Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
From Writer to CEO with Zack Howe of Nyx Studios
31 Plays23 hours ago
🎙️ Episode Summary:
How does a writer become the CEO of a game studio? In this episode of Player Driven, Greg sits down with Zack Howe, co-founder of Nyx Studios, to discuss his journey from storytelling to game design, and ultimately to leading a company. Zack shares insights into the making of Havoc, a competitive deck-building game that blends both physical and digital experiences.
They dive deep into:
✅ How to transition from writing to game design to running a studio
✅ The challenges of designing a unique card game in a crowded market
✅ Fundraising strategies—angel investors vs. Kickstarter
✅ The importance of building a strong player community
✅ Leveraging influencers for game marketing
If you're an indie developer, a deck-builder fan, or just love a good success story, this episode is packed with valuable insights!
⏱️ Key Topics & Timestamps:
- [02:00] Zack’s career shift: From writer to game designer to CEO
- [08:45] How Havoc was born and the unique mechanics that make it stand out
- [15:30] The funding journey: How Zack secured angel investors and Kickstarter success
- [24:10] Why community is the lifeblood of a great game
- [32:00] The power of influencers in game marketing—and how to get them onboard
- [41:53] Zack’s biggest lessons from wearing multiple hats in the industry
👤 About Zack Howe & Nyx Studios
Zack Howe is the co-founder and CEO of Nyx Studios, where he leads the development of Havoc, a competitive deck-building game available in both physical and digital formats. With a background in writing and game design, Zack brings a unique storytelling-first approach to game development.
Connect with Zack & Nyx Studios:
🎮 Play Havoc on Tabletopia
💬 Join the Havoc Discord
📢 Follow Zack on Twitter
📌 Key Takeaways for Indie Game Developers:
🔥 Be adaptable. Zack’s career shift from writer to CEO proves that staying flexible opens doors.
🔥 Fundraising is a grind. Whether through angel investors or Kickstarter, securing funding takes strategy and persistence.
🔥 Community is king. Players, influencers, and content creators can help your game succeed faster than traditional marketing.
🔥 Don’t fear failure. Every misstep is a learning opportunity—whether it’s a pricing mistake on Steam or an underperforming Kickstarter campaign.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Preview
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, all. Welcome to Player Driven. Here's a little preview of what you're about to listen to in today's episode. Today, we're talking to Zach Kao, the co-founder of Nix Studios. Zach is a fascinating character that went from being a writer to a designer to the CEO of the company. And it's a great conversation to hear how he made that transition.
Investment and Community in Gaming
00:00:20
Speaker
We talked about investing and how he worked on getting investments from both angel investors as well as Kickstarter and different ways of finding investing.
00:00:29
Speaker
We also talk about comm community and how community is stepping up, playing games, testing and having so much fun with it. It's a really awesome episode. Zach has a lot of awesome knowledge to share and I hope you guys enjoy it.
00:00:44
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Player Driven. Greg here. Today we're joined by Zach Kao, one of the co-founders of Nix Studios. We're going to talk about fundraising. We're going to talk building a game. We're going to talk deck builders. We're going to talk about all this fun stuff today. I'm really excited to have Zach here. We actually played a game of ah Havoc the other day, which he kicked my butt, but we'll we'll let that be in the past and we'll have a better future going forward. Zach, thank you so much for jumping in today. How are you doing today?
00:01:11
Speaker
I'm doing great. Thank you. That was overly generous. I didn't kick your butt. It was, I barely eat by, but regardless, it was a good time. So thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to chat. Yeah. And I'm excited. You know, you've done a lot of things. A lot of indie gamers are looking to try to learn how to do, how to do better, whether it be building the game, fundraising, do anything like
Career Transition from Writing to Game Design
00:01:32
Speaker
that. Before we get too deep into the woods, can you give us your story of how you ended up at Nick's studios and kind of what your role is now?
00:01:41
Speaker
convoluted so I'll try to give the abbreviated version but I was a writer by trade um yeah sort of the creative type and a a few different endeavors and I wrote some books. um Early on.
00:01:54
Speaker
within college and shortly after then did freelance writing for a variety of outlets for a number of years after that and then in 2021 an old friend of mine was ah interested in starting a gaming studio and he had a concept artist and he didn't have a writer and so Lo and behold, here I was, and he brought me on as the first writer. I often, of course, tell the story that shortly after that, we brought in another writer whom I was introduced to as the head writer. And then that new writer, Anne Tech, who was the most brilliant man I ever met, became the head writer almost instantly because his work is so great. And it's, you know, I'm i'm honored to work beside him and to have just a few of the things I wrote ah remain in the universe.
