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From Xbox Alternative to Global Sensation: The Remarkable Journey of ‘Exploding Kittens’

My little boom boom kitty.

From Xbox Alternative to Global Sensation: The Remarkable Journey of ‘Exploding Kittens’
Randy Meeks

Randy Meeks

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The proposal was simple: a Russian roulette game that instead of guns and bullets was played –for whatever reason– with cards and explosive cats. But you could also screw up your opponents as much as you wanted and have a good laugh in the meantime. This is the story of a small and simple card game that ended up becoming an international phenomenon: ‘Exploding Kittens’.

Exploding Kittens DOWNLOAD
Stay Alive in this Hilariously Explosive Card Game

Take care of my cat, Manuel

Elan Lee, even as a teenager, was a computer genius. So much so that he ended up modeling Jar Jar Binks‘ neck in ‘The Phantom Menace’ and, soon after, became the lead game designer at Xbox, where he helped launch ‘Halo’ and other milestones. And yet he felt he was making the world worse by feeling guilty about making people not talk and laugh, basing his life on a video game: “I started to feel responsible, because I was the one who had put those pixels on the screen,” he said.

So he decided to go back to basics: a card game called ‘Bomb Squad’ in which you drew from a deck and, when you got the bomb, you were eliminated (unless you had a card to counter it). The next step was to contact Matthew Inman, better known as The Oatmeal, a viral Internet hit, who saw the game and thought it was fun but had no soul. It lacked being, well, funny.

What if instead of a bomb, everyone was stressing and worrying about a kitten? A kitten could kill you and blow you into a thousand pieces.” Said and done: ‘Exploding kittens’ was born. But of course, it’s one thing to come up with a game and another to have enough money to get it off the ground. And here comes a basic tool for the day to day of creative people: Kickstarter. If you’ve never had to use it, you don’t know how much stress you’ll get rid of.

Kick and go

In January 2015 the campaign was launched, with the idea of raising 10,000 dollars and having enough money to be able to launch, in addition to the decks agreed with the backers, another five hundred for some stores. One month later they had raised almost nine million dollars with 290,000 backers thanks to a strategy (later copied ad nauseam) in which they turned crowdfunding into a game in itself.

From then until now they have sold 11 million units, that’s a lot to say. Who said that board games didn’t make money? It didn’t matter the anger of some animal groups, the fact that it was similar to others or its extreme simplicity for the most hardcore players: ‘Exploding Kittens’ was such a success that they immediately started to release expansions and special editions.

From 18+ games to zombie variants, 2-player games, including collars, imploding cats, minions or recipes, the world of exploding kittens continues to make millions of dollars. So much so that an animated series is already being prepared for Netflix and the team has grown from two people to more than a hundred in just five years.

Burritos that hurt

And next to ‘Exploding Kittens’, games that have revolutionized boardrooms around the world, such as ‘Throw throw burrito’ (and its variants with avocados and giants), in which you have to throw rubber burritos across the room, ‘Mantis’, ‘Happy Salmon’ or ‘Hand-to-hand wombat’. Originality, a lot of testing and having fun: those are the keys to any board game after all, aren’t they?

Oh, yes: and they have also gone to the digital market with apps, console games, merchandising and much more. Not bad for a simple game of strategy, cats and explosions that started as an alternative to the Xbox… and ended up eating it.

Randy Meeks

Randy Meeks

Editor specializing in pop culture who writes for websites, magazines, books, social networks, scripts, notebooks and napkins if there are no other places to write for you.

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