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81 | A New Era of Gaming Where Women Lead and Minds Thrive

• Ladies First Digital Media Company • Season 5 • Episode 81

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Discover the unsung heroes of the gaming world as we sit down with Lynn Potyen, the mastermind behind the GameBoard, to celebrate Women's History Month. Lynn shares her journey in the industry, shining a light on trailblazing women who are reshaping our approach to board games. 

Tune in for a riveting exploration of how board games are more than just leisure; they're a lifeline to brain health and social bonds. As we reminisce about the classics and navigate the resurgence of board gaming across generations, you'll be inspired to look at your next game night through a fresh lens—one that sharpens the mind and fortifies friendships. This episode isn't just a homage to female entrepreneurs—it's a call to bring joy, connection, and mental fitness to your own table.

Tune in as we discuss:

  • a French study that links board game play with reduced dementia risk.
  • the huge increase in women-focused games as well as women leaders in the game space.
  • how games helped her son develop and build confidence after his diagnosis with dysgraphia. 


Connect with Lynn Potyen:
The GameBoard website=  https://the-gameboard.com/
StoryCorp story about Lynn = https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/mindy-baker-and-lynn-potyen/
Book What Board Games Mean to Me = https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/What-Board-Games-Mean-To-Me/Donna-Gregory/9781839082726

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, happy Women's History Month, happy March. Today I want to just give you a little reminder that, as it is Women's History Month, don't forget to go out and support your favorite women-owned business. There are many of them all around in every town. Speaking of women-owned businesses, I'd like to give a shout out to our two contest winners. Both of them have won a free month of ads on you Bet Ya, she Did. We have Asia Dorr, who is a brand strategist. She's amazing. She's originally from Alaska, now in Wisconsin, and she is an expert at helping you develop your brand. She actually was on the podcast too in early January, so check out her episode. The other contest winner is Rebecca DeQuesnoi of Serendipity Cut Flowers. She is a sustainable flower grower in southeast Wisconsin. She does flower subscriptions, she does bulbs, she does the world's most beautiful amaryllis. I have bought those from her before and I love them. They keep blooming all winter long. She also has an amazing cut flower garden, so stay tuned. You'll be hearing ads from those two amazing women. Those are two great women to support among many.

Speaker 1:

Our guest today is Lynn Potien. She is the owner of the Game Board, a game store in downtown Sheboygan, wisconsin. Lynn is going to talk to us about a lot of things, including why games are great for your mental health and your brain health. She's going to talk to us about how the world of gaming and game boards has expanded to include women. When she first started 17 years ago, women were just a small faction of the game board industry and it's just grown since then, and also how game companies are starting to manufacture more and more games with women protagonists. She also has some great recommendations of games for a women's game night. So stay tuned. Here we go. Did she really do that? You, betcha? She did Hello and welcome back to you, betcha. She Did the podcast where women entrepreneurs, leaders and changemakers, especially from the great Midwest, share their wit and wisdom. I'm your host, raina Rikiki, and today in the studio I have Lynn Potien, who is the owner of the Game Board, which is a really magical store in downtown Sheboygan, wisconsin. Lynn, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to get to see you face to face.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely Now. I grew up playing board games. A couple of my favorite. I love life, especially when I was little. I love trying to like plan out my life, map it out, and I also really love just traditional card games and RummyCube. Rummycube is one of my all time faves. I wanted to ask you what are your top two favorite games and why.

Speaker 2:

Okay, this is the deepest, darkest secret about Lynn Potien that you will ever learn. I don't have favorites. I know I'm, though if you bring out a deck of cards to play Rummy, I am here for it. I play poker, but, like, as far as board games are concerned, like they change so much that I don't have a tendency to like have one favorite because they kind of like just evolve and keep going. I happen to adore werewolves and I love a bunch of different publishers because they always come out with something unique and cool and I'll like, I'll like really get down with a specific publisher because they like have a tendency to go in a direction I like to go for brain health.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, yeah, that's cool. Okay, that's good to know. I guess it would be hard to narrow it down, especially when more and more really neat games keep coming out.

