. And he was like, ⁓ he’s like, think we could do something with that. He’s like, that was like really, really fun. I think other people would like it too. I was kind of like, what do mean? Like, like manufacturing, selling it to people, like going to thrift shops or whatever. And he’s like, yeah, yeah. So I said, no, actually I was the one who, yeah, I said, no, I didn’t want anything to do it at the time.

It was just supposed to be fun. We called it one of our cabin games. We just pull it out once in a while and just play it when we’re bored. Well, about a week goes by and Tom calls me up and he says, hey, by the way, we have an LLC now. He’s like, through the card game. I’m like, Okay, here we go. Let’s do this. So then it came the project of, you know, finding an artist, manufacturer, obviously attorneys. You got to find that copyright trademark then the whole shebang just kind of opened up.

Joe Casey (03:19)
we’d gone to a couple of stores after we got our first print in and we did some testing amongst some of the high school kids, D and D groups. And with the dice rolling, that’s something that they kind of latched onto. Well, during our play test, they’re loving it. So we’re like, well, okay. Other people are liking it, it’s not just us. So we went to a local card shop and just a couple of towns over from us up in northern Minnesota. And they

were enamored with the game too. And they said, Hey, let’s try to do a tournament and see if people can latch onto this. like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Let’s, let’s give that a try. So we went back, we made sure all the rules are locked up because of its tournaments. We’re to give out prizes. Um, people want to feel like it’s a fair game. So we had the first tournament and lo and behold, everybody loved it at the tournament. We had guys play, you know, big card games like magic or you go or Pokémon. And, uh, they’re like, yeah, I had more fun with this than I’ve had with playing magic in

years. So that was it was at that point after that tournament that we had really locked in that like, yeah, we have something here. Let’s let’s rock and roll. Let’s keep going with this.

Jason Hsieh (04:19)
I see. How big was that original first tournament? How many people participated?

Joe Casey (04:23)
had 16 people in it. then I, yeah, yeah, 16 people were in that first tournament. And it was good because they had a bunch of their local guys come out. You know, and it was people, some people we worked with showed up and then other just random people caught wind of it and wanted to give it a try. So yeah, good 16, even 16 tournament makes it easy for me to do brackets.

Jason Hsieh (04:40)
Yeah, that’s an even number. Yeah, for sure. And I think in order to give the audience more context, because the battle system itself is really unique. I also have played Pokémon card game with my son in the past, and that’s never dice involved in the whole game. So you can you kind of explain the rule? And I know you have a game with you that maybe you can also show the audience that’s maybe watching.

Joe Casey (05:06)
there’s one of the boxes there that comes in. This would be one of our booster pack boxes here that I can show off. And that’ll contain 24 boosters in it. And then that will have, so here’s just a little booster pack. And you’ll notice right away that these packs actually look different than traditional

Jason Hsieh (05:15)
Okay.

Joe Casey (05:23)
booster packs for trading card games. The reason is because if I can get it right here, if you see up in the top corner here, there’s a little easy pair. So essentially how these work and you don’t, I’ll just, open one up right here is it’s as simple as just like that. It tears right like that and the cards come out. And then essentially, so here’s the cards here. I was fan out a couple of them trying to do this with the camera as well. The blue ones are the magics.

Jason Hsieh (05:37)
Okay.

Joe Casey (05:48)
Okay, the tan ones are the creatures. Yeah, and you can see there’s a very old school design to them because we always like the old school looking card games like it’s on like kind of like rip parchment paper like it’s a D &D character sheet almost. Yeah, and these ones the blue ones supposed to like they’re on a cracked old stone tablet. so that would be a booster but then this is the real seller here is these big thick

fat packs. These are a starter deck. It’s still got this easy tear on it so it just pops open. we have other ones here too. Like this would be our generation one with the cool Owlverine on the front of it there. So what these are designed to do though, and this is another thing we wanted the game to be, is we wanted it to be a just like tear and start playing right off the bat.

Jason Hsieh (06:13)
started that okay yeah

Joe Casey (06:30)
So there’s a lot of games that will do something like that, but every card in here is random, but ratioed to be correctly ready to play. So you’ll have the right number of magics in there, the right number of creatures, It’ll work right out of the pack. So you don’t need to go and figure out how to make a deck or anything. Just grab this, it open and just start playing. And most of how Ward plays is very straightforward. And you would brought up, you brought up the battle system.

