...as long as there's family and friend's there's a game!

I also believe we must follow our dreams cause someday somehow, we might touch the lives of millions. Dream Big!

My name is James and i believe: as long as there’s friends and family there's a game.

Who knows? Maybe 10 years or 50 years from now some kid may look back and remember those precious times, sitting at their table with their parents, playing one of my games and remembering it was the best time of their lives playing with their loved ones. This is my hope that the silent encouragement my parents gave me will seep into their lives and bring them wonderful memories.

As my father once said, “there’s nothing you can’t do in life if you set your mind to it.” Those words ring out true to this day. I would like to sit here and thank my Mom and Dad for giving me the foundation of my dreams. I embark on my dreams to give a ray of hope to others and give the world a chance to come together and live moments in time, sharing a game at the table with family and friends.

And my mother, who painted the game space on the back of another game, was encouraging my dreams as well, but she didn’t know it at the time. Funny how life can turn the very little things our parents do for us, into lifetime impacts on our lives.

Sometimes I think back to when I was a kid and saw my father making my first checkerboard, maybe something struck me that I could do this someday. Maybe Dad was in some way paving my road to the future at a time when all he was trying to do was make his son smile!

That is when I decided to learn graphics myself, so I could create more card games and start a brand myself. I joined Adobe Illustrator and spent months watching YouTube videos and redesigning Flip’em and creating 3 more card games. And once again, I contacted China and got new prototypes and kept working until I was pleased and now, I have several games of my own creation.

Years went by and I tried again and this time, I made a game called “FLIP’em”. I got the graphics done, found my own China connections, but when I got my first prototype back, there were problems. The money went dry before I could address the issues, so for a while the games were back on the shelf.

But that didn’t deter me and neither did a friend telling me board games were no longer a “happening”, that everything was online now. But somehow, it stuck in my soul: as long as there’s are friends and family, there’s a game! That very though has become the slogan for my company, two 75 games.

Months went by and we finally got the game back from a manufacturer, but it wasn’t at all what I expected. It needed more work, but it was truly a step forward. Unfortunately, my boss died, and I found myself back at square one.

I never thought I would sit in a meeting and close a deal, but here I was with someone who was willing to take the leap of faith with me!

That evening, I told my Mom we had a real business meeting the next day and for her to bring in the game. The following day, as we sat at a table in his office and he looked it over, making some suggestions as to how it could appear better. He said he liked it enough to back me and get it made in China!

That evening, I waited for my boss after work to speak with him about it. I told him about me inventing a game and asked if he could take the time to look at it, if I brought it in tomorrow. He said he would gladly do that.

When I was a kid, every day waiting on the bus to go home, my classmates would play games.

One I was particularly fond of was Checkers and at the end of each day, I was hoping I’d get a chance to play. Often, the other kids did not give me that chance, but I loved the game so much I begged my parents to buy me a game set. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t have the money to buy me one.

He replied, “A checkerboard for you to play Checkers with!”

You can imagine my excitement, just knowing I would finally get to play with my own set, no more waiting and hoping to get to play with the other children!

The next few days, my Dad and I sat at the counter, and he would teach me about the rules and tricks for playing a solid game of Checkers!

Then, on the day I finally took my checkerboard to school but at the end of the day, my dream became a nightmare. A bully took my board and ran away with it. When I finally caught up with him, he broke the board over his knee, laughing, and left it in a pile at my feet!

I still remember placing the broken halves in the school trashcan, not wanting to take it home and face my Dad, in shame, after all the hard work he did to make it for me. Part of me was more broken than the game board since the pride I had in my father’s work, done only to make me smile, was destroyed.

I never ever told him about it, since I couldn’t look him in the eye, knowing I wasn’t strong enough to protect his hard and tremendously loving work. He never found out, a few years later I sadly lost him too.

A year or two later, my cousins moved in next door to us. They had a bunch games, and for a kid who didn’t have many growing up, having all those games to play, and them to play with, with like winning the Lottery! Those memories, of playing so many games with them, before they ended up moving away, were some of the happiest times of my life!

It was about a year after they moved away when I got the idea in my head to make my own game! I drew it up on a big piece of plywood and one evening, I showed it to my Mom and my brothers and they immediately wanted to play it with me.

She must have enjoyed it quite a bit, because when I came home from school the next day, she surprised me with an upgraded version of my game, made on the back of a Monopoly board. She had taken some paints and color-coordinated it and I could hardly believe it; my own game, sitting on the table right in front of me! Can’t even start to tell you how much I loved it!

Flashing forward a few years, I recall the trip my Mom and brothers made to Nashville, to meet with a lawyer to copyright my game. I remember standing with my cousin in the foyer, waiting for the elevator, saying one day, after I sold my game, I’d have an elevator of my own! I was just 12 but dreaming BIG!

Years went by and my dream primarily sat in my mom’s closet, gathering dust until one day, when I was working in a printing factory, something sparked me; my Boss knew people in China who could actually produce the game!

Then one day, I noticed my Dad with two spray cans; one black and the other red, along with some tape and a 12” by 12” piece thin of paneling. I watched him as he drew the lines and I asked, “What are you painting?”