 Board games were a huge part of my childhood, and they're still a big part of my life. Rarely did a game of Risk or Monopoly end without a brother or an uncle vowing revenge against their own blood. These games provided real competition, real excitement, and most importantly, a table surrounded by real people. I love a good console game, but nothing compares to laying down a lightning bolt in front of a colleague and seeing him cringe. Man, I love games. But where do these games stand in today's world of digital gaming and virtual reality? Do people still care about family game night? It's impossible to talk about board games without talking about Hasbro. The company, founded in 1923, has created some of the most iconic games of all time. Life, Candyland, Battleship, Ouija, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, I mean the list doesn't stop. The games you played as a kid, they own. And while Hasbro may not have created all of those games in-house, it now owns the companies that did. As of 1984, Milton Bradley is one of Hasbro's brands. And what about Parker Brothers, the longtime rival of Hasbro? Hasbro bought it in 1991, but these games have been around for decades. How does a 91-year-old company stay relevant today? I mean, Monopoly was created during the Great Depression, yet people around the world still build park place hotels and bankrupt their families. How does a game stay timeless? Do you have any idea on the number of families that Monopoly and RISC have destroyed over the years? Have you ever had any divorces or weird? We are a pretty competitive family, so we've had a lot of battles over Monopoly and my wife will not trade with me. So we have a trading rule in our family where we can trade properties. My kids will trade with me, but my wife now refuses to. So I understand the competitiveness of Monopoly and RISC. But you know, Monopoly in particular is an amazing brand, right? Over 90% brand awareness globally. So you've got this amazing appeal around the world. And what's great is our fans love to participate in the creation of the game. So through our things like our token vote and our house rules campaign, we found that fans want to contribute and participate, which I think gets the blood boiling that much more. Is once you have even more of a stake in it than you've ever had before and you're helping create the game, you are that much more passionate about the brand. What is it about Monopoly and other board games that you think keeps people coming? Sure, well it's funny because when I first started at this company, everybody's aware of what Monopoly is and almost everybody has one in their house. It's almost like a part of the housewarming experience is that somebody's going to get you a Monopoly board and it's going to be one of those things that you can always go to. But I think it's that tactile feel and it's that connection that you make to people actually being face to face. So this is my Monopoly. So what we've done is out of the box, you have your classic game that everybody's familiar with and it'll come with these little squares. And on these squares you can print out stickers using the website or the app and you can put them into all the different spaces within your Monopoly game. So as you go through here, you see that each picture sort of has a customized piece underneath it so silly sunglasses or Santa's little helper. And you can move these around all around the board to make any style of game that you want. But then the game, like I was talking about, you have a website that you can access and you have a mobile app. Both of them are connected to each other. So the user goes in, they can either log in with their Facebook or they could create an account. They go inside, they can upload photos from social networks or they can grab photos from their mobile device or from their computer. They put it into the account and then they can start to customize those photos so they can crop in, they can add text and we're going to start to add more features as we start to see more people getting engaged with the product. And product engagement really is what drives game development at Hasbro. Remember Simon, the electronic memory game? Today it's become Simon Swipe. Kids today are more familiar with touch screens and Hasbro looked at that when developing the updated version. This is Simon Swipe, this is your newest one. How did you come up with the idea for this? So really, I mean, what it really is is taking the great classic gameplay of Simon, which involves lights, colors, memory, all of that and making it relevant to a whole new generation of kids. With the technology here we have, it's actually a tap technology so it's touch, just like traditional Simon. Start with one light and it builds. That's where the new Simon Swipe comes into play. So press, press and then hit the swipe across. So we cast a really wide net and we came up with lots and lots of different concepts. And it was through a process of elimination with marketing, with upper management to drive down to one concept. And that could be from what is the easiest get to what's the most exciting new product to something that we can really advertise and that we can drum up a lot of business around. Why did you make a new physical Simon instead of an app or a digital game? While there is this sort of great influx of digital media and apps and all that, there's still sort of a basic human need for the physical. And when we test stuff with kids, you really see that. When you get something physical that they hold, there's something there that I feel that