Welcome to episode 136, where stories stick to the page like
S'mores, and every role leads to a deeper connection.
In this episode we're diving into the whimsical and wildly
original world of Marsh Hollow, a cooperative rolling right game
bursting with charm, tension and teamwork.
We're joined today by designer Kervin from 4Y Games, whose
upcoming Kickstarter title flips the genre on its head with a
clever polyomino drawing mechanics and a heart warming
and slightly toasted narrative. Players take on the role of
marshmallow tribes. That's right, you heard that,
trying to escape a shadowy cult of fire worshipping foes
determined to roast them over open flames.
Strategy meets survival. In this laugh out loud yet
deeply tactical journey through the hollow, we'll explore how
this game encourages collaboration, creativity, and
most of all, community, all while dodging skewers.
So grab your dice and pencils and most importantly, your sense
of adventure. This is 1 sweet story you won't
want to miss. It's cults, campfires and
confectionery chaos. Thanks for joining me.
How are you? I'm doing well, thanks for
having me. Hey, I am thrilled that we were
able to do this. I'm really excited to have you
on and getting to meet you at Gen.
Con, which was you warm my heart.
Thank you so much for that. You bought me coffee.
Of course I had to. See, that's how I lull you in.
If you want to be on the show, I'll buy you coffee at a con.
Pistachio oat milk lattes get with me every time.
Was good, wasn't it? So good.
I had a matcha latte. I had it for the first time the
day before and that was just really incredible and I fell in
love with matcha. I didn't even know that was a
thing, but apparently it is. I'm Asian, it's a thing.
OK, well, there you go. I'm a white boy from southern
Louisiana. I don't know nothing about
matcha, but now I do. I've been educated.
So there we are. So you've got this game, Marsh
Hollow coming out. Tell us a little bit about the
game and then we'll get into how you came up with the story.
So in the game you play Marshall the Marshmallow, whose family
has been taken in by a pyromancy marshmallow cult.
You along with animal the forests, are going to go and try
to break them out armed with water balloons and water guns
and try to save them and prevent the swamp from being burnt down.
That's that's kind of like the general story of Marsh Hollow.
Yeah, explain a little bit about what I thought was most
interesting in the prototype. And the version I saw is nowhere
as near as close as where you are today based on the box you
showed me the polyomino like you're drawing the polyomino
shapes, but they don't touch. I could explain that a little
bit. So I love the, I love Roland
writes, I love polyominos. And generally speaking, in
Bergen design language, when it's a polyomno game, you have a
confined space and you're trying to place these pieces as
efficiently as possible within a given rule set to score points
or to like not lose points. And I love polyomnos, but there
are polyomnos games that don't follow that.
And one of my favorite ones is called Blockus.
Blockus is that it's a, it's a family game.
I, I played it a lot during the pandemic with the person I
designed this game with and her parents.
In Blockus, you have Poly, you have polyamno pieces and you're
trying to place them on a board. Your goal is to use them all and
you can only place them on the diagonals.
So you can't have any of them touch orthogonally like their
sides can't touch. And I always wondered why there
aren't any other polyamno games that use polyamnos that way.
And Blockus is very much an abstract game.
And I always thought to myself, if you had a game that was
similar to Blockus in that regard with a theme, I think it
would be amazing. And so that's kind of how the
mechanics of Marsh Hollows started.
Yeah, it was, it was difficult and even knowing block us and
you say it and all of a sudden I'm like, that makes sense.
I didn't, I didn't put that together when I was playing it
at first, right? Like it was very difficult to
adjust to. OK, they, the pieces you're
drawing them, but they can't touch.
They've got to be diagonal. I struggled with that for a
little bit and then we picked it up and and ran away with it.
It was, it was pretty fantastic. How'd you come up with the story
of a marshmallow trying to escape these fiery cultists?
So my toe designer, she's actually my best friend from
high school. In her senior year of college,
she went to like a com design school where she had to take one
object and put it through a bunch of different mediums.
Her name's Kelly Reese, and she decided to use marshmallows.
So she did like she carved into wood block like a mouth where
every taste bud was a different marshmallow.
She had postcards. She had like this her her final
projects were crazy. And I was digging through my
room and I was And I found her postcard that she had made her
senior year. And I'm not kidding.
I saw the game of marshallow. There were these marshmallows
who were just kind of like doing their own thing.
They were like, they were like skewering each other.
They were like happy. They remind me a lot of the What
do they call the Despicable Me guys?
What are they called? The minions?
Minions. Yeah, so I have always imagined
Minions, but like marshmallows in this area.
And I literally saw the game. And so I went up to her and I
was like, I have this idea for a game.
