Shell Game with Dan Shapiro (Episode 59)

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Dan Shapiro with a premium sheet of game pieces.
Dan Shapiro with a premium sheet of game pieces.

Dan Shapiro with a premium sheet of game pieces.

 

Dan Shapiro created the game Robot Turtles out of scissors, clip art, and a printer to offer asymmetric play: kids and adults can play together and both can enjoy the experience. He brought it to Kickstarter to sell a few hundred copies, and wound up selling over 25,000. In his workshop, Dan explains how the game developed, the Kickstarter proceeded, and he’s fulfilling it.

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Show Notes

View a set of photos and videos I took while visiting Dan, including shots of his 2D laser cutter at work.

Candy Land “is a crippled Markov chain coupled to a push-pop stack.” Dean Putney, who I have now referenced a million times, was a guest on the show in November 2013. I just received my copy of his book and it is fantastic! Huge and wonderfully printed. Fulfillment by Amazon lets companies store their stuff in Amazon’s warehouses and have them manage shipping stuff to your customers.

Dan’s friend Joe Heitzeberg (with his friend Ethan Lowry) created Poppy, which is an apparatus that turns an iPhone into a 3D camera and viewer. It went into commercial release a few weeks ago and can be purchased at Poppy’s site. Joe is working on Kickmailer, a back-end processing system to help Kickstarter projects manage fulfillment.