Julian Miller – co-founder of McMiller Games – on finding ideas, testing games and fighting fish!

It’s been a while since Mojo Nation’s done anything with you chaps, Julian. What did do we do wrong? Did Billy piss David off? Is that why he’s not on this call?
Yes. That’s the truth – off the record.

Wait a second… Can you say, “off the record” after the fact?
Oh! Yeah… That’s a good point. Put that on the record then. David’s not happy with Billy!

Right. Ha! Just as I feared. Well, I’ll paint David out of your profile image and you and I can just chat like there’s nothing wrong…
Ha! The other reason we’ve not been in touch – on the record – is that we’ve been so busy just running the company. It’s been crazy. We’re actually looking to get an operations manager so we can free ourselves up for things like that because we do think it’s important to be more in touch with the community. We realised that when we did GAMA and the toy fairs in New York and Nuremberg this year.

And that was your first New York Toy Fair, was it not? How was it?
Actually, it was the first time we’ve gone to any trade shows! It was an amazing education for us and it’s paid itself back so many times already. One thing that was great is that there was a real focus for us at the shows… Selling and connecting. That kind of stuff doesn’t feel like work to me, especially because we’d done a lot of prep and sorted everything out beforehand.

You weren’t running round like a dog at a butcher?
No, we wondered if we’d be like, “Oh, my god! Where’s our luggage? This doesn’t fit! Where’s the electricity?” But no… And really, we didn’t have to think about any of the day-to-day stuff for the whole time we were there. We just concentrated on building our network – and that’s been phenomenal. Well… Until we got back to our desks! Ha! It’s taken a month and a half to catch up!

And why was 2025 the right time for you to do trade shows, Julian?
We’ve predominantly focused on e-commerce for the last few years, but we didn’t want to neglect bricks and mortar. We’ve been in Barnes and Noble and in Target, but we really haven’t had a strategy to roll out and capitalise on our products as much as we could. We also wanted to make some distribution deals internationally… We’ve just signed one with Greece, for example. They’ve taken four of our games to launch in September.

Amazing! Now, the game you showed me in New York was Fish Fight. What’s the elevator pitch for that?
Fish Fight is our fish flopping and plopping party game! So if you mix Minute to Win It with Poop the Potato, you’ve got Fish Fight. After you split into teams, you battle it out in a series of 25 funny challenges. I also sometimes describe it as a mix of cornhole and the French game pétanque…

Ha! Forgive me laughing… You did a French accent and a little pout when you said “pétanque”! You looked very sophisticated!
Yes, I just channeled my best friend – Maryse in Paris… She’s French. I usually channel her when I try to pronounce French words…

It’s a good system, you did well. Generally speaking, what do you look for in an idea?
One of the ways we develop games is to find stuff that’s going viral online, give it a McMiller makeover, add some value to it and put it in a box. The ingredients of the makeover include a little bit of cheekiness while still being multigenerational… We love to entertain every age. It’s Bananas is a great example of that. We get comments and reviews saying how all ages that play it – from kids to pensioners – end up in fits of laughter.

I think cheeky is a good word for It’s Bananas. I’ll put a photo of that in here; people can instantly get what we mean. How many games do you put out a year now?
At the moment, we try to launch at least one or two games a year. Obviously, that’s nothing compared to the big companies, but we try and focus our efforts rather than throwing a lot of things at the ball to see what sticks. When we started out, It’s Bananas was such a monster that it took up a huge amount of time and energy. We didn’t have the capacity to grow a bigger line of games. But It’s Bananas taught us a lot so – as we expand – we’re hoping to go up to maybe two or three games a year until the range reaches around 15 SKUs over the next three or four years.

Terrific! So you were saying you tend to look for trends, then add your ingredients. How did Fish Fight come about?
That followed the pattern! You know, Dave does the initial part of our games; finding any nuggets of inspiration… He came across a video that went viral a couple of years ago. It showed a family playing Poop the Potato. Dave looked at it through a filter of three things… First: does it grab attention? Do you keep watching to figure out what they’re doing? Second: is it entertaining and accessible for multigenerations? Is everyone laughing? And third: is it easy to play? With Poop the Potato, all three boxes were ticked!

