The American Football Board Game

I am looking for funding to raise awareness of an American Football Board Game that plays like checkers or chess. I will eventually give up my copyrights and patents to the public domain because games like chess, checkers, and this game should belong to everyone. We also plan to donate many game sets to schools, prisons and rehab centers because it builds the mathematical side of the brain like chess, while having fun playing football, which everyone can relate to.

I remember a documentary about a teacher in Harlem who started a chess club. He took students from an under-funded inner city school and took them to the national championships (I think it was called Brooklyn Castle). You can tell by listening to the students speak that they were well prepared for college and society. I grew up in Brooklyn where most of my friends were the sons of mafia gangsters. It was a tough neighborhood and my friends and I were not on a good path. I can definitely say that I was rehabilitated into becoming an honest member of society by studying math. My interest in mathematics started by playing backgammon and then chess.

So far, the feedback of this "football-chess" game has been mostly positive. The only criticism we received is that it is too difficult to play, too much like chess. It is true that the game requires intensive thought at the pro-football play level. However, the Amateur (beginner play level) rules are simple enough for anyone to start playing within 10 minutes of opening the box. This video explains all you need to know to begin playing the game at the beginner level:

The first 10 to 15 minutes explains all the rules you need to know to start playing using beginner rules. You can continue watching to see a complete sample beginner-level game.

After playing at the beginner level, you will want to include more rules to advance to the college play level, and eventually, the pro-football level.

We want to encourage young people to play this game and even start their own business. They can profit by 3D printing the parts and customizing them for their favorite teams, and sell them directly or from our website(s). They can organize game contests, playoffs and championship games and receive a commission on follow up sales.

I've perfected this game over a 40 year span, since 1983 when my college team, the Miami Hurricanes (please do not hold that against me) won the football national championship for the first time.

I believe that the best way to get people playing the game is to start where the game began: in schools and college campuses. We will also be giving away the game to influencers and hiring individuals via sites like Fiverr. Every penny of the funds raised here will go towards getting people to play the game. We are currently getting quotes from companies like American Eagle, Constant Contact, GoDaddy and individuals on Fiverr to help us market the game.

We need another partner to manage our social media and marketing. We decided to start crowdfunding campaigns because, well, first of all we spent all of our savings to get this far, plus, even if we don't raise any funds, at least we'll gain some exposure. We decided not to ask our friends or families to donate because we want to see if we can make it by using online resources alone. It's been 2 weeks and we raised $0.0 so far. Our combined college GPAs average 3.8 so this experiment will also see if 3 relatively intelligent people can learn how to get noticed on the internet. Right now we feel pretty stupid.

Try reading about things like: Google Analytics tracking ID, Google Ad Tracking, Google Adwords, Conversion ID, Conversion Label, Remarketing ID, Facebook Ad Tracking, Facebook Pixel ID, Facebook Verified Domain.

We were able to design and manufacture the game board which is for sale now (on mazadia.com/shop). One partner (Isaac) was able to convert my drawings and sculptures into 3D files (.step, .stl). Another partner (Andrew) 3D printed the parts. His house is filled with 3D printers, and together we can make about 400 game sets a week.

We need to recruit additional partners or hire professionals for the next stage of launch, marketing. I was able to reserve key social media websites (facebook.com/mazadia, instagram.com/mazadia, many others) for the startup, but when it comes to social media, we have no idea what to do. So we plan on finding our next startup cofounder from the first players of the game.

If we find marketing partners from this campaign but do not raise any money, that would be considered a success.

You can find more information about this game at https://mazadia.com

You can watch videos of sample plays at https://mazadia.com/sample-plays

We are offering a chance for anyone to become a partner in this startup. We need a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) partner. Right now, you can help us market the game simply by emailing your friends or posting links to our website, post on your social media pages, sending links to influencers, or by contributing to this campaign. Simply send out this link:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/american-football-board-game

If you or someone you know is a social media expert we can offer cofounder status for the startup and sales commissions for each sale. Please email us for more info.

The beginner (or amateur) play level is designed to be learned in 10-15 minutes. It relies more on luck with some strategy. The college-football play level requires more thought and strategy and relies less on luck. The pro-football levels require a lot of brain power, similar to but not as difficult as chess.

You can play it with your friends, classmates and other students on campus and even make a profit in the process. We just want more and more people to play the game, and we'll sell the game for no profit just to get more people to play the game.

