Hey guys, and welcome to episode 162 of Maple to People.
Today, we're exploring the issue of sustainability in the
tabletop gaming world. From plastic miniatures and
shrink wrap to global shipping routes and manufacturing
materials, The hobby we share has a footprint, but it also has
enormous potential for innovation and positive change.
As more publishers, designers, and gamers ask how can we make
games greener without sacrificing creativity?
Equality, a new chapter in board gaming, is unfolding before our
very eyes. And joining me to dig into this
intersection of environment, ecology, and entertainment is
someone who's been working on these issues from multiple
angles. Julie Beerworth.
Julie has built her career at the crossroads of gaming and
environmental responsibility. She is currently the Chair of
the Committee on Sustainability with Gamma.
She's a collaborator behind the second edition of the Green
Games Guide, and she's owner illustrator at Distant Rabbit
Games. So it is clear that she's got a
resume that indicates she knows what she's talking about.
And I'm happy to be talking with her today.
Julie, thanks for joining. How are you?
I'm doing great, PJ. Thank you so much for having me.
How are you? I'm great.
I'm really excited because this is a topic that I'm really
thrilled to talk about and have you on.
I've always wanted to, I've said this multiple times, there's
issues that are really important to this industry and to me, but
I'm not an expert on them. And so finding experts to come
on the show, I'm really thrilled to learn about you and have you
on SO again. Well, thank you so much.
Yeah, I've been very fortunate, sort of like what you're talking
about. I've been very fortunate to work
with people who are experts within this industry from lots
of different angles, people who are doing the manufacturing and
people who do, you know, footprint analysis, like
actually calculating these things.
I'm more sort of the collator of all that information and trying
to, you know, connect the right people with the right
opportunities. But I've, I feel like I've
learned a lot along the way and it's mostly just that I, there
are a few things that will motivate me quite as well as
sustainability. Well.
You're the perfect guest to have on to talk about about this.
But before we went and get into it, I I wanted to ask you, what
was the first board game that you ever played that got you in
the muck? It's going to be it's going to
be the classic answers. The resistance was up there.
Catan was up there. Catan.
Yep. And I can't even tell you which
one came first. And also Munchkin.
These were the ones that friends introduced me to back.
I know Munchkins throwback. Like I feel like Munchkin has
fallen out of the gateway game. Yes.
In favor of other things, but in my day that was a big gateway
game. You, you are back in the you and
you're definitely in safe hands here.
Because you know, those are those are some of my similar
beginning games as well. No one has mentioned Munchkin.
I've virtually forgot about it till you just mentioned it.
I know I have not played it in so many years.
Yeah, that. That one was at the at the time
that I feel like a lot. I knew a lot of people who
played it and I got introduced to it probably around the same
time as Catan, I think. I think even resistance was a
little bit later. But yeah, those were those were
my first. So those, OK, so that's an
interesting trio. I want to unpack that for a
minute, right. So you've got Catan, which is
the quintessential Eurogame that comes over to the US and the
Western world in the Mid East. And then you got the resistance,
which is social deduction, bluffing, things of that nature.
And then there's Munchkin, which at its core is a simple card
game, But is, you know, that that whole, I think what people
don't like about it or why they don't play it as often as that,
that kingmaker kind of at the ending, right?
It's like whoever gets closest to the 10th point, we just gang
up on them. And then Julie comes in for the
win. Yep.
So after having said all that, what was it that, if you'll
pardon the pun, sustained your interest in the hobby?
It's two things. And it, you know, it was so all,
all of those things were introduced to me by various
friends in various circles. And they just sort of felt like,
you know, they came about naturally.
I'd be at a friend's house and they'd say, I have this game
that I really want to introduce you to that all that all felt
very natural. It was when my husband and I
first got together, he had grown up playing lots of games and I
need young children. And so we started a lot of the,
you know, games, Sleeping Queens, a lot of the, you know,
games that are accessible for kids.
We played them all the time. All, I mean, the amount of games
that we played with our kids when they were young was
incredible. We both have a, a university
schedule for most of the year and our kids have a school
schedule. And so during the summers, you
know, what do we have to do all day except play games with our
kids? So that was that was a little
bit of the the beginning of it. But then, you know, they would
go to bed and we'd want something that we could do just
the two of us. And so we started finding ones
that we're going to be good for when we were together, some some
when we were long distance that we could play online.
We, you know, that's how we got into Splendor, was playing.
On the app. Together, that was another big
gateway one for us, for our like 2 player.
Hanabi was another big one for 2.
And then we started kind of bridging that gap into like
Terraforming Mars and, you know, things that we're going to be
heavier. But the, yeah, the the big thing
that we never found, we we both really loved the resistance.
That was kind of a, a hands down classic.
And especially for the player psychology aspect of it, none of
the Euro games ever touched for us what was like, you know,
emotional and evocative. And so seeking out more hit and
roll and betrayal experiences was sort of how we kept pushing
forward until we started publishing games.
Interesting, interesting. So what about the step from
being a gamer to a publisher? What was your motivation for
starting your company and designing?
Yeah, it was just 100% an accident.
It was literally the most, the most an accident it can ever be
when you publish a game. It was My husband was in the
midst of a very stressful first semester.
He was untenured his first semester of teaching as a
professor. And whenever he encounters that
kind of intense stress, he has these bursts of creativity
that's sort of like a coping mechanism basically.
And he had this idea of what if we could do a hit and roll game
for two players. There was no thought, zero
thought to publishing anything. We didn't know anybody who
published. We didn't know that you could
even. We thought this was like a this
is how this is how unaware we were.
You know, we knew about Katan and Munchkin.
You know, we knew about all those things, but they seemed so
distant to us that we were like, well, if we were to publish a
game, we would have to bring it to like, Parker Brothers.
Like, this is how far outside of the indie.
Like, in our mind, there were like, you know, four different
companies that you could go to to publish something.
In the meantime, there's this whole gigantic, you know, indie
hockey industry whole. Yeah.
Yeah, that we had no idea that we didn't even know Kickstarter
existed. And so we were like, well, we
could, we could make something that you and I could play
together. And so he, he I was, I was away
at the time and he made this whole two player hidden role
game, which had never been done before.
We didn't know this, but nobody had ever really kind of cracked
the the two player hidden role code.
And but we wanted something we could play after our kids went
to bed where we wouldn't have to have a million friends over to
play something hidden role. And I played it with him and I
was like, wow, this is hands down the best game I've ever
played. And still we didn't think about
publishing it. We had got one of those keepsake
Zazzle boxes where you like it, you know, like a like picture of
your family on the front of it. And we call it the game of
trust. Put the put the thing on the
front of it, kept all like got some cards printed.
But that was the extent of it for I mean, for four years we
just played it, the two of us. And that was all it was ever
going to be, was just something for us to play together.
