Full of Life (with Bob Moog)

Where does your inspiration come from? Do you have a ritual? A favorite playlist, a special coffee spot? For Bob Moog, he dreams as he lives. Constantly creating and inventing, Bob turns every day into an opportunity to grow and try something new. Listen as Bob regales us with stories of his board game empire.


Thanks to our Amazing Guest: Bob Moog
Websites
https://UniversityGames.com
https://AreYouGame.com
YouTube:  @AYGStudios  

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

0:44

How many games do you have behind your back? Without looking? I don't know. But I'm going to guess. There's four shows. I think there's 12 games behind me. Wow. What a tabletop. And the way they answer to this. Yeah, exactly. Larry, Reason is pretty funny. I don't know. I would, but I didn't want to give you the back of my head. I thought that would be rude. It's good. I love it. Yeah. How many games have you made so far? I, I started this company when I was 28 years old, and on April 1st, 1985. So we've been making about 20 games a year. So, I mean, PRI trade, 400, maybe, or 500. I never counted them. Wow. A lot of games. I don't invent them all. I, I have a team of people now that help me. But in the beginning it was just me and one other guy. Yeah. It was really it's really fun. It's like the best job to you guys have a good job doing this thing, But it's. It's been pretty great, you know? Yeah, I love it. And I'm planning on doing it. You know, as long as I can. Yeah. What was the strike that. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I know it was. Go ahead, Brandon. You go ahead. I was going to ask if you've ever been to Parks before. Yeah. I'm so glad you asked me that, because I'm trying to remember the name of PAX. I went up in Seattle once. Okay. Is that PAX West? I think they had something up in Seattle with that much. And yesterday I was trying to talk to someone about that, and they said, We've got to go to these. Not Gen Con, not Comic-Con, but these game conventions they have on the East Coast in the West Coast. I can't remember the name of the company or what they're called, and it's PAX that was exactly that was trying to think of we've also given games you have they have a library there that can go in and just play games. Yeah. To give them games to that, which has been very cool. Yeah. Sorry. Phines Where were you going to start? No, no, just that. But the ability to like, say like what? What inspired you to start your own company? man. It's sort of like what inspired you to do a podcast? You know, you sort of have these ideas when you're growing up. I want to. I want to tell my story. I want to be out there. And I started out as a kid just doing stuff. My my mother and I started a carnival in our backyard when we were about eight. And we raised money for the Jerry Lewis telethon. And that was like our thing. And my job was sales and getting people to come to the we didn't call it sales marketing. It was to get people to come to the carnival. And then my sister was in charge of the cake walk and my little brother was in charge of selling popcorn. And we just sort of did projects like that. We had a little newspaper called the Moog Gazette, and it was written by my brother and I was in charge of selling it. And I just was always I always knew I was going to have my own company. The question was, what was it going to be? And when I was 27, I had a friend who was an accountant at Pricewaterhouse whose board, and he said, Let's start a company. And I said, okay. And we got it down to three possible things. One was in the tech industry doing no, no, the final three were novelty ice cream bars, you know, the dove bar. It was like Dove Bar was just invented. This is in 1984, 85. And we said, Let's do our own novelty ice cream. And we looked at that second choice was microbrewery. And the third first was a board games. And it turned out that the board games had needed less capital to get going than any of the others. Really. We didn't have much money, so we went for it and that was how we got into board games. I like trivia and I like Trivial Pursuit and I said, I've never done this, but I think I could do it. And so we tried it. Probably a lot healthier than the other two, right? Yeah, I certainly have consumed a lot of the other two since then, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure it is healthy amount that you and I haven't quite gotten the beer bug out of me. There's a brewery here that Sapporo is trying to sell called the Anchor Brewing Company here in San Francisco, and I've been really involved in trying to put a group together to buy that. I still would like to have my own brewery, but yeah, it definitely was helping. You guys anywhere near close to getting it. Well, there's a bunch of different people talking to him. We're a couple months away from knowing if we're going to get it or not, but I'm it doesn't. It loses a lot of money. And so what they want to do is they want to just sell the land here in San Francisco. You can sell that land and they can make as much