Purple Games – Greek Startup Delivering Board Games Worldwide

 
Two young ladies from Thessaloniki fabricate and sell board games around the world. Evi always preferred the red pieces, Maria-Olga always the blue; the combination of the two created the name of the company “Purple Games”. An innovative venture with board games that started in Thessaloniki and now receives orders from around the world.

“From as young as I can remember, I always played board games and jigsaw puzzles. Every year, my parents – oh sorry, I meant Santa – brought me a board game for Christmas. In primary school I used to play with my schoolmates games auch as “Hotel”, “Mystery of Old Peking”, and “Jenga” of course!” Says Evi Tsirogiannidou, whobis a psychologist specialising in family therapy.

“This company is something we have been thinking about for many years. It started off as a joke, an unreachable dream. However, along the years and our constant involvement, we finally decided to go for it and change our dream to reality!

Of course we took into consideration the issues that the crisis creates. The crisis in Greece has positive aspects as well! It made us come out of our comfort zone and allowed us to risk, since there was not much to lose in the first place. There are still many opportunities in Greece. The whole thing is to manage spotting them and dare to follow them!

The stages for the creation of a board game are a few, and the whole process may take more than 6 months. To start with, we find creative ideas for games from the inventors. In that first phase, we don’t give any attention to the artistic aspect of the game, we only look at the mechanisms, so how well the luck/strategy/decision aspects of the game link together between the players. In a few words, the inventor delivers the rules of the game.

Then, we are in charge of trying the game, playing it again and again, with different people. During this phase we sometimes propose changes or amendments to the inventor, we may decide on the game’s theme (i.e. past, present, future, in a train, a house, the woods). The next step is the actual game creation. We get in contact with painters, designers or graphic artists, for the idea to become an aesthetically pleasing game. Last but not least is the manufacturer, who will change the digital files into a box with cards, pawns and a board. For example, for “Intrigue City”, our first board game,we decided to work with the graphic centre “Shape and Colour” (“Σχήμα και χρώμα”) from ΚΕΘΕΑ (Therapy Centre for Dependent Individuals) to support their work”, says Evi.

For the moment, two games are in the market: Intrigue City and 27th Passenger: A Hunt on Rails, and they are totally different games.
The response we have received towards our games is satisfying both in and out of Greece. During the past few years, board games have started becoming more popular again in Greece, so there starts to be more demand.

We try to cover the posting costs for Greek deliveries, but as we can’t do that for international purchases it sometimes becomes an issue. We had an order from Singapore not long ago! Most orders are from the US and central Europe, and mainly from Germany and Belgium. Of course we’re always delighted to receive orders from Japan, Australia, and Mexico!

What amazes us every time when we’re in touch with people from other countries is that they think of board games as a part of their daily lives. Many visitors who approach us in the exhibitions are so used to board games that they don’t need more than a 5 minute explanation before they can start playing!

Source: LifO