So the way we came up with a dice rolling battle system is when we so we always played card games and Dungeons and Dragons were a big part of games that we would play all the time. when I was thinking about making a game, originally it was going to be similar to Pokémon, where there’s just like set damage and that’s how much you do when you attack on your turn. But then the way I had the game designed is

there was like this weird thing where I’m like, well, actually you won’t even need to take your turns because you could like just predict five turns ahead. You’re like, well, he’s going to do 20, I’m going to do 30. He’s into, then the, then you just, know, who’s going to win. It would just kind of waste time. So that’s when we figured let’s throw in dice and not just any dice. We weren’t going to use 20 sided, a hundred sided sick four sided. We just wanted six sided dice because everybody has access to those somewhere at home.

that’s everything about the game has always been about accessibility and ease of access. And that was a big part of it too, is why we chose six sided dice and the dice it actually feels like they’re battling. So I’ll roll my dice, add it up. That’s how much damage I do.

Some creatures that are stronger will get more dice, thus they average doing more damage, some get less. So that was why dice were pulled into it. And just using dice in general opened us up to just a ton of different, like, fun effects that you can do. Like, for example, there’s a card that when you play it to the field, your opponent can’t cause damage or use magic until on their turn, they can roll a one through three to break out of it.

So the dice are used for far more than just the combat. They’re used for almost every aspect of the game. It is definitely a game of dice.

Jason Hsieh (08:26)
I see. Yeah, that’s very unique because just like you say, based on my experience playing Pokémon games, that’s pretty straightforward. Just by looking at the card, you already know which card is going to win.

Joe Casey (08:37)
essentially there was a lot of times if you’re playing with kind of a lower end deck of Pokémon cards, like you just know who’s going to win essentially. Yeah. that’s why we did the dice is we needed to find something to combat that

Jason Hsieh (08:48)
And I know a lot of the trading card game tend to build more and more complexity over time. But I think with your card game, you try to keep things fairly streamlined.

Joe Casey (08:58)
We wanted to bring the games back. so it’s a trading card game. “Game”, like that’s what we focus on. It is a game. Exclude the rarity stuff, the PSA stuff, holographic, all that. Our focus is on the game. We wanna make the funnest game for you to play and make it, I’m not gonna say word is simple, it’s straightforward.

That’s what it is. You’ll look at the cards and if you’ve ever, I don’t know, played any card game or a video game of any type, you’re going to look at these and just kind of understand how the game works without even reading a rule of any type. You’re going to see up in the corner, there’s like HP, there’s attack dice, there’s like, it’s very straightforward. Obviously you’re going to have to read the rules. You’ll probably end up playing wrong, but you were going to grasp

Jason Hsieh (09:44)
Do you have a game map like a lot of other trading card game they have a game map as well

Joe Casey (09:48)
⁓ Yeah, I got a couple of them here. do you want to see one that’s got some zones on it like Yeah,

Jason Hsieh (09:52)
Sure.

And for our viewers that want to see the game in action, feel free to check out today’s interview on our YouTube channel instead of listening in.

Joe Casey (10:01)
Okay, so this is one of our two player mats. It’s gonna be tough to get on the screen here. I’m gonna do my best. this would be, okay, slide out to the corner here. There we go. I feel like a teacher right now.

Jason Hsieh (10:10)
Yeah, I get it.

Joe Casey (10:12)
So you can see there we’ve got the,

the other half of the map there. Yeah, so you can see here that you have the primary creature. Ward is a game of just battling one on one with creatures. And then below you have the magic slots. The magic essentially is there to kind of bend the rules of the game a little bit. So you’ll play magic. Maybe it makes your primary creature have more attack dice or you’ll play a magic that boosts their armor level or one that makes it so your opponent can’t play magic for a turn.

Jason Hsieh (10:15)
okay.

Joe Casey (10:39)
Yeah. So essentially that’s what it is. It is very straightforward and simple. Summon your creature out, power them up and rock and roll with the dice. And now a dice battle it’s always a back and forth So if you and I are playing and I’m controlling the field and I’m going to attack you. The first thing we’d have to look at is whose creature is actually faster. There’s a speed stat on all of the creatures. So even if it was my turn and I’m going to battle with you.