money as they can sell in the company. But we're trying to talk them into the idea that it's been here for 100 years and it's part of San Francisco and too many things are being lost. And they should they should want it to stay. And it would be a wonderful thing for them to do PR wise. And we're willing to pay good money for it. But it's it it doesn't make money right now. That's why they closed it down. So we're trying to get them to reopen it before they sell. All the brewing I've had. That's not not a Korean beer or steam. It's a steam beer. It's the most famous product is steam. It's the simplest. I remember when I went to PAX because I thought of it as a video game competition place. And you don't really think of board games, but my brother's like a streamer and video game fanatic and then you go and right past all the video games is hundreds of tables of board game makers created like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. And most of them are very. Small. Independent. They've got one or two games or they're trying to get going. So such massive success is like incredible in their field, right? Yeah, it's hard. We've been really, really fortunate. I, I, I got this idea that if we were going to compete against Hasbro and Mattel, we needed to be different and not just copy what they were doing. And so we've, we've always had a learning element to our games but are also have always been really irreverent. And so our first product was called Murder Mystery Party. And you guys may know about these. We invite people to your house and everyone dresses up in costume and you try to solve murder. And that's. Have you heard of this? Yeah. Yeah. So we are the originators of that entire concept. We own the trademark. We own the registered trademark and murder mystery party. No one had ever put those three words together until 1985 when we did. And that was the product that launched us. And and and that was a game that everybody that I talked to who was in the games said, well, no one's going to buy. And I said, why not? It's really fun. And they said, Because when you buy a game, you want to play it over and over again. And Murder Mystery party. Even when you play it once you know who the murderer is and a game you want to be able to play it with 2 to 6 people and murder mystery party, you have to have exactly eight. And a game, you know, is something that has a start, finish and end in the game board. And this thing doesn't have any of those. And I say, no, it's really fun. And and then they said, and also, can you imagine Toys R US putting a game on the shelf that little kids would see that has the word murder in it? Even Clu doesn't use the word murder, you know, on their box. And I said, I know, but it's really fun. And so we started selling it in bookstores and at Barnes and Noble. And at the time there was Waldenbooks and Borders and and we we were able to get it into all of these bookstores and then department stores and then it finally got into Toys R US, and I took a picture and framed it when we got into Toys R US because the guy who had told us it would never get into Toys R US was a very, very well known and respected toy consultant at the time. And I went up to him. And so we've always been that way. We've always tried to do things that are a little bit irreverent, a little bit, a little bit off kilter. Yeah. I've heard the term toy consultant in my life. I think there's a bunch of up there, there, there, there are some who just are sort of publicists and PR people, and then there's some who work it in retail, like that. You might be the toy buyer at Wal-Mart for 20 years and then you retire and you become a toy consultant and they go into companies and try to help them decide, you know, how to manufacture toys, how to market toys, or possibly how to identify a good toy from a battery. It's a it's a it's a pretty cookie field. Toys and games. Yeah. You get your kid. Well, they people used to tell me, have you guys seen the movie Big with Tom Hanks? Have you heard of it? So, yeah, when that movie came out, we existed because it came out about four or five years after we started the company and I got so many people saying to me, they made that movie about you because you're a kid who's an adult and you're running a toy company. And I think for Christmas I probably got 15 of the miniature shorts pianos. There's that scene where he's on there and they're playing together, and people thought that was a funny gift to give me. I got somebody that's that's funny. That's great. When you guys do this, you do all different kinds of businesses. