Katz & Roberts
Kats and Roberts stopped by the Inside Memphis Business office to show off Charty Party.
In the time of COVID-19, the traditional office space is, for now, in deep hibernation with video conferences and remote functionality the order of the day. Some businesses, however, never needed to rely on a conventional office setup to get work done. Never has that flexibility been more useful than now.
IMB Logo
For board game entrepreneurial pair Evan Katz and Josh Roberts, a “typical” day at the office before social distancing was anything but. Perhaps it entailed jotting down ideas on Post-it notes at the Southern Growth Studios office where they both work full-time. Other days, community outreach and marketing efforts might have brought the duo to Inside Memphis Business’ very own conference room to discuss a new game. It could even have been a quality assurance playtest excursion to Local on the Square or Wiseacre. Nowadays, of course, Zoom sessions are more likely.
So what do you do after successfully creating your own Kickstarter-backed card game from scratch? Why, do it all over again, of course. That’s what Katz and Roberts did after overseeing the creation and production of Charty Party, a Cards Against Humanity-esque game that eschewed the latter’s vulgar and offensive jokes for more well-rounded, graph-based humor.
Round two into the fray of the games business has brought Puns of Anarchy, where players edit prewritten cards with dry-erase markers to create the funniest pun relating to a category. Example: In the Food category, players might change the prewritten House of Cards to read House of Carbs, or Post Malone to Toast Malone. While not yet released, the game is still available for preorder via its successful Kickstarter campaign.
Now, with so many spending time in home offices due to the coronavirus, the conventional workday might have shifted. But Katz and Roberts have found new ways to harness the change. “The self-isolation has given us more time to reach out and have individual conversations with potential users and customers,” says Katz. “The opportunity to get a stream of direct feedback like that is really a motivating factor to keep creating and working on our product.”
1 of 2
2 of 2
Recently, that motivation paid off in further development on Charty Party’s first expansion, titled the “All Ages” edition. Since the original version released a year ago, Katz and Roberts have fielded requests to create a more kid-friendly version of the game.
“Teachers and parents have asked us to create a PG-version of the game that they could use to teach graphs intuitively in a different way to kids,” explains Katz. “We hadn’t really had the time to sit down and focus on that, so ironically, self-isolating has given us that time.”
Instead of sharing ideas and jokes on paper, brainstorm sessions are shared via PowerPoint presentations and Zoom calls. “We’re still able to do some play testing and come up with something that will be as equally high-quality as the original Charty Party,” Katz says. In a similar vein, Charty Party itself is a great option to stave off boredom during a lockdown. “Some people have been doing virtual Zoom games of Charty Party, so we’re hoping to host one of those soon.”
Although the coronavirus forced changes in the way most companies practice, Katz says their games weren’t affected as much as other businesses.
“We run through a lot of stock, but we actually were able to get a new print run of our games from the manufacturer,” he says. “While Amazon hasn’t been accepting new shipments recently due to them rightly prioritizing their warehousing toward essential goods, I think they’re going to open that back up soon. While we haven’t been impacted too much by that, it’s just something that we have to look into every day to adjust to the situation.”
