Andrey “Reynad” Yanyuk, the founder of the esports organization Tempo Storm, recently announced his secret project, The Bazaar, a digital deck building game, via an Indiegogo crowdfunding page.

While Reynad was traveling across the world doing his IRL streaming, he hopped on a call with myself to talk about the game’s competition (or lack thereof), his motivation to see this project through, how his childhood helped inspire the idea, and much more.

You posted the crowdfunding video a few days ago and you’ve already raised over $40,000 (now over $55,000) with multiple individuals donating $1,000 single-handedly. What has been your initial reaction to the support?

Honestly, I’ve been blown away by the reaction of the community. They’ve been incredibly supportive and it’s exactly the kind of reaction you dream of when you show anything creative publicly. I’m just blown away. I knew this was the kind of game I wanted to make but I wasn’t sure if people wanted to play it. Based off the feedback I’ve been reading and the response on the Indiegogo, I feel like we’re really on the right track and that’s the most reassuring part of it.

Where did you come up with the name “The Bazaar”?

I’m good at game design and I’m good at balance but the thing that I’m not good at is the theme or flavor of a set. I’m not a writer. I can’t creatively come up with a universe that is rich and deep with lore that’s good for a game. So when it came to designing a game, I wanted to make sure that the theme or universe would be something that was broad enough to scope any card I wanted to design. I wanted to make sure that if I wanted to make a ridiculous kangaroo card or archeologist card or time traveler card or whatever bizarre thing, that it made sense in the universe of the game.

It’s one of the freedoms you have when you’re not limited to a single IP like World of Warcraft. The game uses a lot of money as a resource instead of mana so I think trading made a lot of sense. There’s a merchant class that was a natural fit so I started thinking about, “What kind of universe could all these different types of characters, classes and people be found in?”

An intergalactic bizarre bent around trading made a lot of sense. Money is a thematic element in the game. On top of that, if I made the planet that The Bazaar was on kind of an intergalactic pseudo-futuristic environment rather than something that was like only medieval or only futuristic, it gave us the broadest range of types of cards we could make.

One of the first folks that we hired to do some storyboarding came up with that. The bazaar was an option for that and you could find all of those races and classes.

For me, it was a natural fit. When I grew up in Ukraine there was a bazaar right under my apartment building stretched out for like a mile, that’s where I went grocery shopping. I’ve always liked the word and it just made sense. I deferred to the judgment of others when it came to the universe and storytelling element of the game.

How long has the idea of creating your own card game been rolling around in your mind for?

The idea of making a card game has been rolling around in my mind since I first picked up card games when I was 15. I really like creative outlets and I really like making things whether it’s producing video content, making a game, building a company or streaming. It’s the kind of person I am, I always have to be making stuff.

Through Tempo Storm and what it became, I came to a point in my life where I had the resources to take that risk and invest in that kind of project and see if I am qualified to execute on a project that big. For me, it was a no-brainer.

I think I make a damn good game and I figured let's just do it. I’m not the kind of person to wait around for all the perfect pieces to fall into place. I start something as soon as possible and improve it and polish it up as the time goes on.

“I wanted to make sure that if I wanted to make a ridiculous kangaroo card or archeologist card or time traveler card or whatever bizarre thing that it made sense in the universe of the game. It’s one of the freedoms you have when you’re not limited to a single IP like World of Warcraft.”

I bought on Amazon a bunch of blank playing cards and Sharpies and as soon as they arrived, I had a few hundred cards designed and a game engine and a game that I thought could be kind of fun.

I hired some devs to start building out a digital version of that for a demo and we moved quickly on that.

What was the moment that this idea of a card game became very real to you to where it wasn’t a hobby and you were going to go for it?

The moment that it felt real was when I decided to go for it. Ordering $50 of blank playing cards and Sharpies is not exactly a big investment but the first time I had to actually make a payment to the devs that are building out the demo, that’s not a small chunk of change, right?

Watching them put it all together and agreeing to a contract made it feel very real and for me to see the project through.

What’s motivating you to see this game through to the end? Is this a financial play/end-game? A “Can I actually do this?” move?

