How to Succeed in the Gaming Industry: Lessons from Alex Yeager

EP003_01-18-24_Alex Yeager

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert in the field, will guide you through the enchanting world of toy design, marketing, and manufacturing. Now let the unboxing begin…

Jason Hsieh: Hi, for today’s toys business unbox podcast, we have Alex, a 20 year plus veteran in the game business, working with various high profile hobby games companies, such as Mayfield games and Steve Jackson’s games. He currently is the CEO of Amigo games, part of an international company focused on family friendly board games and car games.

Thank you so much for having to be on our podcast today, Alex. 

Alex Yeager: My pleasure. Glad to be here. 

Jason Hsieh: And we would like to start out for the listener to tell just a little bit more about your experience in the industry and how does your diverse experience have shaped your approach to the toys and the game industry?

Alex Yeager: Sure. So I’ve always been one to hop around in my interests a little bit. I went [00:01:00] to I started in university as a chemical engineer was going to be the plan. And with a slight detour through education, I ended up at a video radio broadcasting with a communications degree.

Coming out of coming out of out of university, I went into marketing research and worked with an automotive marketing research firm here in the U S and then I gradually in my open time, my free time, I began to volunteer for game companies. It was always an interest that I had all through high school and college and.

That eventually turned into working more directly with a few companies. And one of those companies happened to be Mayfair games. And I had an opportunity to come on board and begin working with them full time in 2005. And from there I was with Mayfair until its eventual sale to Asmodee. Then. And ended up as vice president of acquisition and development at Mayfair.

Then spent a couple of years with [00:02:00] Steve Jackson games company. It’s very near and dear to my heart as they were they actually produced a couple of the products that were very influential in getting me into gaming hobby gaming in the first place, so it’s been a few years with them, and then I had this opportunity with Amigo games come up and I’ve been with them for about coming up on three years now.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, so that’s definitely a long journey in your career. How have you seen like the hobby gaming industry evolve over your 20 plus experience? 

Alex Yeager: I think it’s interesting that there’s sort of a demarcation line with the introduction of. Two products, Catan and Magic the Gathering.

And both of those things happened in the early nineties. And so for many people such as myself I came to a European style board games through Catan and through Mayfair when I began volunteering with them, because. At the [00:03:00] time there were several companies Mayfair and Rio Grande. I think in particular that we’re making an industry out of finding German games and bringing them to the U S sometimes just literally adding a translation sheet to, stuck it to the outside of the box in order to be able to sell in the U S.

There was just this amazing explosion of ideas and concepts and mechanisms that were coming in at that point. And then I think if you jumped 20 years later into, we’re well into the two thousands now, we suddenly had a generation of. People who are having kids who understood now the power of a good game.

These are the kids that were playing magic in high school, and now we’re having children and we’re looking for something beyond kind of the typical mass market sort of game. And and understood, again, how complex a game could be and wouldn’t be scared by something that was perhaps more complex and was on the mass market at the time, appropriate [00:04:00] for children, for, young children to be able to play.

And so I think there was this really interesting confluence that happened there in the 20, late 2000s, early 2010s. That, that suddenly you had this amazing audience in place, ready to explore whatever they could get their hands on. And at the same time, we had all of these, the mass market things like target and, the big box stores suddenly understood the power.

Of some of these hobby games, in and above just the kind of whatever was being offered by Hasbro and Mattel and, and certainly even Hasbro Mattel, those large players have come into the market now with some fantastic hobby sort of games. So really we’ve come into a time where we’re melding very successfully, what would be considered a hobby product, perhaps a niche product 20, 30, 20 years ago, but now is something that can be found on the shelves of a target can be found.[00:05:00] 

On, millions of households across the U. S. Catan right now is a ubiquitous is monopoly in many parts of this of the world, let alone our country. And so again, we’re having a really interesting time with now people understanding that Games, there’s this world of games that are out there and are willing to explore them.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. And that’s actually a good segue to the next question I want to ask you is based on your experience and what you have seen in the industry, what are the key factor that you will consider right now, if you are developing any new games for the market? And this is also a question that I see on some of the listener that’s inventor or.

An entrepreneur that’s looking in to develop their own board game to what are the key factors you would suggest them to think about? 

Alex Yeager: So When I was doing acquisition for Mayfair and, we’re going back now, perhaps 20 years you would, when we met designers, it was always [00:06:00] going to be a question mark, whether or not this product was going to be good or not, whether or not the game itself was actually going to be a workable game.