Speaker 2:

I think we get, on average, I think there's like seven new games a day that come out in a year.

Speaker 2:

So that's crazy, it is, it is a lot that we have to wade through because we're doing, we're trying to go through them and cultivate which do we think is going to be the best one, or which one do we want to bring in for our customers, or which one can we use for this kind of a development, and so we do a lot of that custom in our own back house area. Our staff goes through all sorts of things. We read them up and look, we look at the art, we look at the publisher, we look at how, how dependable the publisher is and whether or not we can get their products over and over again, because we don't want to put a lot of effort into something that's just like a flash in the pan and we're never going to get it again. I hate to like give, I hate to sell disappointment, so I always want to make sure it's something that I can like stand behind personally before I'll put it up on my shelf.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was kind of one of my questions. You know you had the game board the store for 17 and a half years and I was wondering about the trends you've seen from when you first opened the store to now. Like how has the game board industry changed and what direction do you think it's going to go in the future?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's been. It's actually been super fantastic to watch it for the last 17 years because we have seen a huge development in with a female perspective, with women focused more. 17 and a half years ago, if you went to a convention or you went into a game store, there were maybe one female presence In the bathrooms at conventions. We all know the story right. You're a woman, you go to the bathroom. There's a line. I go to conventions and I can just walk in and take any seat three or four times before anybody else walks in. It's such an odd change in environment because in the last 10 years now there's more and more of a line. I'm so excited to see more women in our industry who come into the bathrooms because there's such great conversations happen in that private space where you're not out on the floor, where there's other people to hear you and you can really let those walls down and be like.

Speaker 2:

I loved that game. Did you see this one over here? It has been super good. I'll be heading to the Game Manufacturing Association Expo in a week and a half. A couple of years ago we started doing a women in the gaming industry breakfast. There was 15 of us that showed up every year. Last year it was 60. This year the game industry actually believes in us and they're paying for our breakfast and there's 200 seats. It's just an eye-opening, fantastic feeling to know that we are being a respected vision in this industry.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, without a doubt, especially, like you said, there's no line at the bathroom and all the games are more male-dominated, and now you can start to see this shift coming about, that's awesome.

Speaker 2:

You see it in art, you see it in the style of play, you see it in the collaborative games, the cooperation, the communication games, like role-playing games. There's like critical role. Critical role has taken the world by storm and if you've seen the Critical Role show, it is literally men and women who are married to each other, voice actors and friends that start doing a role-playing on the internet. Now it's a whole group of people that folks will download and watch their show. They're just sitting around playing a role-playing game, but they're doing it in character. Now they're wearing costumes and they're interacting with each other as if they're their own characters. So it's super fun.

Speaker 1:

Now speaking of games too. I know playing games and also just interacting with people in general is so good for your brain health, and I know you're a big advocate of brain health and the elderly. Talk to us about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it technically started out as brain health for my son because he was the reason I started the store and from there it grew into learning disabilities, to aging disabilities, to cancer and severe health problems and how our brain becomes isolated and then we see a lack of solid thinking abilities in our brain. It can be as simple as neglect in your childhood and your brain is doing that fight-or-flight response too long and so your short-term memory isn't working right. So you're building up a different portion of your brain, and so playing board games gives you a safe place to develop a different portion of your brain, and I always recommend that if you're really good at speed games, you should try resource development games. Or if you're really good at memory games, then try something where you're trying something opposite that there's so much out there, and when we play a game we developmentally help ourselves grow and become a different entity. And it's so simple because it's just a fun thing. Right, it's fun, we want to have fun and we want to play, yeah, and so we're building memories, we're building health, we're building social engagement, we're interacting with each other, and when we're talking about the elderly especially, I work with the dementia care network of Sheboyne County, and so we are part of the Alzheimer's Association, dementia being the umbrella organization for Alzheimer's and Alzheimer's being one of the pieces to that.

