23-year-old John McNicholl (John McNicholl) demonstrated his card game "The Deceiver" to the people of Northport Park. Credit: Morgan Campbell

Two years ago, when John McNicholl created the card game "The Deceiver" in his Commack basement, he set out to divide the multi-billion dollar industry that produces 4,000 board games every year. A cup of pie.

Monopoly is an aging master, it measures success by moving millions of units. Modern Hot Cards Against Humanity became the best-selling game on Amazon.com, and three prints were sold out.

For now, McNicole's goal is more moderate. He paid $15,000—the savings from working for many years at Commack’s Friendly's restaurant—to print 1,000 copies of his game to Ace Card Co., a manufacturer based in Noida, India. Since last summer, he has sold more than 445 games for $29.99, mainly through Amazon. It recently ranked 77,450 in the toys and games category, and 551 in the "dedicated card game" subcategory. The best-selling one is currently a "simple family-friendly party game" called Exploding Kittens.

"I hope to break even after the holidays," and may attract interest from game publishers, McNicole said in an interview this fall.

Loosely inspired by the mafia in the living room game, this is a social reasoning game where players try to find the "killer" among them. The deceiver asks the player to answer a series of basically harmless (but sometimes embarrassing) printed cards. Yes or no question.

"Have you ever stolen money from someone else's piggy bank?"

"Do you think the people in this room are attractive?"

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"Is home your favorite place on earth?"

Each player gets a seemingly identical card, and together they answer each question by raising their hands (or not). The twist is that there is no problem with the deceiver's card; without knowing what the problem is, he or she judges how to respond by observing others or guessing. At the end of the round, players vote for the person most likely to be a deceiver. At this stage of the game, there are usually accusations, inferences, and denials; the common history comes into play, as does the ability to lie to friends and family. After two months of deliberation and discarding nearly 100 drafts, McNichol’s slogan printed on the side of the box was "A Party Game of Observation, Deception, and Laughter." This game is suitable for players 12 years and older.

The 23-year-old McNichol graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in May with a bachelor's degree in engineering and a master's degree in engineering management. He grew up in a family with hundreds of board games and playing these games together.

He said McNicholl called the party game "all about social interaction." "It's usually simple and easy to understand. It's all about jokes, sarcasm, teasing, figuring things out, and laughing.... If you're playing [strategy game] Magic: The Gathering: You won't laugh. If You are playing deceivers or anti-human cards, and you might laugh."

Juli Lennett, a US toy industry consultant for the Port Washington-based market research company NPD Group, tracks board games as part of a category that also includes preschool, children, and family games. She said that this category is worth 1.3 billion U.S. dollars per year in US retail sales. The adult game subcategory, including games such as "Cards Against Humanity", has achieved annual sales of US$188 million after two years of rapid growth since the pandemic.

"Consumers really like it," Lennett said. "You can do dormitory entertainment or university entertainment in your residence, and invite some friends over," she said.

She said that compared with newcomers and independents like McNichol, the odds of winning are great. "You are talking about meeting some of the largest toy companies in the world. These companies have deep relationships with retailers, have marketing machines and a large number of inventors and creators. Frankly speaking, there is a lot of market for which toys. Research. Consumers."

Quillsilver Studio is a game consulting and development company with studios in New Hampshire and Australia. Its president, Brenna Noonan, said that many of the games she helps bring to market use the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to sponsor orchestrated launches: Send to influencers in the board game space, commenters, post on Discord servers, conduct game demos at conferences, make games available digitally, and conduct social media marketing."

McNicholl is a one-person marketing team. Most of his publicity is carried out on social media platforms including TikTok. A 20-second video he posted has received more than 522,000 views. The first is a close-up of a rejection letter he received from a game company in June 2020, which emphasized some options: "This concept is not strong enough to compete with the products currently on the market." Finally, he was sitting in a seat. In front of the newly delivered box of the deceiver, smiled and looked forward to the camera.

However, a good story in TikTok's highly compressed format does not necessarily lead to good marketing effects: clicks are not converted into sales. McNicole said that the video "does not show anything about the game." "I need to try to show people how to play games and help people understand how interesting it is." The subsequent videos explaining the game mechanics and showing people playing games only received a few thousand views.

He found that a more effective strategy is to approach strangers in Long Island Park and breweries and let them play games with him. Facts have proved that this is far less nerve-wracking than people think. "The way I persuade myself to do this now is that no matter what happens, they may not remember me within 24 hours from now," he said.

Few people would really reject this neat young man in a deceiver's T-shirt. He claimed to be a recent college graduate and the inventor of board games. Many people welcome him.

However, so far, many of his sales have come from Amazon. He inferred that for customers, the site carries a valuable recognition: "I know I will receive it on time.... I know its quality will be good."

For indie game creators, this recognition is expensive: In addition to the $15 production and shipping costs, the site requires $10.50 per sale, which cuts his profit to $3.50.

Noonan said that in general, the manufacturer’s suggested retail price in board games is about four times the landed cost, which includes manufacturing and shipping. She said that by switching to Chinese printers, most of the industry's production is carried out in China, and McNicole may reduce its production cost to US$4 per unit.

However, there may be reasons for hope. Both Noonan and All About Games Consulting's Guildford consultant Philip Hatch in the UK stated that the industry is subject to breakthrough blows from time to time.

"People have a huge appetite for new games and new content," Hatch said. "It doesn't matter that there are a lot of well-developed social interpretation games out there.... It is ultimately up to the gamer to decide."

McNicholl continues to work hard to release more TikToks about people who play his games. He said that soon, he plans to release the deceiver after Diablo, which is a version of the game aimed at older audiences that contains some dangerous issues. "I always want to work hard to improve and keep trying to improve," he said.

Nicholas Spangler is in charge of Smithtown Township and has been with Newsday since 2010.

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