And then it was actually just a complete accident that a friend
of a friend person I worked for at the time knew some folks at
Keymaster Games who had just done their first Kickstarter.
And we're like, oh, you know, we, you can actually publish
things. You, you have this whole game
that you designed with your husband, you know, you could
actually make that yourself. And so they kind of took us
under their wing and, and LED us through the whole how you, how
you go to conventions and then you publish a game and do a run
a Kickstarter and all of that. So it was, it was just, we just
made a game for us and with no intention at all marketing it.
And then it just all kind of fell in our lap.
Wow, four years. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot.
It was every night for four years, sometimes two games a
night. And this is it runs for about an
hour, hour and a half per game. So yeah.
And that was it was all we wanted to do with each other.
That's great. Yeah, that is that is a great
story. Thank you so much for sharing.
That that that that is amazing. I really enjoy that.
So let me ask you what sparked your interest in sustainability
as an overarching topic and follow up is how did it
eventually intersect with your career in the board gaming world
specifically? Yeah.
So sustainability, you know, it's always been a, my husband
and I both went to school, master's PhD, like did the, did
the whole track. And it's always been a, a
concern, a part of our thought process.
But it I would say the real, real thing that kind of kicked
that into OverDrive for us was actually my husband's sister was
actually very sustainably minded, like diligent in every
possible way about what she was doing, her footprint and all
that. And during our shortly after our
Kickstarter for our first game, we'd, we'd already decided we
wanted to go carbon neutral and we wanted to, you know, think
about it sustainably, do a small box game and all that kind of
stuff. But, you know, shortly after our
Kickstarter, she was in a fatal car accident.
And I think for me, for both of us, a part of our kind of
increasing commitment to sustainability has been a little
bit of like a honoring what she would have wanted to not create
things thoughtlessly or needlessly.
And that if you're going to create, that you create it
artistically with intention that it's a contribution that, you
know, an artistic contribution that you feel like needs to be
in the world, not just a, you know, consumer item.
And that it's the best that it can be reasonably.
I mean, even even she would understand there are limits.
You're going to run a company that you're going to, you can't
bankrupt your company. You can't, you know, not be able
to pay your bills, you know, to be able to be sustainable.
But there are a lot of decisions and that was what we realized as
we were going through. There are a lot of decisions
that can be made that aren't unsustainable, that are like
unsustainable from a financial perspective or from a company
perspective, right? Like there are things you can do
that are inexpensive or no cost at all to improve that
footprint. And so that's that's where we've
been spending a lot of our time lately.
Well, extend my condolences, but a great way to keep her memory
alive. Yeah, that's that's just an
inspiring story. Thank you for that.
I guess so. So now you how many how many
games have you guys published now on your?
We actually our first one, Mantis Falls has been so great
for us that we've actually, we've been, we've got four more
in the queue, but we've been supporting that one and kind of
building all of the infrastructure around it for the
last four years. So it sells as well today as it
did back when we launched it. And it means that this is now
the majority of my work is working for Distant Rabbit.
I still teach some, but that's I'm stepping back more and more
from that. And yeah, that's so our next one
is a is a sequel, standalone sequel to Mantis Falls.
Is it also going to be a? Is it also going to be a two
player? It's 2 to 4.
Manas Falls was 2:00 to 3:00. So we did expand it to three
eventually, specifically when our when our son got really
interested in playing. It's all a big family.
I'm noticing a pattern. The children seem to be.
They are a big. Driving the yeah.
So what does based on this experience, what does
sustainability actually look like currently in the board
gaming? You mean like how many people
are sustainable from what are the?
From a like, what is it? What does it look like from the
publisher and manufacturer side, Right, That you know, most of
the listeners are either content creators or they're just basic
gamers who don't know what it looks like behind the scene.
Yeah. So once a game is finished, I
mean, we'll talk about from the design end too, there's
sustainability can come in from the design.
And I actually just did a talk for the Tabletop Game Designers
Association talking about what designers specifically can be
doing to even at the beginning of their process to start
thinking about moving in a better direction.
However, the majority of the work is on the publisher and the
manufacturer and by extension on the consumer right to support
those those types of companies. After after a game is designed
and play tested, one of the biggest projects that a
publisher does is production. And that is what are the
components going to look like? How big are they?
What materials are they made from?
You know, what does all of this in the end actually end up
looking like as a product on a table?
And from that perspective, there are a lot of decisions to be
made. So it's going to mean everything
from could you do this with less components to are you choosing
cardboard? Are you choosing wood?
Are you choosing plastics? How big is the box going to be?
How what type of insert are you using?
How big is that insert on what material is it made out of?
There's so many different aspects that are going to go
into that production decision. And that is a relationship
between the manufacturer to be informing those decisions like
what is actually possible. And it's also a responsibility
of the publisher to ask those questions of what can you make
this out of. One of the things I think that a
lot of consumers don't know is that because a lot of the, a lot
of the board games are made in China, which we can get into,
you know why that is and, and, and how we can, how we can, if
we can get around that and all of that.
That's been a big topic of discussion, especially since
tariffs began. But what often ends up happening
when you names are not made in the same country where you are
is that there's either a language barrier or just a
general communication gap of it's not like we get to go to
that facility and actually look through all the materials.
They'll send us sample packs, but we don't always know
everything that a manufacturer can do and can offer.
And it's usually not in a manufacturer's best interest to
actually list all those things because it's a lot of work.
And the likely thing is that you're going to say, I want all
the standard stuff, basically. And so it's a waste of their
time. And so we get in this kind of
weird dance where the manufacturer says what do you
want? And then you just list all the
things that are that are generally standard usually or
you come up with a really interesting or visual solution
for something in your game and you tell the manufacturer what
you want. They are not usually saying here
is everything that we have to offer.
They're usually saying what do you want?
And then you don't know to ask for the things that they've
innovative for sustainability or that they could offer like the
vast majority of we, we quoted with, you know, half dozen
manufacturers, not a single one of them ever volunteered to tell
us that they had FSC mixed recycled paper.
Not one. They all had it, but they didn't
tell us. And so how would you know, how
would we make that decision if we weren't forward thinking
about it? And so that's that's the thing
that I think a lot of customers don't know how much of A black
box that sometimes is for us as publishers.
And so it now requires publishers to be more forthright
asking what's available. It requires manufacturers to be
more forthright with what they have.
And then, and that's part of what our our job is with
sustainability is to let people know that they can be asking
these questions and that they should be.
Right. So let me, let me ask because
you kind of mentioned it for a minute.
So I think no matter where you are on the wherever you stand on
tariffs, like your personal opinion, I think, I think based
on my, I mean, I am a historian and an archivist.
So I think I can unpack what's going on.
The end goal of the current administration with tariffs
motivated in bringing manufacturing to the US, right?
