A Brief History of Tablestar

August 24th, 2010

In late 2003 I landed my dream job: Art Director for a game company. I was one of two original employees hired by Anthony Thompson to start a business dedicated to designing and producing tabletop board and card games. We had a good ride publishing 16 products over 4 years.

Then on January 7, 2008 we found out that Thompson was not going to be putting any additional funding into the company and we would be closing up the business. This came as a huge shock to all of us. We had 4 games ready to print, and our new game Wealth of Nations was already on the dock in China – printed and ready to put on sale.
Thompson tried to sell the entire company but did not find any buyers. We found people who wanted parts of the company but not the whole thing. Thompson then reversed course and decided to stay open to launch Wealth of Nations. Thompson kept me on board as a part-time employee to do product support and basic marketing.

Since we had already committed to GAMA Trade Show, I made the journey to Las Vegas.  We had a great show! People seemed excited about a new Euro board game. This eventually let to TableStar doing more shows, including Origins and Gen Con.

Everywhere we went, Wealth of Nations was getting a great reception, and I personally did not want to let it all go. I kept emailing people, sending out games and working on the business. We sold almost 2,000 units in June alone and the game was moving well.

Finally, Thompson came to me and said that I should buy the company. I had the energy, enthusiasm and the will to carry on; of course I said yes!  (I have an 18 in rashness and only a 3 in wisdom).

On October 1, 2008 we completed transaction and TableStar Games was born anew. We are starting small again but we have a great stable of games to build on. Two expansions for Wealth of Nations are nearly ready to ship, and more projects are in the works.

I want to extend my thanks to everyone who has supported TableStar Games including gamers, store owners, distributors, conventions, volunteers, podcasters, playtesters, BGG’ers, PSI and most of all Anthony Thompson for starting such a great company. I hope to live up to what we have started and create more fun and exciting games in the future.

Thanks, Peter