If your creature’s fast, you’re gonna actually get to roll your hit and attack dice first. Even though it’s my turn. So a battle is always a back and forth. Yep, so that really adds this different layer to the game that it’s like,

Jason Hsieh (11:07)
First? Oh, okay.

Okay.

Joe Casey (11:16)
and then it really actually feels like you are in combat with them. Your two creatures you have on the field are actually fighting and then the game turns into who can get the right magics onto the creature to power them up enough to overcome the other one. And then there’s the aspect of how you win, which is completely different. lot of card games,

They kind of follow this rule that for some reason there you always have to attack me like either get rid of my creatures and attack me directly or attack me directly and then I’d have to block them of some type. It’s always me for some reason. Like I’m always the one who’s taking the brunt of it. We wanted the battle to be about the creatures on the field, the monsters, the knights and everything and they’re battling. So the goal of the game is I would have to destroy enough of my opponent’s creatures to get a total of 300 creature HP.

into their cemetery creature health points. Yeah. So like, if I had one here, A skeleton pirate. So by the skeleton pirate here, he battles back and forth, back and forth He’s got 40 HP. So if he were to die on my side of the field, and then go into my discard pile, my card cemetery, I’m 40 points closer to that 300 max. Yeah, that’s what it is. It’s battling back and forth. And I’m doing everything I can to keep as many creatures out.

of my cemeteries possible and get as many into yours as possible. so it would be going really deep into the rules of the game, but to get the stronger creatures out with the higher armor level, they tend to be the stronger and armor level is the it’s a level your opponent has to roll to even hit you to do damage. you roll to hit dice and then add any maybe modifiers or something, but you roll to hit dice.

and you’d have to get a five or better with those two dice. So obviously the creatures that have higher armor level are harder to hit. Thus you can’t do damage. So to play those higher armor levels to the field, you have to sacrifice your weaker creatures either from the field or your hand to play them. So if I were to sacrifice that skeleton pirate to my cemetery to get a big bad boy that’s got like a hundred health, 12 armor, something like that.

I’m actually making myself closer to losing the game, but I’m trading that off for a very strong creature on the field.

Jason Hsieh (13:19)
On the field, OK.

Joe Casey (13:21)
It’s a whole other aspect and we’ve done a lot of research into a lot of games, especially right when we decided to move on with this There’s no battle system like Ward. There’s nothing even close to it. Nothing plays like Ward at all. You could argue that maybe the game flow is closest to playing Yu-Gi-Oh, I suppose, is the closest that you’re gonna get. But once you sit down and play it, you’re gonna be like, no, this is its own monster. You’re rolling dice.

You’re trying to get their creatures into their cemetery. It’s very straightforward. It’s and people just people love it. Most people who just sit down and play it. They almost are appreciative that a game like this even exists and we’ll have people tell us, please don’t ever sell this game off to some big company because we’d hate to see it change from what it is. It’s just so much fun.

Jason Hsieh (14:06)
I see. Yeah. And that actually is a perfect leeway to my next question. think you have quite a bit of passionate community around the companies. What was some of the surprising reaction you get from your fans and the users?

Joe Casey (14:20)
man, there’s so many. my favorite thing is I love seeing dads and kids play together. Dads and their sons. That’s my favorite is because that’s, yeah, cause that’s, it’s like such a bonding thing. And because of the dice rolling, it happened by accident, but Ward actually will make you way better at doing math inside your head, like really good at it too. So I’ve watched young kids that will,

like I will say like eight, like eight, six to eight younger kids. And I’ll see them come to play at one of our tournaments and the first tournament, you know, they’re counting on their fingers, trying to figure out how much damage they did. And then I’ll see them maybe a couple of months later in another tournament. Now they played a bunch of ward and now they’re just rattling off. And they’ll be like, okay, seven, 13, 21, oh, times two, so it’s gonna be 42. And they’re just doing it all in their head.

Jason Hsieh (15:28)
Yeah, I see

Joe Casey (15:30)
There are some fans that will show up to like every event we go to. well, it’s always very fun. Yeah. They’ll travel across the state to come to certain things. And then some of these fans even made their own podcast that’s dedicated just to ward. yeah. Yeah. I’ll give a shout out that the WWB, I think it’s called the World Ward broadcast. Yeah, something like that. So

Jason Hsieh (15:44)
really?