Speaker 2:

So when you're playing board games and you have a health problem like dementia, your brain is decreasing, it's declining, it's like going back in age, and so, as you are progressing through the disease, you are forgetting colors, you're forgetting numbers, you don't want to be touched, you don't have a good memory, and so board games are a gentle, soft way to like, interact with the loved one who's going through this and get them to try something new. Also, though, equally good for the caretaker, because the caretaker is stuck every day in the situation. It gives their brain a break, it gives them a chance to relax and try to have a different memory moment, try to build a different memory instead of focusing on well, this isn't the way my loved one was. Let's just meet them where they're at, let's meet them here and let's play a game that they're capable of here. There's a study that was done out of France. It's a cohort study, and they followed a city of people for 20 years and all the people who played board games and brain health games, card games, anything like that dice games if they did it on a regular, they had a 15% less chance of getting dementia. It's the only study out there that gives you such a giant increase in brain health. So it's fantastic, right, it's fantastic that we have the ability to say specifically this is good for you.

Speaker 2:

And so when we look at board games and card games, a lot of times we see it from our childhood. Right, we were talking earlier about your favorite, which was the Game of Life, which has been around since the 1800s, and the game has progressed with time a little bit. Right Now we have cars and blue and pink people and stuff like that, and the cards have changed and they've developed it to make it more to today's standards. But a lot of games from that time period are lost.

Speaker 2:

The Victorian games are lost because we went through a time period where we had the World War II and we lost the resources to build games, and then when we got back into playing games, the biggest well-known games were Monopoly and Life. And then we had the age of TV, and so a number of our game companies started doing commercials and they focused on games for children. But games prior to that weren't for children, they were for everybody, and in Europe they're still for everybody. But here in America we had this area from 1960 to 1990 where there was Saturday morning cartoons and Yep, love those.

Speaker 2:

Right, I totally remember them. Yeah, and children were given these really fantastic, exciting commercials to watch because they wanted you to stay in the show, they wanted you to stick around. So they made these commercials just for children and they really focused on children. Games are for children, children, children. So we have this 30-year window where there's a generation of people who heard that message and they thought games weren't for anybody but kids. And then we come back again to no, games were for everybody. And the European-style games start coming in in the 90s and the 2000s because of the internet, okay, and then Settlers of Kataan comes onto the plane in the beginning of 2000 and because there is Settlers of Kataan is brought over from Germany. It changes the entire map here in the United States of how games are seen and developed.

Speaker 1:

And so I was gonna say that was a fascinating historical game, the games. Like I never realized it, but as you were saying it, I was like that's so true, because I grew up in that era where it's like games are more looked at for children. But I still love playing games, yes, and something's in my head I have that feeling like when I even though my friends like playing games too, but when I'm like let's play games, it feels like we're being kind of childish but we're not, Cause, like you said, they're for everybody and it's super fun and they're better, like, they're the best way to keep your brain healthy.

Speaker 2:

So as you age, you don't lose your mental awareness. Like, ah Right, I know if he wants that. And because, like right, we go, we get out of school and we go into work and unless we're doing like a resource management style job, we aren't really doing memory. We're not doing resource management, we're not doing all these different pieces. But that's what's on games and when we're learning, right, we're learning to do research, we're learning to do resource management, we're learning to have memory, so we remember what we just learned and we're not doing that. And so we have this like 30 to 40 year time period in our lives where some people aren't doing those things and their brains are declining that whole time. But the people who are playing games are still learning, they're still trying to like do all sorts of stuff. So I try to encourage people like if you don't, like, if you have somebody in your family doesn't like playing games, it's probably because they had a bad memory or they were told they shouldn't play games. So it's important to like, rebuild a memory or explain to them why they should be playing games, like because most adults are pretty logical and they go oh, that's it, yeah, I'll play.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I grew up on Monopoly. That was like that was. The only game we had was Monopoly mystery date. That was my sister's game. I wasn't allowed to touch it and she was eight years older than me so she was like no, you can't play that, that's my game. There was a ghost game, the green ghost. I loved the green ghost game but like that was a game I could only play with a sleepover because it had to be played at night, in the dark and so then it became Monopoly.

