Format Games might not be a name you’re familiar with, especially if your usual board game cup of tea is the sort of game I often review here. It’s a game design studio headed up by two people: Laurence Emmett and Matt Edmondson. If you’re from the UK and recognise the latter of the two names, you might be wondering “Is that the same Matt Edmondson from BBC Radio 1?”. The answer is yes, it’s the same Matt Edmondson. One and the same.

Format Games specialise in small, lightweight party-style games. I met Laurence at this year’s UK Games Expo, at one of Asmodee’s areas. They’d recently signed a distribution deal with Asmodee, and were keen to get their games seen and played. After sitting down to chat with him about their games and how they came into being, I managed to grab an interview with the boys.

Interview

Adam: Before we get going, can you tell us who you are, and what brought you into the hobby of tabletop games?

We’re Matt and Laurence, owners of Format Games. Matt does all the inventing and games designing and Laurence runs the business day to day.

Matt: I have always loved playing games, and have to think up lots of them for my ‘day job’ of being a BBC Radio 1 DJ. A few years back I invented a game that found great success with Big Potato called Obama Llama, and it was a fantastic gateway to the industry. Since then I’ve invented quite a few games, and during the lockdown of 2020 set up Format Games with Laurence. I have regular games nights with my friends, and I genuinely love discovering new things to play.

Laurence: Luck and chance for me. I had a few small businesses in the service sector and was keen to move into online retail. During a chance discussion, Matt suggested we make a game that he’d been sitting on for a while called Ansagrams. We had absolutely no idea how to get this game to market, but we knew that between us, we had the skills to make it happen.

For each of you, which are your favourite games?

Matt: Where to start?! I love really simple, snack-able games with simple rules that are fast to learn and have really compelling gameplay. I love games like Gobbit, Dobble, and our own game Noggin which is the game I play the most regularly. I also love The Chameleon. Sometimes I’ll delve into more complex stuff- my favourite ‘big game’ is Colt Express. Every part of it is genius.

Laurence: A childhood favourite was Monopoly, I guess it spoke to my entrepreneurial spirit, and In my early 20’s I was quite a keen poker player. More recently Cross Clues is a fantastic game and I’d highly recommend it. Of our catalogue, I absolutely love Wheels Vs Doors (I’m a bit of a stat-nerd) and it combines poker-style gameplay with amazing stats – it’s perfect for me.

As I understand it, at least one of your games was created during the Covid lockdown. Were you toying around with game designs before the pandemic, or was Covid the catalyst?

Matt: I already had several games out in the market that I’d licensed to other manufacturers, but when lockdown hit a few of my television projects got delayed, so I found myself with some time. I had a raft of unfinished but fully-formed game ideas, so I suggested to Laurence that if he could help me with the ’serious bits’ of running a business, I could try and get some of them designed. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I love learning and I have quite a high tolerance for being bad at something before I get good at it, so I learned Illustrator via Youtube and just sort of figured it out. I think had the pandemic not occurred, I would have been unlikely to have been able to accelerate my skillset to the point where we’ve been able to output eight games titles within the first 18 months of the business. 

Laurence: Without doubt being stuck inside with nothing to do pushed us to produce Ansagrams. For me, one of my companies (a domestic cleaning franchise) was closed and I was genuinely concerned for its future, so I saw this as a way of diversifying. Even though we had zero experience of designing a game, I trusted Matt 100% and knew he would create something brilliant.

You self-published your first game, and sold it on Amazon I believe. It’s quite an investment to get started that way. Did you have a belief at that point that this could be a real success for you?

Matt: We had absolutely no idea what to expect. We both went into this treating it as an experiment. In terms of actual cash investment, it was surprisingly low, so the stakes weren’t high and we felt like we had nothing to really lose and everything to gain. Crucially we knew the game, Ansagrams, was really good. We’d played it loads with friends and family, and we ordered about 3000 copies of it. I assumed it’d take us over a year to sell them all, but they sold out within two weeks, which was amazing and also a little frustrating as we could definitely have sold more! Once we saw how well that game had done, it was easier to conceive of this as being a serious business that had a future beyond that first game.

