Case Study: Magic Table Trailers for Experiment 7

As part of the founding team at Experiment 7, several members of Dark Arts Syndicate contributed to scrappy trailers and marketing collateral for the Magic Table board gaming platform. We helped build the initial partnerships, raise the funds, and ship the games themselves. Our first one was Magic Table Chess:

DAS Art Director John Gaertner held a similar role with Experiment 7, working on concept art, marketing art and UI design. “Magic Table Chess was our ‘prove it’ game. This was how we showed that a board game platform could work in VR and it turned out awesome. Players loved the environments, the core interactions landed great, and we had a blast putting together a tight marketing campaign to get the word out.”

Following a successful launch on all major VR platforms (PSVR, Steam, PCVR), we adapted the core engine behind MTC and brought the Dungeons & Dragons world to life in concert with the wonderful folks at Wizards of the Coast:

“Shipping anything with the D&D license is a pretty high pressure endeavor. You know how much people love that IP and you want to get it right. The cool part was that we got to make a super well-known location - the Yawning Portal tavern - in 3D, which no one had done before.” Gaertner said, wearing a sorcerers robe despite not being part of an active D&D game or LARP session.

With our platform stood up and multiple games shipping on it, we rolled out our biggest release yet - Catan VR, a VR version of the classic board game:

“We pulled together launch trailers, teasers, and all kinds of assets on a shoestring budget. That was big for us in learning how to ship things on time and without scope creep. It’s wild to think what we were able to accomplish with just a few people and a little bit of hard work.”

Gaertner then got back on his mountain bike and launched down a hill, his continuing survival despite a love of adventure sports the darkest of all arts.