A Part-Time Venture Creating Full-Time Fun

hawn Stankewich, along with co-founders Robb Melvin and Molly Johnson, started Seattle-based Flatout Games in 2017. Robb and Shawn lived in the same dorm in college and developed a friendship through playing board games. Molly was already into games when she met Shawn and Robb in 2013. After four years of friendship and playing games, they decided to design their own.

- Natalie Rodriguez

"We just started playing a really heavy Euro game, which is running a board game company," jokes Shawn Stankewich. "We were always really interested in making games...like, everything about making games."

Since its founding, Flatout Games has published or helped develop over a dozen familyfriendly games, many in partnership with other publishers such as AEG, Crafty Games, and Talon Strikes Studios. The company has also designed and published its own award-winning games and partnered with other publishing companies as part of an emerging model for the board game industry that promotes equity as an option for those involved in the process.

"Learning about the industry and wanting to be business people was something we all wanted," says Molly. "We cobbled it together between the three of us."

And if that wasn’t incredible enough, all three co-founders have full-time jobs outside the board game industry. Robb is a business analyst for a trucking company, Molly works in government, and Shawn is a landscape architect.

Learning Along the Way

After the group had some of their game designs published, they decided they wanted to try to crowdfund a game using someone else's design. Shawn met designer Kevin Russ at Gen Con in 2018 and returned with a paper game prototype called Quixotic Quilts. After playing it, the co-founders all agreed it was "the one." Luckily, Kevin was interested in taking a chance with an untested publisher.

The co-founders credit Kickstarter for being able to grow their business. Shawn explained that they would have been unable to publish games without crowdfunding and the gamers who support the gaming community. As Molly puts it, "We understand more pieces. We have some systems and checklists and know what to anticipate, but each project is unique."