Laurence: Yes we dipped our toe in initially. We had other sources of income, which was vital, as we waited over 18 months to actually pay ourselves for our work. We were very lucky to be in a situation together that allowed us to invest our time, and a little bit of money, without taking on substantial risk. I absolutely did think we could make it a success. We both have a pretty good track record at what we do, and we both felt confident that we had every chance of succeeding, but honestly, we had no idea it would get so far so soon.

Can you talk us through how the deal with Asmodee happened? It sounds like it was a whirlwind.

Laurence: Again it was luck and chance. Following on from Ansagrams lightning sell-out over Christmas 2020, Matt and I approached John Lewis and they agreed to stock our game for 2021. At the same time, I was tendering for manufacture and called Asmodee’s UK office.

They politely informed me that they did not manufacture other companies’ games, but once I explained our situation, they made an offer to distribute Ansagrams for us, to John Lewis and other retailers across the UK. That was January 2021, and by April 2021, Matt magically invented three more games (Noggin, Egg Slam and So Wrong It’s Right) and suddenly we were a thriving games studio. By the time we demonstrated at Toy Fair 2022, our catalogue had grown to 8 games and the amazing reaction from retailers encouraged Asmodee to offer us a 3 years distribution deal, which for us was a total game changer.

Matt: It feels like we’ve been really fortunate to have met the right people at the right time. The games are seriously great, and the thing I want above all else is for people to play and enjoy them, so having a distributor with such a great track record and amazing reach is really important. With games like Noggin, in particular, they’ll live or die on great demonstrations – I truly believe if you play Noggin once, you’ll be playing it for the rest of your life, so we love what Asmodee has done with Dobble on the demonstration front and want to forge a similar relationship.

The deal with Asmodee is a huge thing. Has it changed any future plans for either of you, now that your games are being sold and distributed around the world?

Laurence: It’s turned my world upside down. After Toy Fair in January I made the decision to sell my cleaning company and take a back seat on the other businesses I am involved in. I’m now full-time Format Games, and I absolutely love it!

Matt: The entire thing has been a bit of an unexpected whirlwind. A lot of my life is embarking on fun creative projects and then seeing what sticks, but the pace of expansion with this one has been really astonishing. I’m going to keep coming up with games (in fact, I’m typing this up whilst on a flight back from some games meetings in NYC and I had an idea for a game about 15 mins after take off which is BRILLIANT, so I’ve started working on it straight away!) and Laurence’s role will be to help us grow the business both in the UK and internationally.

My readers know me as someone who loves more complex games, as well as family and party games. Does either of you have any plans or ideas for something heavier, a big box strategy game, or something similar?

Matt: I am in awe of the big strategy games, and when I play the really complex ones I often think ‘how did anyone come up with this?’. I’m not sure my mind is wired for creating that type of game (although never say never) and my mission in almost everything I do is to keep it as simple as I can. I want all of our games to be really accessible for both seasoned gamers and people who only play one game a year at Christmas. We’re going for mass market but with a playful and personality-driven tone. 

If there are any budding game designers out there, what advice would you give them to get started?

Matt: I think the first thing to do is to make a prototype of your game and then just play it with your friends loads. From that, you’ll work out which bits work and which levers to turn up or down to make the game more fun. I’d then also decide a route to market. For the first few years of my career, I was incredibly content licensing my games to other companies, and they always did an amazing job with them. I wouldn’t be able to run Format Games on my own, so if it wasn’t for Laurence my inventions would have ended up with other games studios or sat on my shelf gathering dust. It’s been a lot of work getting these different products out into the world in the quality we expect, and so I think if I was still a solo games designer I’d be pitching my game ideas to companies whose games I already love.

What’s next for Format Games? Do you have anything new on the way you’d like to share with us?