Yes. So let's talk.
About. Yeah, right.
Presumably. How realistic is that not?
For us, yeah. So I, the way that I, the way
that I liken it, the, the expense difference between the
US and China is so big that the US makes sense for certain types
of products. Like if you're just doing a pack
of cards, that's a great product for the United States.
But for anything that's more complex than that, it can often
be very challenging to do it in the US.
And now that's, I know, I know some incredible US manufacturers
that people should talk to you if they're interested in making
things local. And there are some great
benefits to making things in the US, including that, you know,
you don't have all of that great time, you know, things on this
on the seas and you don't have to worry about imports.
And there's definitely a lot that makes it worthwhile.
However, I would, I would liken it to saying, you know, you
could make cars in Detroit or you could make cars in
Manhattan. And is it really worth trying to
bring car manufacturing back to Manhattan?
Like Manhattan's cost of living is so high that you would have
to pay those workers just for them to have an even keel with
the people in Detroit on in terms of living wage.
You would have to pay them so astronomically much and then you
wouldn't have as much space and all that.
I would say that in some ways the, you know, abroad versus the
United States issue is a little bit like that one where our cost
of living here is just so high that you know what a worker in
another country will be paid to make your game.
It might seem like a very, it's a very front subject for sure.
But often if you were to bring that back to the United States,
the worker in the United States is going to have a lower quality
of life. It's going to have a harder time
affording basic necessities on that kind of salary then the
worker who is in China or Indonesia.
And so it's just, it just requires so much more.
And in order to be even close to competitive on cost, sometimes
it means that those workers are getting paid less relative to
their needs. So yeah, it's it's it's a
difficult issue. And you know, from an economics
perspective, I'm not qualified to really speak to, but yeah,
that's that's one of the issues that we really see with it.
That's another expert I'm looking for.
I need an economic economist to come on the show right like.
Yeah, well, I mean, good luck. You're going to have to.
You can find competing economists who have different
opinions on this. It's, it's very true, very true.
I mean, I, I studied ancient history in Graduate School, so I
don't know anything about modern economic, I mean, a little bit
as a consumer, but beyond that I don't know.
So the other thing you touched on was there were things that
designers can do. To incorporate or be more
sustainable, promote sustainability.
I'm wondering if you could talk about that from the designer
standpoint for a minute. Yeah.
So the designers role is I, I kind of view it as twofold.
So the first is designing in the 1st place, thinking about that
sustainability. So what that's going to mean is
thinking about how many cards you're using, like how many
different sizes of cards you need.
There's all kinds of, I would say this is very similar in
Hollywood, right? A lot of scriptwriters want to
be able to have more control of how how a movie is directed.
And the way that they can do that is by, you know, like ties
within the script or descriptive screen descriptions within that
script that are going to guide the director is very similar.
You, you are creating the content, you're the designer.
If you show them a prototype that's small, that's in a small
box that has fewer components, all of that stuff is going to
hide the initial thoughts for the publisher of of what they're
going to end up doing with the the product layout, the
production, all that kind of stuff.
Even even if that weren't guiding them like a lot of right
now, a lot of publishers really want to have a smaller game
because they're they're a little bit higher.
You get higher return on investment or easier to sell.
People are buying smaller games right now.
So. But even if that weren't the
case, you can think about things like, you know, am I using all
the cards that fit on a sheet? There are standard sheet sizes,
there are standard card sizes. All of those things actually
make your game more sustainable. Using standard box sizes,
standard card sizes, all that consistent card sizes, not
having like 4 different sizes of card within a game.
Those are those are things that make it more sustainable to
having your initial product be basically a instead of, instead
of a bunch of plastic miniatures, having it be, you
know, standees or tokens that represent your characters.
Then that can be another way that you kind of like prime the
thinking for the publisher in terms of what they're, what
they're going to think this product should look like in the
end. Yeah.
The two challenges that that you have 1 is how do you use
components when you're first designing, But the second one is
how do you influence the publisher.
There are there are designers who have the clouds to influence
the publisher more overtly, who have enough behind their name
that they can say, I want this to be, I'm only going to sign
this contract if you're going to promise sustainable production.
That's a rarer and most probably most designers don't have the
comfort level to, to make that depth.
And so we don't really, we don't really pressure designers to do
that kind of thing, but they can open that conversation with
publishers. I would love if you could, if
this game could be, you know, no plastics or mostly sustainable
and things like that. And there are publishers who are
receptive to that kind of conversation.
They they might not go with it. And usually publishers don't
have to go with anything that the that the designer
specifically wants. Right, So what about?
I know it. So in my professional world, in
the archives, digitization is a huge topic and requires more
work than people actually realize.
You can't just digitize it. However, there's been a lot of
talk around Tabletop Simulator as an alternative to physical
prototypes. Yeah, I'm.
What's your take? Line, that's what we do.
We do 100% Tabletop simulator for our prototyping.
Yeah. It's.
Hard as a It's really hard as a
as a play tester, I want the prototype right and I'm kind of
resistant to Tabletop Simulator, but.
Yeah, and you know, we talk about that all the time do my
husband does all of his first iterations in Tabletop Simulator
and it's so fast like that. The iteration process is so
quick, so easy, you can get up and playing in no time.
And so there's such a huge benefit for play testing at that
stage. However, not having things
physically in front of you is is also a big impediment.
It's more finicky. You're more likely to feel like
picking up a card and looking at it feels so intuitive when
you're at a table and when you are, you know, having to
remember your key vines and stuff like that for her tabletop
ceiling, it's a very different feel, you know, And so we do
find, you know, it does impede play testing a lot of the time.
And then once we actually get our first physical copies, you
know, we had something where we have a really cool poker variant
game that we're working on now, and we had it online and you're
like, OK, yeah, we'll play test. We'll play test.
And then when the moment we got our first physical coffee, it
was like, what a breath of fresh air to have something you can
actually play with. Now we'll, you know, like, like
tape over things on a physical topic.
Yeah. You know, write them on stuff
like that. And that's one of the ways, you
know, you don't reprint it every single time you make a change.
Absolutely not. So let's the feedback that you
get during the play test process, play testing process,
right. How much does it change from
digital on Tabletop Simulator versus once you get play testers
who have a physical, how much does the feedback, is it more
constructive? Is it about the same?
I would say I don't know this. It's specifically the feedback.
It's more like how likely are you to have a good how much is
their friction in the way of getting accurate feedback,
right? Like if you are going to play on
Tabletop Simulator, there's all of this friction to, you know,
if you have downtime, people are at different computers in
different rooms, sometimes in different states or countries
when they're play testing together.
And if somebody's doing something, maybe some person
like is on their phone, you won't even notice that they're
on their phone because they're in a different place.
