Who said that? Alumnus develops his own card game

By Jason Mount

A Rider alumnus has taken his interest in card games to the next level by developing his own: Quotable.

Matthew Kostinas, ’10, said the idea for Quotable, which involves players guessing the speaker of quotes on the card, came about by playing a makeshift version with his friend and partner in developing the game, John Galmiche.

“Quotable was started sort of by accident,” Kostinas said. “We were often amused by making up fake quotes and attributing them to real people. Then we started playing a game where we would tell each other a quote and the other person would need to guess if it was real or fake. Then we eventually decided to take the game seriously, and Quotable was born.”

According to Galmiche, the basis of Quotable was not very different from what they normally do.

“Matt and I have been creating games together for a decade,” he said. “We would just always try to think up competitive environments for our friends to have fun. Our games weren’t always card-based. We’ve created games with pingpong balls, kitchen utensils and traffic cones.”

Both creators of Quotable shared that the process of creating it was not as easy as it may appear. After sorting through thousands of quotes, the pair narrowed it down to 200 that were “authentic, funny and unrecognizable.”

In order to market the game to consumers, Kostinas set up a Kickstarter for the project to see if people would want to play.

“Kickstarter is a unique opportunity to test the market for your product,” Kostinas explained. “[It] allows you to give a price for your product, assuming you hit a specific goal.”

Kostinas also shared that “backers” of the game, those who financially support its launch, will get to submit their own quote for the game as a reward for supporting the project.

Quotable has already been played multiple times by friends and family members of Kostinas and Galmiche, and both say that it is widely loved.

“We’ve been playing it at every family and friend dinner party for the last year,” Galmiche said. “This game was perfected by so many of our friends, and it really would not be possible without their input.”

Kostinas had the same experience when sharing Quotable with his friends, saying that they “curate the game” with favorite quotes.

“We play it every time we get together,” he said. “Everyone is really excited about the game. For that reason, we’ve been trying to get in touch with friends of friends to try to get some outside feedback. It’s tough to get criticism from people who are close to the project.”

There are already plans to expand Quotable with two packs to add more stylings to the game, Kostinas said. One, the “Party Play” pack, is meant to narrow down the options of who said the quote, while the other, “Adult AF,” contains quotes that have more adult content, in order to keep the main game as family-friendly as possible.

The Kickstarter for Quotable launches on April 16.

Visit the game’s website, quotablegame.com, for more information. 

Published in the 3/27/18 edition.