Tabletop Opportunity Strategy
Evaluate the property, audience, category fit, price points, formats, and licensing opportunities to identify where tabletop can create the most value.
For License Holders
Put your IP in play.
Best in Play helps entertainment companies, brand owners, creators, and licensing teams turn intellectual property into tabletop products that feel authentic to the property while making commercial sense.
One experienced partner from opportunity through execution.
90+publisher relationships represented across our team’s experience
Millionsof tabletop games sold by products created by our team
30+crowdfunding campaigns managed by members of our team
Your brand should become a game, not just appear on one.
The best licensed tabletop products start with the property itself: its characters, conflicts, humor, world, audience, and reasons fans care. We build outward from those strengths instead of forcing a familiar game system underneath a logo.
Services for IP owners
Use us for one piece of the process or as your outsourced tabletop games team. We can help define the opportunity, find the right partners, develop the product, and support the path to market.
Publisher & Designer Matchmaking
Connect the right IP with publishers and designers whose capabilities, audience, distribution, and creative approach fit the property.
Licensed Game Development
Concept creation, designer direction, prototyping, playtesting, rules development, product refinement, and creative oversight from idea to approval-ready game.
Crowdfunding Strategy & Management
Plan and manage crowdfunding programs designed to validate demand, activate an existing fanbase, and create a launch moment around a tabletop product.
Publishing & Production Guidance
Support partner evaluation, manufacturing decisions, schedules, component scope, cost targets, retail positioning, and the practical realities of getting the game made.
Fractional Games Leadership
Add experienced tabletop leadership without building a full internal department. We can coordinate projects, partners, approvals, schedules, and product pipelines on your behalf.
You own the world. We help determine the best way for players to enter it.
Why Best in Play
Creative judgment backed by commercial experience.
Our team combines game design, licensing, crowdfunding, manufacturing, retail, business development, publishing, and operations experience. That lets us evaluate an opportunity from more than one angle, while keeping creative ambition connected to the realities of the market.
Property-first design
Mechanics and product choices begin with what makes the IP distinct.
Partner-neutral advice
We can help identify the best path rather than forcing every opportunity into one publishing model.
One point of coordination
Designers, publishers, manufacturers, and campaign partners can be managed through one experienced team.
Built for approval
Concepts are developed with brand standards, stakeholder review, schedules, and licensing realities in mind.
Work with us at the level you need.
Some partners need a great publisher introduction. Others need an entire games function. Our role can expand or contract around the opportunity.
Find the right opportunity.
Portfolio review, category strategy, product recommendations, partner evaluation, deal-path guidance, and introductions.
Build the right product.
Creative briefs, designer selection, concept development, playtesting, product refinement, approvals support, and publisher-ready materials.
Run the tabletop initiative.
We can function as an extension of your licensing or product team, coordinating development, publishing partners, crowdfunding, production, schedules, and launch.
From IP to playable product.
A straightforward process designed to protect the property, reduce wasted development, and surface the strongest commercial path early.
1
Understand
Audience, brand pillars, approvals, goals, constraints, current partners, and commercial priorities.
2
Identify
Determine the best tabletop formats, price points, channels, and potential publishing or crowdfunding paths.
3
Match
Select designers, publishers, production partners, or campaign resources that fit the opportunity.
4
Develop
Create, playtest, refine, document, review, and prepare the product for approval and market.
5
Launch
Support licensing, publishing, production, crowdfunding, retail, and continued line development as needed.
Built for properties with something worth protecting.
We understand that a licensed product has two jobs: it has to be a good game, and it has to be a good representation of the IP. Neither is optional.
EntertainmentFilm, television, animation, gaming, streaming, and character-driven properties.
CreatorsCreator-led brands, digital personalities, communities, and fan-first properties.
ConsumerBrands looking for meaningful tabletop extensions, promotions, or experiential products.
PortfoliosLicensing teams evaluating multiple properties and deciding where tabletop belongs.
Have an IP that belongs on the table?
Send us the property and what you’re trying to accomplish. We’ll start by helping identify the most promising path.