He’s Got Game

Former Pictionary owner and his wife develop new game together

LIFE IS ALL FUN AND GAMES

– literally – for Upper Arlington resident Richard Gill and his wife, Catherine.

The couple, who have been married for three years, share an office in their UA home as well as similar career paths.

Since his 20s, Gill has been creating and marketing board and card games for both kids and adults. Gill is British and is glib, always smiling and happy when talking about his life’s work.

As a youngster in London, his home on the site where the Olympic stadium is being built, Gill was the “family game organizer” whenever they gathered. One of their standards was charades, but his personal favorite was Escape From Colditz, an English prisoner of war game that Gill says would never be successful in the U.S.

As a young adult, he worked in various businesses, including one that made mimeograph machines. But he found his calling when he joined Sans Serif, license holder of Trivial Pursuit in Europe. The company sold 4 million games in 1986. The next year, the company stationed him in Barbados to orchestrate international sales. After three years, Gill became a partner in Pictionary, Inc., and marketed it worldwide.

“We had no idea what we were doing,” he says. The game eventually was printed in more than 30 languages in 50 countries until it was sold to

Mattel in 2001. Initially, Pictionary had 2,500 words – 500 of them hard, 500 easy and the rest “in the middle.” It’s no longer that expansive, he says.

The popular family game became the basis for a 1997-98 network television quiz show that Gill produced – and for which he received an Emmy nomination. It aired 192 episodes with Alan Thicke as host.

When the game was sold, Gill was living near Boston. He invested in Sababa Toys, which, among other things, created more than 25 licensed versions of the card game UNO – including such titles as The Hulk, Muppets, Care Bears and Peanuts. Recently, Gill helped create licensed versions of the Etch A Sketch featuring Hello Kitty and the Simpsons.

In Gill’s various capacities as marketer and game developer, he travels internationally to game and toy shows to promote games or ideas. He recently went to Australia for a game show and sold two games to be put on the market there.

It was during his travels to Chicago in 2004 that he met Catherine McMillen, an Ohioan who was with U.S. Playing Card Co. in Cincinnati as a traveling sales executive. Gill approached her about a UNO product, but she didn’t like it. The game “was not good enough for our market,” McMillen said. It “needed a game board and other elements to make it fun,” including better quality cards, she told him. They never did do business, but remained friends, Gill says.

Catherine, a spirited woman who also had marketed Rubbermaid and Coleman lanterns, became senior vice president of sales and marketing for Top Trumps USA, a branch of a Londonbased company.

The Top Trumps card game is played somewhat like the popular “war” that uses standard playing cards. Each game – and there are many – has a topic with a related picture on one side and statistics on the face. Topics include the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, a game that features animals. Each card has the same kinds of information, such as the animal’s weight or amount of food it con- sumes daily. Before a card is played, the contestant picks a category. When each player has placed a card on a pile, the one with the highest number in the chosen category wins.

Gill says board and card game sales have been stagnant in recent years, but are not dropping, despite the rise of computer and video games.

Now the two are developing their own game, their first together. “It’s called Name, Say, Do!, a fast-paced game of quick thinking and memory,” Gill says.

It asks questions, many of which may be obscure, and requires fast answers. The couple pasted together a prototype package and created other parts of it in their basement. They expect it to be sold first in Sweden.

In their shared office with large windows overlooking a treed yard, shelves are lined with each boxed game with which Gill has been involved – including original versions, such as UNO. Catherine has an array of each Trumps game she offers or has marketed.

Gill’s small company is NH Contract Management LLC, with an office in Las Vegas. He is there sometimes for business but generally travels elsewhere. Gill, 54, hasn’t shown much interest in slowing down, although he doesn’t go to all the marketing shows offered around the globe on staggered schedules that are not conducive to his attendance. They might require hopping from Europe to Japan to Chicago to Australia in consecutive weeks. Attending all is not necessary anyway.

But he’s not complaining. “I haven’t worked since I was 28,” Gill says, and Catherine corroborates.

“We’re both big kids,” she says.

Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at laurand@pubgroupltd.com.

By Garth Bishop