00:02:42
Speaker
because his vision was definitely the guiding principle and it should have been. So we kept that there. Fortunately for me, I showed a little bit of aptitude in game design. So I got to stick around and do some of that. And here I am. Here you are. So what? So so there's a few things to talk through here. right You were a writer. Was the goal to be a writer in the gaming world? Well, when when you're kind of going down that route, what what's your mind telling you?
00:03:10
Speaker
No, not in the gaming world. I mean, I was a lifelong gamer. um I think I had never even considered and a job, a career in the gaming industry. I think because it seemed too good to be true. You know, video games are my life and always have been. But as I say, it it seemed too pie in the sky. So I'd never pursued it. I was writing, ah you know, fantasy series and things like that. And I certainly enjoyed that. um I didn't enjoy the clickbait that I wrote for a little while, but that was short-lived, fortunately. um But no, you know i because I knew someone in the industry and kind of pulled me in, um I was very overjoyed to have that opportunity and I've never looked back. So here I am. It's all about who you know, unfortunately.
00:03:58
Speaker
So you you wanted to be a writer. You ended up in the gaming space. They quickly hire a head writer, which you are not offended by. And you kind of pivot into game design. What does one do to have the mindset of going from writing to game design? there Are there different skill sets that you need to tap on? How do you ah how do you approach that?
00:04:20
Speaker
Different skill sets certainly, but related. I mean, it's creativity at the end of the day, right? It's a creative endeavor. So for me, I think, and I tell people this all the time, if you're a lifelong gamer, there's a pretty good chance that you're a competent game designer because it's ingrained in you. It was certainly ingrained in me, right? So I just sort of intuitively applied the principles that I learned from a lifetime of gaming um I supplemented that with podcasts and things from you know notable game designers, specifically Mark Rosewater of Magic the Gathering. I believe he's the lead designer of the game and has been for decades, literally. So I consumed as much of his talking, talking, talking as I could and as I was designing this game. once i Once I stumbled onto this path of card game design specifically, because initially you're making an RPG,
00:05:12
Speaker
Um, of course he was not the only guy I listened to listen to others, Justin Gary, a few other names. Um, but you know, if you, if you dig in and do it, if you have experience in the field, even if it's not professional experience, again, just being a gamer period, I think one would be capable. So it really wasn't a difficult transition from writer to game designer for me. So maybe we should take a step back and say in Zach, in your mind, what is the role of a game designer?
00:05:44
Speaker
Well, it can vary quite a bit, of course. um you know it's you need to For me, I created the concept for the game and then sort of led the design from start to finish. um Now, there are some who could probably just create a concept and then sort of let others take the reins or vice versa. um you know work with what someone has created as an initial concept and develop the game from there. um I tend to think that it is something that should be done with at least a partner, if not a team. I have a co-designer named Cole Beardsley. He's a brilliant, also lifelong gamer, but also no experience in game design like myself. um He was a magic player, a heavily magic player. I actually wasn't a big magic player. So um you know I think our experiences in gaming
00:06:37
Speaker
complimented one another. But ah just I wish I had a more articulate or, you know, insightful answer. The reality is it's it's just trying and doing the thing and you can probably do it. I love this, right? You got two game designers that don't quote unquote, no game design. So I feel like you got really great creative side. So maybe you got to work on a sales pitch, you know. say Hey, well, I'm not trying to sell it here. I don't need to at this point. The nice thing is we have a pretty great game. I mean, and I won't take sole credit for that, but not by a long shot. Part of the reason it's so great is because of my art team who are exceptional and created just a visually stunning game. It's also because of the universe that Antek created that I have these, you know, ah these toys to play with, so to speak, in terms of the various factions and civilizations or whatever.
00:07:34
Speaker
it it was kind of right for the taking to be distilled into a card game. And then from that point on, it was just a matter of applying you know some game design principles. I think ah guess if if you don't know where to start when you're setting out in game design, find a few different games that are your you know and guiding lights, combine various elements of those things, of those games, but make sure in so doing you're creating something new. Because every game has been made, every game has been designed. So what is left now to everyone is to make games that are reminiscent of others, but they have a significant enough twist that they're original, that they're unique, right?
Game Design and Unique Mechanics
00:08:22
Speaker
ah So that's that's kind of the key thing is finding that fundamental
00:08:27
Speaker
element of the game that can be changed in such a way that it makes for what feels like a profoundly different gaming experience. For us, it was the field of play, a six by six grid. um It introduces movement and range in addition to the standard, you know, other statistics that you see in card games and card battlers. Now, that wasn't ah original. I mean, other people have used those ah those types of fields of play. um So it was really more about, I think, the hybrid mana system or resource system that we use. um And the fact that, you know, it's a shared resource between the two players, I think, ah introducing some tension in the game of, you know, sharing resources or whatever it may be, makes for an interesting game design.