You already do marshmallows, you're a graphic designer.
Like let's see where this goes. And so that started a three-year
journey of trying to figure out for game design, trying to
figure out Stories, trying to find Tik Toks and trying to
figure out how that works. And before we knew it, well, I
mean, we're launching in a month, which is crazy.
That is, that's insane. How was that the how was the
process of learning game design right?
Because you had no experience with this beforehand, did you?
Kind of like I I did watch a game prior to this called Allow
me to Mansplain. That's one of the reasons why I
got on TikTok originally. I had an idea for a game and I
did a bunch of research. I, I listened to a bunch of
podcasts, I watched everything on YouTube and I said, I think I
could do this. Sure, why not?
And so I've always been really good at games.
My background is in theater. I've been really good at like
analyzing how things work. And so, and I played a ton of
games. And I think that's the one thing
that helped me a lot is that I love games.
I love playing different types of games and I'm able to look at
games A to enjoy it, but B, like figure out what about it makes
it work. My original idea for the game
did not work, surprisingly. My original idea for the game
was there's a campfire and you're marshmallows and the
animals of the forest are coming to try to put out your fire.
And so they're trying to like defend from all these animals
coming from different directions.
But the one thing I wanted was I wanted it to be a rolling right.
Rolling right is my favorite genre and I wanted to figure a
way to make a game to convince people who don't love Roland
rights that Roland rights are worth their time.
People talk about how Roland rights are like accounting with
tweezers. Oh, it's, they're all the same.
And it's just like, it's, it's so low and it's all of these
things that aren't fun. And I don't agree with that.
And so we, and so I, that's when we came up with the idea
originally, I realized that's a lot for a Roland, right?
That's a lot to ask for, for cards and paper to be attacked
from different directions. And so, and then I was like, OK,
let's take it back, let's figure it out.
And then it's slowly morphed into what it is today.
That's cool. What was what about?
Did you reach out to other designers for input or getting
Kickstarter projects started, and if So, what was that
experience like? My journey into board game
design and board game publishing is very different than most
people, mostly because of TikTok.
So I had After I launched my first game, I, I made a video
and I and I talked about the different games that I had that
could be in the works. And the last one, that video was
Marsh Hollow and people absolutely loved the theme of
that game. And even though that wasn't one
that I wanted to make necessarily right now, if people
are asking for it like you kind of like if someone are
interested, that's easier to get play testers, that's easier to
get everything. And so I said sure, why not?
And so that's when I asked Kelly to join me in the process.
The when I started with the design.
So she is very much a gateway gamer, like below gateway gamer.
She's not really into like really crunchy board games.
She's not really into like tons of pieces.
And but she her background is in design and she's very big on
making sure that like her biggest complaint about Roland
rights is she's fighting with the design of the Roland right
to where she can't actually play the game.
Oh. I can see that.
Because size is a priority where your eye goes and like there's
different things that she takes inspiration because of her like
of her profession that it's hard for her to like play a game.
And so to have her so, so to make a game that was intuitive
to her, that followed a lot of the design rules because
apparently we're game designers and artists break them a lot to
make that was we had to learn how to speak to each other.
We had to learn to be like, well, what do you mean move?
That was an hour conversation. OK, when?
It comes to roll like like like when you say move, do you mean
like up, down, left, right? Do you mean do you move that
like it was, it was one of the wireless conversations we had.
But so once we finally got some semblance of something to play
test, I I play tested a lot. I one of the best parts about
having a rolling right is that it plays so low.
So I played tested a bunch way before I played test with people
and gencon 3. I guess now the three gencons
ago I asked my like 5 of my first ever followers on TikTok
to join me the bipoc lounge and play this game and it was the
first time I met all of them in person.
It was probably the worst explanation of a game I've ever
done in my life because Gen. Con is overwhelming.
I got to meet these people who've seen every video I've
ever made and they played it like I didn't mention it as a
cooperative game until halfway through.
Like they played the game. And so their their feedback was
something I took to heart because one of the biggest
complaints is probably not the right word for it.
But when you have play testers, it's people being honest with
you about your game. And my background's in theater,
I'm kind of known for being very blunt.
And so like being like, please tell me about your game.
And I remember that feedback is what changed the direction of
where Marsh Hollow went down to one of them said Kervin.
I have a hard time rotating shapes in my brain.
I'm not spatially like spatial awareness is something I'm not
very good at. Can we these should be plastic
cards. And I said, gosh Dang it, that's
such a good idea. And then from that, and then
from that play test, like I thought the game was fun.
I thought it was great. And they said it wasn't great.
They said it, they, they said it played, but they actually took
the time to explain to me why things didn't work for them,
what was confusing, what I could have done better.