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. But I'm your first presenter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what, though? This is the thing that keeps popping on me, and I keep. I You are a so obviously to me. Listen, you could be having me, fool, but you seem so full of joy. I'm wondering is is is this are you seem like you're very it seems you have a like do you like this Do you that is noticeable at least to me. So I'm like, should I be making board games this right doing wrong? I have to say, yeah, I'd have to. First of all, normally I would be able to tell you what drugs and alcohol I had been consuming, but I haven't hit anything today. And this is just like normal self. But what I would say is I am pretty good at getting people excited about my ideas and you could have another game inventor on, you know, and they would be more of a nerdy engineering daddy type guy who might not be as excited about it as I am. But I just think the idea of taking something inside your head and then manufacturing it and then sharing it with people and then having them have moments or memories of experiencing it with other people who are their friends is so cool that I get really excited about. I've been doing it now 39 years and I am just as excited now as I was in the beginning and my friends are all retiring and stuff now, but I want to keep doing this. I got more games in my head that I want to do. Is there is there a cutthroat madman underbelly to this industry or is it all sort of very joyous? No, it's there's definitely that's a great way to say it, a cutthroat madmen underbelly. There is there's there's all like I'm into coming up with new games that marry kind of learning with fun and and there's a whole bunch of people who basically are saying I'm in this business to make money. I don't care really about kids. I want to figure out how to make money. And they're the people that excuse me, do the knockoffs to go to the store and buy a bunch of stuff and then send it to China, say, can you make it cheaper? And then they'll go to retailers and they'll say, I can say the same thing at 30% less or 50% less. So there's a whole bunch of that. There's also a thing and I gave a talk on this in June to a group in London where they said, Tell us your pet peeves about the toy industry. And I said, Well, one of my pet peeves is the jargon that people use. People will say, retailers will say, you know, we really love your company and we want to partner with you. And when I hear the term partner, I know that means I'm going to be a victim. They're going to it's going to be a one sided thing. They're going to want big discounts. They want me to make special things for them and then they're not going to pay me. And the other one, I don't like is, let me tell you this in full transparency, because when people say that and they almost are never fully transparent, they they'll tell you something, but they won't ever tell you the whole thing. And so I've said to the game inventors, when you present your games, because there's there's another thing you know, but there's about 500 to 1000 people who invent games and toys and then present them to companies. They don't work for the companies. They're just a community of people that come up with new ideas. And that's what you could do finishers. You could come up with ideas for games and then submit them to companies and see if someone wants to make your game. But I told the inventors, Tomorrow you're going to have people like me say to you, you're going to present your game and and they're going to say, in full transparency, I got to tell you, we're working on something like that. And then you're going to ask them, how is it similar to what I'm showing you? And they can say, that's proprietary, that's confidential. I can't tell you. Well, if they say that it's not full transparency and the other way you're going to say to an inventor, I mean, you're going to say to a company like mine, if you're an inventor paying full transparency, I want you to know I'm glad you're excited about my product. But there's some other companies that also are interested in buying it. And then when I say, well, who else is interested? You're going to say, I can't tell you that it's confidential. Well, then you're not giving me full transparency. You're kind of partial opaqueness. And so that's part of what goes on in the industry. People steal each other's ideas. People tell people that they're working on things they're not really working on. And so you have to you have to sort of learn how to navigate that. But just like, you know, going rafting, when you go down a river, there's big rocks you can head and you can fall in the river, but you also can have a really great time going down the rapids. So I, I know how to navigate it and I help other people learn it. It's plenty of fun, but there definitely is that dark underbelly. Yeah, sounds like it sounds like poker. Yeah. Or something. A little like a lot of a lot of bluffing is like, yeah, I'm transparent. Know there is there is some bluffing that goes on. And I think licensing is a big part of it. So if we're looking at a license like right now, we're trying to get a Disney marvel license for Spider-Man and I think Captain America and Iron Man and Sewer and there's another company that we know also wants to get a license that's sort of related to what we're doing. And we think Disney will only give us one one of the companies a license. So there's a little cat and mouse game going on between us and the other company in terms of what we're