July 25, 2024: Questions Three: Darryll Silva

If you've been part of any of our crowdfunding campaigns in recent years, you've almost certainly witnessed the administrative handiwork of Project Manager Darryll Silva. If you've picked up our releases in other venues, the odds are nontrivial you've benefitted from Darryll's expertise and attention to detail. And if you've been on Slack and received a questioning ping about interesting ideas to make available for fans, you might be me – Steven Marsh – proofreading this post.

Darryll graciously took the time to answer some queries from me for this latest iteration of Questions Three.

Project wrangling of the sort you do involves a lot of spinning plates but can seem pretty invisible from the outside. What's the most interesting part that customers would only notice if you weren't doing it well?

Well, gee, interviewer, way to put me on the spot here. ;)

I think that I have had the great opportunity to help and learn about different aspects of the business throughout my time here, but I'm still only one person and the whole team here is what makes this [flails wildly] actually move forward and turn into something cool that we can share with everyone. The plates keep spinning because we are often all helping to spin each others plates to keep them balanced.

You worked tirelessly behind the scenes on the ultra-successful Munchkin Big Box BackerKit campaign. Any cool moment or anecdote from that campaign you can share?

This is going to sound kind of mushy, but oh well. I think the coolest part of it was reading through all the people discussing Munchkin and the Big Box on social media and sharing their stories and experiences. All that positivity and emotion really helped to reinforce why I've been in gaming and entertainment for over 20 years now.

You've helped shepherd big projects and campaigns for Car Wars, Munchkin, The Fantasy Trip, GURPS, and no doubt others I've forgotten. Is there anything interesting you've found different about the vibes across them?

Your question prompted me to see how many projects I've touched in various ways now, and it's close to 90 crowdfunded projects, from small dice projects to large heavy boxes full of Old School Roleplaying, T-shirt campaigns, and more. I think the thing I've noticed most in my time behind the scenes on all of these campaigns is the returning backers who show up for so many of our projects across our various lines. You may not think we see you, but we do, and it's not something that goes unnoticed.

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To keep abreast of all of Steve Jackson Games' crowdfunding efforts – where you'll no doubt witness Darryll's ongoing handiwork – check out our Kickstarter page and our BackerKit page and click the handy "Follow" buttons on both.

-- Darryll Silva, interviewed by Steven Marsh