Our goal is to get people to play it once. Once they play, they'll be hooked. It's a lot of fun... after all... it's FOOTBALL!

If you're interested please email us (info at mazadia.com) to join the team.

You can use our player piece designs or create your own. If you create something very original, we will add it to our website and sell it for you. For example, we've created checker-style pieces which come with the board. We have chess-style pieces which customers can buy separately. They are abstract shapes that have helmets and the football has a base that fits over the helmet. We did not create sculpted player pieces yet, which will look like miniature football players. If you can create them before our graphic designer has a chance, we will sell yours as an option. Our graphic designer is busy with the baseball, soccer and hockey game pieces right now. We may have a design contest for the sculpted pieces.

We want to create a whole community of game players who can take part in in the manufacturing, marketing and selling of the game.

Our mission statement is to be fully transparent with our player community. Perhaps you might want to organize a playoff contest between players, email us and we'll sponsor it. If it results in sales, then you would receive a commission.

Anyone who shares in our vision can join the startup with no financial investment. Our interest is to gain traction before going to angels, venture capitalists and maybe even appear on "Shark Tank" on TV.

Of course once the game becomes popular then we will not be so generous. Everybody wants to be in business with you once your business shows signs of success, but when you ask for investors at the beginning, it's sort of like those old western movies when everyone closes their shutters and locks the doors before a gunfight.

You can watch the game being played in the "Sample Plays" section of the site (mazadia.com/Sample-Plays). You will see how we customized some of the boards and game pieces with colors and decals of our favorite football teams.

Currently we are selling the game with red, white and blue colors. The white color game pieces allow you to customize the game with your favorite team colors.

So please donate to our campaign for a product that will encourage young kids (and adults) to play a game that builds their brain power.

More Details:

So far everyone who has played the game loves it. Most people are amazed at how they can execute any play that they see on TV. After the Superbowl, my phone kept ringing with calls from friends and testers to say how they just saw the plays they made up when playing the game last.

Most people who watch football casually have enjoyed playing at the college-football play level. People who understand football plays (like coaches) want to play at the pro-football play level because it is a more accurate simulation. The pro-football level requires a strong knowledge of football plays and almost no luck. The average football fan will want to start at the beginner level and gradually add college football rules to make it more challenging.

If you read the full set of rules on our website (mazadia.com/rules) you can see how much thought was put into every corner case.

We will release baseball, hockey and soccer versions once this game is launched successfully.

I've been working as an engineer my whole life, but my passion is designing games. When I hit my 50th birthday I realized I want to leave the world something. I've been hoarding all these game designs my whole life. I then decided to build them, and give them to the world.

This game board is a football field divided into a 13X18 grid and fits on a standard coffee table. It represents about 1/4 of a full football field. You can tell by the size of the endzone and the players that it is just less than half the length of a regulation size field and about 1/3 across.

Once I write the AI software, I will be able to scale the field up to any size. This board is sufficiently large that most plays you see on TV can be made on this game, but it is restricted to 9 player pieces, because we're using 2 dice and the size of the grid field.

Once I program the rules in software, people can play "against the computer" for practice online. We will have leader boards, playoffs and even a Super-Grid-Football bowl. I will also be able to test the 9X12 grid version with rule variations, so that I can release the small grid version. It will be as small and as mathematically balanced as chess, checkers or backgammon.

We can even scale it up to a full-size field and let the software play 2 teams against each other thousands of times a minute, which will allow fantasy football players to utilize the simulation.

Ultimately this will be the look of a new kind of classic game. A simplified football field with mid-field at the 10-yard line.

There's chess, checkers, backgammon and now there's:

"Grid-Ball" - The new American Football Board Game

This version of the game allows people to enjoy playing Grid-Football similar to chess. Games are much quicker but you can run or pass just like the current game. I tested this version and it appears to work, but I'm not confident enough to release it yet. For this version, I will need to program the rules and let the AI software play itself millions of times until the combination of play-level rules are perfect.

This version can be played on a small area just like chess or checkers. I spent 40 years designing the current board game because I wanted it to be perfect. The current version was well tested by humans, but to make this small version perfect, it will need to be thoroughly tested with software, millions of times.

The current version is now available for sale on the website, Mazadia.com.

Mazadia Games launches Grid-Football

Note: There is no game like this on the market. If you read the full set of copyrighted rules at mazadia.com/rules you will realize why nobody has been able to make anything like it. There are several soccer games which are similar in concept which are big sellers in Europe, but American football is a much more complex game.

