Sponsor Spotlight - The Last Gameboard is the Future of Tabletop Gaming
/At Apotheosis Studios, we are endlessly grateful to our sponsors. Fans like you have backed our many kickstarter projects, and lead our efforts out of our dreams and into reality.
For bigger, more ambitious endeavours, like the currently ongoing Satine’s Quest, we need a little more help. That’s why approaching companies we love like Last Gameboard has been so great for us, and we’ve even had our own exclusive beta look at the Last Gameboard ourselves right here.
I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Shail Mehta, CEO & Co-Founder and Roland Cinco, the Head of Growth over at Last Gameboard. A big thank you to Phil Macnevin, Head of Community for bringing this all together.
A Look at Last Gameboard
Last Gameboard is known the world over for the most ambitious tabletop gaming platform to date. But no company starts as such. It'd be such an interesting story to hear how the hybrid of digital and tabletop gaming came to be. How did Gameboard get started?
Phil: Shail grew up playing tabletop. In fact, when she migrated to the US, playing board games helped inject herself into the local community. Her dream is to build one big gaming community world and connect the different worlds of tabletop players. Gameboard is her answer! When she, with cofounders Tim and Rob, launched it on Kickstarter in 2019, it was an instant hit! The rest is history... we're now about to ship our Beta units to our early customers and influencers. We've never been more excited!
The perfect union of a player's unique gaming minis, the meticulously crafted monster minis, and the detailed maps that the Gameboard can make all adds up to a masterwork of immersion. We here at Apotheosis Studios deeply love that for bringing our adventures like The Red Opera to life. But may fans would love to know just how it works. Can you talk us through the process of bringing the TTRPG environment to life through the Gameboard?
Phil: The cool thing about how Gameboard works is that immersion between your environments in TTRPGs and your physical minis and characters. Similar to how most VTTs work, any DM can use their supported VTT to craft amazing looking maps using their own creations or maps from other artists. Gameboard then connects to that VTT server, giving players a surface to view and interact with the map. The difference between Gameboard and other options out there is that Gameboard can detect both the presence and orientation of physical miniatures, allowing players to continue to use their beautifully painted minis while simultaneously and dynamically interacting with the virtual world displayed on the Gameboard. As you move your mini around, you can see exactly what your character is seeing in real-time since the dynamic lighting automatically updates as you move your mini around on the board, and your field of view rotates with your character as you rotate your mini around.
Virtual Tabletop is all the rage right now, and Gameboard is one of the best ways I've seen it implemented. There's a lot of talk about future gaming tech to use Augmented Reality and VR to bring their tabletop roleplaying games to life. Is this something Gameboard will look into using? Will there be ways to update and bring even more content to the Gameboard once it's out there for us gamers?
Shail: Absolutely, Gameboard is cross device. We can easily deploy and Augmented Reality game onto our platform. It’s truely up to a developer how and what they would like to use in our SDK. Think of Gameboard as an open sandbox, where a developer can choose how they want to use our technology and modify/create their own games. Our goal is to help push the limits of our technology.
The imagination and potential of Gameboard is endless. As well as being at battle map simulator for TTRPG, you have a selection of gaming classics available to play on the platform. What was the process like for bringing classics like Chess and Poker, as well as hard hitting gaming classics like Gloom and Terraforming Mars?
Phil: We have an in-house team of developers who are working hard to bring some of the classic games like Chess and Poker to Gameboard while bringing in some of the new ways to interact with those games to life on Gameboard. In terms of other popular tabletop games like Gloom, Terraforming Mars, Mystic Vale, etc, we’ve been working hard to develop relationships with these amazing game publishers to bring their creations to life on Gameboard while guiding them on how to integrate some of the new technology available on Gameboard into their games. We’ve built an SDK that game developers can use to maximize the player’s experiences on Gameboard,and allowing the players to connect and play with a great community of players on the Gameboard platform (and beyond).