00:09:14
Speaker
But ultimately, we just had to find a couple sort of foundational tenants that that made the game truly unique compared to others in a similar genre.
Havoc Card Game: Success and Future Plans
00:09:24
Speaker
So ah let's spend some time ah talking about what Havoc is, right? You're talking about the gameplay mechanics, right? Our listeners may or may not. So Nick Studios is building Havoc, which is currently a card game. Can you kind of let us know what Havoc is and where the state of it is today?
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, so Havoc is, as you say, a card game. um I often describe it as the sci-fi love child of magic and chess, um which probably makes sense now that I've explained a little bit of the mechanics. ah We call this first iteration of it Havoc Gen Zero. We had a Kickstarter for it in the fall of last year for the physical version of the game. Kickstarter went well. ah We are now manufacturing those units for our backers, which we'll get to them in a few months. Now we are focused on turning our attention to developing the digital game. So part of this fundraise is most of the fundraise is going to be allocated to development of the digital game. Some of that is going to be
00:10:22
Speaker
a smaller retail operation, at least to start for the physical version of the game, because we want to keep that alive. um The two will support one another, the physical and the digital, that is. um So it will exist in various formats. But our primary aim right now is to make the the digital version of the game sort of be reminiscent of Hearthstone or other, you know, even Magic Arena, other online digital card games.
00:10:46
Speaker
So we got physical digital version. We have kind of the idea you're going through fundraising to make sure you can support that stuff right now. I want to go back to something you said a lot earlier, which is kind of the ah the building of new mechanics or finding which mechanics work in some games and others, right? So you're building a card game, you're not necessarily the magic player. or So but before we even get there, what card game sold you on making a card game?
00:11:09
Speaker
A game called Faria, F-A-E-R-I-A, that very few people apparently have heard of, every one I've spoken with, or the vast majority of people I've spoken with or played havoc with. Few have heard of it. say It's on both Nintendo Switch and Steam. um It's an exceptionally clever game. The interesting thing about it is when I first opened it up, I was like, oh, this is a little bit of a magic ripoff, and I could not have been more wrong. um So the the mechanic in that game that inspired me is there is a grid, a field of play, but you actually build it as you go. So frankly, it's ah far more ah unique and original than our game is.
00:11:46
Speaker
But in that game, you're using the mana like though that you find in magic. And in magic, if you're familiar with it, mana is called lands. Different lands give you different type of mana. Same is true in Feria. The difference is in Feria, when you build those lands, they not only act as your mana, but they act as the board. So it's very dynamic in that every time you play, you might be building a different board.
00:12:09
Speaker
but also you're utilizing those resources. Everything has sort of a dual purpose. And that was that was sort of the central tent that we introduced into the game of Havoc as well. So you're playing Faria, your co-founders playing magic and other card games, right? And you to decide, you know what? We want to build this, but we need a mechanic that makes us different, that makes us stand out, right? Because a lot of games are coming up these days. how How does that process begin? Do you just sit around a Zoom or a table, right? Throw ideas together. Do you guess and check? How does that break down?
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I it's so so many years ago at this point that I initially started designing havoc that I'm trying to think back to the very early days of it. Um, I came up with the original concept because I'm not as clever as the Faria guys. So I was like, okay, maybe just a static board will do since I don't know how to make one that changes. I mean, the nice thing with our format was that it was very adaptable to a physical version. I'm not saying that a game like Faria couldn't be adaptable to a physical game, but it would be, it'd be difficult because it's ever changing. Um, so, you know, I, I think. Because I wanted to have a physical prototype to at least test the game.
00:13:19
Speaker
although I may not have planned to one day have a physical version of the game as we do now, um that sort of drove me in that initial direction of static board, static field of play. And I knew other card games well enough to know that Most of them don't have that. And so just by virtue of adding those additional variables of movement and range, that it would make the game a bit more dynamic, but also strip out some complexity. I mean, when you read a magic card these days, it's like five paragraphs long and my tiny brain can rarely comprehend what it's telling you to do.
00:13:51
Speaker
For the record, I'm not saying magic is not a great game. It is a phenomenal game. But when you introduce things like various and other variables like range and movement, that allows you to remove some of that complexity from each card having its own unique mechanic. So those were the initial concepts that sort of drove me forward. From that point on, it was just a matter of you know creating a whole bunch of cards, a roster of cards, again, with various mechanics, but those that aren't overly complex because of the range and movement. And for the majority of that, Cole was heavily involved. i I think I created the initial field of play and I created half the cards and then I hit a wall and I didn't know where to go from there. And that's when I brought in Cole, who was just an old friend and a card gamer.
