Links: Making Games Mainstream, Finding the Villain & Guessing the Spiel des Jahres Nominees

There is nothing stopping further versions of the game. Why not create a version that directly appeals to young gamers who like to play with princesses and place it near the dolls? One could imagine stores like Walmart stock four versions of the game in different portions of the store, selling them to different demographic groups, and no one realizing that everyone is playing the same game...

The fun bit is that, in digital versions of games, you can have your cake and eat it too. Imagine a digital version of a game like Zombie Dice, or Trophy Buck, that was designed for multiplayer. One player is enjoying eating brains, the other is trying to hunt deer, and they're both playing the same game against each other but on different screens. My kids aren't fighting over what game they want to play with each other due to mechanics, they want to play a game with certain characters or themes. Reskinning each game, and showing that version of the game's reality to each player is a powerful way to bring people together.

After reading all of the Discworld novels (at least those published up until then) I decided to move on to Neil Gaiman, as the two had co-written a novel, Good Omens. I then started reading other Gaiman stories, including Sandman. I'm always looking for ideas for a new game and initially I thought Neverwhere was the best place to start – empire building in a fantasy underground London. The idea for Emerald actually came from another book, called The World That Never Was, a history of anarchism at the end of the 19th century by Alex Butterworth. The book is wonderful, creating a picture of desperate assassins, revolutionaries, and secret agents.

My initial thought was to attempt to make a game around this theme. The problem was that I thought the Americans would not want to buy into a game where you spend most of your time blowing up people – too many parallels with modern life. The solution was to make the targets into monsters – given that they seem to have no rights whatsoever. As I had recently read A Study in Emerald that gave me the "in" to create a slightly different universe. The background to the game is firmly rooted in Neil's work, but many of the characters populating this alternative reality are actual historical figures.

While would-be entrepreneurs chase venture capital funding and dot-com riches at incubators and startup boot camps around the city, the Cards team rejects investors, refuses to sell the game to retailers or license it to other manufacturers, and hasn't bothered to appoint a CEO, let alone create a management structure. Their business plan has the sophistication of a lemonade stand.

"Every time we sell games, we make more games," says co-founder Ben Hantoot, 26. The supply chain overseen by Hantoot, who manages Cards' manufacturing efforts and works as an animator in Los Angeles by day, has precisely three links: factories, Amazon distribution centers and customers.