Like when you're at a table, you're not going to be on your
phone. What about if people don't
actually understand the, you know, they have to be reminded
about how to search through the deck or something.
There's all of these little extra friction steps that make
it. I would say it's the same as
having a product before there's any UI or user experience design
to it, before there's art. People more easily forget what
card is what, which and you know, they don't have any
symbols to base anything off of. And so they, you know, don't
have the quick intuition. And that's why we try to get
symbols and art into our prototypes as fast as possible
because we really believe that it's, you can't get accurate
feedback back without people having some extra layers on
which to understand their hearts and remember them and what they
do. And so I would say it's very
similar with tabletop simulators.
It just feels like an extra barrier in the way.
But that said, we use it all the time, all the time.
And it's incredibly important for for our process at least.
So with the use of iconography and glossaries or whatever we
call it legends for the icons, I'm wondering about is there or
have you noticed a relationship between designing a language
independent game and sustainability?
Like to design A game that's language independent seems like
from my point of view that it would would be more likely to be
sustainable. It is the the difference.
There's there's a few main things that are going to
contribute to that difference. It's not, it's not necessarily a
huge difference. OK.
So the first thing is that you'll, you'll sometimes buy
games where they'll have multiple manuals in the box with
different languages that that does contribute to more
material, right? And that's, and that's pure
waste because that material is only you're only usually use one
of those languages. We got a box the other day that
was. Tossed the rest of them.
Six or seven different manuals in it for all different
languages. And I was like, I've never seen
this before. But then they, you know, then
they don't have to worry about, they can print a enormous amount
of copies at once. That saves them, you know, money
and they they can produce massive quantities.
They get financial benefits for printing large quantities at a
time. And so I understand why people
do it. Language independence definitely
helps. However, the manual still is
always going to be in, you know, that language.
And so in a weird way, the ones that are where their components
are language independent, but their rules aren't, they're more
likely to do that like print the rules in every language kind of
a thing. But the other place where we see
language variations be an issue is in when you're actually
printing. When people actually print, you
know, cards and manuals and everything there are they're
actual presses that they have to create for each language for
each. They're called plates, printing
plates. They have to create for every
single language for every every edition of the game.
And so we have plates that are for the English language version
of Mantis Falls, and they can reuse those.
They made them once, they can reuse them every time, as long
as we don't change anything about what's on it, right?
And so as long as we keep everything consistent, no new
plates, which is wonderful, but every time we change language,
they have to change the plates. They have to create new plates
for every new language. And if we switch to a different
manufacturer, we have to create all new plates.
And so that that plate creation is, you know, a part of that
waste process because those plates get stored away.
But eventually they'll, you know, no longer be used sometime
in the future when people don't buy this game anymore.
And that's, I would say, I would say it's a small amount of waste
though compared to what we're seeing in, you know, large
plastic miniatures and, you know, oversized boxes and that
kind of stuff. Has there been any conversations
either with the committee that you're on with Gamma or any
other efforts that you're working on?
Has there been any other conversations about foregoing
including rule books all together in favor of AQR code or
some other link to a digital or mobile version of the rule book?
Yeah, You know, I, I haven't heard those conversations
within, within the Gamma sustainability committee nor the
green gains guy. Those might have happened when I
wasn't there that I've been, I haven't been on the green, green
game, green gains guy for very long.
But I have had those conversations with my husband
and we have unanimously agreed that people would hate that.
You know, one of the great things about a game is that you
can take it and bring it to a place like, you know, off grid.
You don't need your phones. When you do pull out phones,
people tend to get distracted by other things.
And so there's this kind of beauty and the fact that people
could actually just like throw their phone out a window for a
little while, open this thing, and then just, you know, learn
an analog way. And again, I mean, the rule book
itself that the paper is so small on the scale of waste that
we're, that we're thinking about like, you know, the amount of
junk mail that you get in the mail is going to be more than
that paper. That's not usually where I'm
most worried about that the impact that we're making.
And also those are some of the most recycled components is, you
know, paper boxes, cards, people are better about handling paper
than almost any other material out there.
It's where it's where we can start making really serious
changes to either the quality of the paper, the sourcing for the
paper, and then the other components.
Really like how many plastic bags do you really need in your
game to store stuff? How many?
The answer is 00 you guys. You do not need plastic bags to
store things. We've been gaming for 30 years.
I have I have an entire shelf of bags above my head.
I don't need any more. And what we're generally seeing
too is there's a there's a funny thing like we, I think it's
this, we didn't know how much consumers actually wanted this
stuff. So Atlas Games, that makes
Gloom, they're one of their biggest.
So they have a sort of supplementary business called
Replay Workshop, in which they take the old sprues from, you
know, pop out plastic miniatures and recycle them into components
terrains, you know, all kinds of stuff like that.
And they are trying to collect sprues from, for example, local
retailers. And so we set up this program
with one of the retailers that's on the sustainability committee,
Total Escape Games in Colorado. And Jason set up this, this
sprue recycling thing. And the moment that he got it
out there, the amount of people who had been hoarding their
screws in their home and being like, someday someone's going to
figure out what to do with this. And then, you know, they, they
open this and then instantly it was full.
All of these people had been waiting for this solution
without even really telling anyone about it, without even
like talking about it because they felt guilty without
throwing this stuff in the trash.
And as you know, as we we should, we should be figuring
out better things to do with them.
But I think we're learning that customers want this.
They want solutions. They don't want to feel like
they're being wasteful when they buy games.
Right. So where is the, the, the number
one pain point, if you can call it that for, for everything
we're talking about like plastics, plastics.
Plastics getting plastics out of games.
Yeah, So what that generally I can tell you the kind of easiest
ways. So plastic bags, getting plastic
bags out of there. The actual like true best,
easiest is the plastic wrapping that comes around cards, that
cellophane wrap that comes around cards.
People hate tearing that off. They don't want to feel their
fingernails go against the cards.
Sometimes it doesn't come off easily, and then they worry that
they're going to damage the cards.
And almost all of the manufacturers that I have spoken
to had the capacity to either do paper bans or full paper wrap,
like a gift wrap type thing of the cards.
And generally speaking, it's the same price for for us as
publishers. Yeah.
And this is one of the things we're like, when we did this, we
transitioned our cards from plastic wrapped to paper
wrapped. It's been great.
People like unwrapping those so much.
It's more like opening a gift, right?
It comes off nice and easy and then you get to recycle it and
that's it. Just feels better overall.
And it looks really nice too. It does.
It's so much cleaner, yeah. Yeah.
So we know that this is a this is a viable solution, It's a
reasonably priced solution and all these places have the
facility to do this. So why aren't we doing this all
the time? The games are already protected.
They usually have plastic wrap on the outside.
And that's one of the few places where we're still trying to
understand like we want to get people away from plastic
wrapping the outside, But it does become an issue of are we
risking damage to the whole game, which is waste in a
different direction, right. So, but on the inside, those
cards don't need to be plastic wrapped.