Speaker 1:

And that was just Monopoly, oh yeah, it's like when I guess who I loved Clue. Clue was so fun. I would have loved to have played it.

Speaker 2:

I know, but then at least he was spinned and he opened my eyes to like so many more games in the 90s and I was like, oh, this is cool. Like I can get behind this. Here's the stuff.

Speaker 1:

I need. I liked what you were saying before about you know being intentional with the games you choose, like you were saying, like if you always do things with memory, try these longer term resource games. If you do more research, try memory, cause I hadn't thought about choosing a game with like a strategy in mind for brain health. So that's fascinating and I'm sure if people went to the game board, that's something your staff could help them out with. Like hey, I'm looking for these types of games.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we try to have relationships with all of our customers. So we want to hear, like, what do you like to play? We'll find something for the first couple of times like similar, but then we'll try to direct you like, hey, you've been doing this, let's go in this direction. Why don't you try this one? And if it's Uber uncomfortable, let's investigate. Why is it Uber uncomfortable?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, let's dig into that a little bit and see what's going on. Well, I realized that recently you contributed a chapter into a book called what board games mean to me. Talk to us about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So last spring I was contacted. There were 28 of us worldwide who were asked to participate in this. It's a wonderful book that was edited out of the UK, and so I mean we have Reiner Kniecia he's an amazing game designer. Matt Forbeck he's here in Wisconsin. He's a role-playing game designer. We have John Kavalec he's also from Wisconsin and myself which is really odd because there's three of us actually from Wisconsin and it's a worldwide piece. So that was like a super cool thing for Wisconsin to like woo got three chapters. John Kavalec is a incredible illustrator and he does a lot of the artwork, for if you know Munchkin, steve Jackson games, he does a lot of their artwork, beautiful pieces. So this came across.

Speaker 2:

I was asked to write a chapter about my specialty, which is the brain health, and it goes into depth about what we just talked about, about the aging and elderly, talks about, excuse me, people who are playing games because of cancer. Talks about children and disabilities and speech delays and things like that, and how to help your the people in your family to develop and grow. And it doesn't have to be just for health, right, because it's fun. We play games because they're fun, but people don't understand, I think that games have a health perspective that we don't talk about because, oh, that wouldn't be cool. And so when I started 17 and 1 1⁄2 years ago, it was because I was doing this for my son. He had a severe speech delay.

Speaker 2:

Then, during the gameplay, one day we found out he was colorblind. After that we had a customer come in and she was describing a learning disability that she thought her son had, and I was like, wow, that sounds just like my child. And so she pulled up the information and, sure enough, my son is dysgraphic, which, if you've heard of dyslexia and you're reading in the word swim, dysgraphia is the same thing, except it's a written word. So the information goes in your brain, but then it can't come out properly. So your brain will trigger a word, maybe that your eyes see as you're taking notes. So when you get into high school and college it becomes even worse, because you can't write for very long without false information going into whatever you're writing or notes, and so you can't trust yourself to read your notes, to study, and that self-gaslighting. That's huge right. You don't want to do that to a child.

Speaker 2:

So we had to navigate through the Schwoenere School District to get an IEP that would talk about dysgraphia and to get teachers who would give an outline of what they were going to talk about so he could fill in blanks or he could take a note to the side and he could study that. It helped him immensely. He went on to LTC, got an associate's degree and a year ago he finished a bachelor's degree at Whitewater and he's a computer programmer. So it's helped a lot. He has great. He in fact is the one person in the house you don't want to play a game against because he always wins. Noted For Christmas. He gave his dad a Christmas gift. He said I will give you I think it was three or four free wins in a game over the next year.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's nice. It's like a handicap. Here's your handicap If he's free, wins that I am crushing you.

Speaker 2:

At any time in the game. You can hand one of these in and I will automatically be defeated and you can win. It was the funniest game and he was afraid it was going to come across as being arrogant. I'm like oh my god. No, eric, you're the least person you could be arrogant.