They gave me ideas of where to go.
And so the majority of my play testers are board game content
creators, right? I probably played the game with
90% of board game TikTok and they have had significant input
to my game. Like I every time I look at the
game and I see like, oh, we made this change because of this
person. We made this change because of
this person. And board game TikTok, they love
all different types of games. And I realized the only reason
why some people didn't like it was because they were
overwhelmed with the choices, couldn't spatially rotate
shapes, and so they would just choose the easier of the two
pieces and just place it wherever because they felt like
they were holding people back. Well, that's a that's a good
point. I hadn't considered that.
So let me ask you, did you have any non board game tik tokers
that were play testing? Because there's an entire
because there's a culture of just play testers, and that's
what they do. Absolutely I would.
I would make videos and people would be like, I'd love to play
it. And I said, well, if you have an
e-mail, let's go. And so I would play with them
remotely. I would do blind test, play
tests on TikTok. I, I talk a lot about board
games and board game adjacent things.
And I, I have a whole series called things I do.
So my boyfriend will play board games with me because he loves
Monopoly and he doesn't actually like to play board games.
But I had someone, I noticed someone was watching my like a
couple of videos and she would watch a couple of videos every
10/15/20 minutes over the course of a day.
It was like 200 videos that day and I was like, that's really
weird 'cause there's, it's pretty common for people when
they first find your channel to just like mass spam like videos.
And but she watched enough of them enough time to make me
realize that she was actually watching my videos.
And that night as I was going to bed, I get this massive DM
saying I'm sorry if this is creepy, I'm not trying to be
creepy. But something about you I
connected with. I watched enough of your content
to know that I like you and I want to support you.
I would love to play this game with my kid.
I know it's not made for children, but I, I kind of want
to see how it plays with children with like my son and I
said absolutely. So we played it with her son
remotely. I had never met her prior.
And we, we changed a few things because he's 6, his son was 6.
So they were able to place things orthogonally and they
started with a gun. But he understood the rules
better than she was and she was in it.
She's not a gamer. Her husband runs the local board
gaming group in her city and she's not a board gamer, but she
was so excited to play this game because of the theme and her son
loved it too. And so like, I've learned that
when I would play the game with members of people who don't play
a lot of board games or I play tests with people who aren't
members of board game TikTok, how they how they explain the
game back to me affected my teacher of the games because
they look at things differently and they like different things
appeal to them. And I've learned that every time
I play it with someone who doesn't necessarily play rolling
rights or board games, might might teach like forever future
changes a little bit. Interesting.
So I'm going to ask a question that I think I already know the
answer to, but I like to ask it of designers.
How easy was it for you to be vulnerable and open yourself up
to that, to play testers in all of that criticism?
I'm a theater kid like there's nothing these people could tell
me that my teachers didn't say meaner.
So a it's that BI talk about diversity on TikTok.
I share my personal experiences on a like platform where people
are mean. People sometimes roll.
And it's one of those things where I always view it as, as
long as I can tell that you're trying to be helpful and it's
coming from a place that isn't spiteful or mean.
Like you can hate my game, that's perfectly fine.
But I need you to tell me why you hate the game.
I need you. I will sit down with you like, I
didn't like this. Well, what didn't you
understand? And I will sit there and like,
spend time to be like, hey, if normally it's like one or two
concepts that if you would have gotten your game experience
would have been completely different.
And so I, I personally don't have problems with people not
liking things I create. I have more of a problem if you
don't like me. That is a fairpoint.
That is fair. Yeah, I feel that too.
I want you to like me. Exactly.
It's like, I think I'm great. Well, you are great and I think
that your followers in your following Pip pans out right.
It shows that you're pretty terrific.
So and now you've got this game coming out.
That's just like I said, it's going to flip the genre on its
tail because this is a unique take on that polyomino mechanic
and it's in a rolling right format, which is pretty
spectacular. I didn't like, I didn't intend
to go out and make this game that like was significantly
different than what's out there. That's not something that like I
was trying to do. I definitely design theme first.
There are people who design mechanics first.
People's on theme first. I very much care about themes
and I talk a lot about how on my channel, how a lot of the games
don't interest me. Like there's a lot of themes I
don't care for and that's fine. But I remember last year I, I, I
was really big in Lor Kana, which is the trading card game
by Robbins Burger, the Disney 1. And I love Disney.
