Gadgetory

board games were a huge part of my childhood and there's still a big part of my life rarely did a game of risk or monopoly end without a brother or an uncle vowing revenge against their own blood these games provided real competition real excitement and most importantly a table surrounded by real people I love a good console game but nothing compares to laying down a lightning bolt in front of a colleague and seeing a cringe man I love games but where do these games stand in today's world of digital gaming of virtual reality do people still care about family game night it's impossible to talk about board games stop talking about Hasbro the company founded in 1923 has created some of the most iconic games of all time life candy land battleship Ouija Trivial Pursuit Scrabble I mean the list doesn't stop all the games you played as a kid and while hansbrough may not have created all of those games in-house it now owns the companies that did as of 1984 Milton Bradley is one of Hasbro's brands and what about Parker Brothers the longtime rival of Hasbro hasbro bought it in 1991 but these games have been around for decades how does a 91 year old companies stay relevant today I mean monopoly was created during the Great Depression yet people around the world still build Park Place hotels and bankrupt their families how does it games day timeless do you have any idea on like the number of families that monopoly and risk have destroyed over the years have you ever had any like divorces are weird we are pretty competitive family so we've had a lot of battles over monopoly and my wife will not trade with me so we have a trading rule at our family where we can trade properties my kids will trade with lead by wipe my wife now refuses to so I understand the competitiveness of Monopoly and risk but you know it's it's a monopoly in particular is an amazing brand right over ninety percent brand awareness globally so you've got this amazing appeal around the world and what's great is our fans love to participate in the creation of the game so through our things like our token vote and our house rules campaign we found that fans want to contribute and participate which I think gets the blood boiling that much more is once you have even more of a stake in it that you've ever had before you're helping create the game you are that much more passionate about the brand what is it about monopoly in other board games you think keeps people coming sure well it's funny because when i first started at this company everybody's aware of what monopoly is and almost everybody has one in their house it's almost like a part of the housewarming experiences that somebody's going to get you a Monopoly board and it's going to be one of those things that you can always go to but I think it's that it's that it's that tactile feel and it's that it's that a connection that you make to people actually being face-to-face so this is my man up so what we've done is out of the box you have your classic game that everybody's familiar with and it'll come with these these little squares and on these squares you can print out stickers using the website or the app and you can put them into all the different spaces within your monopoly game so as you go through here you see that each picture sort of has a customized piece underneath that's a silly sunglasses or Santa's Little Helper and you can move these around all around the board to make any salad game that you want but then a game like I was talking about you have a website that you can access and you have a mobile app both of them are connect to each other so the user goes in they can't even log in with their Facebook or they could create an account they go inside they can upload photos from social from social networks or they can grab photos from their mobile device or from their computer they put it into the account and then they can start to customize those photos so they can crop in they can add text and we're going to start to add more features as we start to see more people getting engaged with the product and product engagement really is what drives game development it has bro remember Simon the electronic memory game today it's become Simon swipe kids today are more familiar with touchscreens and Hasbro looked at that when developing the updated version this is Simon swipe this is your newest one how did you come up with the idea for this so really I mean what it really is is taking the great classic gameplay of Simon which involves lights colours memory all of that and making a relevant to a whole new generation of kids with the technology here we have it's a actually a tap technology so it's touch just like traditionalsignin start with one light and builds that's where the new Simon's white comes into play so press press and then hit the swipe up folks so we cast a really wide net and we came up with lots and lots of different concepts and there was through a process of elimination with marketing with upper management to drive down to one concept and that could be from what is the easiest get to what's the most exciting new product to something that's we can really advertise and that we can drum up a lot of business around why did you make a new physical assignment instead of a a nap or a digital game while there is this sort of you know great influx of you know digital media and apps and all that there's still sort of a basic human need for the for the physical and you know when we test stuff with kids you really really see that when you get something physical that they hold it's just it's there's