we're sharing and how we're doing, our proposal to Disney to see who gives it. But we work with Disney for decades, so we're pretty hopeful that it will work out. good. Yeah. So you guys are the largest independent game company in the world. What does that mean? There's something companies that are public, you know, that have a public following like Mattel and Hasbro and Spin master. And then there's some game companies that are owned by European companies and the US is their subsidiary. And then there's other game companies that are owned by private equity, which is sort of rich money people. Yeah. They dip their toe in the toy industry. That's crazy. It's crazy. So if you take all those out, then we're the largest Wow purchase where some guy like me started a company and made that his career and put his life and heart into it and built it and hasn't sold it and hasn't gone public and and hasn't, you know, become part of a bigger company. So it's a dubious distinction. But to some people that's important because they want to sort of support someone who's creating jobs and creating products and isn't part of a bigger thing. That's kind of the corporate thing. We're not part of that. Yeah, that answer the question. It does. No, it's it's great. Phines and Sierra and I we're all really passionate about creative arts and Phines is a visual artist and Sierra voiceover and all that stuff. Just I'm curious, like you've produced so many games, do do the ideas come to you when you sleep or. Well, first off, it's not just me. There's me and there's a team and we have offices in Australia, in England, so we have a couple people in Australia, a couple of people in England, and then about four of us in the US who are all thinking up ideas that my process is a pretty, pretty specific process and I actually do. There's two places where I come up with most of my ideas. One is when I'm kind of alone without a lot of distractions and a lot of inputs, like on an airplane. If I'm on an airplane, I put on the headphones and and the ideas kind of start to flow. And I do a lot of flying to Europe and to Australia. And so I'm often on flights that are 10 hours or longer, and that's some of my best creative work. The other place is, is relaxing and going to a bar. I usually have to go by myself because amongst other people I can't get in the right headspace, but I'll go into a bar or I'll sit outside at a beer garden or something on an afternoon and get a beer and I have a pad of paper and I just start jotting down ideas. And what I try to do is like I try to think about themes, what it seems that I see in society. I think about who's the consumer, that I want to play the game, and then what are they about. So if it's a if it if it's a game for a millennial, for a 25 to 2840 year old, I sort of think about the characteristics that they have. If it's a game for a five year old, I think about, hey, what's a five year old like? You know, they can't read, they don't like to sit still. They always want it to be their turn. They like a lot of attention. And then I create a game for a person that has those characteristics and I marry. That's one of the themes that would be exciting for them. But it has to be. I have to use that process because when I don't and I just think what's a great game, right? Just sort of free flow, I end up with things that aren't commercial, so I like them and I can play them with my friends, but they're not commercial. And in our business, for me to be able to keep university games going and employ people and pay rent and all the things that we have to do in running a business, I have to be able to come out with products that are commercially viable. And so my process gets me to a place where it's commercially viable because I'm starting out thinking about the consumer who's going to play the game versus just what I intrinsically love. And it might be a difference between how I see my art and what you guys do. Or you can just be have a come from yourself and then find its audience versus trying to figure out what the audience wants and. Make sure you have three questions you must do. The first one is do you have any like, I like Matt and then maybe an idol, but I like of someone that trailblazers for you, someone that like gave you direction, a mentor or some sort like as because this seems like I'm really getting I'm open to the vibe of this art which it is definitely art. You're an artist for sure. So now I'm like you. Just how what like, did anybody help you to Do you have any, you know, give me guidance from anybody or how did that work? The guidance that I got was not about game design. The guidance that I got was about self esteem and self confidence. So from a very young age, my father and my mother infused in me that I could do anything. I wanted, that if I applied myself, I could do anything I wanted. Now, it was not true at all. I was not a particularly good athlete. I'm not a good driver or I wasn't as a kid, very good in math. But I didn't know that because they always said, You can do whatever you want. And when you're a