I was lucky enough to grab a Skype interview with the CEO of Tabletopia, Timofey Bokarev and pick his brain about how Tabletopia came into creation, and some of the business models behind the company. With the help of Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight, Tabletopia has gained a huge following of board game and card game enthusiasts around the world, and is bound to become a revolutionizing way of playing already popular and blossoming new games. 

Their huge Kickstarter campaign has 1,216 backers for a total of $59,297 funded towards their goal of $20,000. With still 20 days to go, Tabletopia is destined to go beyond their Goals and Achievements; having already passed $35,000 for Original Dice and $50,000 for Sound Disks.

Their upcoming achievements that are put in place is $70,000 for Playing Cards, $??,??? for Skyboxes, and $??,??? for More Meeples. While the team anticipated a large popularity, it’s skyrocketed above their anticipations and adjust their goals to the funded totals.

The Creation and Vision of Tabletopia

While sitting down with Timofey Bokarev, he divulged the vision of Tabletopia and inspiration that helped to develop the digital platform. 

Courtney Gamache (CG): What inspired your team to create such a large platform for board gaming? Was there any childhood experience that fueled the development?

CG: As CEO of Tabletopia, what kind of expectations do you have for the game in the long-haul? 

CG: What was it like approaching publishers to get them in agreement for licensing on Tabletopia? Was there a business model that was very appealing to their monetary goals?

For longer expectations, Tabletopia plans to hold tournaments and events that users and their favorite publishers can participate in. By inviting the author of the game, we will then feature it; and they’ll have their own dedicated page for their fan base

CG: Is there a nitty-gritty way to explain the business model and how the money from users is spent?

The whole catalog with full versions of games will be available to premium members that pay the monthly fee, while a free version is still available for everyone to enjoy. 

CG: Were there any unexpected difficulties when importing the board games onto the digital platform?

This is to reflect how some games are ten-minute plays while others are hours. Open statistics for how many hours each game is played will be available for view.

CG: Is there any type of promotion and marketing that the future of Tabletopia will be taking part in for the company and publishers?

CG: Are there plans to implement popular miniature tabletop games such as Warmachine and Warhammer in Tabletopia? 

CG: How is Tabletopia a catch for publishers? What benefit does it give them along with the company?

Anything is possible in Tabletopia. One of my favorite card games I play with my family called 1,000 I have yet to find a good implementation of the game, but it is possible in Tabletopia. Tabletopia doesn’t include a built-in A.I. system or rule enforcement yet, so users can play games the way they want with their own rules giving an experience that can be found in real-life using a table. 

If the idea of Tabletopia is appealing to you and your future endeavors of board and card games, there is still plenty of time to fund their campaign on Kickstarter which gives early access and beta access.

For many small publishers and game authors it could be also a stepping stone to bigger publishers.

It gives them a chance to publish their game.

And there are so many cool out-of-print games… some of them have only a hundred fans - so it is economically not possible to print them - but with Tabletopia it will be possible to play them. So we are going to encourage our players to speak with authors or publishers of out-of-print games and if they will allow - publish their games here. 

In my opinion there is many different ways Tabletopia could help publishers and gamers. There are many crazy ideas along the way - even adding a later possibility to print physical copy of the games based on them being uploaded to Tabletopia with the game graphic files. 

There is also ample information on their official Tabletopia website, announcements on their Twitter account @TabletopiaGames and information on their Facebook Page. 

Below is also Tabletopia’s anticipated timeline for production, support, beta access along with upcoming future projects surrounding the company.

What do you think of Tabletopia? Do you have any questions for Timofey Bokarev? What’s appealing in the digital platform? Share your thoughts below!