For me as an individual, I value the power of a brand around a person. Brands 20 years ago came in the form of a logos and now they come in the form of people which is why things like influencer marketing is taking off.

As good as Tesla and SpaceX are as companies, the Elon Musk brand, for example, is worth a lot more than both of them combined.  The combination of that, and me always having been an ego-driven person for-better-or-for-worse, those two things mean that the cost of failure is incredibly high.

It’s very high risk, high reward. If the game takes off and it’s executed the way that I envision it, it will reflect well upon my personal brand which matters a lot to me. If the game goes to shit or I mess up or get lazy halfway through, there’s a lot of accountability on my shoulders.

I’m very forward-facing as a CEO and if I don’t deliver, that really hurts my personal brand which is my long-term goal is to be building that career-wise.

Are you worried at all that you’re entering what is perceived to be an oversaturated market with the premise revolving around a digital card game?

A lot of people bring up the over-saturation part and a lot of those people, as soon as they hear the word “card” when it comes to describing a game, they file it off into the same category as Hearthstone, Gwent and all these other card games.

The truth is, cards are some of the oldest types of games human beings have been playing on the planet. The category has as much depth as first-person shooters. The same way that I don’t think that Overwatch and Doom necessarily conflict is kind of the same way I don’t think The Bazaar and Hearthstone conflict. Even though they’re both games with cards and decks in them, the gameplay is so fundamentally different and the audience I’m going for and the end-product is totally different that I don’t think they’re comparable.

In my eyes, I’m not really competing with Hearthstone, Artifact, Shadowverse or these other card games. I’m competing with nobody which is why I decided to make the game. There’s no digital deck-building game that utilizes the digital format, they’re all just tabletop ports right now.

You emphasized in your trailer video that you’re very against the pay-to-win model. Talk a little about that as you decided to go out of your way to mention it?

I’ve been in the trenches of [the] card game world for most of my life now. At this point, since I first picked up card games, about 12 or 13 years now, that’s just a common theme I’ve been hearing from people around me.

The fans, the players, whether professional or more casual players, the cost element of card games is something that is very off-putting for a lot of people. So, when I made a game, I wanted to fix the biggest problem if I could, at least in my own little bubble. The pay-to-win or pay-to-play model is the number one complaint when it comes to card games. To have this massive up-front investment that allows you to play a variety of decks you want to play is very off-putting to people.

“It’s very high risk, high reward. If the game takes off and it’s executed the way that I envision it, it will reflect well upon my personal brand, which matters a lot to me.”

From my perspective, I wanted players to feel like they weren’t at a disadvantage from their first game because someone has invested more money than them. I think other genres like MOBAs have already proven that a cosmetic monetization system can work as a business model and I think it’s ridiculous that nobody has tried that in a card game yet.

How big is your current design team and how big can you see it getting in the near future?

Right now we contracted a team that already has the engineers, artists and everyone in-house under them to build a demo. I did a very short-term contract with them to develop just the demo of the game which is basically something that has a rule engines, it kind of shows the framework and is polished and plays well but it’s far from a final build.

As we’re nearing the end of that demo towards the end of the month, I’ll be building out our own in-house development team which is going to be something that I build out myself over a period of time. I guess right now there are technically zero people working on the final build of the game but there is a large team working on this demo section of it.

I’ll be in the weeds of that hiring process over the next couple of months and it’s something I’m no stranger to, having built it with Tempo Storm so far.

Why go through the crowdfunding phase when some may assume the CEO of a company would be able to fund it himself or not need additional outside revenue?

There’s a lot of reasons. First of all, the cost to actually bring a mobile game to market is pretty significant, at a minimum it’s $1.5 to 2 million dollars. Tempo Storm just doesn’t have that much liquid cash. It’s not like I have the option to pay out of pocket.

The second reason is, even if we hit that $150,000 or $200,000 goal, that’s 10% of the actual cost to make the game. The money is not the reason I’m doing this fundraiser, it’s far from the main reason. The reason I’m doing this is because I wanted to put something in front of the audience that’s going to be playing this game as soon as possible. I wanted the fans and those interested in this game to be giving input in the earliest stage as possible. I wanted their input as soon as I could have it and I wanted to gauge interest in this category. I think the crowd-raising accomplishes all of those things.