Nowadays, there are so many tools for designers, so many amazing things that can be used by a aspiring game designer or even established game designers meetups, you have things industry shows like protospiel and unpubs can help you develop those games, forums, so many groups online that can help you to develop your idea.

Then nowadays, when we sit down with a designer, if your game is good, that’s a check Mark, that’s not a wow moment. It’s mostly you’ve done your due diligence. If a game isn’t good, that is far more of a black Mark than it would have been. Years ago, because at this point, that means you’re not using the tools that are available to you.

And perhaps that means that you haven’t discovered them. You are so young or so [00:07:00] inexperienced that you’re not aware of them. So we always are going to take the time to say, Hey, these are opportunities. These are resources that you have to be able to to be able to develop your ideas better. But. So often a game that is presented to us is already a very good, workable game.

Now there’s always going to be development that happens after the fact to either, if nothing else, to make it more appropriate for the company that you’re, that you’re working with, but ultimately when you look at a game now. You are all, you’re looking through the prism of what is it that our company needs, and literally it could be, I’m looking for a card game that is under 20 and this could be a really good game, but it’s not that.

And I may reject it based on just simply, the features of the game based on the needs that our company has. And it’s an industry as well, at least on the hobby side, that’s very generous about recommending designers to go to somebody else. So if I see a game and it has a particular [00:08:00] quality or a particular vibe, or the theming is a certain way, or there’s a mechanism in there that I go, Hey, it’s not right for us, but there’s this other company.

And I think you should go pitch to them. And that happens all the time. We get referrals, we send referrals out. All of that is, is under the theory of a rising tide lifts all boats. We want games to be better. We want good games to be out there. We want interesting games to be out there. And if someone discovers this game, it’s very likely, especially for the major players, they’re going to find us in our games eventually.

So beyond that, though, it always comes down to, and the first question I ask anytime I’m working with a designer is, what’s the fun of your game? What is it when you made this game that you went, Hey, this is what makes it interesting and fun for me to play? And then you start looking at the design from the standpoint of what is it in the design that supports that premise of it being fun.

And what is it that takes away, that detracts from [00:09:00] the ability for it to be fun. As a very rudimentary example if you’ve ever played like a match three game on your phone and it’s, that’s the fun of the game is actually trying to make the match three and watch the little boom and everything falls and you get to do that again.

And there are so many games in that genre that do everything they can to make it hard for you to do that. They put timers on it, you have to spend things, or you only can do certain types of things, or you’re blocked, but all of those things are things that get in the way of the ability to have, do the fun thing that you are presenting, which is to make a match three on your phone.

So ultimately a good designer, a good developer is an editor is always going to look at a design and say what is it that is supporting the fun of the game and what is it that we can remove or we need to change in order to let the core Fun game shine. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. And I think it’s also depends on the target audience [00:10:00] of the pro game that is designing as well. I think that’s played definitely a key factor.

Alex Yeager: John Kowalik who’s an artist very successful is the artist on the Munchkin series also has done some game stuff told me once upon a time. That they had a game, he was working with a company and had a game design come in and they were playing this game and you moved around on a board and did all this stuff.

And there was this one little resolution mechanism they had in the game where you had to draw a card and then everybody else would play a card and you would look at the card and say, which card is more appropriate with this other card? And. After playing it a bunch, the company just, everyone’s sitting on the table, had this moment and said, all of this other stuff is not fun.

This is the fun part, cards and cards, literally stripped it all away and became apples to apples. The idea, and even Catan started this huge sprawling design of you would go find an island, then you would explore the island, then you’d settle the island, and they broke that game up into three chunks, the third part of which [00:11:00] was Catan.

So many designers always layer on layer, and sometimes it’s a matter of just stripping away as much of it as you can to get to that core nugget of this is the game, this is the thing that is fun. 

Jason Hsieh: I see. Yeah, that’s a good way to definitely look at it. To make sure the game will be successful as well.

And also on the key factor, I feel like it’s also like the replay abilities of the game itself. Do you want to elaborate a little bit on the, on that as well? 

Alex Yeager: Sure. So replayability, I think. Has it’s a little bit of a multifaceted thing. I think a lot of people think about replayability and sense that, oh, the game’s different every time.