Speaker 1:

It's more like Charlie than honey. Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you for sharing that story and just how games have impacted your son and helped out, because it's great, I love hearing stories like that. Yeah, before we head out, I wanted to pick your brain for two different game recommendations. One game recommendation would just be for a family game night maybe something that people don't know about, but you're like, this is an awesome game. And then another recommendation for if there was a group of women getting together and having a game night, what would you recommend?

Speaker 2:

I love that you put me on the spot like this and I can't walk out to my store and take a look at myself. I'm coming for you after this. You know, and here's the thing right it's so hard to come up with a game for a family, because what's family?

Speaker 1:

Are they?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know in what ages are the kids 20, or the teens, maybe a five-year-old and a 12-year-old, Like that's. The kind of thing we try to do in here is let me answer this, maybe a different way. When you come into our store, our games are set up in different categories, so like we are of a children's section, but the games on the bottom shelf start from two to four because they're at their eye level yeah, I love that. And then we go four to six because it's at their eye level, and then eight to 12 because it's at their eye level. So we try to set it up like how tall is your child, your grandchild, and then how can we meet them here? Right, that's the first thing. And there's so many great games. I love memory, labyrinth games, hobba games are fabulous. And then, like one of my go-to favorites forever and ever and ever, has been Castle Panic by Fireside Games.

Speaker 2:

Castle Panic is like an eight-year-old's game, but we, our kids, played it when they were like five and ten. You know they played it in that age range. It is actually the game we were playing when my son was diagnosed with color blindness and when I told them that my son was having a hard time. The next generation of game that they created. This is 15 years ago. The next generation they created had color blindness, specific cards Because they realized they hadn't done that Like. That's what I mean by like great companies that like adapt their game specifically because they see a need and they're willing to like do another print run to, they go that extra mile. Yeah, yeah, fabulous.

Speaker 2:

So Castle Panic it's cooperative, it's fabulous. You are fighting, you're in the castle in the middle and you're fighting the monsters as they come and attack the castle in the center. It's such a cool game, such a cool game, Castle Panic. And there is a kid. There is a preschooler version called my very first Castle Panic. So there's two different versions. And then Girls Night Out. Once again, it depends on who the girls are. I know, right, who's the girls.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just think like just something like we like to play Rummy Cube, we like to play cards, but if there's a game where you're like oh yeah, this one's really fun and more people should know about it, you know what?

Speaker 2:

Now you're seeing my evil side. A little Halopagos. You are shipwrecked on a desert island. Your boat has crashed. You have resources and you have to gather water and food. One water, one food every day so you survive. But you also have to be building a raft and you have to be helping everybody else survive and you're trying to get off the island. It's cooperative. It's collaborative, but at some point you may have to like get rid of somebody who's not playing nice.

Speaker 1:

Who's not no?

Speaker 2:

who's not getting sick all the time. Maybe they need to go. So survivor it's a little bit of a survivor. I think it's a really fun one to play with a group of women, because you'll see a different side. We did this with an admin group, mostly women. It was actually one man in the group. They were admins for a senior health facility. They were just the administrators. They were having to, like they run their own facilities all over the state of Wisconsin and they had to get through. The game of Floppy goes is the only time in my entire existence of playing this game with groups of people that the entire group made it off the island alive, wow.

Speaker 1:

They were administrators.

Speaker 2:

They ran the gauntlet. They were like, okay, you go do this, you go do this, you work on this, you work on this and they work together. And they got off the island. I know it can be done. So, yeah, like it's such a whole like way to like investigate who's going to work together, who's not.

Speaker 1:

I'm intrigued for sure. Lynn, thank you so much for being on the show and talking to us about games and brain health and getting some awesome game recommendations. If you're interested in checking out the game board, I will have it linked in the show notes and send downtown Sheboygan, wisconsin, a wonderful place to be. Your homework is to find a friend, a sibling, maybe a parent, and play a game and then tell us about it. Let us know how it went. What's your favorite one? We would love to hear about it. As always, if you like what you're hearing and you betcha she did don't forget to share this show and, as always, take care.