kid, what you want to do is naturally things that you have an inclination towards. And so I didn't know that I couldn't play a musical instrument. In fact, when I went to college, I taught the band at the school that I went to Stanford. I took the band at the school, the letting me march a beer keg and play in the percussion section. Right. Had no training because I just believed I'm going to go out there and I'm going to be able to play a drum as well as someone who has been doing it for ten years now. That's ridiculous. And but I that's just how I am. About five years ago, I decided I wanted to write a musical and I now have written this musical. I don't know if I'll ever make it to stage, but I wrote the entire book. I wrote the lyrics to 22 songs. I went and found a composer who wrote music to my songs, and I went to New York and put a workshop together on an off-Broadway stage in New York with money that I got people to donate. So I just have a life where I'm always just setting a goal and then figuring out how to get there. And audience was the same thing I before I left, before I did board games, I did this thing. I mean, some of the stuff I've done, when I think back, it's like, what was I thinking? Because that probability of being successful was so, well, I was up at Tahoe working. This is when I was about 25, working at a resort as like a dishwasher. And I ran the bar and that kind of stuff. And I went, I came in the next morning to clean out the garbage and some of the staff had gotten stoned or high or something, and they had taken gummy bears and put them on the back of paper plates and then drawn steams around them and put caps. They were like they were gummy with the back and stuck them on the plate. They would draw language around it and then write Gummy Tree. And then there was another one where they did something else. And I took all of these and I brought them home and I went to a friend of mine who was an illustrator, and I said, Do you think you could make a book out of these? And I'd never done a book before. And she created art boards and we published Gummy Bear Goes to Camp, which was a a book about Gummy bears. And then we talked a company in Germany into donating to us 5000 bags of gummy bears. And we glued a bag in every book and we sold the books and people were opening up these gummy bears, licking the backs and sticking them on the pages of the book the same way that they'd done with the paper plates. So that's just a crazy thing to do. I mean, I was just I just had been that way. I thought, Well, I've never published a book. I think I'll do that. And and so when you ask about the game company, it never occurred to me that I needed someone to teach me how to do it, because I just thought, I'll figure it out because my parents. Had. Taught me as a young kid, you can do anything. And, you know, I think it works if you have that kind of parenting where you're getting a really, really strong reinforcement. And I just am lucky I don't run into anybody that has that story because it's just so unusual and it's unusual that people would take it in that direction. But for me, it's led to a really great life. I've been very flattered. By how much I knock these out because I do have I'm only. Athlete eight But. I give you a short answer's. Yes. I no, no, you're you're fine. These are I'm truly enjoying all of it. So thank you. And I'll ask one of the questions anyways, because once the answer, then I just got ten more questions, so don't you worry about it. Sorry. No, no, seriously, it's great we got about Sarah. Ask something serious. You're right here. Go ahead. It'll come to my question. Okay. All right. My next question is, as an also a fellow artist, and now that I've learned more about your confidence and your ability to go out here and try it, it seems I would have a hard time working with others. Yeah. With your go to attitude and your wanting to get stuff done, it does seem. I am wondering how you've learned to be so correct. Call app cool app called collaborative. Okay. Ah. Okay. So you are incredibly perceptive and insightful. I'm amazed because I am the worst team player in our company and I hate ideation meetings and we we when I interview people, I go, How many meetings a week are you used to at your job? And if it's more than four, I go, okay, I got to warn you, we don't have meetings in our company. Everybody works in people and then we get together. So you're really, really insightful on that. What? But I'm the only one. Everybody else needs to work together to be collaborative. So what usually happens is I'll start the meeting. I also can have a little bit of trouble just sitting still. So I start the meeting, I leave, I then come back 2 hours later and I go, What did you guys come up with? And they tell me what they've come up with. And then I say, I become the mentor you were asking about for that. And I see what you thought of this. If you follow this did. Yeah. What about this? And then that gets their juices going. So we end up with a better result. But I can't sit still because my brain's