So, so that's when we're trying to get people to push towards.
There's actually a new initiative also that's coming
out of Europe starting at the end of next year.
That or the end of this year for bigger companies.
In the end of next year for smaller companies that people
are going to have to start getting prove that their paper
products are free of deforestation.
So they're, they're using responsible sustainable forestry
services where they're replacing trees that are get milled.
It's called the European Union Deforestation Regulation.
And they're actually, they're changing the laws very shortly.
And so all companies that are exporting into the EU or
bringing games into the EU are going to have to start complying
with this. So you're going to see the
industry start to move towards FSC paper across the board very
shortly. And not, and not necessarily
because everyone's choosing to, it's just because they have to.
So that, that one's a nice easy win for us because the European
Union's taking a lead on that and it's just basically making,
making people do it. But the places where we can
really make the biggest changes are getting out plastics in
every in, in every form where we can find them, basically.
So are there any new or upcoming materials or innovations in
packaging that you're particularly excited about that
you're hoping will become more and more accessible?
Some of the things that we're talking about CGE started using
Rewood, which is a composite of sawdust and plastic that while
it itself, like if you were to put it into a waste stream, I'm
not entirely sure how each each different waste stream would
actually treat that or because there is plastic inside, but
they are claiming at least that it's infinitely recyclable into
new components. And that's when we're where you
can actually do molded miniatures and things like that.
It certainly is and actually have a like literally right next
door. So it's, we actually just got
this for the an upcoming talk that I'm doing, but you'll hear
the, the clacking around, but it's basically about 70% sawdust
with a binder material. And it's truly just like
moldable into miniatures, which is a solution that we need
because miniatures aren't going to be going away anytime soon.
No too much, too much of A demand for them.
So if we could find a way, it smells like a campfire.
It's very nice if we could find a way to at least make them less
plastic consuming and an offshoot of a waste product,
which is the sawdust. And that's wonderful.
And that's certainly a positive direction for us to be going.
The company that makes that is a kisser in Germany, and they were
very gracious to send me this sample pack to be able to show
off at the upcoming Game Manufacturer Tabletop Game
Association Expo. So that one's an interesting
solution. We're looking at gift wrapping
machines, which would basically hopefully replace the plastic
wrap that goes around games. Your games would have a layer of
paper on the outside that would be the protected layer that
would probably have some printing.
It would feel more like, you know, opening a present.
I talked with Jimmy Stegmeyer. He's working with Panda on that,
that we're talking with some of our manufacturing partners
within the Green Games guide about the feasibility.
It's it's not a commonly purchased your own piece of
equipment for game manufacturers right now.
But that's potentially where we see some options for the future
for for sustainable box closures because right now we're having a
kind of a mixed issue of the plastic wraps very protective.
Right. But it's not sustainable.
The tabs, the plastic or or paper tabs that go around the
games, for one, sometimes they peel up, sometimes they take off
portions of the box. And customers pretty unanimously
do not like them. And sometimes retailers don't
either. Sometimes some of our retailer
members will complain that the the tabs are coming off of games
in the store, which looks very bad for them.
You. Know I've been to like, you
know, Barnes and Noble and I'll see ones that have tabs on them
and they, you know, the, the box will be open and people will
have like rifled through the materials inside and that's,
that's not a sellable game any longer.
So we're trying to come up with some good solutions for the
exterior. That's been a little bit of our
lower priority because there are so many easier targets to look
at for sustainability right now. Right.
Can you, can you talk a little bit about the actual committee's
role in everything we've just talked about?
Like, yeah, what? Because I'm pretty sure I don't
know a lot about the committee at all.
I don't know what it is that you do and how can you affect
change. Yeah.
Across the industry. So the first thing to say is
that Tabletop Game Association, which we call GAMMA, is a
industry group with membership including, you know, designers,
media publishers, events, runners, everybody within the
industry that's working in table top games has a, has a place
within that organization. It's a pretty, it's, it's one of
the most reasonable, honestly one of the most reasonable trade
organizations I've ever seen. It's like $300 a month a year
for, for membership. And that also gets you access to
their annual meetings. That would be the origins would
be one of them and Gamma Expo, which is coming up in a about a
week and 1/2 is the pretty pretty reasonable within that
structure of that organization. There are a lot of volunteers
like myself, the people who are members of the board who are
trying to support the industry with all kinds of initiatives.
These would be things like when the tariffs were growing up,
there was lobbying groups when, but we're trying to figure out
how to get games into schools. There's an education committee
that's trying to help get educational games into schools
for children at a young age to begin playing games instead of
watching TV all the time. Yeah, absolutely.
We're going around social media and so we're finding all these
avenues where an organization like that can support not just
the game industry, but the game players better.
And so within that structure, there are committees and these
are usually kind of subordinate to the the main goals of the of
the organization. So there's also board members
and everything, but the committees will cover things
like making sure that we have appropriate DEI initiatives to
support an expansion of the, the industry to be inclusive of all
members would be, there's one committee, that's ADEI
committee. There's like ethics and media
making sure that people are, you know, people like yourself or
anybody else who's, you know, maybe reviewing games or talking
about games, that they're doing it in an ethical way.
And so there's all these different committees that are
focused on important topics within the industry.
So sustainability was a relatively new one and it was
initiated by Eric Price, who was at the time the the president of
Gamma and he was how I, I found this and got into it.
And so I took over the role from him.
But our structure, we have members from several different
groups within Gamma. So that means we have
manufacturers who are members of that committee, which is very
impressive because they're of, of all the groups, they are
probably the most likely to be competitive with each other if
you're only going to go to 1 manufacturer usually.
And so they usually don't want to share their trade secrets
with each other. But these, these particular
members of our committee are very much focused on the long
game, which I appreciate. They understand that this, this
all needs to change. We have publisher members, we
have retail members, we have some people who kind of
crossover into events and all that.
But right now we have basically 3 work groups.
We have the manufacturers who are hard at work helping to
figure out how to educate publishers about what is
possible, what materials can be used and should be used.
OK. And also educate, inform the
upcoming criteria for the Green games guide, which is working on
a possible certification seal so that so that a person could flip
over a game and say, oh, this is a sustainable game because it
has the seal on it. And then what is what does that
actually mean? What's what's financially
feasible for someone to make a game sustainable?
Because we can go in a lot of directions of what's
scientifically sustainable, but then what's actually going to be
possible, right? So our manufacturers are working
on things like that. Our publishers are working on
what kind of things should we be asking manufacturers?
And then on the other side, what kinds of things should we be
telling our customers about the materials that are in this game?
Like what's our responsibility to tell them this is recyclable,
compostable, this is this type of material so you understand
how to handle it at its end of life.