Once we knew Dave was onto something, we wanted to see if we could make the object anything other than a potato – just because pooping a potato could get a little boring after a while. We also felt we couldn’t just give people one game. Eventually, we came up with 25 different challenges. To do that, we basically stuffed the fish everywhere we could on ourselves. The fish in the original prototype have touched every inch of our bodies.

I’ve got one word for you: eBay! Ha! And out of interest, did you go through other animals? Why settle on fish?
Now that’s a really good question!

Finally!
Ha! Its odd: right at the start of development, we’ll usually be saying to ourselves, “Let’s try this!” Months later, we’ll be asking ourselves how we ended up on whatever the decision was! Why fish, you kniw?! In this case, though, I think it was because we were looking for a particular shape. It needed to protrude between the legs so that you could see it. So if it was a ball, for example, it would just hide in the middle of your legs, say, and you wouldn’t see it…

In that respect, it needed to be something that would tuck away but stick out at the back. Well, what has a long shape? And what’s funny? Fish! So yes… We started with a fish and never went away from it. Later, we thought we could turn the objects into fun characters and build that into a fun theme. We also added the idea of wrestling as an inspiration… That’s how we ended up with two teams: the Greenie Meanies and the Silly Salmons – two of each fish.

And what’s your playtesting process, Julian? How do you know which of the numerous ideas you have should make the cut?
It’s very loose, actually, and it really depends on the type of game we’re developing. With It’s Bananas, it was quite practical in a way… Because it was already visually funny, and the gameplay kind of suggested itself. So, yes… That was more about perfecting the curve of the tail and how it would work on people of different heights. How can we get it so that you could play it at your height, Deej, and kids could play it too? Then: how do we make it so that the tail can go up and down? Another example was one of our previous games, Santa VS Jesus…

Santa VS Jesus?!
Yes! That did pretty well; it was prior to It’s Bananas. The problem was that it had four smaller games within one big game. That meant you quickly ended up repeating a game – so everyone said it needed to be more replayable… We took that with us into the first edition of It’s Bananas – but we took it too far! We had so many mini games that was a bit overwhelming. Eventually, we took all that out to bring it back to the core. So we do that a lot now; we figure all that out in playtesting. For the first couple of months, though, it’s just Dave and me… We role play all our friends around the table.

Wait, what?! You literally role play? Putting on voices and acting like your friends?
Ha! Well, maybe not the voices; that’s a little too far!

You did the French guy earlier! Ha!
Ha! Maybe we do do the voices! Either way, we like to imagine what our friends would say as they play. Dave and I take different seats and give ourselves different names and personalities. For example, one of us always plays our friend who doesn’t like games and is easily bored – just to see how it lines up with what he likes, you know?

After a couple of months of working on it ourselves, we then invite friends and family to do five to ten test games. That way we get views from people we trust. We don’t send it out to anyone just yet, though. We’re always there.
Eventually – when we know we’ve got the rules clear and concise – we look to remove ourselves from the testing so that we can just observe. In fact, when some of our friends come round, they tease us about it now… It’s like, “We’re just here to make sure dumb people understand the rules, right?” Ha!

Ha! Perfect! Well, we need to start wrapping things up, Julian, but with you more than most, I’m curious to know… What’s the most interesting object in your office or on your desk?
Wow! What a great question…

I always ask that of all my prey. I just like the sound of it!
Ha! Well, we moved into this place in August last year… It’s only in the last month or so that we’ve finally started putting stuff in here so that it isn’t just white everywhere! So… What’s interesting?! I have a tape measure and a ruler – they’re boring… I’ve got some ink for my refillable pen…

Oh, look at you. You’re a class act!
None of that’s fun, though! Oh, I know! When we first started out and It’s Bananas was doing well, we got a little carried away… We made these figures for an IP called AstroBeasts… We came from the development side for TV and game shows and thought there might be something in it. We were thinking we could make an animation show out of it, and then do toys. And we had these toys made out of natural rubber – because most of our products are plastic free. So we had these two made – but it was way too much effort for not enough gain, and they do love to waste your time in Hollywood!

You’ve hung onto them, though?
Yes! I think they’re a great reminder to us to dream big – but stay realistic… Because toys for kids is such a crowded market anyway and what does well one year doesn’t necessarily do well the next year.

Great answer! Well, I have to say, Julian, I’m glad David fell out with Billy because I’ve loved every second of this. Thank you for making time!

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