00:14:51
Speaker
and I was exceptionally fortunate in that he's also are also, forgive me, I almost said he's also a brilliant game designer, implying that I am, it's that's not true, I'm an okay big game designer, but Cole came in, the one brilliant game designer on the team, and you know we just clicked right away, and we we just our vision just sort of aligned, and we started working towards something truly great. and It's an iterative process. It took years, um but the to end result is not unrecognizable from the beginning phases of the game. So point being is that a lot of times you do have to kind of throw everything out and start over. We fortunately didn't run into that. Of course, we made significant changes throughout the course of the development, but we I think we had a good starting point and that made the design from that point that much easier.
00:15:49
Speaker
how does one even start designing cards and then make sure they're balanced, right? I mean, do you know this going? Does it start with a pen and paper? Does it start with an Excel sheet where you can type this stuff in? How does balancing work in something like that? Yeah, so Mark Rosewater again ah was my hero in this regard because he describes himself as an intuitive game designer as opposed to the mathematical types like Richard Garfield, the other or the original creator of magic.
00:16:17
Speaker
um Richard Garfield was a mathematician, a professor in mathematics, and so he applied, you know, mathematic principles to card game design and balance. Great. and that that That's that's the good for him. I wish I could do that. I can't. So what it required for me is probably many, many more months of iteration, um truly just play testing for literally years and tweaking various mechanics and statistics here and there. um I'm sure there are ways to algorithmically find balance
00:16:52
Speaker
more efficiently than that. um I look forward to one day bringing on a game desire to the team who can do that and streamline our process. But, you know, for the first four years of game design, it just had to be us doing trial and error until we found them all to, you know, made them all work together. We're going to take a quick time out here. I'm going to throw some what we call fireball around here, you throw some questions at you that you don't have time to think about. Good to go.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah, sorry for being so long-winded. You're not long-winded at all. I don't know what you're talking about. You should listen to some other podcasts. You're probably pretty good. All right. Question number one, my favorite, which everyone doesn't like, what did you have for breakfast? I had, oh my God, what did I have for breakfast? I had cereal. What's cereal? You can't just say cereal. Multi-grain Cheerios. How exciting is that? love I love multi-grain Cheerios, almost as good as team Cheerios. Next question, dream vacation.
00:17:53
Speaker
i ah Bora Bora. OK. Not counting Havoc, what is the last game you played? I think it was the new Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom. Very clever fun game. What is the last show you binge watched? Oh, I don't think Shrinking Count has binge watched because we were watching as it was on. So I guess I would say Scrubs. Wow. Again, Scrubs, throwback.
00:18:23
Speaker
A final question would be, what is the last book you read? I am currently reading ah Wind and Truth, I believe, is book five of the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. Now, when I say reading, I'm listening to it on audiobook. I haven't picked up a book and physically read one in years, but I listen to audiobooks in the car everywhere I go. So that counts, right?
00:18:46
Speaker
It counts for sure. I read the first three and then I had kids and I no longer had time to read in my life. And I thought, damn, damn, I love those books. Oh, yeah, well, this is the way to go. I guess. Yeah, it feels like cheating. All right.
00:18:59
Speaker
like i want I want to, I don't want to call Zach out, but we're going to kind of call Zach out. So Zach became part of Nick Studios as a writer and then they hired a head writer. Then he went into game design and they hired someone else for game design. It doesn't take it a detective, but if you take a look at LinkedIn, it now says that Zach is the CEO of Nick Studios. So with all of this stuff, what is the role of the CEO at Nick Studios and what is your day-to-day like today?
Role and Responsibilities of a CEO
00:19:26
Speaker
My day to day today is fundraising um that has been my day to day for a while now, which is why I have fallen into the CEO role. um I never anticipated this for myself. um back in I'll give you a little bit of history to give you some ah insight as to why we ended up here. So back in the spring of 24, the guy who had been funding the project to that point, um he had his first child and he had some other things going on with a couple of his companies that he decided that he didn't really want to put any more into this one. And we we didn't necessarily
00:20:07
Speaker
See that coming. So my colleague and tech that brilliant head designer who has ah risen to the, well, he's fittingly has become the COO because he does everything in the company. He said, can you please go get investors? And I said, what are you talking about? I've never done that before. And he said, just try. And I said, okay.
00:20:27
Speaker
So I did and I went out and I talked to friends and friends of friends and I got Six Angel investors to get us through to that point we were approaching the Kickstarter that we'd been working on for months and planning and we needed you know a budget for the marketing and for the Kickstarter as well as a little bit of runway beyond that point and so that's what we did in that first round which was you know a whether you call it a pre-seed or a seed round, um or just a friends and family, I suppose. ah That's what we did there. And that that was enough to get us through. During that process, um you know pitching to prospective investors for the first time, my CFO who worked for the original founders, you know various companies,
00:21:10
Speaker
has many decades more experience than me in C-suite and in investment period. He was an investment banker for years. So he was able to give me you know a lot of guidance along the way, which I really appreciated. And one day we were, it was after one of my first you know few pitches that I had brought the whole team into, because I wanted this prospective investor to meet the whole team.