going so fast. I feel like I already know the answer to what we should do and that's ruins the creativity in the collaboration. If I'm just if if I'm telling them what it is before they say their ideas. So I actually leave the room. They put it on a whiteboard, and then when I come back, they say, five, here's where we are. And then and then I give my input. And I mean, this is my first art collaborative, artistic endeavor, and I think we're doing okay. But for the most part, I do not. I'm not I'm not the best. Okay. This is my last one is. So you've learned to be commercial. I guess I want to know a fan favorite without explaining the rules or anything that that you have that will never be commercial enough that that that you and your coworkers. Sorry, That's as much as I. I did a game that I love. And it's called 20 Questions. And the reason it's called 20 questions is because we wanted to have a hook where people would say, I know 20 questions. I played that at home. And it is just this amazing game and it can be broadened a million different ways and it sells. Okay. But I it was my game that I thought would become my Scrabble or my Monopoly or my Yahtzee that everyone would know in the English speaking world. And it hasn't turned out to be that way. So that would be the game. That is a long way from being as commercially successful as I would like it to be, But I'm really proud of the game and of the gameplay. And what. Does it. Do? We have a well-known person, place or thing and there are 20 clues describing the person, place or thing, and the 20 clues are broken down into four categories. There's some that have to do with interacting with the board. There's some that are puns, there's some that are descriptive, and they're general descriptive descriptions. And there's some that are specific descriptions. And so what you do in the game is you give a number one through 20 and then you get a clue. And depending on what number you pick randomly, you might get a good clue or bad. Okay? And the goal of the game is to identify the mystery topic. And the faster you identify the mystery topic, the more points you get. But it's not like trivia where you get one question with one answer. It builds on itself so that the the quest, the the clues might be I am male. Then the next clue might be I was born in 1811 and then the next clue might be I'm an American, and then the next clue might be there's a state capital named after me. But the next time someone plays the game, they might get those clues in a totally different order. You know my first name, You can find my first name in the Bible. The clues are like that, and then you have to put them together and figure out I was president of the United States. And as you play the game, every player you go around. So every player is trying to guess the same mystery topic and that there's a there's a lot of math and a lot of randomness to it. But the way it's built is that if you get the third clue one time around, the the person rotates to the right. So the next time you're going to get the second clue. So everybody is getting there's an equalizer and a balancer, so everybody is getting the same chances and the top the one thing about it is every answer, every player knows, which is so anti trivia. So what we've done is we've taken well known people, places and things. The one I was giving you was Abraham Lincoln and well-known people, places and things. So, you know, you have this lack of stress or anxiety that I know the answer, but can I guess it before the other players anyway that's a that's a that's 20 questions. Hello I like that. You could do a lot with that. Yeah. And I could do a lot of like packs. Yes. We've done that. We've, we did the original game than we did in nature and Science version. We did the kids version, we did a Disney version, we did a sports version, we did a Bible version, we did a second edition. But even after all of that, we still it still isn't that well known and that the questions I've never been asked that question before. Scientists It's a great question because that's my that's my one where I wish it was a bigger deal than it is most of the rest I'm pretty happy with. So we have a new game now based on Rocky Horror Show. I don't know if you guys are into that or not. Yeah. yeah. That we just, we just started shipping. That's pretty exciting. Nice. Anything. Brady? No, I. Want to pass it to Sierra. If she has any. Questions. Yeah. Sorry. What do you say? I was just asking if I'm blowing it. If you guys don't have any questions, I don't know. I'm. I'm really interested. No, I'm loving it. I want to kind of go back to like, like talking as like an artist, because you have a lot of different avenues that you express yourself creatively. Like you were saying you do, you've done musicals, you've done books. You know, you do a lot, a lot, a lot of games. Do you have like a down time kind of like hobby, or are you kind of the person that's like, I try to make hobbies, but then my hobbies turn into like my work and then I like I really love my work. So like, my work