Backstory:

What started as a simple idea became an obsession. I wanted to make a game that plays American Football. It turned out to be a challenging task so I kept at it every couple of months or years. Now that it is perfect, I want the game to live forever. I will eventually give up my copyright rights and make it public domain, especially the small 9X12 grid field. I hope to see people play it on park tables the way chess is played now. All you need to play is a football field divided into a grid, a few player pieces for each team and 2 dice.

I started in 1983 when my college football team (UM) won the national championship in spectacular fashion. I was working in my work-study job at the computer lab. Part of the job was handing out those old-fashioned wide printouts that had white and green rows on one side. I used these rows as a basis for the game board which is a standard football field.

I was able to come up with the passing play rules in the first week, but it turned into a complex puzzle when it came to manipulating (blocking and pushing) the linemen so a running back can run "up the middle". Over the years, I would re-address that issue along with the many other challenges to creating this game. One day about 10 years ago I came up with a rule governing the blocks that made everything fall into place. It was a weird feeling. Have you ever worked on a major project for a long time and when it was finished you were surprised that there were no more things on your TODO list?

I manufactured a prototype and demonstrated it to my friends. They thought that although it is a fun game, the rules are just too complicated for the average person. They said it was almost as difficult as Chess or Go. I spent another year or so to refine the beginner (amateur) rules that allows anyone to start playing within 10 minutes of opening the box. I also found a happy medium in the college football play level rules.

The beginner rules rely more on luck than the next play level. The full set of detailed pro-football rules are great for people who want to play a very strategic game with no luck. And for the average person who loves football and wants to play a challenging version of the game without straining their brain, they will most likely enjoy playing at the college-football play level.

Anyone can start playing at the beginner level after spending 10 minutes learning the basic rules. As they want more of a challenge they can advance to the college-level rules, and eventually move up to the pro-level.

Once this game is well known I will build my baseball, hockey and soccer versions. I have about a dozen games I designed over these many years, but this one is for sale now at mazadia.com. It has been thoroughly tested for the last 5 years.

The challenge ==> nobody knows it exists.

We need to make an online footprint. We need to gain traction and then you will probably see us on the TV show, Shark Tank to expand further.

The best place to gain traction for a game like this is exactly where the game started, on college campuses.

But to be honest I have no idea how to spread the word... maybe I'll run naked with the game box in my hands through the first NFL game next season, and by the time I get out of the hospital, everyone will be playing the game.

I need help marketing this game to people who love football, love games, and want to give it a try. Since students do not have much extra money, I came up with several ways they can make parts of the game themselves and start their own business selling or giving them away.

They can get the boards and boxes from us for a discount, 3D print their own game pieces, add their college team logo decals and customize game pieces with their team colors, and they can make a profit.

Picture your favorite team logo here and other areas of the game.

Start your own business in your college or community with no startup costs. In fact, I'm hoping to find an enterprising person who can figure out a more inexpensive way to make the quad-folding game board which is the game's biggest cost. I'd like to transition from crowd funding to crowd manufacturing and crowd selling.

We made chess-style pieces which look more like people where the ball has a base that fits over the helmet of the players. The chess-style pieces look better, more like people. However, the checker-style pieces played better during testing because you can slide them around the field easily with your finger or even a pencil. Anyone can purchase the Chess style pieces and even the sculpted player pieces later.

I have a partner (Andrew) who has a small business. His house is filled with 3D printers. Together, we can handle up to several hundred sets of game pieces a week. When we reach that threshold, we will approach VCs. It is impossible to get seed financing without a successful sales history (traction).

If you donate a certain amount to this campaign, we will send you a game set and new pieces as they come out. You can see for yourself that it is an easy game to start playing at the beginner level and the rules are robust at the pro-football level.

I am currently making and posting videos on the company site, and you can see how easy it is to play. You will also notice how much I desperately need to hire professionals to edit the videos.

You can look at the images of sample plays on our website, watch the videos, or download the rules without contributing to this campaign or buying the game. If you are impressed, you can become part of the the startup Mazadia Games.

I want to make the world a better place with this game. It will help people improve their brain power by playing it. I envision someone leaving prison with a stronger, more disciplined mind from playing this game at the expert (pro) play level for several years. I often daydream of someone telling me it helped divert their attention from taking drugs or the pain of withdrawal because playing the game at rehab was so engaging that time just went by.

