Company Profile - Big Potato

Cream of the crop

The indie games company Big Potato has earned a reputation for developing decidedly different, family-friendly party games that are quick to learn and easy to play. Rachael Simpson-Jones paid a visit to Big Potato’s Shoreditch HQ to speak to Becky McKinlay, head of UK & EU marketing, plus some of the other team members, about what comes next for the fast-growing company and how it continues to chip away at the games market.

A decade after Big Potato co-founders Ben Drummond, Dean Tempest and Tris Williams decided to put their respective advertising backgrounds to use designing games, a lot has changed. The trio enjoyed early success with Linkee and used the learnings to launch Big Potato in 2014. The company has been firmly rooted in Shoreditch since the very beginning, although its premises have grown along with the team. In 2016, Big Potato moved to a Victorian department store fondly known as ‘The Palace’ from its previous location, ‘The Cave’, and now occupies the top floor of an architectural firm (aptly named ‘The Penthouse’).

In addition to Becky’s appointment and Big Potato’s arrival at the US retailer Target, 2016 saw the launch of Obama Llama, created in partnership with radio DJ Matt Edmondson (who’s since gone on to create his own games company, Format Games). Becky says Obama Llama marked a point in time for the company: it was - and remains - a massive hit. The following year, The Chameleon launched. This game, which was discovered at Essen being carried around inside a humble plastic bag, has been one of Big Potato’s biggest sellers to date.

Like other games companies, Big Potato has also seen its share of success on Kickstarter. In partnership with YouTube creators ASDF, it set out to raise £10,000 in 30 days for a game called Muffin Time. It achieved that within one hour, and over £1m was raised in total. This, again, helped propel the company to even bigger and better things.

Present throughout all Big Potato’s formative years has been James Vaughan, the company’s first ever employee. Although he’s worn many Big Potato hats during the eight years he’s been there, James is now head of Game Development. This role marks a significant shift in how the company approaches things. To date, the inventor community has been an important source of games ideas for Big Potato: James says around 30% of Big Potato’s games over the years have come from outside inventors, and the rest from inside the company. First-time inventors make up a large proportion of successful submissions, and moving forward, this will be balanced with in-house invention, thanks to an appointment made in 2021.

James explains: “A big change has been the hire of Ed Naujokas (the designer of the pick-yourpath strategy game What Next?) into the game development team as our first ever full-time inventor. Since his appointment last year, Ed has designed three titles that have gone on to become main games in our range. This is no small feat and Ed’s impact is already noticeable. When developing games for this year, four of the games in our line-up were inventor items [including Sounds Fishy, Chicken vs Hotdog and Shoot for the Stars]. Next year, just one of our games will have come from outside Big Potato. It just goes to show what we can do with a little more game designer firepower in-house.”

Licensing also plays a part: around 25% of Big Potato’s games involve a brand licence, while the rest are home-grown brands. Big Potato aims to put out a licensed offering each year, some of which might resonate more strongly with audiences outside of the UK, in the US for example, where the company is continuing to grow its footprint via its distribution partner, Spin Master. For example, this year has seen Big Potato launch a strategy board game based on the US Postal Service.

As it continues to pick up pace with its games development, Big Potato is placing a much bigger emphasis on play testing and product package testing. The company now taps into a pool of Big Potato fans, split into four different target markets. The new games get played by these enthusiasts, who then provide pre-launch feedback on how easy they are to play, whether the price point is right, who the game could be played with, and so on. This approach has helped Big Potato define not only which games to produce, but how it positions itself in the market. The feedback the playtesters provide has also been invaluable in identifying potential pitfalls early on. Chicken vs. Hotdog, which launches this month, is a good example of beneficial product package testing in action. The game comes with two ‘Sling’ems’ – one chicken, one hotdog – with suckers on the bottom. The aim of the game is to complete Challenge Cards by landing your Sling’em suckerside down in the way dictated on the card. Although it’s supposed to be a family-friendly game, testing feedback indicated that the facial expressions on the initial Sling’ems designs were too aggressive, and that Chicken vs. Hotdog was therefore an adult game. Big Potato subsequently redesigned the faces to have more dopey, dumbstruck expressions and sent them back out for further testing. Lo and behold, the testers were then satisfied it was a family-friendly game.

During the pandemic, Big Potato also branched out into puzzles (with a gameplay element): the third title is launching this year, joining the existing Night at the Movies and Day at the Festival 1,000-piece puzzles. The party game specialist began to think more about single-player games such as What Next?, the first of Big Potato’s portfolio to be playable by just one person, though it caters for up to four.