At the same time, in the long run, we might even be losing money, right? A lot of people contributing to this game might have been playing it anyway and they’re getting in-game currency at one-third of the price of the market.

“I think other genres like MOBAs have already proven that a cosmetic monetization system can work as a business model and I think it’s ridiculous that nobody has tried that in a card game yet.”

For me, it’s not a cash grab as it’s a drop in the bucket cash wise. It’s a way for the community to get involved early and making sure that they’re part of the game design process all the way through.

With the amount of time you spend running Tempo Storm, doing your IRL vlogging across the world, etc., where does The Bazaar fit into your priorities time wise?

A lot of people ask me that question, investors included, and the truth is that any project I start or any element of our business that I build from the beginning with scalability in mind and with the idea that I can take a step back from it and focus on other projects.

What that means is, when it comes to the esports side of things, I built out the staff and infrastructure in such a way that I can step away for months at a time if I need to and work on other projects and Tempo Storm will be just fine.

If I need to step away from the production side of things, I’m going to be just fine. The whole thing with production is the tech and the team and the staffing behind it, it’s not me. The host is interchangeable, the channel that it’s on is interchangeable, the theme of the show is interchangeable, we can change all that stuff. Building out a team is my main focus because as soon as that’s ready, Reynad as a placeholder can be moved out and we can put in more entertaining people and do more entertaining shit.

The way that I’ve built every business I have is in such a way that I’m not this crucial point of it that needs to be at the heart of it at all times or it’ll fail, it’s very much modular. If I were to take a step back from Tempo or take a step back from IRL streaming or just not stream for months on end to give The Bazaar the focus it needs, the way I run my businesses allows me to do that.

I don’t feel like I’m being pulled in 20 different directions to work on things, it’s autonomous under the Tempo Storm umbrella.

How would those who work under you whether it be your investors, business partners or contractors describe what it’s like working with you?

That’s a good question. When it comes to other people speaking about you, the most telling lines are how they speak about you when it comes to how you handle the hard times. Because we haven’t had those conflict moments, I can’t say whether I’m good or bad yet. I will say that I have a very clear vision of what I want for the game and I’ve been very articulate and anal about communicating my wants.

I want to make sure there’s no ambiguity about how I want something to look and how I want the end product to feel. I try to be understanding of developer limitations when I can but I think the main feedback the devs would give of me would be that I have a clear vision and I’m vocal about how I want things done and when and in what way.

How much money have you personally invested in this game thus far?

It’s more than the goal of the crowdfunding, for sure.


To wrap things up, can you talk a little about the creative design behind your entertaining video unveiling The Bazaar?  

We’re just lucky to have an incredible production team at Tempo Storm and between the folks handling the IRL portion and the folks up at Hollywood who handle our esports production, they’re some of the best in the industry, period.

When it came to the Indiegogo video, the script and the layout of it and even the editing all came down to Doug [Wreden]. He’s the same guy who ran the Trinity Series for ESL on Twitch for Hearthstone and is an excellent Executive Producer on absolutely anything we put him on.

Simon, who films the IRL stuff we do, and Devin, they came out and filmed it for us and got excellent shots. Between the two of them, it was an excellent team and they made a great video and people have been really receptive to it. We got rewarded for a great production team.



Any final words for the supporters who have backed the game so far and those who are awaiting a finished product someday?

I’m just blown away by the reception we’ve had and I’m going to do everything I can to make this game the best it can be because I have so much invested in it. I would love more feedback.

I think if people are going to be active like on /r/PlayTheBazaar, for example, and post things that they are thinking about the game, especially the bad stuff that they think I can improve upon, that’s what I want to hear. I want to hear complaints, I want to know what people aren’t happy about. I’m not saying I’m going to cater to everyone one of them but I want to be sure that I’m listening to people’s perception of things.

At the end of the day, that’s what matters most is how people feel about the game. If they feel bad about the game, they’re not going to play it.