It seems like the Gameboard can do it all. You offer a diverse range of games, in addition to the battle map optimisation that that appeal to many of our fans, and to us right here in the Apotheosis Studios team. But is there an item, idea, or service that you are particularly proud of?
Phil: We here at Gameboard love the flexibility that digital board games gives us in both portability as well as playing with loved ones and new friends remotely, but we often miss the physicality that goes along with traditional board games. We also love the tactile feedback that physical board games give us, but sometimes it can be a challenge to play games when you want because of the availability of players to play with when you have the desire and time to play.
We love that Gameboard can bring together both worlds! We love that Gameboard gives us a lot of portability - you can bring your whole board game collection with you anywhere. We love that with Gameboard, you don’t have to sacrifice the tactile piece of Gameboard, whether that’s playing with physical miniatures in TTRPGs or even being able to use something like the blade of your hand to show your cards in poker, that gives board games a more natural and physical feel. Most importantly, we love that you can do all of this without sacrificing community! Whether it is through our online Guild system, or in-person with a group of friends, or a combination of both, it’s very easy to find people to play with when and where you’d like to play.
It's important in business to admit when something isn't right, and no idea is a winner every time. With a project as high tech and ambitious as the Gameboard, some technical hitch has to happen here and there. Was there ever an idea or product that you can recall that didn't work or wasn't a good idea? What happened to it? How did the company learn from the minor setback?
Roland: As a startup in the gaming space, building both software and hardware, which is very difficult, it's safe to say we've had our fair share of challenges. We're a fail fast company, and Gameboard has come a long way since the first version. Speaking of initial versions, Gameboard didn't start square. After several design iterations and feedback from tabletop players, we came up with a square design, the perfect shape for most tabletop games.
The reviews for the Gameboard are glowing. The endorsement from Steve Jackson, and the support from titans like Riot Games and Asmodee digital show you have the respect of the industry's best. Does that inspire the creative team to push the bar even further?
Phil: Yes! We are very grateful for our relationships with such amazing collaborators like Steve Jackson, Asmodee, Nomad Games, Apotheosis, etc and working with such amazing partners definitely inspires us to push the boundaries even further! We want Gameboard to be a place where gamers can really come and connect with an amazing community of gamers and play games together in very immersive ways. We have a lot of great ideas for the future, and we’re also excited to see what our community of game developers bring to the table in terms of innovation as well!
You've been partnered with Apotheosis for quite some time. The continued support has allowed us to take on some of our most ambitious projects yet, and for that we are grateful. How did that sponsorship come into being? What drew you to us?
Shail: Energy. Call us suckers if you must but there is something magical about meeting a company/people that you are instantly drawn to. We share a vision with Apotheosis Studios on the bold future of immersive gaming. That vision became synchronized when the teams met and instantly saw how our respective businesses could align. Together we are shaping the way for immersive play, that does not exist today. There are beautiful things ahead of our partnership!
Every business is looking at this new year with a lot of hope and excitement. There's plenty to expand into with the unique and ambitious plan of marrying digital and tabletop gaming. So what can we expect from Gameboard in 2022? How much can you tell us about what to expect, and those mysterious game studios coming soon?
Phil: The first set of Beta Gameboards is set to ship in batches in Q1 of this year. Hundreds of thrilled Beta users and influencers will be getting their hands on their boards and will play live! We have hundreds of games and studios in the pipeline for this year, which are top secrets for now. But you know what, join our email list or Discord server, so you don't miss your chance to get fresh news from us.
Truly exciting stuff. Last Gameboard is most definitely the most exciting and ambitious new venture in the world of tabletop gaming. To look into Last Gameboard, and reserve your own, look no further than their own website lastgameboard.com.
Now we want to hear from you. Have you reserved your Last Gameboard? Which exciting tabletop endeavour has you excited? Let us know in our discord server or in the comments below.
Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, they write all kinds of gaming press, while they write news about the League of Legends Card Game on RuneterraCCG. On Youtube, they can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Find where they dwell by climbing their Linktree.