Joe Casey (15:52)
And I listen to it once in a while too, because it’s fun to hear their input too, because they go to lot of tournaments or events and it’s fun to hear what they say and even maybe consider making changes based on that.

Jason Hsieh (16:02)
Hmm. Okay. Okay. What was some of the biggest challenge to taking the game from the idea to a real like a whole project that you have going on right now?

Joe Casey (16:12)
Um, the process of turning it from an idea into an actual, game we’re selling. Obviously there’s the, there were the hardships with making the actual original cards, like the physical labor of making those was a nightmare. I made like 200, 200 by hand. Yeah. Yeah. was two pieces of, uh, card stock.

glued together and then laminated as well. But bringing it to life in a, like a retail setting, the hardest challenge has actually just been, there’s a lot. I mean, it’s entrepreneurship. It’s a business. There’s a bazillion hard challenges from learning tax codes to talking to our attorney.

about certain things. I every bit of art that we make, you have to talk to an attorney just to make sure we’re not, you know, messing anything up.

Jason Hsieh (16:56)
Other people yeah, okay

Joe Casey (16:58)
Yeah, you got to be careful of all that stuff. our trademark, making sure our trademark is good, our copyright is good. So there’s just a lot of business stuff you have to know. And it’s kind of alarming. And especially when we’re just a small team of five of us doing all this stuff with me and Tom doing the brunt of the work. Yeah, It’s it’s it’s a lot of work and you have to be dedicated and you have to be. Some of us are still working a full time job.

and doing this as well. So you’re talking going to work eight hours a day, coming home. I know, I think you have kids, I have kids too. You gotta be, be with the kids for a while because you’re still a parent. And then if they go to bed, now it’s like, now I’m staying up till midnight doing ward stuff essentially. And that’s an everyday thing. It is exhausting and a nightmare sometimes. But when we go to convention, we see how much people love the game. It all feels worth it. Those late nights. just to see them happy.

Jason Hsieh (17:49)
I can 100 % relate to that. That’s how I started. Like I shared with you before in 2016, I have a full-time job and running the business. I remember sitting in traffic in commute having meeting with like vendors, freelancers and sitting in traffic.

Joe Casey (18:04)
It’s a lot of work, especially throwing on a normal nine to five job on top of it because entrepreneurship is a full time job plus of more. It’s more than a full time job. Yeah.

Jason Hsieh (18:15)
Yeah, hundred percent and I think one of the unique thing about trading card game is you also need to think about the balance Especially when you’re introducing new card to the game.

you want to make sure the card is not too overpowered, then you can break the entire system by having one card.

Joe Casey (18:32)
We tried to rework Time Dragon. essentially retyped him and rewrote him and we brought him to the next tournament. Basically like, this card can’t come back from your card cemetery or discard pile. But there was another loop with him. So we finally just banned the card right out. You know what? We’re banning him or replace him with a different card.

Jason Hsieh (18:50)
Yeah, for sure. That’s interesting. Thank you so much for sharing that story. I know Indie like publishing company competing in the space that’s dominated by some of the bigger card game companies that you mentioned, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh and other like magic the gathering.

What are some of the strategies you’re doing marketing-wise, really trying to make your game more out there for the people to experience and for people to know about your particular trading card game?

Joe Casey (19:18)
Yeah, so it is a very competitive market and the big three Pokémon, Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh! They’re the big ones. They’re tough to beat and they’re not going anywhere. ⁓ We’ve come to terms with that. You’re not going to beat them. we’ve taken Ward in a different direction. It is a trading card game, 100%. You can’t get away from that. Literally you trade cards and you don’t get everything. It fits all the bill.

But we’ve pushed for Ward to be more or less like you’re playing, maybe for those at home watching, like you’re playing a game of Call of Duty or Halo and you jump in and there’s like the base way to play, which I’ll just use like Halo as an example, which would be probably Slayer, Team Slayer would be like the base way to play Halo. But then you get to the custom games and that’s where the real fun happens. People have made games like Infection, Zombie. I saw one called Doom Slayer.

⁓ There’s capture the flag. There’s big team battle. so we’ve taken ward and instead of just having like, this is how you play ward. This is the only play one verse one. We’ve developed a ton of different game types We’ve opened it to the community as well. So essentially there’s, standard ward, which is the one verse one and you do have to learn that first. If you want to do any of the other fun games, you should probably learn the base way to play it, which will take you no time at all. Cause it’s very straightforward.

