To organise the world’s game data
and make it useful

In mid-2022, founders John Brent and Eric Poulin decided to start recording the games they played. Their first instinct was a spreadsheet, but it had to be easy to enter results with dropdowns… and formulas… and pivot tables! At first it was very simple, letting you choose a winner and keeping a tally. This quickly got more complex as they added more and more things to track.

It was soon that the penny dropped… there’s definitely an app for this! A quick search found a handful of apps that seemed to do what they were building. Though as good as some of these apps were, there were some opportunities missed.

Their spreadsheet allowed either of them to log a game from their phone in two taps and for it to be immediately shown to the other. None of the apps did this. The spreadsheet also had dropdowns pre-built with relevant information for the game they were playing. Again, none of the other apps had this for all the games they wanted.

The scoring breakdown in 7 Wonders, the factions in Root, the scenarios in Betrayal at House on the Hill, and “how do these two expansions work together!?” could all be captured, made available as interesting data points to track and easy scoring. Having games played by friends all show up on their phones in real-time and personalised stats immediately available could be made possible.

Partnering with co-founder Eli Labes and then Chalene Scott, the team started talking to game players and building what would become Aftergame.