And so I didn't buy board games last year because TCGS are
expensive. And I wanted, and there are
people in the industry who say like, oh, I'd never play games
with themes I don't love. And I said, I don't know what
that's like. That's not something, that's not
like a privilege that I have. And so I decided to play just
Larkana and it changed the, the type of games I was like willing
to play. Like, I didn't realize it's OK
to be like, you know what? I, I'm not sure I like the theme
of the game. Maybe I'll pass because I always
think that there's always something about a game you can
love. There's whether it's like the
people you're playing with or there's like a mechanic that's
like really interesting. I, I think there's something,
there's always something you can learn from a game, even it's not
from a theme you love. But I have actively prioritized
finding games with like different themes because of that
one decision I made. And then going into Marsh
Hollow, I have converted people into lovers of rolling rights,
which is crazy, which is like not something that, like, that's
not something that I was actively trying to do.
I was just like, I wanna convince people that this genre
is worth it. And there are really good
rolling rights that like, even if you don't think you might
like it, you might actually could.
And they do. And I get to play rolling rights
with them. I get to play with them online.
And it's, it's, it's something that I didn't expect to happen.
And I'm very happy and grateful that I was able to get to that.
And you should I I find I got to say, I'm a little surprised by
the reaction. I didn't realize there were that
many people that just did not like rolling rights because
they're, they're just so accessible, you know, they don't
require a massive table presence.
They're easier to travel with. Yeah.
And how many rolling right versions of larger board games
have been published in the last two years?
Tons, Yeah. Like they always say, it always
feels like accounting with tweezers.
And I'm like, I can see that. Like there's some of them
absolutely are just like, just like tick mark, tick mark, tick
marks. But just like every other genre,
there's different things within it that are actually fun.
And to write off a whole genre because of what you think it is,
is something that, like I, I wanted to show people.
Yes, and I think you, I think you achieved that.
The theme is interesting. The theme didn't sing to me at
when I when I got the prototype from you, I was like, OK, being
honest, I was like what? OK, but I'm going to.
But I also love play testing for the sake of play testing.
And I also recognize that as a fellow creative, the importance
of getting constructive feedback.
So I want to be helpful. So my wife and I sat down and
played and figured it out and I was like, OK, the mechanics and
the gameplay made it an interesting experience.
And then after playing it two or three more times, it was like,
this is adorable it. Is adorable.
It so is and you know, there's so many cute games out there,
but this is just, this is a new way of polyominal mechanics and
a new way of rolling right? And just it took my breath away,
if I'm being honest. So originally the the style was
supposed to be like kawaii, super cute.
And then and then we got into there's a lot of characters in
the game. I think there's like 11-12 like
individual animals, there's a bunch of little marshmallows.
And when we were trying to figure out like in the kawaii
style, they're all the same height and part of the joy of
having a bunch of different animals and in relation to
marshmallows, saving other marshmallows is like the height
differences, the play on like the different like movements and
positions you can have. And so we were looking for
different styles and Kelly came up with rubber hose, which is
what Cuphead is and what Goofy, who's my favorite Disney
character, was originally drawn in So.
Right. And so that style is very much
like that. And there aren't a lot of games
that utilize that. I remember when I, I couldn't,
when I, when I create a game as a publisher and a content
creator, I think about the types of videos I would want to make.
I think about my friends who are going to make content and like
how their videos work. And if I want to make sure my
game is highlighted well, I need to make sure that I have enough
art, that I have nothing to unbox, that I have enough
interesting things to show. And I, I remember thinking that
if this was kawaii and it's just super cute, it would just be
sarcastic coming from me. Like I'm a happy person, but I
want to be like, look how cute this is, Look how cute this is.
I would, it would be so like not real for me.
And like, I think things are cute and I think things can be
like darker and cute. And I think that cozy isn't
necessarily the same for everybody.
And you can do things that are cozy, that aren't just like cute
but and have different people connect to your game because my
game is a different type of game.
And if I want to attract people who like different types of
games, I'm gonna go a little dark.
I'm gonna make things like cute, like.
And there's some characters like the Otter, freaking adorable.
It's when I the Otter and the alligator are my favorite
characters in the game and to have them just be like and and
be able to show things and like. I can't wait to have all the
merge. That's another thing is that we
spent. A.
Few and a half years trying to figure out the style and that
the reason why it's taken so long was because we wanted to
make sure the art was right and the characters were correct.
And like we even did a comic for to explain the lore of the game
we wanted. We wanted to show something that
does isn't really out there, especially for own rights to be
like this is, this is what can be.
And a lot of people think, I thought I was crazy.
A lot of people in the industry are, we're confused and they're
like, you could have done this sooner.
You could have just put tariffs, you could have done all of this.
But I always tell them, but if it makes sense for me, that's
all that really matters, right? And my audience has been
following me the entire 2 1/2 years.
And I, I can honestly say as like an indie board game
publisher, I wasn't hurting for play testers.