But then, now it opens you up to playing Ward 2 vs 2 team battles, which are super fun. Big team battles, are where you have like four people battling four people. We have a whole mechanic for how that works. It opens you up to ladder matches. Ladder matches is like a whole other way to play it where it’s you pick 12 creatures, one through 12 of the armor levels, and then you battle each creature one on one.

Jason Hsieh (20:43)
I see.

Joe Casey (20:57)
And then the creature that wins goes into winning pile. If your creature loses, goes in a losing pile. So that’s another way to play the game. We also have ward RPG mode, which plays kind of like you’re playing a tabletop RPG, like classic D and but instead of building up a character sheet, like in a classic role playing game, you’re slowly building your deck up in the RPG mode. like you would have someone that’s the watcher, they’re controlling the game.

They’re coming up with everything you’re supposed to do. They divvy out the cards to everybody to start and you start with like really weak creatures. And then as you progress through it and you battle more and more, you were then awarded and you actually like basically enslave or capture other creatures as you’re making your way through it. So like, let’s say we battled, we were working together and then we just battled a skeleton and we beat him. We would not only get all of his magics that he was using.

but then we’d get to roll the dice and see if we capture him and then divvy him up whose deck is he going into. So you’re slowly by the end of it, it can be long. mean, it’s a campaign, it’s a role playing thing. So it can take hours and maybe days like playing in different sessions, but you’re slowly building up your deck as you do it. So then by the end of it, you’re probably fighting strong creatures. You have a fully fledged powered up deck. yeah, that’s a really fun way to play the game. And then…

We have our bread and butter that’s coming out here very, soon called Boss Battles.

these are our boss decks okay what they are is a way to play ward without anybody else you can play it by yourself kind like you’re playing solitaire in a way so essentially what it is is like you would buy this deck and then you’d have your regular ward deck that you want to use and you want to test it out so you’d then battle against this is cosmagus here yeah and you’d see if you can beat him

And the boss mechanics are so simple that it’s so simple that you can keep all the focus on what you’re doing on your side of the field and not have to worry about boss, the boss mechanics. The boss is very simple. He stays on the field. He battles once on his turn all the time. And he always flips up a, he flips up a magic every turn. And then you just do what the card says. That’s it. So if, if the boss is, it’s his turn, flip up a magic, say the magic says the boss gains plus five attack.

Okay, he gets five attack and then you know that you’re gonna have to battle the boss. So you’ll do your roles for your damage and then you’ll roll for the boss as well. And you can do it by yourself.

Jason Hsieh (23:15)
Can you play co-op?

Joe Casey (23:18)
So, Cosmagus here is actually designed for three to four people.

Jason Hsieh (23:20)
That’s a very interesting play. It’s very different way to play it.

Joe Casey (23:25)
And playing as a team against a boss is very fun because like you and I are playing and I’d be like, I mean, I’m going to, I’m going to try to attack him. And you’d say, yeah, I got something in my deck that I, or in my hand that go ahead, attack them. I’ll be able to negate his attack. Like we can, we can work together or you could put, ⁓ power-ups on my guy to make him stronger or heal my guy. So essentially you’re playing as almost like, ⁓ like a party, like if you’re playing like final fantasy. Or even D &D. I actually put it closer to like Final Fantasy because that’s what I used as a reference when we were kind of designing up how it works. And we designed to be almost like a turn based combat type thing.

Jason Hsieh (24:02)
Okay, yeah, I play quite a bit of Final Fantasy when I was a kid too.

Joe Casey (24:06)
So boss battles are incredibly fun to play and those are not released yet, but they’re going to be released very, soon. I. You have them out before either early summer or late spring is the goal.

Jason Hsieh (24:12)
..I see, I see. So that’s the latest expansion this year for the.

Joe Casey (24:21)
And it’s like I said, it’s a different type of expansion. We have more of that coming too, because people love that. They love new cards. But we want to keep moving Ward kind of around. Like it’s not just a trading card game. It’s a game that you can play all sorts of fun ways. And we invite the community to make up their own game rules.

And with how these cards are designed, it’s very easy to come up with a lot of ways to play. But we do have a locked in one versus one style that, like I said, that people, you will have to learn before you can start opening yourself up to all these fun game types.

