Eric Olsen, inventor of Flip 7 and Co-Founder of Messy Table Games, reflects on a remarkable year… And reveals what’s next!

Eric, what a year you’ve had with Flip 7! What sort of impact has that had on you?
Before Flip 7, I’d decided to start a game company – Messy Table – with my friend Jeff Argast. Jeff and I had regular jobs… We knew we were going to take our time with it. My plan was to transition out of teaching and go full-time with Messy Table in four or five years. Flip 7 then kind of took the world by storm and that accelerated my timeline. I retired from teaching back in June – and here I am doing games full-time!

Terrific. And did you have any inkling that Flip 7 could be something special?
Before David Blanchard joined The Op Games, he was showing the concept around… It got a lot of interest, and I felt so strongly about it that I was prepared to self-publish it as our first Messy Table game… And in terms of when we all realised that it was going to take off? Maybe Spring 2025. The Op’s Tony Serebriany had been carrying it around everywhere he went, playing it with everyone – and getting tremendous feedback. But nobody – not me nor anyone at The Op – realised it would take off in the way that it did. And now it’s also doing really well in Europe and the recent Grinch edition was selling out, so it’s been exciting and surreal – a dream, really.

Have you had companies reach out wanting to grab the next game from the creator of Flip 7?
Ha! Well I’ve had some large publishers reach out to me, which is really nice. And they’ve been very receptive. I actually had a conversation at Gen Con with a European publisher who said: “I wanted to meet you to see if this was a one-off!” Fortunately, we chatted and he said it wasn’t a one-off! So Flip 7 definitely helps me get through the door – but I still need to have great concepts.

You mentioned The Grinch edition of Flip 7 and Flip 7 With a Vengeance recently landed. Do you feel any pressure to feed the brand with new editions and fresh ideas?
I’m absolutely interested in doing that, but I don’t feel any pressure to. I mean, thinking about lots of editions at once is a trap some new inventors fall into. I did the same with my first game Glyphics – I thought there could be a Sports version and a Disney version and so on. But my experience was that publishers aren’t really interested in where you think the game could go – it’s almost like you’re trying to teach them how to do their job! So I don’t get overly excited about that type of thing. But if Flip 7 caught on to the extent that it became an evergreen game, and The Op was looking for ways to keep it in the public eye, I’d happily contribute.

Let’s talk about Messy Table Games. Your opening slate includes Booty Dice, A Lotta Axolotls and French Goats in Trench Coats. Do they share anything in common?
Most of my games are totally different from one another – and I like that. I don’t want to be a one trick pony. A Lotta Axolotls is a simple card colour matching game, French Goats is centred around blind bidding, while Booty Dice is a little similar to something like King of Tokyo. Then we have one launching in April called Tally Up that does share a few similarities to Flip 7… It has that gambling feeling, but it’s ‘choose your luck’ rather than ‘push your luck’. You have some control. What they all have in common is that they’re family friendly party games. You can learn them all in under five minutes and you can play them in 15 to 30 minutes.

What dictates whether you self-publish or a license a game?
That’s an excellent question and something we figure out day-to-day! Sometimes it comes down to price points – we have to consider cost at Messy Table. Other times it’s timing… We might not have space for a game one year, so we decide to show it around. If the right publisher wanted to take a game, and they’d do a good job with it, we would hand it over. We only want to publish one or two games a year as Messy Table.

Why do you think you still have the appetite for self-publishing, having gone through this remarkably successful experience licensing Flip 7?
I love this question – and it’s something I’ve been asked by new inventors. Should I license or should I self-publish? One thing is: What do you really enjoy doing? I have an entrepreneurial mindset, and I love doing the business side of things. And I’d already started Messy Table Games before Flip 7 took off. I knew I wanted to be doing games full-time. That was my goal. And the only sure way to make that happen is to self-publish.

Now, you could get lucky, but you can’t count on getting lucky… You can’t count on a Flip 7. And I certainly wasn’t counting on it, right? I’m glad that it happened, but I didn’t expect it to happen. For me, the only sure thing was to start my own game company, believe in my games and put our own money behind the games – then plug away at it. That was the goal and it still is.

Great answer. Eric, always a pleasure to chat. Thanks again.

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