Last month I visited my 5th grade teacher’s current class to talk to them about board game invention as his students were assigned a project to invent a game that included facts about a famous American.  I talked about different types of games and game mechanics hoping to get them thinking about games that aren’t based on Monopoly or Candyland, which seem to be popular solutions.  I have to say that in the past couple months I’ve heard about a lot of school projects that are centered on creating a …

An article I wrote for Global Toy News, you can view the post HERE: 
Last year there was some research that revealed that the average American has only 2.03 good friends despite having hundreds of “friends” on Facebook (see article HERE).  While I don’t know why they it felt necessary to include the .03, what I do know is that 2 is not a very big number.  What this research indicated was that our circle of good friends has been dwindling over the past decades despite the increased online connectivity.  Sure, …

I can’t tell you how often it’s happened in my career that I show a concept to one company’s inventor relations representative and they give me less than glowing feedback, but the I show it to another company’s inventor relations representative and they can’t wait to bring it in.  This always blows my mind – how one person can react like I showed them something that smelled foul and the next is as giddy as a child on Christmas morning.  You’d think it doesn’t make sense that two people who …

This article was written for Global Toy News (July 22, 2011) and can be viewed with comments HERE. I’m adding it now to keep all of my game development advice articles all on my site under the same tag to make it easy for any aspiring or new inventors to access them.  Click the HERE to see them all.
 
While I was writing my last article on boxes that last, I did a very informal poll on The Game Aisle’s Facebook page and Twitter account to see what everyone’s pet peeves were regarding packaging.  Here …

Okay so you’ve got an idea for an awesome game or toy  — now what?!  Yea, I get that question ALL THE TIME and I have one answer….go to T&GCon.  But spending money on a conference isn’t what most people want to hear when they’re already considering self-manufacturing a new concept.  Which makes sense — BUT I can’t stress enough that starting off on the right foot is essential to success and the best way to make sure you’re doing that is by getting advice from people who have ” …