So with Catan, the tiles go down differently every time. So the board is different and there’s a different experience of the board itself dictates to players. I think also you have, I think you have a situation like, for example, a game that we publish, Bonanza, which is a trading game. It is straight [00:12:00] up, a negotiation game from start to finish, and that game is the same in rules, but varies very much based on who is playing it and the way, are you a person who trades a lot or are you a person who’s going to be really tight, tight to your chest with your cards?

Understanding how a game is going to provide replayability, whether that be through player experience, whether that be through mechanisms, whether that be through, how a game unfolds, or perhaps, in the case of some of the, like a a legacy game or something, you’ll, you’ll suddenly add new components or new elements to the game that will make it different.

All of these things are again, tools that even a designer might not have had 20, 30 years ago, the idea of a legacy game, is something that is still being explored as far as what it could do, how it can be implemented in games and all of those things, feedback into that idea of what is it that, that when you talk about replayability, it’s always, yes, you want people to encounter your game.

In different [00:13:00] ways in different times. How are you bringing that, though, to the table is going to be very different depending on how is it that you’re approaching that replay ability for sure. 

Jason Hsieh: For sure. Thank you for elaborating on that. I want to do a segue and just talk a little bit.

Extension on your background, because I know you have an extensive background in automotive marketing research as well. Yeah, that’s a very, of course, different industry, but how do you apply some of those similar marketing strategy when we’re marketing for like board games and the industry are currently in? 

Alex Yeager: A lot of it, when I, when, so my job at the time of when I was doing my marketing research was sending out surveys. And so we’d send out surveys if there was a. Period of a few years where if you bought a new car if you bought a new car in the U. S. between about 1991, 1990, and 1994 or I’m sorry, other way around, so 2000, 19, 1999, and say 2004 I [00:14:00] probably sent you a survey.

I’m sorry, but I did. And one, and one of the, one of the core issues, one of the things that, that has stuck with me much more than the math that a lot of that has disappeared into the ether over the years, but I think a core concept. In any good marketing research environment is how is this information going to be used and even going to step back to the client level.

If I tell you the answer to your question, are you prepared to act upon it? So if we go out with this survey and it comes back and says, people do not like this color option on your car. Are you prepared to drop it? Or are you just going to say I wanted to know, but I don’t want to know now because there’s that and.

And taking that into the game development side of things, you’re often going to hear things you don’t want to hear you, you have questions you always need to ask during game development. Did you enjoy yourself? What did you like [00:15:00] about the game? What didn’t you like about the game? And I have a friend of mine, a game designer.

James Ernest, who is always very specific about, when he asked questions, he wants to know the problems. He doesn’t want to know the answers. Because for the most part, he has worked with these designs. He knows how they work. He understands what makes them tick. And so when someone says I don’t like this or more accurately, the way it often comes out is you should add this to the game, or you should do this to the game, and he’ll always take that step back and go, okay.

What is it that you didn’t like about the game? Why, what is the problem that you see that needs to be fixed and use that question to inform his development of the game, to be able to create something that is better, that addresses that issue, but isn’t going to, it’s going to be a more organic solution than perhaps with someone from whole cloth would just throw at it after a single play.

Whether it be marketing research or game [00:16:00] development, it’s about data collection. It’s about what’s all that design. What’s the width of the data that you’re getting in, how many different people, how much blind play testing are you doing, taking that information and literally incorporating that into your, being able to get rid of that thing that you really love and you’re so super excited about the game, but it’s not working.

And you need to take it out and you need to get rid of it and you need to do something different. And, so using data and using it effectively in your design is something that can be emotionally taxing sometimes if you have those little sacred cows that you just don’t want to touch in your game.

But for the sake of the game, you need to remove where you need to make better. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, I think definitely the customer feedback is going to be important in kind of, so you can improve the games and really make sure it’s user friendly and it meet the user’s expectation as well. 

lex Yeager: So things, and that’s, I think the reason the value of things like, for example, a protospiel or an unpub. And I know that I will [00:17:00] get some pushback from both organizations if I characterize it this way. But Protospiel is often for designers it’s a convention of game designers. So game designers come, they’re the only people that really attend except for some play testers sometimes and they’re showing games to each other.

So it’s a great way to take a design that’s early in its process and see if it excites. Someone who makes games. And the people who make games are also going to be industry people. So you’re learning through that process, not only how to make your game better, but how to look for those things that are going to excite someone that you’re going to pitch the game to eventually maybe to publish at the same time, you’ve got unpubs, which are oftentimes more developed games that are looking now to start looking at how to market the game, maybe they’re six to 12 months out from a Kickstarter. There you’re getting feedback about how the public is going to interact with your game. Are they going to find it interesting and exciting? Is it, is there confusion in how the rules are presented? Is there confusion in the way that the pieces are presented on the board? Is there some way that, is it confusing?