00:21:34
Speaker
I let Antek sort of lead that particular pitch because I wanted it to be story-driven. Antek created the universe. I thought he could speak to the lore. Of course he could, and he did. After that, I had a call with the CFO the next day, and he said, you know, you kind of like Antek. We're on the show there. I think as the CEO, you should probably be leading these pitches. And I was like, I'm sorry, as the what now? And he's like he's like, well, you've gotten multiple investors to invest at this point. So you're the CEO now. Congratulations.
00:22:03
Speaker
And so I talked to Antek and he was on board with that. And, you know, there's only a handful of people in the company, so no one could say no. So my default fell into that and here I am doing it again after the Kickstarter. So look at what happens. You raise a little bit of money and look at the trouble you make for yourself here. You now are the CEO of a company. Yep. So Angel investors, right? Friends, family, the perfect candidate for Angel investors. What type of stuff, content, do people want to see at this stage of angel investment? Is it just goodwill? Is it something else? Well, at that stage versus where we are currently, slightly different, but pretty comparable because I'm still working with angel investors.
00:22:54
Speaker
So what they want to see, I think, is a viable product. um The good news for us is we have the physical version of the game that people can play. um We've also uploaded it to Tabletopia, which is a tabletop simulator where people can play. we have We have our Discord community actively playing the game. So we have an engaged player base, even though we don't have a video game version of it yet.
00:23:19
Speaker
um So it's not much of a leap to see that there is an existing player base and that of course can grow once we have a true digital version of the game. So beyond that, it was just...
00:23:31
Speaker
instilling my faith um if in our potential or having, you know, convincing people to share that faith. um I'm exceptionally passionate about this company, this game, this universe. My colleagues, they're truly brilliant. I could not be more fortunate to work with just truly world-class talent. We're a tiny team of, at this point now, six full-time, three part-time.
00:24:00
Speaker
But every single one of them is is literally a world-class talent. And that's largely thanks to Antec finding said world-class talent and being one himself. um So as everything I've said to this point, I've lucked into it. But because of that, I was able to convince people it wasn't that hard. Hey, look at this exceptional product and this exceptional universe. Don't you want to get on board? And a lot of them say yes.
00:24:23
Speaker
So now you have Six Angel investors, you're good to go, which is going to help, I'm guessing, fund, like you said, the Kickstarter. How does one approach the Kickstarter? Oh, man. ah I have a different answer to that now that I've done it than I did then. We worked with an agency called LaunchBoom who has sort of a formulaic approach to successful kickstarters. um i don't they I think their approach is very effective.
00:24:56
Speaker
i I don't, they've had a couple games in their roster who have done it. I don't know that it is best applied to games or perhaps not physical games at least. I'll just say that we we made some mistakes in the way we listed our products and the way the Kickstarter platform functions.
00:25:17
Speaker
um so Instead of beating around the bush, I'll say that people came in you know after day one of the Kickstarter where we had a huge success because we had a day one discount. People came into the Kickstarter day two, day three, whatever, and they saw the discounted price that people got on day one.
00:25:36
Speaker
That's not automatically removed from the platform. It's just grayed out so you can't click on it. Instead, you have to scroll past it to find the more expensive version that you now get to buy. So it was it was kind of a fundamental misunderstanding, frankly, of how the Kickstarter platform was going to work and how it would affect people's, ah you know, desire to purchase once they saw that. Now, that said, we still did pretty well. um You know, we had more than 2x ROAS. We just had a small budget. So 2x ROAS only got you so far. But it got us, you know, far enough ah to get that 500 plus backers and and felt pretty good about the end result. so
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say, you know, ah learn from past mistakes. If we ever do a Kickstarter again, it's it's a lot, a lot of work, months of work just to prep for it. So be prepared for that if you're going to do it. But what I love is, you know, all these tools, all these platforms have have learning experiences that you just need to kind of do alive. I've heard a number of people with steam and pricing mistakes on steam when you get started. And there's no harm, no foul. Yeah, if you look back at it, and you you screwed up fine, I'm going to change it next time, right. But this is all part of the learning experience. And I think, unless you go through it, right, you you can't you can't get things perfect, right, you you can plan for the best, you can plan it for the worst, but something's going to happen every time. If you went back to Zach of
00:27:06
Speaker
so many months ago, right? When you had to go pitch those either those angel investors or those kickstarters. What are kind of the three takeaways you would warn other founders who are first stepping into this territory or or maybe best practices that they can get ahead of before they make that first misstep? Well, I'll try to think of some that are sort of broadly applied as opposed to gaming specific and even more specific a physical game or board game. um But I would say I don't know that it's a necessity to have a large marketing budget, but it was certainly the part of the formula that LaunchBoom suggested and and pushed. And so therefore we followed it. um But if you work with an agency like LaunchBoom, you know, their fee, their upfront fee might seem reasonable, which theirs was. um But know that most cases, those agencies are going to recommend a much higher
00:28:05
Speaker
marketing and advertising advertising budget budget beyond that point. So be prepared for that if if you're going to do it that way. that's That's number one. Number two, I've already alluded to it or at least said it explicitly that it's a lot of work. I mean, it it takes months of prep work to build a Kickstarter page that is engaging, that looks professional.
