From Z-Man to Play-to-Z | 30 Years of Board Game Publishing | BGSS ep_023

One of the most storied résumés in the entire board game industry. Zev founded Z-Man Games, published 🦠 PANDEMIC and the first English 🌾 AGRICOLA (and basically invented the "animeeple" by deluxing it), signed the original ENDEAVOR, spent seven years exploding the WizKids catalog with ~100 games, and now runs his own publisher — ✨ PLAY TO Z. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE, WE GO DEEP: 💰 The real economics of conventions 🏆 Why Origins beats GenCon for a premiere 🃏 The CCG days & Shadow Fist 🤝 Betting on co-op when NOBODY wanted it 📦 Under-printing Pandemic 🌶️ His (spicy) take on expansions 📜 IP licensing headaches & the Middle-earth project 🚀 Crowdfunding, paid previews vs. review copies 🔮 What's next for Play to Z 👉 If you care at all about how the board game industry ACTUALLY works, this one's a masterclass. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 LINKS ⚔️ Siege Perilous — LIVE on Gamefound now (through July 14) ▶ https://gamefound.com/en/projects/pla... ✨ Everything Play to Z has going ▶ https://www.playtozgames.com/ ❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard ▶ https://crdbrd.app/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST! 🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... 🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnT... 🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/014... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 - Intro — who is Zev Schlasinger 00:39 - Origins & how the con has changed 03:04 - Why publisher attendance is dropping 04:15 - Conventions are marketing — money is gravy 05:03 - The ROI secret: premiere something new 06:56 - Why release at Origins instead of GenCon 09:07 - From CCGs to board games — the Z-Man origin 09:53 - Always a gamer: wargames, Magic & judging 11:31 - Grave Robbers From Outer Space changes everything 13:16 - Breaking into board games & the "Rio Grande wall" 16:40 - How you found games to sign back then 18:33 - Selling off Shadow Fist / leaving CCGs 23:38 - Would he ever do a CCG again? 24:49 - When did Z-Man feel like a success? ("one disaster from bankruptcy") 28:21 - Under-printing Pandemic & Agricola / print runs 33:04 - Lead times then vs. now / the Soothsayers reprint 36:01 - Meeting Matt Leacock & signing Pandemic 38:03 - Betting on co-op when nobody wanted it 42:22 - Play to Z's philosophy: engaging & different 43:31 - Signing Agricola, the $70 euro risk & animeeples 48:48 - Publishing the very first Endeavor 52:40 - Zev's honest take on expansions 1:05:00 - Why he sold Z-Man (and kept working there) 1:07:28 - The WizKids years — 100 games in 7 1:11:47 - The reality of working with IP & licensing 1:20:54 - The Middle-earth game & Asmodee's curation 1:27:08 - Why start Play to Z — hitting the ground running 1:29:40 - Crowdfunding — why he resisted it for so long 1:33:02 - Crowdfunding vs. bank loans & publisher risk 1:39:37 - Paid previews, review copies & marketing ROI 1:47:27 - Social media & staying transparent with the community 1:52:29 - Board games vs. digital / BGA & the tactile future 1:54:40 - Play to Z's lineup — Siege Perilous, 23 Knives & more 1:56:52 - The most slept-on Play to Z game 2:00:45 - Late-year releases — Dogs of War, Soul Journey 2:03:21 - Where to find Siege Perilous & wrap-up ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #boardgames #boardgamedesign #zmangames #pandemic #agricola #tabletop #playtoz #boardgamepodcast