is my hobby. I mean, I kind of think of my life as a work of art. Yeah, a weird thing to say, but everything people talk about work life balance, I sort of think that's not the right way to think about it. Work life integration is kind of the way to think about it, and so I'm not really sure sometimes when I'm working and when I'm living, I, you know, I, I, I, I started, I picked up golf. I thought, okay, I'll play golf because people play golf. And it's, you know, it's kind of a white thing to do. So I play golf and I started playing golf. And before I knew it, I was like organizing tournaments. And I was thinking of doing a play, a round of golf. And I was having the Bob Moog Golf Invitational, and it's like, I couldn't just go out there and enjoy golf, had to make it into something. And and that happens, you know, that happens a lot. I went I went to a bar that I went and they changing their menu every six months and they did an astrology menu. And then they did a a menu that was on where every was named after a famous impressionist artist. And they did these different menus. And before I knew it, I was talking to the owner of the bar about doing a menu on board game. It's like I, I everything sort of leads to some other project. I don't I don't know how to explain it. I've never really thought about it. Yeah, but that's kind of how my life is and, and I love it. And so there's no time when I turn it off. And in the sense of saying, now I'm not thinking creatively or I'm not trying to do something creatively, I don't get I don't get worn out by it, it doesn't exhaust me. That is so inspiring and so cool. But jealous. I'm so literally that's the dream. Well, you know it. Yeah, it's just. I know it's unusual because I have a daughter who's a filmmaker. She's 33 and she's a filmmaker. And I said, Let's make a movie on my on my company and on how we've influenced the world. And she said, We have an influence, the world. And I said, Yeah, but in the movie, we're going to start as I said, I said, I'll make it. She said, Well, are you in charge? The man in charge, you're in charge. And I said, But I want to make this final. And so she decided the movie is going to take place in 2056, which is when I'm 100 years old. And it was going to make up on me and I'm going to be 100 year old man talking about how university games and our games have influenced the world. And the first part of the movie is going to be sort of recapping from 1985 to now, and then we're going to just make stuff up for the rest now, 2026, it's going to make us really, really an important company and I'm thinking like, you know, movies last for a while. And so this movie, I think our company did all this great stuff that maybe we will do. I don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. It's just going out. It's the origin of it's going to start out with this actual clip of me. In 1986, I was on a game show called Supermarket Sweepstakes. for the century Nosferatu of the Century. And we have a clip of it. We're going to actually show the clip because that was where I went to get the original funding for our company. I needed to win $30,000 so we could get the company going. I didn't win any money, but it's still a funny clip. You still got that company going? Yeah, I still figured out a way to do it. Are you a grandfather? Yeah. I've got three daughters and I'm. And I'm encouraging them. But then none of them were married. What your parents taught you? Like, did you sort of try and pass that on? Just that blind confidence and like, Yeah. Very consciously. And if you said to any of my daughters, Hey, what can MOOCs do? They would know they were wrong because they would all three say anything can do anything. Now, they have not necessarily succeeded in everything they've tried, but they're all three living the life. My my oldest daughter lives in Copenhagen and she is a filmmaker. My middle daughter is living in Maryland at in Bethesda. She works for the New Age and she's a biochemist and biophysicist. My youngest daughter right now just got a grant and she's going to eight countries in eight months to write a grant. She's an engineer and she's writing a grant on how air can impact innovation and engineering and architectural projects. But it's really a scam. She's I hope they don't think we gave her the grant and see this, but she took the eighth country. She wanted to go to. Then she figured out what the projects were that she could find in those countries. That's amazing. And they're paying our expenses. She's going she's in Cairo right now. She's going to Cairo, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Japan, Germany, Brazil and Mexico. That's pretty wild. I'm going with me on that. I never did anything like that. So it has a little bit, you know. So, yes, they all three were raised the same way I was in that regard. We only have a very short time left, but what would you say if you were to walk through packs and you know, like the youngest, most inexperienced board game designer who has one game and they're just trying to get themselves