00:28:31
Speaker
Not everyone can just do that. Again, going back to my world class art team, they were able to make you know some pretty incredible marketing assets. So we didn't have to pay other people to do that. But in a lot of cases, people will need to pay other people to do it because it requires you know highly polished marketing assets, images from the game, whatever it may be. It also requires networking to Influencers um in in various ways, having UGCs, user-generated content really, really, really helps push your product. So whether that is just finding influencers who you know will give you their rate sheet and you pay them to do it, or as I was often inclined to do, building those connections slowly but surely and finding people who are
00:29:24
Speaker
more willing to do it because they love the game. ah That helps, but that takes time. um All of it takes time. It's really the the long and short of it. It takes a lot of time and and resources to be able to have a successful Kickstarter.
00:29:41
Speaker
Just kind of reading some some of these up just kind of circle back on it. ah Just keep an eye on your marketing budget, right? There's probably not too much or too little you can spend. Just know what you're spending on and just cause someone's telling you spend X on your marketing budget. Make sure you can afford X. Make sure it's not going to screw anything else up. um It requires work.
00:30:02
Speaker
Rome wasn't built in a day. It requires a grind. You've got to build this out. ah Network, find influencers, topics like UGC, especially I feel like for a card game where people can help build art and other stuff like that, or fantastic connections to make. it And we talked about this in a bunch of podcasts. Influencers and your community can help spread the word of the game quicker than you can, right? So find those strategic influencers, those strategic partners, and work with them. Just time, again, Rome wasn't built in a day.
00:30:31
Speaker
build it out, all that. seeming Seemingly ah got all that there? One last piece, I guess, that I'll say that applies directly to at least game developers or designers, whatever it may be. Play the game with as many people as possible, um even if it's in prototype form. I mean, get it to a place where it's polished enough that you feel comfortable sharing it. But don't be afraid to share the prototype with the world. I played the game with, at this point, hundreds of people from around the world.
00:31:00
Speaker
and you know, that helps in the game design process, sure, but it also helps create sort of an army of evangelists who will spread the good word of your game. You you move focusing on this influencer side of thing, right? You have a number of fascinating influencers that play the game that enjoy the game, right? How do you go about locating and finding these influencers? How do you convince them to give it a shot?
00:31:27
Speaker
There's a few different ways. you know Frankly, given the way that Twitter, I refuse to call it X, has changed, it etc might be more difficult to to copy my initial approach. But I'll just say, what I used to do on Twitter was that I would find people who played card games, both casual fans and influencers,
00:31:52
Speaker
I would record a brief video saying, hi, my name's Zach. I have this game that I think you might like. Do you want to give it a shot? And then I would DM them with that video. And I had a lot of people say, yeah wow, I've never had someone send me a video before. This is really cool. Thank you for personalizing it. Now, if you find yourself on a platform where you can't send a video, then make sure you're at least personalizing those outreach messages.
00:32:17
Speaker
Once I've transitioned over to LinkedIn now as my primary platform for making connections, which I love, by the way, it's ah very effective. I don't, I'm not able to send a video initially with my intro message, but I make sure to personalize it. People know if you take the time and effort to do that, if you send you know a blank connection request. I mean, ah frankly, you're better off sending a connection request request without a canned message, just a ah blank one with no message than you are sending one that says, I would like to be your connection or whatever it is. ah So, you know,
00:32:58
Speaker
Ideally, take the time to craft personalized messages to each individual. um It's hard. It takes time. And with 300 characters, there's also you know an art to it. um I often find myself using every single one of those 300 characters. Now, one other caveat to that is that I will sometimes use LinkedIn's Sales Navigator. So that allows you to send longer messages.
