Today we’d like to introduce you to Prince Chijioke.
Hi Prince, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The idea to create my own card game hit me way back in 2017 while I was living in El Paso. I was often hosting or attending games nights and even went to a few of the local “Meeple Society” meet-ups at the University of Texas-El Paso, which got my creative juices flowing. I admit this pursuit seemed a bit farfetched given my background as a Nigerian who had always pursued STEM that ended up with a degree in pharmacy. However, I ended up designing the rules to my first game back then and play-tested it with some coworkers before ultimately putting it on hold for other priorities.
Flash-forward to the early months of the pandemic, I had a lot of downtime from projects at work and my mind was racing to return to my creative interests. Realizing that the game I designed years ago was a bit more quirky than I’d like for a debut project, I thought a lot about creating a text-based game that could get people talking. It was actually a trip to Vegas with friends from Dallas where someone posed a crazy billion-dollar hypothetical to the group that I thought back to as the basis for my debut game “Never Say Never” under the Smashed Studios banner. It seems like a blur, but in May 2020, I raced to put together 400 scenarios for the game with some help from friends because I wanted to launch it before the year’s end. Next came getting logos, designs, and a website created and finally, I launched the Kickstarter for the game in September 2020 and the goal was exceeded by October with over 100 backers in total.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
One of the biggest struggles was tackling the beast of crowdfunding. It sounds so appealing because of the ability to get marketing from the platform to people who would have never met you, but if your a bit obsessive like me, looking at the progress bar every day as the clock counts down can be quite a struggle. Beyond that, I definitely think that the timing of the launch caused a lot of stress. There were production and shipping delays that set me back from getting a lot of the pre-orders out to people, even by my more conservative timelines. Thankfully, none of the backers have expressed any kind of remorse for helping this game gets launched and have been gracefully patient.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Smashed Studios?
Smashed Studios is an idea that sparked in 2017 but finally materialized in 2020. With me as the owner, it is a Black-owned, Veteran-owned game design company that currently aims to produce unique and new table-top games, the first of which being Never Say Never: the hilarious game of horrible hypotheticals. There are definitely plans to continue to expand upon the scenarios in the core game as well as launch a few other table-top games in the works in the coming years. The interest lies especially in creating games in the future that could create a more competitive, tournament-style community as well as eventually branching into mobile-based games.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I’m a Nigerian who got a degree in pharmacy, served in the Army, and still found room to carve out space in my life to create something totally unrelated to anything life had directed me towards prior. The one thing I would share with anyone reading is if you have a farfetched idea, go for it and make it happen.
Pricing:
- Never Say Never – $24.99
Contact Info:
- Email: contact@smashedstudios.com
- Website: www.smashedstudios.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smashedstudios/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smashedstudios
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/smashed_studios
- Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Never-Say-Hilarious-Horrible-Hypotheticals/dp/B08VF5YT29/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=never+Say+Never+game&qid=1613056607&sr=8-3
