Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark McGee.
Hi Mark, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve been into games for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of playing cards, video games, or games with toy soldiers in the back yard. As I grew up, that hobby evolved into career ambition where I studied computer science and video game development in school. After a short stint in the video game industry, my interests began to lean more toward the board gaming space, where I felt closer to the game design side of things, since there isn’t a layer of technology between myself and the game. That led me down a tabletop game design journey that included being one of the original members of the Game Designers of North Carolina guild, making a lot of friends and connections in the board game industry, and getting a couple of board games published. After about a decade of that, I felt there was a niche in the board game market that needed a little more attention and I felt confident enough that I could do it, so I started my own publishing company, How To Steam Broccoli. That was about 4 years ago, and now we have 2 published games and just completed a crowdfunding campaign for our third.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s never easy starting out as a new company in an established industry, but I had enough personal experience in the space to have an idea of what I was getting into. The strengths I brought to the table were in creating polished and well-designed games. I partnered with someone who brought a lot of graphic design and product design experience, and together we were confident our games would be very high quality. The biggest gap for us has been marketing. Because we don’t come from a marketing background, we opted for a slower, word-of-mouth growth trajectory by default, hoping that the quality of games would be their own selling point. And that has worked for the most part. It’s just been slow growth. But people who hear about us tend to remember us, and people who play our games enjoy them. That’s what we want, so in that sense, we’re successful.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We make tabletop games that are slightly off the beaten path. They must have something about them that is a little bit unusual or weird or hasn’t been done before. They also need to be approachable enough that anyone can play them. We have this internal assessment that I have to be able to play the games with my kids and also with my parents. If it’s too complicated or thematically off-putting, then it’s not a How To Steam Broccoli game. But we do this without sacrificing good principles of game design. We are game designers first, and I think that shows. We care a lot about quality. Maybe more than we need to, but that’s one place we have no intent to compromise. I don’t think there’s a single detail in any of our games that hasn’t been scrutinized and discussed by our team. So if you want a slightly unusual tabletop game that’s approachable and high quality, then I can’t think of a better place to look than How To Steam Broccoli.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I think I’ve been a moderate risk taker most of my life. I frequently take calculated risks that I think will be worth it, but I don’t risk things I would be terribly sorry to lose. The entire company started off being funded by my own money. That means two things: I’m willing to bet on myself, and we started off very small. I knew there was a chance it wouldn’t work out, but I developed a plan I believed in and my family supported it, and that was enough for me. To be fair, I didn’t put myself in a situation where I would be destitute if things fell through. The company was built using funds I otherwise would have put into retirement savings.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://HowToSteamBroccoli.com