And that's one of the coolest things to know is that they're
people who want to support me. They want to support the game.
And, and you're more likely to get better play testers to give
you better ideas for your game. And it slowly evolved and I'm so
happy with where it is. That's incredible because how
many designers I know they complain about, not complain,
that's not the right word, but they they share their
frustrations with how difficult it is to find a diverse group.
And I don't mean, you know, just a wide number of different play
testers from around wherever and struggle with that.
So it's great that you were able to instantly have a pool of play
testers to get that feedback. And, and not even that, just
having like a roller, right? I mean, we got to play remotely
and so I didn't have to be in person to, to show we were able
to figure that out. And it it, it was incredibly
helpful and probably it would have taken me a lot longer if we
had decided to not do a rolling right.
Do you have any regrets? Or maybe not regrets, but things
you would do differently if you were to do it over again, like.
With the like designing the game or like the Kickstarter or just
like everything. Everything.
And that's not meant to be a trick question.
There's no right or wrong. I will say, I will say the So
every year I do 10 things that scare me as someone who's like
an anxious person, I think it's important to because you don't
always have control over when you're pushed outside of your
comfort zone. And I think it's important to be
the person sometimes to push you out of your comfort zone.
I think it's one of the ways we grow.
I think the older we get, the more likely we're not to do it.
And the older I've gotten, the harder it's gotten, if I'm
perfectly honest. And so in the BIPOC lounge, the
it's just run by the Rose Kotlin foundation at Gen.
Con. They also do the women gaming
and origins. The the big a dinner at PAX
unplugged. They really focus on bringing
more people into the hobby and more people in the industry.
If you're like education and one of the things you can do is you
can sign up for a time slot for with a mentor.
Previously, every hour of every day was planned and so I
couldn't even grab lunch with somebody.
Mostly I skipped lunch and people just brought me lunch and
I ate during a play test. And this Gen.
Con I decided I was going to sign up for a mentor and so I
was reading through and I ended up wanting to meet with the
senior marketing manager of Renegade.
His thing talked about like Kickstarters, he talked about
working with influencers and I met with him and this is what I
told him, which is made me very anxious because of my experience
in this in the space. I said I am well aware of how
indie publishers create and kickstart a game.
They go to conventions, they play, test it with strangers,
they build listservs, they go Kickstarter.
They want like launching conventions, they have booths.
And I didn't do any of that. I said I did all of my research
and realized I don't think that works for me.
And so on a whim, I joined TikTok.
I was able to create a following, some sorts of a
following. I was able to get play testers.
I was able so and that affected my marketing strategy, which is
basically going to be a lot of for getting content across all
platforms. And I said, as someone who
didn't do what most people did, as someone who's not seen my
game, can you look at my game and tell me what you would
highlight? And I, and I fully expected, I
fully expected him to just be like, well, why didn't you do
the listserv? Why you like, like what you hear
over and over and over again? I'm like, sure, it doesn't, I
don't have the, it doesn't work for me.
And like if I have resources that I think are better, like
I'm not running meta ads and it's always really big, like all
of the things like I'm not doing.
I expected him to just like be super judgy and say, well, you
should just do these things because people say the same a
things over and over again. And then he looked at me and he
smiled and he said, let's, let's go through it together.
So he pulled. He pulled up one of their pages
that they had done for our previous Kickstarter.
He explains, like the rationale of how things are laid out.
He looked through, he looked through like the instruction
manual. He looked through the things he
said. You should highlight this here.
You should do this, you should do this.
And I didn't. I know why I was originally
scared to tell a person in the industry who's marketing manager
for Renegade, It's a pretty big deal to be like, I know what
you're supposed to do. I didn't do it, I think, and I
haven't come across as like, this is what made the most sense
for me. And not like I know what's
better or like there's a lot of things that people could have
read into that. And he was so welcoming and he
was so nice. And so like, because I went so
far left with how I'm going to launch this campaign, I regret
not not even at trying to do like listservs or like like like
it's it's one thing to say that doesn't make sense for me, but
also something to be like, I didn't try it.
Right. Sure.
OK. So, so like do I have a like a
listserv of people to e-mail? No, I have like their like
number and I can text them when I need things.
I have. And again, when the majority of
your community is content creators, it's going to look
different than if you never make content.
And so like, I don't regret not doing that.
But also like there's only so much time in the day.
And when you're one of two people trying to figure out this
whole how to do a Kickstarter, how to make a game, how to like
while having a full time job, while having, you know, like
being in a long distance relationship, it's a lot to try
to like maintain and handle. And so like, I wouldn't say I
regret not doing that, but like, I probably should have just
sucked it up. And then like, it's fine.
I can attempt to do a list serve.
