Breaking into the toy and game industry these days is a challenging (if not impossible) feat for small businesses who invent creative and educational family board games. Hats off to Brainiac Games, Inc. for their unique new board game that teaches children about the importance of safety. I had an opportunity to interview Tamara Purcell, VP of Operations of Brainiac Games, Inc. She gave some insight into this very competitive market.
Tell us, what inspired you to create Safety Brainiac?
Being a parent and grapling with the dangers that children are exposed to each and every day led us to search for products, and games in particular, that could help our children learn how to stay safe. After seaching high and low for something that fit our needs, we discovered that there was really nothing in the marketplace that, in a comprehensive manner, covered the diversity of dangers and situations that children face on a daily basis. So we toyed with the idea of creating our own game and proceeded to start by doing research on various safety topics and then moved from there into building prototypes and play testing until we had something that was fun, educational and very comprehensive. After a couple of years of work, sweat and tears Safety Brainiac ? Junior Edition was born!
In this day and age the children’s gaming industry is pretty competitive, what sets your game apart from others in this market?
There are several elements to the game that make it unique in the marketplace. First is the depth and breadth of safety topics addressed in the game. We did our very best to ensure that the questions presented in the game were very situationally based to provide context for the question which helps the children better understand when and where they may encounter a particular danger. Secondly, we built in a sort of handicapping system to ensure that younger children had a chance of winning the game even when they were playing older, and presumably more safety conscious, children. Lastly, the game features a built-in reward system in the form of winner?s certificates and coupons. Young children love to receive certificates in recognition of their efforts and older children love to get little perks for doing well and/or performing well. The rewards bring a great close to a funfilled game and keep the children coming back to play the game again and again.
Homeschooling is becoming more & more mainstream, what is your take on the importance of parents playing an active role in their children’s learning process?
Being a homeschooler for 6 years I really appreciate the important role parents play in helping their children develop a real love for learning. There is no greater feeling & sense of accomplishment than watching your children learn and grow with a love for learning.
As a homeschooling parent, no one knows how your children learn better than you and each child learns differently, if one way of learning isn?t working you can make the necessary changes, ensuring their learning is successful. Making learning fun and finding the educational moments in the fun is incredibly rewarding!
What safety issues are taught with this game?
The game covers a wide spectrum of safety issues facing children aged 5 to 12 years old, including, but not limited to: bullies, internet predators, strangers, fires, poisons, pedestrian and biking safety, weather safety, choking hazards, getting lost, escalator safety, and much, much more.
How are you marketing this game currently and what are your plans and goals for the future?
We do what we can, with a very limited budget, and have had to rely extensively on the great PR from the 7 toy industry awards the game has been honored with as well as press releases, newspaper and magazine articles, word of mouth and the like. We are currently working on a video marketing opportunity that will help us promote the game over the internet. We are very excited about this and are very hopeful the result will be a consistent growth in sales.
What are your biggest challenges in this market?
Over the past couple of years, through trial and error in many cases, we have learned how very competitive the toy industry is and getting retailers, distributors and the like to give the game a chance, by stocking it, has been our toughest challenge. Going head to head with the big players in the toy industry, with their multi-million dollar advertising budgets, has made it difficult to get the attention and widespread distribution a game of this kind deserves. You have to be persistent and creative to make any in-roads, especially when your own advertising budget is so small
Safety Brainiac is your flagship product, but you have other games you have created as well, can you tell us about a few of them?
As is true in most industries, new products, that have yet to make it to market, are kept a secret ? for fear of a competitor copying your ideas and getting to market first. So I can?t reveal specifics but I can say that future games will utilize a similar recipe that will result in high quality products that embody the ideals of ?family, fun and learning.? We do have a couple of games that will be available next year and they will be every bit as good as Safety Brainiac ? Junior Edition in every sense of the word.
Do you have any advice for inventors, developers or work at home parents?
First of all, remove the word “quit” from your vocabulary and adopt the approach and attitude of “where there’s a will there’s a way.”" Never give up on your dreams! Secondly, be critical of what you are creating and how you are creating it so that you will be open to feedback and input from various sources that will result in a better creation/invention/product. Lastly, do your homework, try to view the world through the eyes of the consumer and test, test and re-test until you are sure you have covered all your basis and have a product that will sell.
By Lisa Di Clemente for the Business Opportunities Weblog.
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