About Us

GAME DESIGN

Build Game Box began as a series of local youth game design workshops to learn tabletop and digital game design. After years of drop-in studios, local game hackathons, community maker days and family game design workshops, Build Game Box introduced game boxes to create a game making experience kids and families could create at home. Build Game Box creative kits were born.

Kits were inspired, tested and created in collaboration with hundreds of students of all ages, including our own kids and families. We bring the craft of game making to life in the classroom and at home!

A game design classroom scene with a presenter standing in front of two large projection screens, with children and adults seated at tables and raising hands.

OUR VALUES

Build Game Box aims to make tabletop and digital game design accessible to everyone.  We start with analog and creative process to introduce game design before breaking into tech. 

  • Analog first: lead with tabletop hands on creative activities and ease into programming, use tangible tabletop game concepts to ease into more abstract digital game design
  • Promote growth mindset: engage kids through challenges, obstacles, effort, and opportunities for success
  • Low floors/wide walls: provide low barrier to entry and multiple pathways into game design
  • Scaffolding not recipes: enable exploration of game mechanics without rigid success criteria
  • Creative: encourage breadth of ideas and inspiration
  • Hands-on: take action, jump right into creating, build game concept prototypes now and iterate
  • Play nice: assume best intent of design partners and game players to create a playful environment for others
  • Multiple entryways: many pathways into careers in games, not just through coding...writing, research, promoting, testing and level design each appeal to different types of creators

OUR STORY

After meeting and sharing love of games at Carnegie Mellon, we began our careers building award winning digital games and toys for global game and toy giants like Leapfrog, Zynga and Games for Change.

Along the way, we taught game design to youth of all ages and crafted a unique approach to game design that starts with physical tabletop items.  We know that there are many entryways into making games and want to invite others to explore with us!

We build games for fun!

OUR TEAM

Founders Emily and Erik have four decades of commercial game design experience and observed repeatedly youth and adults engaging in game making and witnessed how engaged and immersed creators at all levels can be with their own ideas. We share a love for making fun and want to bring that fun to everyone!

EMILY TREAT CZAR Co-Founder

Emily began her career making interactive toys and games for LeapFrog and went on to consult on over 200 game projects and delivered award winning games with Games for Change. Along the way, she conducted endless amounts of playtest sessions, maker events, hackathons, playtests and co-design sessions with youth and observed the transformative power of game making.  

  • First game played: Peek-a-boo
  • Favorite game: Original Mario
  • First game job: Associate Game Producer/Designer at LeapFrog
  • Favorite game mechanic: Count-down timer
  • Most dreaded game type: Any thing involving touching
  • Favorite part about making games: Game testing with kids
  • Least favorite part about making games: Descoping
  • First thing coded: Pterodactyls wings flapping 
  • First game published: Pirates of the Caribbean magic compass game for Leapfrog
  • Favorite design tool: Miro for digital whiteboard
  • Best game tip: Always seek feedback
  • Biggest in-game accomplishment: Winning Bubble Bobble (all 100 levels, 2x) 
  • Favorite low/no-code game making tools: Twine
  • Dreaded game roles: Regression testing
  • Dream game concept: Cat gang turf war in the streets: cat gangs get into dance fight competition to win the cat turf wars. Build and train your cat gang to beat the streets!
  • Favorite game design collaboration: Creating games with my 7 year old son

 

ERIK VANBRAGT Co-Founder

Erik began his career making social games for Zynga and was responsible for early development work and game system definition for commercial hits such as Mafia Wars and Farmville. Along the way, he taught game design in the classroom with youth. Now, as a father to three, Erik continues to make and play homemade games at home. 

  • Favorite game: Final Fantasy 6
  • First game job: Software Engineer @ Zynga
  • Favorite game mechanic: Press your luck
  • Most dreaded game type: "Party" games
  • Favorite part about making games: Putting all the pieces together
  • Least favorite part about making games: Too much tweaking
  • First thing coded: Choose your own adventure games in hypercard
  • First game published: Mafia Wars on Facebook
  • Favorite design tool: Pen and paper
  • Best game tip: Don't take it personal, keep trying new things
  • Biggest in-game accomplishment: 100% on Elden Ring
  • Favorite low/no-code tools: Scratch
  • Dreaded game roles: QAing my own work
  • Dream game concept: Kindergarten Adventure Game where each level explores a different part of the kid's imagination over the school year

Contact us