So, how long does it take to create a board game and get it to the market?  A long time.  My first notes for creating a game came in 2012 after reading The Real Estate Game by William Poorvu.  The idea then went to sleep for six years.  Stewart and I woke it up in 2018 when life’s circumstance became a bit more favorable for both of us.

“Land” was what we were calling the game–a real estate focused game–simple and memorable.  At the time, our thoughts were heavily influenced by Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne.   As with many creative experiences, after our initial adrenaline rush of thinking of creating something cool, we began the long slog of actually creating something hopefully cool. We plugged along for about a year and a half and at some point, decided to change the name to PLACES.  Well, where did PLACES originally come from?  Good question.

Sometime before 2012, I had read a scriptural account about a family who had to begin a community from nothing.  I thought, “Hey, whatever activities they needed to make their community exist, function, and thrive–maybe we need similar activities today.  Since my brain is very simple and visual, I decided to explore an acronym to provide a way to remember the various activities needed for thriving communities.  My friend Michael Hathorne helped think through this, and eventually the acronym PLACES was born: Play, Live, Academic, Community (originally just Church), Employ, Shop.  Many of you will want to point out that these words are a mix of nouns and verbs–true, true.  Our justification is that in our communities the solid, foundational activities of learning and service (civic, church, etc.) are stable nouns and the more active uses are verbs (perhaps not perfect, but we gave it our best shot).

Back to the game.  As I mentioned we had “plugged along”–we were working on ideas but there was nothing particularly exciting or original–frankly, it was boring.  Then, on March 13, 2020 (just as COVID was coming into view), to help visually distinguish the different activities within the PLACES acronym, I quickly made some groupings of shapes (e.g., triangles, circles, squares, etc.) in Powerpoint and called Stewart to discuss.   

The simple use of different shapes led to a rich conversation about using various shapes for buildings.  After the call, Stewart immediately began creating a rich assortment of shapes to match the PLACES activities.  This rejuvenated our creative juices and the development of PLACES took off. 

Within the year we had created and tested what we are now calling PLACES-build.  We were fortunate to be able to test it with Tim Burgess (owner of Your Local Game Store) and his brother Ben Burgess who gave us fantastic feedback as well as hope that the game could become a reality.  As we pursued the creation of PLACES-build during the COVID pandemic, Stewart developed a second PLACES game and we began discussing this in earnest in April 2022.  This game was a little quicker and less complicated but incredibly fun and addicting–we decided to name this PLACES-bid and make it the first PLACES game to come to market. 

Once we had a functioning game, we needed to create attractive art.  I was inspired by Sesame Street (at least the 1980’s version) and their ability to create something attractive for both children and adults.  I wanted our artwork to attract all ages.  After several different ideas, I decided to sketch and watercolor local buildings for the artwork.  Ultimately, we settled on a card design that depicted a sketched-watercolor building on trace paper with a coffee mug stain on a wooden table.  We wanted players to feel like they were participating in the creation process with the cards.

After two years of testing, modifying, testing, modifying, testing…we finally launched our crowdfunding campaign in the summer of 2024 and were able to deliver the first games to backers November of 2024.

Our goal in creating PLACES was to provide an opportunity for people to have fun and laugh with each other as well as to provide a simple way to understand the buildings in our communities.  After playing it with six-year-olds to sixty-plus-year-olds at homes, in schools, in hotels, at youth camps, and in game stores we are thrilled by the many smiles and connections that have come from it.

We look forward to completing and bringing the original PLACES-build to the world as well as our pass-and-play version–PLACES-assemble.