And it's not even like I didn't do my research on that because
when I did all my research, I knew like there's Mailer light,
there's mail trip, like I they're all the things like
they're in notes, in notebooks in a corner of my desk that like
I'm sure I could open. I'm not one to do things just
because people do it. And if it doesn't make sense,
why, why am I doing it? And if I'm like.
It's a great question. Like running meta ads.
Why does one run meta ads? Because they're trying to put
your game in front of people who might be interested.
Well, if I have 30 to 60 content creators across platforms show
off a really beautiful game, isn't that similar?
I'm not saying it's the same and I'm not saying necessarily like
the R, the ROI is gonna be the same, but it's gonna be put in
front of a lot of people's eyes. And so and so that I found that
I have alternatives to what people are doing.
And even though it may not be exactly the same, it was enough
for me and it made sense for how I wanted to spend my time.
Because also, how many publishers or like any
publishers do you know, who actually are making can make
their own content for their game other than this is my game?
Like becoming a content creator absolutely drastically
influenced how I designed the game, what the art looks like
and how it plays. Wow, wow.
So you in an you in essence are exemplifying everything I've
been saying is that on this podcast, is that your personal
experience informed how you viewed this project and how it
and how you approached it and how you tackled it and developed
your own strategy. I love that.
That's that's incredible being a content creator.
Yeah, that. I love how you said that.
I want to. I was thinking about, I was
thinking about our conversation at Gen.
Con, and you were talking about the environment of content
creators in terms of game design.
Oh, man, I wish I could remember what you said because I wanted
to give you an opportunity to say it again because it's just
so cool and it was tied directly to everything we're talking
about right now. Gosh, shame on me forgetting
what you said to trigger that. I'm a terrible interviewer.
You you didn't have a notepad out?
I didn't. I didn't because I'm so in the
moment. Yeah.
So that's on me. Shame on me.
Well, but I love how content creators influenced your
approach. Like, that's just that's unique.
And is that why you decided to go publish it yourself rather
than approach a big publisher and let them publish Marshallow?
I think I'll, I'll get to, to that in a second.
I feel like what separates me from a lot of content creators
and just like people in the industry is just intention,
right? Like if diversity is part of
your platform, you have to be intentional.
And there and there are people who say things like, it must be
nice to be able to hit record, just talk and then because you
had a thought and then post it. But that's not how I make
content. There are people who have said
Kervin makes content in his car where he just talks.
If he can do it, anyone can do it, which like it's true, but I
actually think about it. I actually like there's a reason
and a purpose and like branding is super important.
And so the intentionality at into which I talk about
diversity into which I do my brand and I make my tik Toks is
what I brought to the my game and my board game design and my
publishing of it. And so like there's a reason for
everything. And a lot of people, their
process is just different. And so getting to that point was
a lot of band power as a lot of bandwidth and why it's taken as
long as as I have. Could you rephrase your question
again? I lost it.
Oh, why? Why didn't pitch back?
Why didn't pitch Marshallow? So.
In my initial research of self publish a game versus pitching
games to publishers, you lose all control.
So like I had people tell me, Kervin, I am so glad you are
self-publishing this yourself because no publisher would
publish this marshmallow cultists.
People are like publishers don't even do necessarily do witches
unless they're like tea wishes, which is coming out, which I'm
sent for like a you lose control of which like I don't want to
spend all I I've it would have been fine if I pitched it at a
certain point, but there's a point where you either pitch it
or need to self publish it. And for me, part of my platform
is I wanting to do things different.
Part of my platform is like, you don't have to do things just
because that's how people are like people tell you you have to
do it. And so when I made the decision
that I was going to self publish this, it's because I wanted to
be able to show people what I can do and to show people that
what I can design, what I can publish.
And I wanted because I think the game is amazing and I knew it
was going to, I knew it was going to be really, really good
and part and ultimately I would love to be someone who talks
about diversity in the space and to be a a personality or to be
someone who does that, you need to get a certain amount of
success either as a content creator or as a publisher for
people to like know who you are right And to and to be like to
have a following on TikTok is not enough because people don't
even know what TikTok is. And so like, since I'm a
designer and I'm a publisher, having a successful game and
getting my name out there and like networking and getting
people to know me and understand what I'm doing.
That's something that ultimately is bringing me to like what I
want to do because I don't know if I want to publish games
forever. Like I always said, I don't
wanna. I don't like After Marshallow,
I'm there. I'll probably take a break from
content creation. I'll probably take a break from
and just figure out, like, if this is what I enjoy or if I've
convinced myself I enjoy it. I'm pretty sure I enjoy it.
Yeah, but when when you've posted at least one video a day,
every day for four years, do you really enjoy it?
