GaZima Gets Into The Game

By the time Greg Zima, principal of San Diego's GaZima Games, arrives at the 2008 American International Toy Fair in New York, he will have made his biggest step yet towards becoming a bona fide member of the toy industry.

This month, a journey more than three years in the making pays off with nearly a half-dozen games for retailers to take a chance on carrying available for the first time at several exhibiting game makers. And while for some that accomplishment would be cause for comfort, for Zima, a 34-year-old former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, you're never out of the woods until you're out of the woods—and there are lots of trees at Toy Fair.

“Toy Fair is always a time of anxiety because we'll be bringing some new prototypes and you're bound to see one or two of your ideas, or something very similar, already out there,” says Zima. “From that point of view it can be tough. You can be there and see something already out that you just spent 50 man hours developing.”

At Toy Fair, Zima's first game to market, Zip!, dubbed the “fastest dice game in the universe” and available since last fall at retailers Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon.com and AreYouGame.com, will be nestled among Reveal Entertainment's 2008 roster, while four others—Battle of the Sixes, a dice game; and three vertical strategy games, Gobsmacked, Cahoots and Pull Through—will reside with Montreal's Family Games.

“It's kind of a big Toy Fair coming up for us to see how the games go,” Zima says. New deals continue to come in, he adds, including a just-inked license to Out of the Box Publishing of a new concept. “The [game] we've licensed with Out of the Box is the first in what we see as a series of games. They're paying an advance on that game, which is kind of exciting; they're the first company that's done that.” And Zima will have “eight to 10” new concepts he'll be touting at Toy Fair that he hopes will keep the momentum going into 2009.

“We could show up [to Toy Fair] with lots of good news or we could get a bunch of emails tomorrow that say no thanks, but it's all kind of exciting; it feels like everything's hitting all at once,” Zima says. “We want to keep it growing.” He'll do that by continuing to “look for what's not there” when seeking out new ideas and “following through the best we can,” in dealings with potential partners.

“We try to have really tight prototypes,” Zima says of his company's strengths. “More than anything else we focus on good game play.”

Now with his first games coming to market, Zima says he's “still at the humble point; I'm just grateful people give me their time.” But down the road, he says, “we'd like a breakout game. We're content to create solid game-play games and get them into the market, but if we could get a breakout game in three to 10 years, that would be great. If we don't, and instead have a bunch of moderately successful games, that would be good too.”