Back story on "Mazadia" name:

My mom's name is Maria Rosaria and my father would call her Mazaria (rolling the 'R') for short. It sounded like "Mazadia" to her friends, so that became her nickname. Her friends have been calling her Mazadia since she came to America many years ago. As a present I bought the domain name, mazadia.com and wrote "Happy Birthday" on the website, as a present. But then when it came time to renew the domain, I realized that it is a good name for a company because it stands for something.

You see, everyone loves my mom. She helps all her "church lady" friends with their computers and everything else. She teaches them how to use their email, put their photos in online albums and share them, sell stuff on eBay and all kinds of stuff. She is a very good person, honest, earnest and everyone loves her.

For example, when my wife was pregnant, she only had 3 friends in America. My mom threw a baby shower for her and over 30 ladies showed up who only knew my mom. We had so many presents we did not need to buy anything to prepare for the baby.

I had an idea of an online business where I can connect trustworthy and knowledgeable people to help other people navigate the complexities of the internet and life. The service would be well-known for the one place that everyone knows you can trust.

For example, you can have one main advisor who has access to many intelligent people who would provide more advanced help. These people would be vetted, similar to the way the government vetted me for a secret clearance. For example, they called all my friends and family and almost everyone I know.

We would connect people with a trustworthy advisor who has access to knowledgeable advisors. For example, your main advisor would be the only one with your very critical information like your bank passwords. The information will be kept offline somewhere in America on some trustworthy person's handwritten notes.

That main advisor would have access to all of these experts, but only the main advisor has access to your critical info. I figured the company's mission statement would be that everyone in the company, especially the main advisors, behave like the original "Mazadia", who is now over 85 years old, and still active with her friends, church and community. Time-permitting in my life, when I finish making all the games, I may start this service.

That service is a great idea but getting it started became a monumental task, but I kept the name and the mission statement. I want everyone to know the Mazadia name is a trustworthy company. For example, that is what gave me the idea to split the profits with enterprising young people who can design new pieces, 3D print the parts or organize events.

With that in mind, I want you to know that every penny contributed will be spent towards spreading word about this game, a game that players will enjoy while it builds brain power. We will keep profits to a minimum and incorporate more and more entrepreneurs to participate in this game and the ones to follow.

Thank you for your time,

Dino Mario Perrotti

Become part of:

"Grid-Football" and our startup - "Mazadia Games"

The game is available now at mazadia.com.

You can watch videos of sample plays at https://mazadia.com/sample-plays and read the rules here: https://mazadia.com/rules.

Become a Cofounder of Mazadia Games startup by:

Help us market the game by sending links to this campaign:

Become a partner by:

(college or Pro-football)

If you can manufacture a game board and game box for less than $22 each, please email us to join the team immediately.

Scan to donate. Please forward.

Longer story (BIO):

My father would like to quote philosophers, Shakespeare, and others at our Sunday dinners. As a kid I would often argue with him about topics. One day he got frustrated because he felt I was not taking his advice, and he brought up the quote, "Youth is wasted on the young" by George Bernard Shaw. His point was if I listened to him and other wise adults then I would live a better life.

That quote stuck with me, and I would pay attention when adults advised me about life. I would also pay attention to people just a few years older than me to absorb their new wisdom.

Everyone advised me to go to college and become a professional. For example, there was this very tough, well-respected guy in the neighborhood who taught me gymnastics on the beach. He was just back from Vietnam and had that thousand-yard stare. Someone in Coney Island installed high bars and parallel bars on the beach. I would practice moves like the "Giant" where you would spin round and round the high bar. He gave me advice which was kind of a privilege for a 12-year young kid. People feared him because he had a "tough guy" reputation, but he was good to me. He didn't talk much but one day the conversation was about my future. I don't remember what I said. I just remember him saying, "Don't be like me... you should study hard and go to college... make something out of your life". That was a surprising response, and it had a profound effect on me.

There was also sister Joan Marie, a nun who took a special interest in me. One day I was writing the glossary of the science book on the convent stairs for detention. She walked outside and said, "One never knows who one will find on one's front porch". She noticed that I was writing the definitions from memory, and said that I could amount to something if I applied myself. After all, that was about the third time I was writing it and she was the one who sent me to detention each time. I don't remember why she sent me that time, but I was always causing trouble in the back of the class. My favorite trick was to hit the bell with a paperclip using a rubber band 2 or 3 minutes before it was about to ring, so everyone would jump up and get ready to leave, and she would have to stop them and assign the homework. She would send me to detention a lot but even as a little kid I knew she was just encouraging me to study harder. Besides, I enjoyed writing the glossary of the science book. Maybe that's why I love watching documentaries so much.