00:33:27
Speaker
That has also been effective. um I don't know why I tend to use just the the standard LinkedIn message more than Sales Navigator. I think I like this back and forth of so-and-so viewed your profile. um it it kind of it's when When you go to someone's profile and they get that notification that so-and-so viewed your profile, that's sort of one register of you being there.
00:33:55
Speaker
or you being on their radar. Send them another message, and that's another one, right? So like just by the very virtue of going to their profile and then sending them a message, you have now popped up on their notifications twice. um So there's there's certainly value in that. And I think you know that's probably intentionally designed by LinkedIn, and I love it. So even in the times that I did use Sales Navigator, where you can find someone's profile and send them a message without ever giving them the notification that you view their profile, I would still go view their profile so they at least got that notification.
00:34:31
Speaker
and We talk about that a lot in the sales world where you can, if you're a business development rep or even if you're a higher enterprise sales rep, how your first action should be something like view their profile on LinkedIn, send them a message on LinkedIn. And then what you can do is you can follow up with an email because then when you send an email and they see your name pop up in their email box, they're going to say, you know what? That name is familiar. Why is that name familiar? And then you can click it up and it's kind of like a three-headed attack.
00:34:59
Speaker
to try and get in front of the people and people are really receptive to it. I think going back to your personalizing a thing, whenever I see BDRs, the business development reps doing canned messages, it makes me want to pull my hair out because we all get canned messages. Yeah, there guys there's nothing to pull, but like we all delete can messages right we all maybe even delete personalized messages the thing is we'll take a second to look at a personalized message i will happily reply to a personalized message if they took the time to say hey i see you went to this school or oh look at i got people calling me up as a jets fan so they say i see you went to the jets game blah blah blah right i will instantly respond even if i don't have a budget to buy something right to let them know hey sorry like but i'll remember that i think it's super powerful knowing someone's name.
00:35:45
Speaker
personalizing it, doing a little bit of work, because if you're not willing to put in time and effort to learn who I am or who I'm reaching out to, right, I'm not going to take my time as well to to reply. I think it goes both ways.
00:35:58
Speaker
um So I wanted to talk about what your next moves are, right? So you you have <unk> you're building physical, you're on Tabletopia today, you're building digital. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the concept of transmedia.
Expanding Havoc through Transmedia
00:36:12
Speaker
Transmedia is really big in the in the gaming and industry, you're right? This is kind of the year of transmedia, but it seems like with a whole bunch of writers, and and sorry for the people not listening, transmedia is the same type of content on multiple platforms, right? So this havoc would be perfect, right? Because you could have backstories, you could have books, you could have a tabletop game, you could have a digital game, right? Have you put more thought into this whole transmedia movement?
00:36:33
Speaker
um And kind of how do you see that going? Sure have. um Yeah, we are. I were building a franchise, frankly, and I know a lot of people think it sounds crazy when I tell them that one day it'll be the size of the Star Wars franchise. But one day it'll be the size of the Star Wars franchise. You can bet your bottom dollar, my friends. No, I mean,
00:36:53
Speaker
ah When we started out, we came together in that that very beginning as a handful of guys with mostly creative backgrounds and no game design skills or at least experience and started making an RPG. We didn't intend to create a universe. But because my co-founder Antek wrote this exceptionally rich, vast, deep universe with so much potential, we realized pretty early on that limiting it to just a game or two would be foolhardy. I wish I could wax poetic about the lore, but it would I would go on for hours, so I won't do that. I'll just suffice to say it's a ah very dark cerebral sci-fi setting with a lot of different alien civilizations, but all with their own backgrounds,
00:37:43
Speaker
Antec wrote histories and pre-histories of each of those civilizations, homeworlds, like hundreds of pages of writing that is all just backstory. So it's all rife for adaptation in all other forms. So we are talking to a couple different um Hollywood studios and and things of that nature, um comic book ah publishers as well. We want to develop pretty much every form of entertainment, transmedia. ah Now,
00:38:13
Speaker
It's important too to keep your eye on the ball. um Those discussions that we're having are very preliminary and ah intended to be so. um We are focused on developing the digital game first. We're a small team. We shouldn't bite off more than we can chew. Same is true of other people as well. So establish those connections early if you can and keep that in mind as you develop the game and the universe.
00:38:40
Speaker
Slowly but surely, you know, let that lore out into the world to have people engage with it. um We now have some fans in our discord who are making their own type of fan content. One guy's making a comic book. One guy asked if he can make a TTRPG out of our lore or our IP. So certainly encourage that as well.
00:39:01
Speaker
um We also have ah people in a Discord community who just wrote fan stories for our website. We have a community section on the website for the the universe. So don't, don't bogart it, you know, allow other people to experience it and allow them to connect with it personally and and create with it. And that will help you, you know, develop the universe further, but also create evangelists, as I've already used that term, but it's's it's important in developing a universe that you have people out there, you know, singing your app praises or at least that of your IP.