Matt: We’ve had fairly rapid growth and now have a slate of eight games (in just over a year!) so our plan is to focus on two of our big releases this year, a game called Karen – all about ridiculous one-star reviews found online, and Wheels VS Doors – a hilarious debating game with a brilliant betting mechanic and the most mind-blowing stats you’ve ever heard. I’ve got three or four other games I’m currently working on, but we’re trying to pace ourselves. I frustratingly have more ideas than we could ever hope to make, so it’ll be a case of seeing what’s working from our existing range and then trying to compliment it with new stuff.

Laurence: We are such a new business, you could arguably classify all of our games as new. This will be the first Christmas season that our games will be available in most retail outlets, and it’s our first proper launch from a pr/marketing perspective. In 2021 we had such limited stock available we had to launch in, and stay in, first gear, this year we can hammer the throttle a little more and we’re hoping that momentum will continue into 2023. We plan to release 2 games next year, Matt has so many ideas it will be a case of working out which 2 we run with and launching them at Toy Fair in Jan 23. Exciting times!

Finally, and maybe most importantly, which is the best biscuit?

Matt: This is a controversial answer, but I’ve just discovered I’m dairy intolerant (noooooooooo!) so I’m backing the Bourbon. It’s ‘accidentally vegan’ which means it doesn’t have any milk in it and is therefore a staple of my life now!

Laurence: Two compete for top spot. A dark chocolate digestive, and a chocolate hob-nob. Mainly for their superior dunking properties. But you have to time it right. There is nothing worse than losing half a hob-nob in your mug of tea.

And finally

If you’d like to know more about Format Games and their range of titles, head over to their site now.

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The post Industry Spotlight: Format Games appeared first on Punchboard.

Here on Punchboard, I spend a lot of time talking about games. I love talking about games almost as much as I enjoy playing them. It’s almost always the cardboard that gets the attention though, the game on top of the table, covered with little wooden meeples.

I’ve decided to start something a little different, so from time to time I’m going to publish some of these Industry Spotlight pieces. I want to take a look at the people and businesses bringing these games to us, so that we all get to know them a bit better, and meet the people behind the brands.

We’re starting off with Hachette Boardgames UK. Hachette is an importer and distributor of board games here in the UK. You can’t buy games from them direct, but your favourite local or online store certainly can. They specialise in bringing games across the Channel from French publishers, and there’s some really good stuff available.

Today is a special day for them – it’s their first birthday! Awww, one year old. Writing that seems crazy to me. It feels like they’ve been around for years, but that’s probably because they’ve been to all the same conventions as I have. They’re also a prolific bunch on social media. If you don’t already, give them a follow on Instagram, it’s never boring!

I grabbed some time with their head honcho, Flavien Loisier, who was kind enough to answer a few questions about himself, and about Hachette. Let’s get into it.

Interview

Adam: Thanks for sparing some time for me. Let’s start with the basics; who are you, and what do you do?

Flavien: Hi, thanks for the opportunity, I am Flavien, who is sharing the love of board games in the UK with Hachette board games since summer 2021, importing games I love mainly from the other side of the Channel.

A: Would you describe yourself as a gamer? If so, how long have you been playing, and what do you think was the game that really brought you into the hobby?

F: Clearly, yes, always been gaming, with the early Ravensburger games, Abalone or Quarto when they released but the absolute blast has been Catan, putting the Junta, Civilisation or Diplomacy in the cupboard.

A: And just so we have an idea of your taste in games, if you had to pick, which games would be in your top five of all time?

F: Mythic Battle Pantheon – I like the hand management and the combo on the board.
Concordia – streamline ruleset for a tense gameplay.
Iki – amazing learning curve for a mid weight euro with an interesting hand management.
Trick taking/discard games – I won’t chose a special one, I love so many, the atmosphere it creates at the table, the thought process and all their variants.
Dominion – the purest deckbuilding experience.
And I now hate any backstabbing experience in gaming! Especially in long games…

A: Before around this time last year, if you’d asked me who Hachette are, I’d have said a bookseller and publisher. Tell us a little bit about Hachette Games UK came to be.

