GD: Yeah, I was very pleased to be able to read through the instructions and go: “Look, it’s the whole thing!”-front and back and that’s it. But my concepts are very simple: you get through the instructions in about 3 minutes. For me, my games, it’s: “Hey, this would be a cool thing to do.” And then I’ll sit down and whip up content, and work with my graphic designer to package something that looks really cool, and hope that like-minded adults will have fun playing this. Anyone in the game world has to have a great deal of respect for the kind of games you’re talking about, which are much more complex, especially in terms of development. You know, my games tend to be the adult party games, social interaction games. So, yeah, the European games and all the role-playing games are definitely a different world than I’m in. The game tests players on how well they know each other, with all the fun personal questions. GD: Most of the games I play that I’ve been getting into are more of the European “designer” games or “tabletop” gaming…ĮP: Right. But in terms of common gameplay around the house, I’d say that Scrabble and chess are the two most popular. Any new game out there I’ll buy at your local Target or Barnes and Noble and check out, give it a go. But in terms of party games, I’ve pretty much stuck to the classics that your average non-gamer probably mentions: Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly with nieces and nephews.
I like playing chess with friends, backgammon. GD: What board games do you enjoy, before creating Loaded Questions, for instance?ĮP: Aside from test playing my own games to death, my wife and will definitely play the occasional Scrabble. Except for the New Yorker game-I didn’t draw all the cartoons! But the content for my other games, yeah, that’s the real fun part I have with my business.
And I do write the content for all my games. The new black edition has more than 1300 questions and I’m probably responsible for 1200 of them.
GD: Now did you write all of the questions for the first edition, and the new edition?ĮP: Pretty much. But, no, I’ve had several duds, several that have done well, and then the Loaded Questions games have been my most popular games. You’re trying to get your chicken, which is your game piece, across the road. Whoever writes down the funniest original one gets to advance. If you know the punch line you advance on the board and if you don’t you’re trying to come up with the funniest one. I did a game called The Joke Game where, if you don’t know the punch line, you make one up. A few years ago, I partnered with the New Yorker magazine and did a game based on their weekly caption contest that runs in the back of the magazine, where you see a cartoon and come up with your own caption. GD: Have you published any other board games?ĮP: I’ve done twelve games, five of which are Loaded Questions games. So that’s the start of my board games–it started with the one idea. Today the game has sold a million copies and it’s at Target, Toys R Us, Barnes & Noble, Borders, all the websites and such. The following year they brought it into all stores, and that’s kind of the early success of Loaded Questions. That year, 1997, Toys R Us decided to test it in about a hundred stores and it tested very well. I sold about 1,000 games, I got a lot of good media coverage. During the trip the game was pretty successful. You know, I’d splurge on a Motel 6 if I needed to. Very few responsibilities, so I was able to camp out and sleep cheaply.
I was just out of college, I wasn’t married, no kids, like I am now. Shortly after that, I started driving around the country for 16 weeks selling the game out of the trunk of my car to mom and pop stores. Not too many weeks or months afterward I produced 5,000 copies of my first game, Loaded Questions. I thought the idea was great, I quit my job, invited friends over for pizza and beer. At the age of 23 I had an idea for a board game while I was working as a copywriter at an ad agency in Miami. Eric Poses: I’m 35, I live in Miami, and I’ve been in the world of board games for 13 years now.