going, like, what would your one thought or word of advice be? I would tell them, Don't manufacture your game because you're going to end up with a garage full of games. But find a company that will manufacture your game for you. Let you do the marketing and let you get the royalty and learn from them. And then if you have more games in you, then start a company. But don't start it right away. Learn we're on someone else's dime instead of you making those events elsewhere. Yeah. What about you? Final, final. Words. What I'll say is, you know, no matter, I don't think what's so special about you and your family. And I'm sure people that you touch, and me being one of them at this day is like, I don't think it matters what was going to happen in your life up or down board games or whatever, that you were going to keep this this spin of purposefulness in it. And I really I really appreciate that and really appreciate talking to you about all that and like that. You're, you know, spread me So so I appreciate very. Very much that it's good to have positive energy and to me, positive energy. And angry. And. Sierra Yes. I thank you so much for coming on. And I think it's itself it's very funny now because we were like waiting to get online and like, waiting to, like, meet you and talk to you and like, just things weren't working and we were just like, Jesus. We're like, no. Like, I hope he's not going to be mad. We're like, I hope he's not going to be this. This is this like because it doesn't work. Like every once in a while we have an issue where like Riverside is like doesn't participate with us. And like we ended up with like literally nicest, maybe. The nicest, most, and. It worked out good. So just an absolute delight. And thank you so much for for coming on the show and bearing with us. What are your final thoughts about. Well, I think that for people who are watching and listening or whoever review that, I think it's really important in life to find a way to to be creative and to do that if take risks. And it doesn't matter what your job is, I don't care if you're working in insurance or you're a car salesman or you work in a laundry, everybody has something inside of them that they can share. And I always say shy people are selfish because they're taking it in from everyone else, but they aren't giving it. And I feel that way about creativity and imagination. We all have it. And it's it really makes the world a better place if you share it with other people because nobody else has inside of them what you have inside of you. That's, I guess, my final thing. Beautiful. And where can people find you and your company, All of our listeners, what do you want them to check out? Likewise. Well, University Games is the company that makes the games and we are at university Gamescom, but we have this other sister company called Are You Gamescom? And are You Gamescom sells games, thousands and thousands of different titles. But the cool thing that we're doing is we have a YouTube channel called Are You Game Studios? And please go to that because it has interviews that I've done with dozens of luminaries in the industry. You can find instructions on any game and hundreds of games. You can see how to videos, you can see old commercials, and it's sort of a marketplace or clearinghouse for everything that's board games. So tabletop board games are at AreYouGame.com and it would be great if people would go to that and follow that and that would really help us out. Yeah, definitely. We'll share that in the show notes as well. My final thought, I love magic and fantasy and sort of something that is very connecting with other people. Do you have any sort of board game like that in your roster? We have a new game called Fairies. There we go. literally. I think where there's. Fairies and magical creatures. At. Armageddon. And it's a great game. We just do the Kickstarter on it and we got thousands of people backing us for the Kickstarter and it's a really fun game and it has both guards and trolls and it has fairies and all different types of fairy folk creatures and people and can you see it okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. The art is amazing. There's a famous artist named Annie Stagg who did all the art. We commissioned her for all this original art. Here's some of the name. Sounds familiar. She's famous. I mean, people. Yeah, and stag. And this is just. And the game. We just played it with our sales force, which is a bunch of middle aged men. They love it, even though it's called fairies. But the game is very, very accessible for men and women and anybody else. And that is our that is our fantasy game. And the winner is the person who builds the best fairy garden while learning their way around the the fairy folk kingdom. In a. Great way. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. I really appreciate your patience with getting on this has been and we said thank you, Phines. Thank you as always, Sierra, we'll see you next week. Thank you so much. Take care of everyone and thank you. Nice, great. Nice having you. Thank you. I