F: Hachette is a 200 year old book publisher indeed, and they decided to develop a board game division four years ago, because a lot of the skills and structures are similar. Regarding the UK, I was about to start my own distribution company in 2020, after having been here 6 years, I knew what was missing on the market and what I could bring. I approached Blackrock games to build my business case, they had games I wanted to import and I was sure about their values. The meeting went perfectly well but they explained to me that they’d been bought by Hachette, who were thinking about opening a UK subsidy … and here we are! In the game of life, you have to be lucky in your encounters

A: Hachette have entered the UK board game scene with all the subtlety of a fire engine. A lot of that is due to you, and now your compadré Richie, hitting social media hard. Are you at all surprised with just how much of an impact you’ve had on the scene here?

F: Funny to see it this way and I am taking it as a compliment We entered it just being genuinely ourselves. The amount of positive feedback and visible joy at our booth at UKGE was so rewarding. For me, who’s never been on social media but always shared my passion in clubs and conventions, discovering this new fascinating world and the number of people we can reach is unbelievable.

A: So far, there’s an obvious lean towards French publishers for the games you distribute, with the likes of Funnyfox and Sorry We Are French on-board. Are there any plans to start importing games from any other countries?

F: UKGE has been an amazing portal to opportunities, that was not a short term plan, but that’s changing !

A: When we chatted at UKGE you mentioned that there are some games that you can just look at and know whether they are likely to do well in one country or another. Why do you think this is, and are you able to give us any good examples?

F: Gaming culture is really different from one country to the other, but culture in a broader sense too. Theme will have an impact, Baseball Highlights is a great deck-builder, but it couldn’t be sold in France where baseball is almost non-existent. Family games are different in the UK too, not as mainstream, and I’ve learned the hard way. Peek a Mouse (which is an amazing co-op memory game where the box becomes the home) for £30 doesn’t fit the British habits … at the moment!

A: If you can tell us, what has the response been like from the other publishers and distributors in the UK? I would guess you’d ruffled quite a few feathers.

F: The first UKGE has been a surprise for the others, but nobody threw stones at us. In January at the toy fair, everybody took the time to come and welcome us, play a game with us, give general advice, that was wonderful. And if I have to name names, Coiledspring and Thames and Kosmos have been especially welcoming!

A: It seems like the UK wasn’t the end of it. I noticed that you’re starting to get a footing in the US now. I saw that Danni left Pandasaurus to be the face of Hachette US. How have things been going over there?

F: With the help of our sister company in Canada, Randolph, the US operations have started few months ago. It will allow us to do worldwide releases and give more visibility to amazing games!

A: What’s next for Hachette in the UK? Have you got any big plans, or anything you can tell us about?

F: From a company point of view, Rory Kelly just joined the team, another passionate omnigamer, but unlike us, he is already super-experienced and known in the UK! We are also spending time and external resources to make UK-specific versions of games. The first one in October is the new version of Feelings (a coop game about being empathetic) for example, which has 15% of the cards rewritten!

On the gaming front, we have a new RPG experience for boardgamers, and are working on our existing lines too: a new Cartaventura, Suspects 2, a new Gigamic classic wooden game…

A: Finally, and maybe most importantly, what’s the best biscuit?

F: Dark chocolate and ginger biscuits of course!

Reviews

I’ve reviewed a couple of the games that Hachette have brought to the UK over the last year, and there are more to come.

Almadi is a brilliant tile-laying game with a very addictive combo mechanism. I really, really like it. If you’re curious, you can play it on BGA now.

Iki is a middle-weight Euro set in feudal Japan, which I love. The more cynical among you might thing “It’s just because it’s got a rondel…”, but that’s only partially true. It’s a really clever game which mixes lots of interesting mechanisms and choices, and it’s one which won over plenty of people when we played it at this year’s UKGE.

There are more reviews to come, including the clever little set-collection game Sobek: 2 Players. In the meantime, if you want to hassle your FLGS for any of the games they distribute, point them to https://www.hachetteboardgames.co.uk/

A special thanks to Flavien for his time, and Richie for sorting out some photographs for me.

The post Industry Spotlight: Hachette Boardgames UK appeared first on Punchboard.