The vision for our company is to make a small contribution to a better world by helping people to laugh at things that are difficult to talk about.

Top of our list is the generational split over how to share wealth.

Next comes our own generation’s taste for competitive over-parenting.

Then we want to take aim at paying taxes that don’t go to the common good but to bailing out coke-head bankers.

As you can see, we think of games as a form of catharsis, and we love games as a uniquely human activity that’s also good for us.

Vive homo ludens!

I (Dave) have been playing games my entire life. My childhood was full of chess, Risk, Shogun, Axis and Allies, and then Dungeons and Dragons and Vampire the Masquerade as I got older. As a teenager, I would go to the various role-playing conventions and game clubs (though increasingly to smoke out the front and talk about music.)

Ryan and I met at uni whilst doing PhDs in political economy and later we both ended up in Brisbane. Many Friday nights were spent at the pub followed by drinks and games at the kitchen table after closing time. Carcassonne was a regular favourite and Ryan has always loved classic card games (and seems to know the rules by instinct). Over the years spent together, we have played countless games whilst we have talked about our lives, argued about philosophy, and shared our horror at a world getting increasingly fucked. We have drawn joy from music, politics, and love. We both have partners and children now and all of us love to get together and play games (Ryan teaches my kids aggressive play styles that he calls “West Australian Rules”).

For the last decade Ryan has been whittling away inventing games and they have always been pretty good. Made out of matchsticks and hand drawn bits of paper, we played these games and had some laughs. But Baby Boomer was the first really exciting idea. Initially imagined as a Game of Life/Monopoly style of game – rolling dice and progressing around the board to absorb a morality lesson – we quickly junked that form and moved to a modern style. Hence Baby Boomer is based around making choices in constrained environments where each choice impacts all others, but with enough fun and a touch of chance that the game remains light and playable and allows the real content of the game to shine through.

That content comes from our love of games and our misgivings about certain aspects of contemporary life. We don’t claim to have the answers, but we do think that laughing while talking is a good start. We want to make games for our time.

We also want our players to enjoy streamlined mechanics that allow both fast-paced play and meaningful choices that create storylines that resonate with their own lives. This means that we work hard to make games that are inclusive, and that we have characters that mirror the society we actually live in. For us this means Australia – a contradictory place made up of people from all over the world.

Ryan and I stuck our heads together and played and played the game, ideas rose and fell, until we had a working prototype made from styrofoam and cardboard.

Then we needed a designer. Ryan asked his friend Mike, designer extraordinaire. A man who has not only hand-animated the TV weather for Channel 7 but wrote and directed the Star Wars fan film Star Wars Downunder. Mike liked the game and so Fat Rain Games was born. We also learned an important lesson – ask for help from people who know what they are doing! Thus Mike got his mate Pete Mullins to do our illustrations – that is Pete Mullins who worked on From Hell….by ALAN MOORE!!!!!!! And I brought in Cormac Sheehan from Purpose Communications, who has kindly led us by the hand (and built this webpage).

We have three games planned – with your support (and a little luck), we will crowdfund them into existence.

Thanks for your support and interest.