I don't know. We'll find out.
Maybe so. It's so.
I like how so control's important.
I get that as a content creator, you want to create it.
You create something that's yours.
You take your or you took. I guess you take because took is
OK semantics with your intentionality in the content
you create. You brought that to the design
of your game and the way that you play, you approached play
testing the way you approached your marketing and hopefully a
way that you approach the project.
And so I find that fascinating, the intentionality and forming
the approach to the design because I've had conversations
with designers on this show with different points of view as to
to pitch or to publish, right. That is the question and you
seem to have an answer for it for you.
I don't No go ahead. I don't suggest the board game
designer, publisher, content creator out like it's not like
it's not something that I think everyone can do.
It's not something everyone can do, sure, because they require
very different skill sets. Like Borgame design is different
than Borgame publishing. Both of those are different than
content creation. And if I'm honest, I stumbled
into content creation like it was something that I, I did like
I remember one of my super fans who has become, she's not one of
my best friends in the industry. She would a year after we met,
she said, Gervin, your first like 20 videos, it looked like
you didn't want to be there. And I said, Brad, I didn't want
to be there. But she's like, but your message
was good. I'm like, yeah, but like, like,
like back then, TikTok was all 7 second dance videos.
Back then, there were 14 people on board game TikTok and they
were doing exclusively how to play it.
No one was talking about board games in their car.
TikTok didn't even want long form content.
But like, in my bones, I felt that TikTok will eventually want
one minute videos and I want and, and outside of board games,
there were a lot of niches where people just talk.
And so I wanted to learn a style, a cadence that was unique
to me that to where I can tell a story.
And I remember I was talking to Nicholas Sparkman at Sparkmanic
and he said, Kervin, you, you, you don't move, you stare at the
camera and your message is, is what people connect to.
And that's what's the most important thing.
And I don't know if that was on purpose or not.
I'm like, it was on purpose. But he said it was really great.
And now TikTok wants you to do one minute content and like over
a minute content. And I'm lucky enough to be it
took me 3 years to get monetized on TikTok and TikTok actually
paid for all of my prototypes. Nice.
I didn't know that. Yeah, I don't think we talked
about that when we when we met. So that's that's interesting.
Yeah. That that's a whole, that whole
monetization is a very new thing for me, obviously having only
been on YouTube for less than a year.
And I know that I know it is a thing, but I'll cross that
bridge when I get to it. Me too, me too.
You know, it's interesting though, YouTube's short content,
they just expanded it to 3 minutes.
So you know, so obviously there is some value to more than just
snippets, right? But unfortunately, my short form
content gets more views than my long form.
But by having folks like you on the show, maybe it'll draw more
people in. And I, this is some great
conversations that people are missing out on if they don't
listen. Because, you know, I think I've
got, I think I bring, I think I'm a good judge of character
and I bring some really great guests on.
And I'm going to be honest, y'all make me look good.
I need a lot of help. I, I will say the one thing that
surprised me the most about content creation on TikTok is
like the quality of people who are content creators on the
platform like that. I didn't expect that.
Like there are a lot of people I hang out with and talk and it's
I, I had a mutual say, I didn't know you were actually close to
all of them. And I said if I, if I feature
them on my channel, that means like we're actually friends
outside of this and we don't always talk board games.
And like I have their phone numbers and we talk and, and I
said it's not my fault they passed all of my tests.
Like I wish more of them didn't. That way they leave me alone.
Because there's so many of us, it's hard to keep up.
How do you balance keeping up with everyone?
It's called being an extrovert. Well, I'm an extrovert too, but
there's only so much time in a day.
There is only so much time in a day, but also like I almost have
exclusively online data my entire life.
And so like, and most of my friends like I've had since high
school, like we're very old school.
Like we like the only people they talk on their onto the
phone are their grandparents and me.
Like we send, we send care packages, I send corrections to
like their children. And I don't know, it's one of
those things where it's not one of those things where it's like
there's a schedule and then we like every Tuesday we talk,
right. When a lot of your friends are
content creators, a lot of your interaction is through the
videos that they create. And then that's true.
And then that turns into DMS. That turns into singing to each
other at conventions. There are a lot of people, but
also you, you make time for the people you care about.
I've always been a big believer in that.
And it looks different. And also I think it's really
important to say that I acknowledge that you have a life
outside of me. Like it's OK to not return phone
calls every now and then. It's OK that like it was a 10
second phone call. Like I like someone's like I
only have 10 seconds. I just wanted to say hi, I'm
thinking of you. That's like, that's amazing to
have to have. I'd have like guys tell me that
like that's, that's like my favorite thing in the world and
so. I.