We have a retailer that we're working with, Total Escape Games
is working with us on a display of sustainable and award-winning
games and we're trying to understand how we can
incentivize customers to see sustainable games and not just
think like this is good for the environment.
That's I think people go into a different, less playful mindset
when they see sustainability. They're like reminded of the
real world and the sadnesses that exist there.
And so we want people to see sustainable and be excited to to
buy that game. And So what does that look like
for us? That meant reaching out to Matt
Lee Hawk, Elizabeth Hargrave, and getting quotes from them
about why they insist on making sustainable games, what their
goals are, so that they can basically be the direct
connection to the customer and say, like Elizabeth Hargrave
says this about sustainability. This is what she believes.
This is what she wants you to know.
Right. And then we're working with a
different retailer as the control group to that so that we
can get actual data-driven analysis of how games sell when
they're marketed as a word, winning and sustainable.
So that we can pitch that to both other retailers to have a
display like that and to other publishers so that they're more
willing to make those kinds of changes to their game.
So we have a whole bunch of friends that we're working on at
the same time within the committee, but it's been, it's
been great and we have some amazing members and
collaborators with this. So let's let's get let's get
down to the where the rubber meets the road, right?
Let's talk about the gamers, the consumers, those of us who
purchase the games and play the games, right?
What can an everyday gamer do to support support?
Support is the word I was looking for guys.
What can we do to support sustainability?
God, that's why I tremble all that s s in the hobby.
Yes. So a few different things, you
know, some of them are easier, easier changes to make than
others. So that one of the easiest
changes that you can make that's, you know, easy,
depending on you as a person, be OK with errors.
If, if something is slightly, slightly bent, torn, misshapen,
misprinted, you know, if you lose a piece or you, you know,
like be willing to replace that with something that you have at
home, be willing to make do with something being a little off,
asking for replacements, having to buy whole new games, having
to ship stuff all over the world.
Gamers tend to be a group that really like things just so you
know, they like things to be perfect.
And it's that collector mindset. However, that mindset comes at A
at a cost. It means that publishers, when
they make a game where there's like a little dent to the box,
they might lost that game, they might never let it see market
because they know the retailer's not gonna want to pick it up.
The consumer's not gonna pick it up.
And that's a huge waste stream already.
Or we get emails all the time from people who say, hey, I
broke off this tiny portion of this one.
Wooden people. I live in the UK or Syria.
We've had ones from Syria. But we're like, can you ship us
a new meatball? And I'm like the cost and the
lack of sustainability of doing something like that, like
something like that, you could get some wood glue, you could
put it back together. And that's, I mean, that's still
our responsibility as a business to support our customers no
matter what. But I would implore those
customers to be willing to see the uniqueness and originality
in something that's not quite perfect.
The second thing I would say they, you know, treat your games
very well, Make sure that they're they're not going to get
damaged. They're off the floor.
You don't have to worry about floods, humidity, all of that
kind of stuff. The longer it can last, the
better this. So that's that's the one of the
best things that you can do. But also understand all of those
games are going to be waste someday.
I think about the amount of games that you have that are 100
years old. In 100 years, nobody is probably
going to own the games that are on your shelf.
Right. The plastics will have gotten
brittle. The printing may have faded.
This printing is not necessarily meant to last over 100 years.
And you know, when you print with archival inks, maybe you
could do that. But these games, they will be
waste. And so own that, appreciate that
that's true. And think about when you discard
an old game, what are the correct places for that to go?
Think about looking for or asking for more sustainability
in your games. So reach out to publishers, talk
to them on their on their online channels and ask them to make
more sustainable changes. If you demand it, they will do
it. They will have to.
What that generally looks like for you is reduce plastics and
games. It means FSC or, you know,
sustainably sourced paper, but it also means that certain types
of finishes are just are just out any of the like UV spot
stuff that you see where like if you turn from the right angle,
you can see the title of the game that's in like, you know, a
shinier font that makes the whole box unrecyclable.
Unfortunately, that is a that is a rough one.
I know and it looks so beautiful it.
Does. Foil is better.
Foil actually does come off during the recycling process and
it's not a large portion of that waste.
And so it's still not perfect, but it is it is far better.
Soy based inks. You wouldn't necessarily know
that soy or vegetable based inks.
You wouldn't notice by looking at a game.
But you can talk again, you can talk to these publishers on
their channels, ask these questions.
And the more you ask, the more they're forced to answer, the
more they're going to make these changes, right?
And it doesn't have to be an aggressive thing.
You don't have to like slam them through not being sustainable.
People are making steps as they can and as the demand exists.
So really, really it's create the pressure from from the
source. You are the source of their
business. If you put on the pressure and
ask them to be more sustainable, they will because they'll have
no choice. It's.
It's interesting. I'm thinking about, I was just
thinking about how so much you were saying really relates to my
preferred professional world probably more than any episode
that I've done over the past four years, right.
So one of the things we do at work is that we recommend to all
of our offices is that you keep all of your records, whether
that's paper records or a server.
If you have a local server, anything that's going to hold
data a minimum of 6 inches off the ground right now that
doesn't, it doesn't do very good for locations alike from where
I'm originally from in Louisiana where you're going to have a
hurricane and a flood, which Speaking of everyone knows this
story. The flood is so it brought me to
Illinois. So 6 inches may not help but if
you have a pipe burst or I'm sort of a plumbing leak you can
avoid mold and so many other factors that will break down
your games or anything in your house.
Yeah. I mean, really, it's it's all
about at that point, right? It's about everything, right?
You don't want to waste anything if you can help it.
We actually, we had a flood. We had a flood here a few months
ago. We're in North Carolina right
now and the we had the, you know, the torrential rain that
came to North Carolina. So I'm in Chapel Hill and we had
about 6 inches and some of our games were saved like the ones
the ones that were closer to the floor were saved by the fact
that they had plastic wrap on them.
That's what that's what we haven't gotten rid of yet.
We have, we have paper on the inside, but we've been a little
bit hesitant and even even within the green games guide,
even within, you know, we, we've been talking about it as a one
of the tougher issues to solve is what's on the exterior the
game to protect it, because it's not just that it's, it's
humidity, it's what about them rubbing against each other?
And there's all kinds of types of damage that you can get when
you don't have a protective layer on the exterior.
So some of ours were saved and then, but a lot of our stuff,
you know, we had spare parts that got completely destroyed.
And it was, we really worked to like, gosh, we have, we have
some fabrics in the game that we like put through the washing
machine to see if we could, if we could salvage them, but
they're natural fabrics, they're cotton.
So they all shrunk. And so I was like, well, shoot,
we're not going to, we're not going to be able to salvage
those. Ones.
We tried very hard. People tend to forget, yes, OK,
there's if if you have a flood or some sort of a leak and your
floor gets wet, yes, that water. But you, you said it yourself,
humidity. Humidity is moisture.
