2026

My year of "40 Before 40" in the board game industry

I genuinely thought this would be the year I would focus the majority of my time into content creation. I’ve spent almost 6 years doing content creation, board game design, and board game publishing. Despite posting on social media at least once everyday, I felt like so much of my energy went into board game publishing and I wanted to see how far I could go as a content creator. My plan was to stream on Twitch, do more how to play videos, get more paid partnerships, and finally get on the media lists of every major publisher.

I started a series at the beginning of 2026 called “40 Before 40” where I shoot my shot 40 times in the board game industry that I normally wouldn’t take. Some of the highlights include doing a guest lecture at Bradley University for their game design program, codesigning 3 games (with two publishers and a designer I met because of FB) and my most recent shot which is creating a game to possibly pitch at Gen Con to publishers.

During the past 3 Gen Cons, there have been publishers who put out calls for board game designers from marginalized groups to pitch their games to them. It was always 2 days before Gen Con and Marsh Hallow was my exclusive priority. I found out two weeks ago that Unpub is doing a collab with Tabletop Gaymers, Rose Gauntlet, and Women in Toys to pitch games to publishers. I decided I was going to make a game and with the help of my friends created one called A Dash of Umami. I submitted the game today. Even if it doesn’t get picked to be published, I think it’ll be good experience. It’s a game I’ve wanted to make and it’ll help me reach one of my goals of trying be more known outside of Tiktok.

I had no idea so much of my year would contain board game design. I forget I’m good at it and how much I truly enjoy it. I used to think the only way my games would go from my brain to the gaming table was if I published them. To be fair, my first published game is a mansplaining party game and my second is a marshmallow cultist roll and write. It's really hard for me to comprehend a publisher wanting to publish one of my games but you never know unless you try. To my surprise, the answer to the majority of my asks this year was yes. Maybe this one will be also.