I think as someone who's always prioritized friendships and
relationships and meaningful conversation, sometimes like
hello is very meaningful because because they have kids, they
have a whole, they have, they have whole lives.
They have to take 2 seconds and to say, I'm, I'm thinking of
you. And that's something I've spent
a lot of time working on is like if I only had a few seconds,
instead of sending like a quick text message, I just did a quick
call and leave. I, I leave notoriously bad and
awkward voicemails to be like be like, hey, cool.
I'm thinking if you kick a by curve, like that's literally all
my voicemails. I'm not kidding.
I. Love it.
I struggle because I identify with what you're saying.
As an extrovert, I love deep, meaningful conversation.
Relationships are important to me.
It's what drew me to this platform of podcasting.
I want a deep, meaningful conversation about meaningful
topics rather than just let's talk about board game A and the
mechanics and the theme and all those things we talked about.
But I want to get to the core of who you are as a person and how
that informs how you approach your design or playing this game
or whatever. And I just, I struggle with
there's just not enough time in the day, you know, balancing
work and the podcast and my family.
And then I feel like, man, I haven't talked to you or sent
you Adm or a text message in six months.
And that's on me. And you know, yeah.
I will say it's different. It's different also because I
started four years ago when there was only 14 people
creating content. That's fair.
And so like I, I didn't know that I was doing.
I mean, I did like, I know I was doing it at the time, but I
didn't realize I was kind of like the board game TikTok
welcome committee. Like the algorithm knew that
like I love watching board game content.
So they would send it to me and then I would DM them and be
like, hey, I love that you're making board game content.
If you ever want to pick my brain about anything, please
feel free. But I just wanted to say hello
and I'm glad that you're here. And that's how I became friends
with so. And then it got to the point
where like you can't know everybody.
I'm like, no. You can't.
That's hard. That's really hard to grasp and
wrestle with because you just, you can't know everyone.
Now I'm musing about how I can't know everyone and how sorry I
feel that y'all can't know me and I can't know you.
So you have to just passively watch or listen to me and listen
to me talk to Kerbin this week, so.
I, I, I will say the we, I don't know this happened to you, but
as a, a content creator who shares more than just like I
share aspects of my life on my channel, I share aspects of like
who I am and like what I believe.
The amount of people who've said things to me over the years that
I've never explicitly said was always really confusing.
Like as a content creator, you have no control over how people
connect to your content. I say that that's like the
number one thing I tell content creators is that like there are
gonna be people who are gonna love the content.
You hate them most and you're like mad that you created, but
there are people who are going to love it and they're going to
tell you it's the best thing ever.
But like having people I, I was, I was like, I remember I was
having a conversation and they said, oh, blah, blah, blah.
And I said, how do you know that?
Because I, I know, because all of my, you know, I'm
intentionally all my tik toks. I know what I'm talking about.
Like I know for a fact I've never stated what you said.
And like, well, you said this on this one TikTok, this one on
this TikTok and this year. And if you think about it, it
makes sense that you like think this.
And I was like, that's creepy. Like, I'm glad we're like, I'm
glad we're mutuals and it's fine.
But like, I, it's, it's, it, it takes me aback that there are
people who like, I'm grateful that there are people who are
that thoughtful, right? And, and, and enjoy my content
enough to remember things like having Tik Tok's quoted back to
you is wild. I mean, it's wild.
And so having people do that, it just makes me feel really
grateful that I have built a platform that people genuinely
connect to. Yeah, I have never been had
anyone quote my podcast back to me, but I have had a few people
like they talk about it in such a way where I'm like, oh, they
did watch it, right? Like they'll drop, you know, key
moments and talks and I'm like, oh, wow, OK, there's a lot of
because most of my contents long form.
I mean, you think an hour long. This is at this is episode 136.
That's a lot of hours of listening to this guy just wax
philosophical, philosophical about a hobby that he loves with
other people. I mean, and the fact that y'all
keep listening and keep coming back and join me on this wild
ride. Kervin, thank you so much for
sharing a little bit of your story and the story of Marsh
Hollow. So tell everyone when is the
launch date and where can they find you on all the things.
Marsh Hollow is launching on Tuesday, September 9th,
September 9th and you can it's it's called Marsh hollow.
It's on Kickstarter and I will be talking about it all over
TikTok which is 4Y games FOR WHYG AM.
Yes. Very good, very good guys.
Thank you so much. And as always, hit the like and
subscribe button. We need that.
We're really close to our one year goal.
I've got 94 subscribers. We're trying to hit 100.
The sooner I can hit that, the sooner I can start working on
the next goal for the second year.
So let's let's keep going and be kind to each other.
Let's play more games.