Even the mafiosos who would come to my family's weddings, big July 4th parties and other events would tell me "don't be like me... go to college", as they would slip me a hundred dollar bill. My grandmother would always show up out of nowhere to take it from me and hand it back to them, speaking Italian to them, something like, "with all respect, don't encourage this one".

The problem was we lived in Brooklyn, and all my friends were juvenile delinquents. I must admit it was a lot of fun getting into trouble and doing risky and dangerous things. It's hard to explain but it was the ultimate freedom to do anything you want. I would make up all these dangerous games like playing roundup without touching the ground. We would jump from rooftop to rooftop, often with a drop of hundred feet or more. We used to sneak in to the back of the police precinct, and release all the police dogs into the high school basketball courts. We thought it was hilarious watching everyone run up the fences. I didn't think of the consequences until one day we were playing basketball and I was nearly bitten when some other kids released them on us. We got it a lot of fights with other groups of kids for no reason, and there didn't seem to be a path to college for me.

One time the police rounded us up and called our parents. That night we made a little campfire in the street just to keep warm, but we put it out before moving on. There were no charges, but they knew we were up to no good and they called our parents to pick us up. We were at a small local police station. My father took my brother and me to the main precinct where the jail was. He argued with the guards saying something like, "If you don't let me put them in jail now, you will have to deal with them later!". Finally, they agreed, and he threw us in a real jail cell. I remember the stainless-steel sink/toilet combo and depressing cell clearly to this day. He took us out in about 15 to 20 minutes, but it felt like a million individual seconds.

We moved to Florida when I was 15 and without all my fun, crazy delinquent friends around, I finally decided to buckle down and study. After going to every summer school for extra credit for 3 years, I made it into honors calculus and physics class by my senior year. I was able to bring my GPA up over 3.5 so I was finally on the road to getting into college and making something out of my life. I was looking around at all these weird kids around me. I remember thinking that these are the kinds of kids we would throw off roofs into tall bushes in Brooklyn if they were scared to jump 5 feet from one 4-story building to another.

I enjoyed physics and calculus. I always wanted to learn the meaning of life and I realized that chemistry, biology and physics uses advanced mathematics. That inspired me to learn more... but there was a problem.

The more I learned, the more I started to daydream. I was designing games in my mind. It's sort of like there were 3 people in my head; the top guy is my present conscious self, then there is the crazy delinquent that thinks freely and then there was this new guy who is the serious mathematical logic guy.

It is sort of like my favorite movie, "Planes Trains and Automobiles". I was talking to 2 sides of me, the fun, crazy, creative me (John Candy or Del Griffith) and the serious "do the right thing" (Steve Martin or Neil Page) me. It can also be described as the left-side and right-side of my brain. I think that the more my left-side grew the more my right-side wanted to grow. I felt somewhat repressed being the serious guy and I really enjoyed being the creative me, thinking freely and creating new ideas, new games, new inventions, new movies.

Finally, one day, when my mind started wandering during calculus class, I told the creative me to "stop daydreaming and focus on the class or you'll have to catch up on your own time". Here's the weird part, creative me said, "Back off! This is what I want to do and don't stop me again!". So, I made a deal with myself, I told serious me, "...just let us wander when we want and we'll catch up with the class later".

We didn't know what ADD or OCD was back then, but I had both, and they were battling each other for control of my mind. So, I got into the habit of living a serious life and when my mind wanders, I would return to thoughts of the same games and stories in my head, and further develop them.

When I was in college I started to design a football board game. Throughout my career as an engineer, I kept going back to it, refining it in my head until it was the perfect simulation of an American football game on a game board.

Next I will write an AI software version of the game so people can practice "against the computer", and it can also play against 2 teams and be applicable to fantasy football players. My senior project was an AI program that plays Othello (Reversi) and it beat the Windows version at the highest level at the time. Now my life is coming full circle where I will program the best game ever invented... FOOTBALL!

I went to college to become a professional because I listened to what all my elders suggested I do.

Do you know what you should tell young people to do now? Tell them to become an online marketing expert.