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At Storyastic
Meet Chip Brown, co-owner (with his wife Dana) of three-year-old game company Storyastic. The makers of The Rank Game and other “all-together” games and playing-card decks are on a mission: to “tech less and talk more.” In a recent interview, Chip discussed the unique ability of games to bring people together away from their cell phones, and the company’s support of independent brickand-mortar stores.
edplay: Why do you call Storyastic’s games “all together” games?
Chip Brown: Because they all feature gameplay in which the players play all together at the same time. The game mechanics are such that players don’t have to wait around to take their turn. In 10-round games, we’ve consistently seen seven or eight lead changes, so everyone playing feels like they can win right up to the end.
The goal is to bring people together and keep them together. We’re finding that players will forget they even have a phone, much less want to check it often. They’re present in the real world with each other.
What are the best ways to demo your games?
We provide demos to stores that buy as few as 10 units. We try to play a round with retailers so they know how to quickly share our games with their customers and convert browsers into buyers. It’s a win-win-win: we move product, stores move product, and everyday people get great, fun tools to bring their friends and family together for game nights and road trips. Playing is like a trivia night at a pub, although the trivia is about the players’ lives rather than arcane facts or meaningless raunchy content. That said, our Risky Business expansion pack for The Rank Game is quite popular!
How’s business?
Business continues to grow for Storyastic. In this era of pervasive screentime, people seem to be quite hungry to leave their tech behind to talk with each other more. They seem to be very receptive to products that achieve it.
We’ve launched 23 SKUs in the last two years; 11 of them this year. We also have several new products launching in 2023, including some high-end wooden games and under-$10 games.
This year we published eight innovative playing card decks, including our DuraDeck, Razor Deck and Glow Deck. Razor Deck is a big impulse buy not only at toy stores, but also at gift shops, bookstores, convenience stores and hardware stores.
The Rank Game is far and away the best seller, and some of The Rank Game expansion packs outsell the others. The most popular are MORE Everyday Life, MORE Adulting, Risky Business, Relationship Goals, The Faith Pack, Sports & Outdoors, and Culture Vulture.
What did you do for a living before founding Storyastic?
Dana was a Walt Disney Imagineer and an educator. I was a
