Links: Awards for Artists, Cash for Kittens, and Tips for Translation

Exploding Kittens, the leading independent tabletop game company in the US, announced today a $30mm investment by TCG Capital Management ("TCG"), an affiliate of The Chernin Group, LLC, to finance its continued growth. Exploding Kittens will invest the capital to develop more games for its fans, expand its IP into live events and other formats, build out its team, control more of its production and distribution, and continue to experiment with innovative ideas around gameplay to help further build the community....

Exploding Kittens, like other consumer companies in The Chernin Group's historical and current portfolio such as Crunchyroll, Rooster Teeth, and Food52, has built a valuable community around its brand. TCG believes Exploding Kittens has the fan base and creative horsepower to capitalize on the fast-growing board games market which is projected to grow to more than $9B by 2023, representing a 17% annual growth rate....

In addition to new game launches, Exploding Kittens will host its first gaming convention, Burning Cat, in May 2020 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. The company sees Burning Cat as a re-invention of the typical fan convention with more emphasis placed on community, tabletop gaming, and actually having fun. Attendees will experience new game designers showing off experimental prototypes, the infamous Exploding Kittens Vending Machine, hand-picked vendors showing off their latest and greatest games and accessories, and a massive arena in the center with ludicrous stunts and insane spectacles every hour on the hour.

With more and more games being launched at Spiel Essen each year, visitors are spoilt for choice and most gamers will prefer to buy games that they have tried and liked. Moreover, Spiel Essen is the sole convention which we attend outside of Asia, and hence it has became our most important channel for us to introduce our games to an western audience. We decided to increase our booth size to allow more visitors to try out our games. Allowing as many gamers as possible to play your game help to spread the word and increase your sales!

As the result of a larger booth with more tables, we managed to interact with more gamers as they came to try our games. Some of them even remarked, "Hey, this is the first time I seen your game. Is this a new publish[er]?" Spiel Essen has grew quickly in size since our first attendance in 2015 and it is now near impossible for visitors to see everything in a single year. Even though we have presented our games in 2018, the titles are still relatively new to the visitors, due to a lack of marketing budget for a small indie publisher. In 2018, we didn't manage to sell out our copies of Debtzilla and had to carry back cartons of unsold goods. This year, we managed to sell out all our Debtzilla sets by Saturday! This debunks the conventional wisdom that old games do not sell as well in Spiel Essen.

We're Japanese school children planning out our last month of summer. Who wants to come over for video games on Sunday? I can't, I'm at my grandparents; what about Wednesday? Ooooh, I was hoping to go to study group with my other friends then.