Inspiration: George Shaw

Back in 2014, I was at Comic Con and I got a chance to meet George Shaw - a composer who was working on some really cool projects. He had already completed his own Kickstarter, and that year I was attending as a professional as well.

We connected on several levels because he was funding a project too. What amazed me was that he was working on his passion projects, had time to listen about mine, while also doing the music for TableTop with Wil Wheaton. I thought to myself - doesn't that mean you already made it? But in reality, George's enthusiasm and passion for his work propelled him to further success where he got to work on Ode to Geeks with Stan Lee!

Ode to Geeks

Suffice to say, I've been a fan and followed George's work since our first, and only encounter, at Comic Con in 2014. I've got him on Instagram, Facebook fanpage, and Twitter. He also has a chihuahua named Korra - I learned more about her from George's Instagram.

When I launched Dogs BOND, I was really nervous about contacting George again. So nervous that I actually waited until about last week. Being new to the creative field, I was concerned that Dogs BOND wasn't maybe up to par with the big studio stuff he'd seen. Also, I had actually saved an old email address of his so I had to email him kind of out of the blue. You know what response I got back?

"Wow, that was 6 years ago! Amazing to see you've made a game, it's super cute! I'm proud of you for sticking with it!" ~ George

And then, when BuzzFeed got a hold of our video, George even retweeted it! The journey where Dogs BOND has taken me, and will hopefully continue to take me, has opened me up to so many exciting possibilities that I just don't get to experience otherwise.

The opportunity to make a re-connection with someone as accomplished as George is definitely one of the highlights of this project. And I think that if anyone is thinking that they are too small in the creative world - reach out. It's great people that make the world go round.

#dogsbondgame #boardgame #georgeshawmusic #tabletop #stanlee #comiccon

Inspiration: Fresh Off The Boat

It's really funny where inspiration comes from when you're developing a game in your spare time. Especially when it's a passion project and on that low simmer.

It was summer of 2017, Fresh off the Boat was really big on TV. Being a real shining beacon of the Asian American experience on television, it was something that I wanted to support and watched on live TV. With commercials and everything!

The season 3 finale was titled This Isn't Us, and it spoke to me about the feelings you have moving from one place to another that just isn't right - and then moving back. The episode aired and I think I was standing over some mocked up cards and thought, how can I make a card that affects all the player strategies potentially equal?

Adopters moving away definitely made it seemingly equal, since the entire board state changes. Maybe everyone is affected or maybe nobody is affected - but in the game I thought - what if they might have a chance to move back?! So I took the inspiration from the show, and actually made it into two cards that do similar things but are just different enough.

#FreshofftheBoat #Inspiration #dogsbondgame #thisisntus #moving #rescuedogs #adoption #constancewu #hudsonyang #randallpark

Inspiration and Gratitude: Colleen Paige

After Dogs BOND was featured on BuzzFeed, there's a lot of other kinds of questions that we're getting across many different channels.

Who and what inspired us to move forwards and how did we come up with the Events? Well, when I started looking at the development 3 years ago, I was super thrilled to learn about #NationalDogDay. I had to learn more and my research took me to a simple page for National Dog Day.

ABOUT NATIONAL DOG DAY

Founded in 2004 by Animal Welfare Advocate and Pet Lifestyle Expert, Colleen Paige, National Dog Day celebrates all breeds, mixed and pure and serves to help galvanize the public to recognize the number of dogs that need to be rescued each year, either from public shelters, rescues and pure breed rescues.

So what did this mean for the game development? Well it got me to think about the different pieces of the game where "everyone gets to play". Different game mechanics like this where someone else's turn can still be to your benefit.

One thing I also had to figure out was what happened to make sure that the person drawing the card was going to be happy they did. So I worked it out that Alpha draws 2 and plays 2; while the other players only draw 1 and play 1. Thanks again to Malone who helped me on those game mechanics.

And of course, thanks to #ColleenPaige for putting together National Dog Day. Your inspired work, inspired an Event Card in Dogs BOND!

~Alex

#inspiration #dogsbondgame #boardgame #development #prototypes