Moisture is water. Guys.
This stuff messes with everything.
And to your point about plastics, think about all your
Legos that got discolored over time.
All of this is impermanent, yeah.
Plastics there, there's a, there's a sort of tangential
ideology that's like, why don't we just make our games out of
stone or plastic or whatever is going to last the longest,
right? Like the longer it can last, the
better. But I mean, think about all
those like, you know, door plastic play toys that you had
when you were a kid, those they discolor, they become brittle.
And that's because plasticizers, plasticizer chemicals are added
to those plastics in order to keep them supple.
They have to. They actually have to have some
elastic quality and not just fall apart.
Yes. With pressure.
And so when we add plasticizers, they eventually do evaporate
into the atmosphere, which is its own problem.
But now, now you have a product that's going to break down
easier and you're going to want to replace that.
You're going to want it to not look like that.
So I like to think about it as if you go to a great meal, a
fancy meal, you're getting like a filet mignon or something like
that. You enjoy the heck out of that
meal. You don't want to waste a single
bit of it, but you also understand that it is
impermanent, that it is going back to the earth one day, and
it's the same with everything. Exactly.
So the Green Games Guide, once the second edition is finalized
and is published, who will have access to it?
Everybody. So the current in addition to
the Green Games guide is online. I think it's
greengamesguide.com. OK.
It's a excellent, beautifully designed PDF that is not not
only technical but very visually endearing.
And they did a great job on that first edition of making it an
approachable, enjoyable document.
And this the second one, when it goes public, it will be, it will
be online available to anybody who wants to look at it.
And it is going to cover for those of you who are interested
to work consumers who are interested in what the
production looks like. It does give a little bit of a
extra glimpse into what are designers thinking about?
What are publishers thinking about?
What are we doing with all? Like when we, when we make a
game, when you crowd fund a game and then you're like, and then a
year and a half later, I get it. What, what does all that time
include? What are you spending that time
on? It's a little bit of a glimpse
into the world of a designer and a publisher, but it all is also
customer facing. So it does have for every
section it says. What can customers do?
That was going to be my follow up question is will it, will it
contain guidance for things and behaviors that we can change to
support sustainability, best practices on preserving and
maintaining our collections, things of that nature?
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, one of the other I
mentioned before that the, you know, demanding different
materials of your publishers, we're putting pressure on them.
I would say one of the other big things that you can do as a, as
a gamer is be willing to have a smaller box game that costs
more. You know, like if you could take
Splendor, I think is the classic example of this.
If you could take Splendor and fit it into a much, much smaller
box, then great, right? You pay the same amount for that
game because it's all the same materials, but it has a way
lower footprint overall because now we're not shipping giant
containers of, you know, 1/4 as many games all around the world
and we're not creating as much box.
And so it the, the publisher won't necessarily make that box
smaller because they know that if they make a small box and
then they charge more for it or charge the same amount as a big
box, you're less likely to buy it.
And so look for density in your boxes.
When you find games that are dense, appreciate them and
appreciate the publishers for doing that.
And when you find games that are not dense, point it out.
Tell the publisher that they need to make it a little bit
more dense, that they need to be better about not just filling
the whole box with air. It's going to be better for your
shelf. You're going to be able to keep
more games. It's going to be better for the
environment. It's a win for everybody.
I think a perfect example of that, applying that pressure and
making positive change. I'm thinking about Flip 7 by the
OP. The orig The original It came in
a It went a huge box, but it was much bigger than.
It and they switched it. They switched it to that little
simple type box. Yeah.
Yes, they did. And then Type 7, we just got
flip seven with a vengeance from Walmart this weekend and it's
packed. Proper, proper, properly,
sustainably. If you're listening the OP, I
did not mean that, I meant sustainably.
Yeah, Pat Marino is going to hear that one.
But you know, what's interesting is when we were playing, we
played both games like yesterday with our group, we were thinking
about sustainability. Immediately we were like, if we
get rid of that, that insert in the larger Flip 7 box, we can
keep Flip 7 in it and we can take Flip seven with a vengeance
and just put it in there. Therefore, I'm still using the
box. I'm still using both.
Boxes well, and that's one of the things that I really like
about what actually Stillmeyer does.
So Jamie does all, I think, hopefully I'm quoting this
correctly, but I think Jamie does all expansions four games
in much, much tighter and more sustainable packaging that's
much more recyclable. Also, it's been the box.
The actual box is a very clearly not a keepsake box, right?
Like it's, it's just like a little like literature Mailer
kind of a kind of a deal because he knows you're going to take
that stuff and put it into your full box.
And so there's room in the full box for the expansions, which is
another thing that's a little bit of a like it's good and it's
bad, right? Like you, you don't want to just
have an empty air in box for no reason.
But at the same time, you want to be able to support people
putting an expansion in. But he knows that there's people
who are going to put that expansion in.
And so we make sure that the expansion box is intended for
recycling and, and that's something that's something that
I really appreciate. It doesn't have lots of extra
printing on the outside. It doesn't have lots of layers
of, of inks and everything like that.
And you'll see that when you look at expansions in the store.
Yeah, having space for people to be able to include sleeves if
they're going to include sleeves.
Now, sleeves are their own issues.
But if they're going to include sleeves that they have space
for, if they're going to include, you know, expansions,
that's totally understandable. That does not mean that you're
irresponsibly adding tons of air.
You'll know the people who are adding tons of air for no reason
just to make their box bigger. You'll see them.
That's right. So my, my last question is, is
there either a game or a publishing company or anything
like that? A perfect example of this is a
game that take it executes on all levels and is completely
sustainable. Maybe not 100%.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
You'll like this game is Perfect or this company.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to do justice to all the people
who have done this because there are.
So the, the problem is there are tons of people who have made
incredibly sustainable games that didn't get as much
attention or get as much, you know, visibility as the ones
that are like, you know, award winners or big EUR and things
like that, right. So the ones, the ones that I'm
high level aware of are some of the ones who have been.
Award-winning and also have won the sustainability award so
green games guide votes every year on a sustainability award.
So the three the three that always come to mind the two who
won the last few years of sustainability award.
So Earthworn Rangers is a won the first sustainability award
and that is a very highly sustainable game.
They even did regional manufacturing.
I mean just and actually Andrew Navarro who created that game is
on this committee with me and he's one of our most diligent
members, which I love and his his American manufacturer Nick
Haas is from Delano Games is also on the committee with me.
So those are great folks who I know care a lot about
sustainability because they put in a lot of volunteer hours
outside of just even even the stuff that makes the money on on
this front. So that's amazing Then there is
Endeavor Deep Sea was the was the winner this year for
sustainability. They did their inserts are made
out of like a pressed the gas, like a waste product from sugar
cane pulp manufacturing. And so, and you know, did like,
I think initially did biodegradable bags, but
biodegradable bags can sometimes breakdown over time.
