10 Steps to Create a Tabletop Game Company

Can't express how important your contribution to the hobby is. Thank you for all your work.

Thanks for this video Jamie, I’m currently between steps 9 and 10. My first game “Outrun the Bear” just won the UKGE people’s choice for best new family game so I’m really optimistic for the future of my company

Great video, I'm really looking forward to launching my first game and getting my publishing company off the ground later this year. Your content has been instrumental in my ability to come up with a realistic plan for launch, and this video just solidifies all those things I'd learned from you and others. Thank you again for all this helpful content!

Out of my passion to involve others into my love of boardgames for building bridges toward better relationships and the joy of fruitful fellowships, I started developing table top games in the mid 1980s and formed the LLC in 2015. However, since my team came together in 2020, we've produced one of the 8 games I've copyrighted. Although we're currently going forward with producing 2 other this year, I still feel like we're still a start-up. Since 2020, I've learned so much from you through Stonemaier broadcast. We're a small local DC company and need to grow & spread out our wings. I'm so grateful for being one who has benefited from your joy and enrichment. Thank you for sharing all of who you.

As always, fantastic advice! Getting this company off the ground has been more work than I could’ve ever imagined, and we have such a long way to go, but there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing!

I am a project manager so I absolutely adore the idea of managing this sort of business side of publishing a game. Maybe one day I'll find a great designer worth partnering with!

love the T-shirt, you big wonderful nerd😄

Thanks a lot Jamey! I’ve been working in the gaming business already for 10 years, but in the mobile segment of it. Lately I’ve been looking into starting the board gaming business. I’m so inspired by the way you run things! Aside from the business aspect, which I am sure you are doing at the top notch level, but more importantly the gist of willingness to help everyone around to be successful, so we all live in better world. Acknowledging your deeds I e-send you tons of support, energy and inspiration to keep being yourself 💙💛.

This video is the most beautiful love letter to our hobby that I have ever seen. Beautiful.

Jamey, first time caller but longtime listener here. You are such an inspiration and valuable resource, thank you for sharing your hard fought knowledge with the community. Question; across the publishing process and supply chain you've just described, what are your two greatest friction points as a publisher that you feel is ripe for innovation or a novel solution you wish existed for?

25 million, whoa!

Thanks so much for this video, Jamey! I've read through your crowdfunding book twice and followed your blog and youtube for the last 4 years, which has kept me incredibly focused on the value-added steps toward building my publishing company and prepping for our first game launch this September/October. This video is timely since one of my to-dos this week is sourcing fulfillment partners, so I plan on starting with the folks you mentioned! It's also great to hear more about your positive experience with Panda since I just locked them in as our manufacturing partner! Aside from all my ramblings, I wouldn't have made it this far without you sharing all your wisdom and knowledge, so THANK YOU!!

I love in depth nuts and bolts stuff! Thanks for continue to share. I've been at the start of a few health-tech organizations now and the number of moving parts and details to manage, regardless of industry, is no joke. Starting a business is signing yourself up to spend countless hours of things you didn't even realize you had to do; spend 10x longer on things that have to get done well that you could just shrug off when working for someone else; and you'll have to get in a learning mindset where every failure and misstep is an opportunity to grow and get better.

Thanks a lot for this wealth of information. As a designer who's yet to publish anything, I really appreciate the validation of my thoughts so far on the process.

I'm kinda new to this, only started designing in Jan this year. Your list is encouraging because I'm on track with a lot of it. What I've done and am doing through muscle and feel, matches up with what you're saying. The crowd building and crowd funding is something I'm weak on, and I understand that it's important, but right now it's not urgent - there is still a lot of ground work I need to do first. Really appreciate you taking time to share your thoughts and lessons learnt, it serves as a perfect framework for new designers like myself to build on - thank you.

Thanks Jamey! We are working on our first big game now called Galactic Cruise that we are brining to crowd funding early next year. This is super helpful in preparing for that!

I have no such plans (at the moment), but a nice in-depth informative video nonetheless.

Great video, Jamey! I think I can glean the answer from what you've said here, but I've always wondered if you considered yourself more of a business man or game designer. I suppose you have other hats to weat as well, like social media influencer. Really appreciate all the content you put out!

Really cool video! I'm going to produce my first game in a few months, I'm choosing Panda too, Longpack is cheaper but is the thing that I can trust them more and for a first project I think it's gonna be really good. Thank you for this gold content!

Hi Jamie - what’s your process for designing and play testing games while you’re still working another job? Did you start out by ordering a whole bunch of cardboard and paper and printing out stuff and using photoshop to play test? I know that nowadays people use tabletop simulator but I find that platform really clunky and don’t like to use it even for playing games. Hence i am finding that to be a barrier to entry. The other being general exhaustion after work. My goal is to actually just go through the process and create a game that is fun for me and my friends to play, then if we all agree it’s fun, we can open it up to more play testers in our wider gaming meetups and eventually publishers. I am based in Sydney Australia and actually know a couple of people who are publishers and have bought people to market. But my main thing is finding a good way to protype and chip away at playing around with designs. At the moment it feels like a pipe dream because when we are not busy we would rather just play a game - after all we have like 500+ games in our collection and have a huge backlog.