there's always going to be a place for the physical as well. Why are board games still relevant? Well, I think the primary reason is people still want social connection. And what games, what our gaming brands bring is the ability to bring people together and connect socially. For laughs, excitement, fun, you can't always get that from digital gaming. Do you think that board games and physical games will be the heart of Hasbro forever? I mean, is that something that's never going to go away in your mind? Are you going to start making more video games or digital components or are you going to try to stick with what's tried and true? I think gaming is going to be with Hasbro. Gaming is kind of a cornerstone of what Hasbro is about. And we focus on the brand first and then figure out the best way to bring that to consumers. So physical gameplay is definitely a core mainstay for Hasbro. Digital gameplay is a core mainstay for Hasbro. I think whatever, wherever the consumer goes, we're going to be there. Hasbro's moves are precise, calculated, and focused. Like a game of chess, each design and development move has a clear focus on what the end goal will be, but newer, younger companies are taking a different approach. In early 2011, indie game Cards Against Humanity raised over $15,000 on Kickstarter. Its original goal was only $4,000, and it's currently now the number one selling game on Amazon, a title it's held for three years. Since then, Kickstarter has become one of the most popular spots for indie games to receive funding. One of those is the yet-to-be-released Game of Phones. Created by Luke Stern and Sam Wander, the game acts as a perfect middle ground between physical and digital gaming. On the one hand, it's a card game. You have a deck, you sit around a table with a group of friends. If you're me, you have some beers and a pizza. But on the other hand, every player is clutching their phone at all times. Your photos, your tweets, your knowledge of Google Images, these are your tools to win the game. This isn't Bradley Cooper from American Hustle. This is Luke Stern from Game of Phones. So what is Game of Phones? Game of Phones is a deck of cards that you play with you and your friends. The idea came out of the kind of antisocial use of smartphones within social settings. So essentially how it works is one person is the judge. They pick a card from the top of the deck and it says something like, find an ugly baby. And then everybody else solves it with their smartphone, however they see fit. It could be an ugly baby from anywhere. It could be your ugly baby. It could be your own ugly baby if you feel that it's ugly enough to challenge everybody else's ugly baby. So then I as the judge, if I pick the card, decide who has the ugliest baby and award that card. And the first person to 10 cards wins. Sounds like you can make a lot of enemies in this game. We're a lot of friends. Most of the development for this game happened in a few bars. So we have about four different types of cards. There's kind of the find cards. So for example, find the weirdest thing that comes up when you Google image search yourself. Then there are ones that kind of deal with the content that's already on your phone rather than searching on the internet. So like show the last video you took. So that's already there. You're not going to create anything. Then there's also more physical things. So like most crack screen wins. And then there's one other type that kind of sits in the background while you're playing next to get a Facebook notification wins. So that's a card that just sits with the judge until the play keeps going and then someone gets a notification. So it's also like apples to apples and cards against humanity. So yeah, similar to those two games in the sense that maybe more towards cards against humanity in the sense that like you're definitely playing towards the judge and trying to kind of win them over. So it may even help if you know them sometimes because you may be able to play something funnier towards them. And you guys put this on Kickstarter and how long did it take you to get funded and recognized? So we did a two week campaign and we got funded I think within the first week. People keep telling us to make an app for the game and that's like definitely not where we wanted to start with it. Maybe it is a good idea down the line but that we really wanted to pull it out and kind of have something that you can touch and trade and therefore have a physical interaction with someone rather than just using your cell phone. Kickstarter is great for getting concepts like Game of Phones made quickly without a corporate machine. But sometimes these concepts need a little more time to bake. While not everything about the game always works, it does nail the social aspect of gaming and in the end, that's what's most important. I've been playing board games and video games alike since I was really little. And sure, Mario Kart and Monopoly have their differences, but they shine most for the same reasons. They bring people together. I'll never forget the time I first sat down with my friends when the Nintendo 64 first came out. I was excited about the cool new graphics, but I really mostly enjoyed being with my other buddies. The same is true for Risk or Monopoly or any other game with real human interaction. That's why, at the end of the day, this tiny game for the Fire TV called Fibbage was everyone's favorite. It may not have had any physical component like a deck or a board, but that didn't matter. It's just no substitute for trash talking to people you love in person.