That was one that both Helena from Ver Island and and then
also Jamie Stigmire both said that they moved away from those
and just because they they do tear apart very easily, they're
not, they're not a long term product.
And that's, you know, it's not just about the footprint, it's
about making sure it's something that's actually going to serve
the product properly. So it's good that it's good that
we're figuring those things out. And then the other one that I
would say is CMYK made Daybreak. And that's that's another great
example where I believe Matt Lecock made a pressed for
sustainable production and that was a beautiful sustainable
game. And I would say in general, my
feeling, this is what something Andrew and I have talked about a
lot, what we would really like to see is that the sustainable
games are not just the ones that are about environmentalism, like
our game's about the mob. You know, we're not, we're, it's
not, not at all sustainability. Earthworn Rangers is not
particularly about sustainability either.
What we generally see is a lot of people make very sustainable
decisions for games that are about sustainability, right?
Because they know that the people who are interested in
those topics, who are buying those themes are also interested
in sustainability. But what I want to see is people
making those decisions regardless of the theme of the
game. OK, that's great.
That's that's good. So making a game that's good for
the environment even though the game has nothing to do.
Yes, yeah. Where where you don't get to
have the audience pat you on the back.
So the fact that you made it sustainable and everything,
you're doing it because it's the right thing to do.
So my last question, there is no wrong answer.
Let's talk about the board game insert industry.
OK, yeah, there are game trays and such.
There are lots of options. I was thinking folded space but
OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that the aftermarket insert industry is the thought.
OK, OK. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's that's so you have a preference and not saying I like
folder space over, but you have a preference like because you
know folder space uses foam and then you've got you've got
several you've got several that do wood, right, game trays uses
plastic. What are your?
Thoughts. I understand that people really
like the like efficiency and organizational structure.
We have family members who get really into the like 3D printing
the inserts and everything. So it's perfect organization.
I personally am willing to sacrifice perfect organization
to not have extra stuff. So personally, like my own
preference, I would never go for any organization structure at
all, regardless of what it's made out of because I already
have whatever the manufacturer provided and that's I'm just
going to make do with whatever that is instead of owning more
stuff. But if I were to make a
recommendation, I would say wood paper.
Those are going to be your better materials across the
board, even be like we would call it bioplastics or something
like corn based plastic or the pressed, the Goss, that kind of
thing. Probably less are less great for
the environment in the long run than the wood and for and for
some reasons that that are unfortunate.
One common thing that happens is, and this is when I worked in
a different industry, when I worked in the coffee industry,
we were always moving towards compostables and all that and it
included plant based plastics. One of the problems is that
people tend to recycle plant based plastics and they can't be
recycled and they mess with the recycling system.
They reduce the efficiency of plastic recycling.
And now you've got a different weird problem of people putting
something that's meant to be composted into something that's
recyclable. It just it screws it.
It's a human behavior issue, right?
A user experience issue, but it's but it does screw up with
it the systems that we have in place.
So I would say people know how to handle wood and they know how
to handle paper. And so that's a really reliable
way to store stuff. I love when people do paper
inserts, just folded cardboard or folded paper.
That's a really low tech. And I know people like their
fancy inserts and everything, but it's a it's a standby and
it's reliable for a reason. You're going to know exactly how
to take care of that at the end of its life.
True. So the number one obstacle that
is preventing us from going to a 0 carbon footprint to being 100%
sustainable is US. It is, yeah.
I mean, anything you're producing, the moment you
produce a thing, it's not going to be 0, right.
We, we technically pay, we pay offsets.
And by the way, the vast majority, I, I can't say like
I'm not a perfect scientist on this, but the vast majority of,
of like carbon neutral carbon offsets are a complete scam.
Anything that's saying they're planting trees or they're saving
forests or anything like that, you run away from those.
Those are scams are we do pay carbon offsets.
We pay, I want to say approximately $0.50 per game,
something along those lines. And what that goes towards is
solar stoves for developing nations, so places where they
would normally burn biomass in order to cook at home.
It does a couple of things. It means we're not burning a
bunch of stuff to put into the atmosphere, but it also means
that people in low income areas who couldn't possibly afford to
make that transition are now not only getting something like
solar stoves to be able to improve the footprint, their
footprint, but they are also inhaling less pollution in their
own homes, which is better for usually the environmental,
environmentally sustainable solution is also the one that is
good for people, that's ethical for citizens of a nation.
And so we do that and we have to fund some plastic cleanups from
beaches and things like that. That's what our our money for
carbon neutrality goes towards. And as far as I can tell, of all
the rating schemes that they have out there for what counts
as good carbon offsetting, that's one of the best.
But we've also as an industry, we've very thoroughly understood
that just being like, I'm going to make a bunch of plastic and
then I'm going to pay some offsets for it is not the way to
go. That's, that does not actually
help us. So that's why we're also making
material changes in our games. Well, Julie, thank you so much
for your time. Thank you for your expertise and
sharing and visiting with me for an hour.
I appreciate it. Thank you PJ, this is having a
platform to be able to tell people about sustainability is
the only way anything ever gets done.
It's true, it's true, it's our community and we have to clean
it up. So if anyone has any other
questions like for you about sustainability efforts, gamma,
publishing, designing of game, any questions at all, where
could they find you on all the platforms?
All the platforms. OK, so if you e-mail me
info@distantrabbitgames.com, that's probably the easiest way
to reach me. If you find distant rabbit games
on Instagram, Blue Sky, gosh, what else are we on?
We're on probably pretty much everything.
I've deleted TikTok. So sorry you won't be able to
reach me on TikTok, but OK. But we for ginky gosh, there's
so many platforms. We have a discord for our game
company for our first title there, but you can also reach
out to the game manufacturer. We just went through a
transition, used to be the Game Manufacturers Association, it's
not called the Tabletop Game Association.
If you wanna reach out there, they can direct you so.
It's not gamma anymore. It still is GAMMA.
The acronym is still GAMMA, but that's Game Association,
basically Tabletop Game Association.
OK, Because it used to be all manufacturers of games.
That's why I was called the Game Manufacturers Association.
But now there's media, there's retailers, there's everything.
So, right. But yeah, if you you can reach
out to them, they'll be able to put you in contact with
committees. Yeah.
Any, anywhere you see distant rabbit games, I'm going to be
the one that's answering that message or that e-mail.
So yeah, reach me. On distant rabbit games guys,
check them out. Julie will respond.
Thank you for watching guys. As always, please like and
subscribe comment below. Share your thoughts in the
comments of games that you think are really good at displaying
sustainability in their materials and we'll reach out
and reply to you right away. So, as always, be kind to one
another. Let's treat our planet well and
play more games.