something there I feel that there's always going to be a place for the for the physical as well why are board games still know it I think the primary reason is people still want social connection and what games would what our gaming brands bring is the ability to bring people together and connect socially for Laughs excitement fun you can't always get that from digital gaming do you think that for games the physical games would be the heart of Hasbro forever I mean is that something that's never going to go away and you're in your mind are you going to start making more video games or digital components or are you going to try to stick with with what's trying to true I think gaming is going to be with Hasbro gaming is a kind of a cornerstone of what Hasbro's about and we focus on the brand first and then figure out the best way to bring that to consumers so physical gameplay is definitely a core mainstay for Hasbro digital gameplay is a core mainstay for hasbro i think whatever wherever the consumer goes we're going to be there Hasbro's moves are precise calculated and focused like a game of chess each design and development move has a clear focus and what the end goal will be but newer younger companies are taking a different approach in early 2011 indie game cards against humanity raised over fifteen thousand dollars on Kickstarter its original goal was only four thousand and it's currently now the number one selling game on Amazon a title it's held for three years since then Kickstarter has become one of the most popular spots for indie games to receive funding one of those is the yet-to-be-released game of phones created by Luke Stern and Sam wander the game acts as a perfect middle ground between physical and digital gaming on the one hand it's a card game you have a deck piece around a table with a group of friends if you're me you have some beers in a pizza but on the other hand every player is clutching their phone at all times your photos or tweets your knowledge of google images these are your tools to win the game this isn't Bradley Cooper from American hustle this is Luke's turn from game of phones so what does game of phones game of phones is a deck of cards i play with you and your friends the idea came out of the kind of anti-social use of smartphones with in social settings so essentially how it works is one person is the judge they pick a card from the top of the deck and it says something like find an ugly baby and then everybody else solves it with their smart phone however they see fit it could be nothing baby from anywhere it could be an ugly your ugly baby it could be your own ugly baby if you feel that it's ugly enough to challenge everybody else is ugly baby so then I as the judge if I pick the card decide who has the ugliest baby and award that card and the first person to 10 cards wins sounds like you can make a lot of enemies in this game or a lot of friends most the development for this game happened in a few bars so we have about four different types of cards there's kind of the find cards so for example find the weirdest thing that comes up when you google image search yourself then they're ones that kind of deal with the content that's already on your phone rather than searching on the internet so like show the last video you took so that's already there you're not going to create anything then there's also more physical things so like most crack screen wins and then there there's one other type that's kind of like sits in the background while you're playing next to get a facebook notification wins so that's a card that just sits with the judge until the plague keeps going and then someone gets a notification so it's also like apples to apples and cards against umass oh yeah similar to those two games in a sense that I mean maybe more towards cards against humanity in the sense that like you're definitely playing towards the judge and trying to kind of win them over so it may even help if you know them sometimes because you may be able to play something funnier towards them and you guys put this on Kickstarter and how long did it take you to get funded and recognized so we did a two week campaign and we got funded I think within the first week people keep telling us to make an app for the game and that's like definitely not where we wanted to start with it maybe it is a good idea down the line but that if we really wanted to pull it out and kind of have something that you can touch and trade and therefore have a physical interaction with someone rather than just using your cell phone Kickstarter is great for getting concepts like game of phones made quickly without a corporate machine but sometimes these concepts need a little more time to bake well not everything about the game always works it does nail the social aspect of gaming and in the end that's what's most important I've been playing board games and video games like since I was really little and sure mario kart and monopoly have their differences but they shine most for the same reasons they bring people together I'll never forget the time I first sat down with my friends in the Nintendo 64 first came out I was excited about the cooling of graphics but I really must say enjoyed being with Miley but the same is true for risk or monopoly or any other game with real human interaction that's why at the end of the day this tiny game for the fire TV called fitted was everyone's favorite it may not have had any physical component like a deck or board but that didn't matter there's just no substitute for trash talking the people you love in person