Is it [00:18:00] messy? However that might be. All of those points along the way are going to be valuable to the point, because once it’s in a box, you certainly still continue to get feedback. But at that point, it’s pretty much going to be, should I buy it or should I not buy it is the data point that you get to.

So you always want to get as much of that ahead of time as you can to hopefully make that answer a far more.

Jason Hsieh: For sure. And the my next question have a had additional layer to that is because you also have a lot of background in production, like media productions. You have webcast in the past, like the Bob and Angus showed and other media that you have created.

How is that influence your approach to the board game industry?

Alex Yeager: I think that there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of people out there who are doing very straightforward. Let’s unbox a game and video it. And then those are easy. Those are easy to do. Those rely far more on the personality of the person that is presenting than it does on the product that’s being [00:19:00] presented.

Same thing with a lot of channels that are going to do reviews or whatever. Those are all pretty straightforward. It’s pretty much tread, it’s ground that pretty much has been You know walked over pretty extensively over the last, you know a couple of decades there were a couple of really interesting things that we did with may at mayfair when we did our video presentations the first of which was we did a series of training videos called white glove movies and The star of that show was me narrating, me talking about the game, and then on screen, we had a disembodied sort of white glove, so it was just a white glove, Adam’s family style of running around, and That was, and it was interesting because there was what happened at that.

And it was inadvertent, but it really does did make a difference. It’s the idea that we could remove any sort of gender, race, any kind of. imposition of this person. I [00:20:00] see this person on the screen. Therefore, this is the person or the type of person who plays this game. By removing it down to this abstracted hand, suddenly we had the opportunity to bring in a neutral, start from a neutral place and be able to work on our inclusion with our other presentations rather than maybe that first time you encounter the game with The product itself with, with Glover.

And then I think beyond that, when we got into the Bob and Angus show and I, you, you’d be hard pressed to find any of that online anymore, but ultimately what it was two sheep that would talk about games and eventually would devolve into shouting at each other. Having two sheep shouting at each other is great fun to write.

I wrote four and a half years of sheep shouting at each other. But again, it was being able to present a game in kind of this fun, neutral format and be able to be funny about it. I think some of the most successful channels that are out there that talk about games I could point to, for example, [00:21:00] Shut Up and Sit Down right off, right off the top of my head.

They have done a really good job of presenting that information in a very concise, very clear way to provide information about their opinions on the game as well as the game mechanisms itself, but at the same time be really funny about how they’re doing it, be very entertaining about it, and relying as, as much on The writing, the scripting of it as they will the personalities that are presenting it again, strong personality, strong writing and presenting their products in a way that makes it entertaining to watch.

Even if you’re not necessarily interested in the game, you can go halfway through a video and go, okay, so this isn’t really a game that’s for me, but you may be entertained enough by the presentation to stick around and watch the whole thing. And a lot of. A lot of that is what informs or what, that I want to look at when I think about the types of video presentations that we want to do that we would eventually like to do even because, a lot of those efforts are pretty startup for our [00:22:00] particular, arm of the company.

We want it to be something that is different and different is the way you’re going to cut through the massive things that are out there online and get to an audience that will support you and appreciate you.

Jason Hsieh: I see. Is it on a horizon for you to produce a other show in the future?

Alex Yeager: Yes, we actually are just gearing up those efforts now. I’m writing scripts as we, not as we speak, I figured I’d do this and then I’d go write, but we’re getting scripts right now. It incorporates a few of these ideas. The danger is, of course, you don’t want to repeat yourself and more importantly what I think is funny, what I thought was funny 20 years ago, maybe we need to find some other voices and other ways to make sure that, we are expressing ourselves to the best of our ability. And so I really do appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much.

Outro: You’ve been listening to Toy Business Unboxed, hosted by Jason Hsieh. Thank you for joining us and exploring the fascinating world of toys and the ingenuity behind them.To stay updated with the latest episodes and continue your [00:23:00] journey into the toy business, remember to subscribe and follow us. If you found today’s episode insightful, please leave a rating and review and share this podcast with others who share your passion for toys. Until next time, stay curious and keep innovating.