Jason Hsieh (24:46)
I see.

got it, got it, got it. Thank you for sharing. So, anything else that’s next for Ward and any additional expansion,

Joe Casey (25:05)
We are working on generation three right now. Me and my brother Tom are actually talking about it this morning, gen three. I mean, when I talk to him, we’re talking advertising, we’re talking boss battles. There’s just a bazillion things that we have to go through every single day to keep this thing alive. There’s a lot of work that’s going on behind the scenes. I know a lot of people at home, they don’t see that. All they see is just the cards and they see the game and then they don’t see us.

They can rest assured knowing that we are on this like 24 seven

Jason Hsieh (25:31)
definitely a lot of time and energy you need to put into the company, especially for the game like yours that have a lot more complexity compared to other board games because of the element you need to keep on introducing.

Joe Casey (25:47)
it’s complex, but it’s yet still easier to learn and play than most board games out there. I’ll see a lot of board games that just have like a bazillion different pieces that are out. And I’m like, okay, so I have to spend several hours setting this game up first. And then we got to learn the rules and then, you know, and then by the end, like, you know what? don’t even want to play this anymore. that’s why, yeah. So like, that’s why we designed Ward to be, it was essentially made for like people like us that just…

you will figure your way through any weird thing that might happen. Like maybe there’s two cards that you think contradict, but then when you actually read the card and just take it as it reads, don’t read between the lines. Don’t read between the lines in Ward Cards. Just read them and do exactly what it says. We designed the game to be that simple for you.

Jason Hsieh (26:26)
Don’t repeat it in the line.

I see, don’t overthink, don’t overthink.

Joe Casey (26:35)
It’s not made to overthink. It’s made to just shut your brain off and have some fun. Except for the math side. You’re gonna need the math. You’re gonna have to do some adding.

Jason Hsieh (26:43)
For sure.

So thank you again for being on our podcast and sharing some of your experience in the industry. If you have to share just one piece of advice with someone that’s just about to get started in the toys and game industry, what would that be based on your experience?

Joe Casey (26:57)
My advice if you’re gonna get into this business and if you have an idea and you believe that your idea is a good one You can’t test it enough get it in front of people test it see what other people think that are not your friends Because those are the people that you actually need the opinion of They might say nasty things, but if you get it in front of enough people that are not your friends you will know quickly

If you’re about to waste a lot of time, let’s put it that way. it’s a hard reality that if you like something, but like everybody’s saying, no, it’s no good. No, it’s no good. You can’t find anybody that likes it. There’s a good chance that nobody’s going to buy it as well. So play test, find out if people like it, spend the time to do that. Take the criticism that they give you and don’t take it to heart. Just take it.

If they give you some criticism in your game, listen to it and see if it, see if there is something behind what they’re saying. it’s hard because like, you’ll be like, you’ll see it maybe a comment or something online and online people are just nasty anyways. Yeah. Sometimes there’s some reality to what they’re saying and you have to just think about it. And if you suspect there might be something to their actions, you might have to do something about it and don’t be too prideful to change it.

Jason Hsieh (27:54)
Yeah

Joe Casey (28:08)
You can’t be prideful in this business, otherwise you’ll fall apart. There’s a reason pride is the most deadly sin.

Jason Hsieh (28:13)
Thank you for that advice. I 100 % agree. Play testing and open for feedback and keep on pivoting and making adjustments along the way.

Joe Casey (28:22)
be prepared for a lot of work. you don’t just make something and get rich overnight. There is a ton of work. Even the biggest businesses out there these guys were starting in their basement making things. think Bill Gates was making computers in his garage, selling them to people personally at one point. And now he’s got one of the biggest companies in the world. It’s okay to be humble in the beginning. You’re going to have to do a lot of work.

You’re going to have to do a lot of things in house because you just can’t afford to have a team of people behind you doing all the work for you. So ⁓ it’s tough, you got to spend money where you need to and save everywhere else.

Jason Hsieh (28:51)
Okay.

For sure. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. And for our audience, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We hope you have enjoyed today’s conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate your support and would love it if you can leave us a review and share the podcast with your friends and colleagues. For more resource tips and the latest update within the toys and game industry, visit our website at toy-launch.com.

Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using #toybusinessunboxed. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, keep bringing joy to toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unbox podcast and we will see you in the next episode. Thank you so much, everyone.