Big Potato is always seeking ways to improve, adapt and grow, not just its team, now 43 strong including two employees in the US (including Massimo Zeppetelli, head of US Marketing and Lauren Rossi, director of Business Development) and one in Germany, but also its product portfolio and sales. The company’s +40% growth YOY vs. 2021 is very impressive, and with over 60 games in its portfolio, Big Potato will sell its 10 millionth game this year. But there’s also a lot going on behind the scenes.

“The Incubator is a new project for Big Potato this year — it’s a distribution platform for inventors and publishers to have their game sold in the UK, USA and Europe,” says Becky. “The games will start out on Amazon, and then have the potential to move into the Big Potato catalogue after the first year. As brand manager, Kerry Bruce helps find the games and manage the accounts of The Incubator as well as our third-party games.”

Other new initiatives include the Big Potato Academy, a six month internship programme which aims to give a leg-up to creative individuals who wouldn’t necessarily think of working in the board game industry. Daisy Holbrook and Yvonne Changa, the first two interns to take part, are receiving a thorough introduction to all areas of the Big Potato business – and in meaningful ways, not, Becky laughs, simply by ‘making tea or doing photocopying’. From game design and social media marketing to retail support and copywriting, Academy students are immersed in everything games. They can also request to ‘specialise’ in certain areas as they discover their passion points.

Becky adds: “One of the most interesting things our interns wanted to learn from their Big Potato mentor/ buddy was how to plan for and hold a meeting. You’re not normally taught that when you start at a company, are you? But meetings take place all the time. Being asked to provide insight on that process has really helped us understand how we can better prepare individuals for success in the world of games.”

Big Potato games can be found across a variety of UK retail channels, from Amazon and mass market retailers such as Tesco, through to high street retailers and indie toy & game specialists. Big Potato’s in-house Sales & Marketing teams work closely together to ensure all retail partners receive excellent support. For indies, this takes the form of social media guides that help store owners quickly and easily understand the platforms they should be on, and how they should be reaching the audiences on them. Its social media portal, meanwhile, is populated with content retailers can use as required, helping maintain a consistent tone of voice that’s instantly recognisable as Big Potato’s. Indies are also provided with exclusive Potato Plushies, stickers and pin badges for in-store giveaways.

“When it comes to retail partnerships and consumer relationships, we’d like to hope we’re known as friendly people”, adds Becky. “Big Potato is appreciated just as much for its people as its games. We also think outside the box – why would we do the same thing as everyone else? Take the board game vending machine we installed at East London’s Loading Bar in 2018. No one else has done anything like that before, or since. Retailers seem to like that about us. They also really like the fact we offer free replacement parts. Someone’s dog ate the pink Herd Mentality cow recently, and the customer of the retailer contacted our Customer Service team when they found out. We replaced the cow really quickly, no questions asked – happy consumer, happy retailer. Hopefully the new cow will be kept away from the dog.”

Looking ahead, the company is placing a big focus on the world of social media, particularly TikTok, where Becky notes small creators and brands can go viral far more easily – and cheaply – than on Instagram Reels or Meta (Facebook) Videos. Big Potato has its own in-house content and social media teams, which include Nat Aves, head of Content Marketing and Community, and Lily Coleman, Social Media manager. The teams create the content, which so far has racked up in the region of 18m organic views with little to no marketing budget behind it whatsoever. TikTok comes into its own for product launches, says Becky. Sounds Fishy, one of this year’s new games, launched in early July and has so far enjoyed two viral videos, one of which had 2.6m views by the time I went to visit Big Potato. The other had 1.6m. Games such as Chicken vs. Hotdog, meanwhile, lend themselves perfectly to video content, not only boosting engagement at launch but also becoming popular among consumers looking to create their own gameplay videos post-launch.

Big Potato is also pushing forward with its ESG responsibilities. The aim is to become a certified B Corp: ‘a business meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials.’ It’s a long, challenging process, but one the team is up for regardless.

“We’ve grown up a lot since 2014,” Becky notes. “We’re thinking much more about everything we do as a company, from our games, which we obviously want to be great, to our culture and how it extends to our retailers and consumers. We want to be ‘that’ brand: the one people feel a genuine affinity with. Hopefully, everything we’re doing will give people more reasons to love us as both a retail partner and games developer. We’re small but we’re growing – and most importantly, we’ve got a Big (Potato) heart.”