00:39:40
Speaker
I love it. I love that you see the big picture and I'm with you, right? Like you could be a dreamer and know it's 10 years down the line, but you need to start with today, right? Today needs to be havoc. It needs to be the board game. It needs to be the digital game, right? Like you can see the bigger picture and always be striving to work towards that bigger picture, like but keep the present in mind because without the present, the past or the future will will flop. um Your community is really strong. and They're playing the game. They're doing awesome.
00:40:09
Speaker
How did that get to be?
00:40:14
Speaker
Engagement from us, um you know, I I built our first player ship by playing one on one with people from around the world for many, many, many months in my, you know, hours where I could make it work. um And then, you know, beyond that, again, I keep bragging about them, but my world class, our team and tech you know there're They're basically our marketing department, which we don't necessarily have expertise in marketing, but because they create such engaging materials, assets, it makes it you know it makes us pop. And so when people see that initially, they can see that it is a quality product or universe or whatever, something that has had thought and time put into it.
00:41:00
Speaker
and So they're already you know primed when they get to that space to be you know activated as a ah loyal fan. um But you know at the end of the day, it's one-on-one engagement.
00:41:15
Speaker
I'm in our discord every day talking with our, you know, various players. I still play regularly with some of them, you know, make yourself available as much as possible to engage with those people, because if you can get them to fall in love with your game or your universe or whatever it is you have, that's great. um If you can build personal authentic relationships and friendships with those individuals as well, that'll just cement it further.
00:41:45
Speaker
Um, so it's really just a matter of, you know, putting in the time and effort, which is a lot easier said than done, but it kind of has to be done. Zach, who started as the writer, the game designer, the CEO, you've seen a lot of different positions and you've becoming a jack of all trades, which is extremely impressive and and congrats to all your successes. Well-deserved and you're grinding hard. What?
00:42:09
Speaker
is the skill set you say you use the most these days compared to the days of when you were a writer or game designer? I am fortunate to be an extrovert. um I very much love engaging with people, getting to know people. um i I'm outgoing and that has worked in my favor. I mean, my job now is building connections and relationships. And as I say, I'm fortunate enough that I love doing it. um So I wish I could give introverts some guidance on this front. I can't, because I haven't experienced these things from your perspective. I know some founders who who do describe themselves as introverted um CEOs, and i you know I'm
00:42:58
Speaker
thoroughly impressed by their ability to sort of overcome that. um For me, it's easy because I love talking to people. So I can't give you specific advice, but whatever you can do to get yourself in a place where you love talking to people and meeting new people and building connections, because network is your, God, I almost said network is your net worth, but it's kind of true, as cheesy as that cliche is, you know, make connections. That's that's the best way to grow.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt about it. And nail that elevator pitch if you're an introvert and you're afraid to talk. It's your game. It's your baby. Know how to talk about it. And the beauty of the space is that we're all gamers. We all have something we can talk about, whether it be the time we played Magic or Pokemon or some sort of card game, right? Or the time we played Hapik. The beauty is that we're all gamers and you should nail how to be able to talk about that because it's your turn to be the sales rep. You need to be able to sell your game in the best way possible.
00:43:51
Speaker
With that, Zach, I think that is all the questions I have today. Can you let us know where our audience can find you or Havoc or so on? Yes, so go to discord.gg slash Havoc gen zero dashes between those three words, Havoc dash gen dash zero, or you can find us Havoc TCG. That's our handle on literally every platform. um If you're even remotely interested in playing the game,
00:44:20
Speaker
shoot me a DM, I'd be more than happy to introduce you. I've played this game thousands of times and I still love it. So I love introducing new people. We also have a ton of people in our Discord now who consider themselves to be, well, I as well consider themselves ambassadors. So you'll find other people who are willing to play with YouTube. So come to the Discord, please play with us. You'll have fun, I promise. We will have links to Havoc, to Tabletopia, to the Discord, all in the player-driven four blogs um blogs i guess yeah
00:44:52
Speaker
um You can also play me, challenge me. I will happily play you as well. We we want to build a whole cool group here and I love it. ah But Zach, I think what you're doing is amazing and congratulations on this crazy success ah on what you're building at Nix. I think it's fantastic and exciting. Zach and I are also going to figure out how to play a game online. Well, we know how to do it, but how we can record it and make it engaging. So that's kind of our next thing we want to do. But Zach, thank you so much for your time today. It's so cool to hear your story, hear your story. I'm super excited to see what havoc can do. And it's a ton of fun. So make sure to check it out. But once again, Zach, thank you so much for today. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
00:45:31
Speaker
And this