Alex and Whitney Kimerling reveal why now’s the right time for Hootenanny’s first licensed game

Alex and Whitney! Welcome. Respectively, you’re the President and Chief Creative Officer of Hootenanny Games. I wanted to do a Brands Untapped chat with you because of your game SIXEM – now with a Sour Patch Kids license!
Alex: Thanks for having us, Deej! And yes… Sour Patch Kids is our first licensed game so it’s great to talk about it.

And on that: why is now the right time for SIXEM to be a licensed title?
Whitney: From the start, SIXEM had all these great, bright colours! So quite early on, we looked at it and thought it would work with a candy brand. Plus, the original gameplay has this fun sabotage element to it… So when we talked about it, we quickly thought of the Sour Patch license. It looks and feels like a match for the personality of Sour Patch Kids: colourful, lovable, fun, mischievous… It seemed like a no brainer to pair the brand with the game.

Yes, I can feel that – and it does look like a great execution; really cute.
Whitney: Thank you! And from a brand perspective, Hootenanny is a bit of a new kid on the block. So for us to be able to come out of the gate with this license was important for a lot of reasons… Not least of which was that we wanted to bolster brand recognition for Hootenanny Games.

So you had the idea you’d go to Sour Patch. And did your background help with that, Alex? Remind me what you did before…
Alex: Before Hootenanny, I was at another game publisher. The most recognisable games we created were based on the Home Alone movie, the TV painter Bob Ross, Kenny G… We also made the Carpool Karaoke game with James Corden. That was a big one for us! There were quite a lot of licensed products there.

And looking at your own portfolio, do you intend to add more licensed titles?
Alex: We don’t anticipate being license heavy, no. We want to sprinkle licensed products into our line up when they fit our brand and fit our goals. We want our consumers to love the games and love whatever licenses we choose as well. And that means picking the right brands and then maybe adding one branded title every so often.

Great answer. And I sense that values are very important to the two of you… So what are you looking for in a brand partner?
Whitney: Well, I think it’s very important to us that the brand is something fun but evergreen. It’s not likely to be an emerging brand for us.

Alex: Right. We want that steady incline so that the games we create do better and better year after year. That’s our goal… We’re not trying to come out of the gate and then sell all the units we’re ever going to sell in nine months. That’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do! And we want to build up over a number of years and create a sustainable company. So we’re after smart sales – not every sale.

Love that! Excellent… Thank you, Alex.
Whitney: Yes – we want games that appeal to a wide range of people. And that’s the same type of thing that we would be looking for in a brand partner. Sour Patch is a great example… My seven-year-old loves Sour Patch Kids – but so does my friend’s mum – and she’s 65! We want partners that span the generations in a really fun way.

And in terms of SIXEM itself, what’s the elevator pitch for that?
SIXEM is fast-paced dice bingo – with a bit of sabotage too!

Oh, good pitch! Everybody: read that twice! That was great; I love it. And did you have to change the game very much to make it Sour Patch related?
Whitney: We changed it a little because we really wanted it to feel like it had that theme at its heart. And, of course, we wanted to bring in the design of the Sour Patch Kids to the actual components of the game. In terms of gameplay, the biggest change is that – in the original SIXEM – you can erase things from other people’s boards. That’s the sabotage element I was talking about.

Right! But in the new version?
Whitney: In this version, you have to choose between being sour or sweet. So I can mark an X on somebody’s board to be sweet and help them on their way to their dice bingo… Or I can erase something from their board to be sour and keep them from winning! So it’s got this fun push and pull element to it. We also had to add a fifth player so that you have all five Sour Patch Kids available in the line up.

Love it. It looks gorgeous… It’s adorable!
Whitney: Isn’t that cute? And if you turn those boards around, you’ll see we had to design the backs of them to be aSour Patch Kid’s booty!

Ha! Mesmerising!
Whitney: Ha! Little did I know part of my career was going to be having serious conversation about what a Sour Patch Kid’s behind looks like. But here we are!

Ha! I bet you’re glad it did, though! Alrighty… We need to wrap it up. Let me ask you one last question… What’s the one question I could’ve asked you today that I didn’t?
Alex: You could’ve asked us what a hootenanny is! But maybe you already know…

Oh! I thought I did! Is a hootenanny not a party? A lively party? Especially in Scotland?!
Whitney: Right! It’s a lively gathering with music and sometimes dancing…

Alex: And in your neck of the woods, that’s Scottish? Are Scottish people the only people that have hootenannies?

It’s the only context in which I’ve heard it! I didn’t realise you had hootenannies in America! I thought it was exclusively Scotland!
Whitney: Well, it’s just such a fun word, right? I mean you can’t help but laugh when you say hootenanny!

Oh, I agree! It’s just never occurred to me that it was beyond Scotland – it’s a very Scottish sounding word… “Hootenanny!”
Whitney: I love that accent! Can I record you saying that? You might become my ringtone, Deej!

Me saying hootenany in a Glaswegian accent?! I’d be delighted. Next time our paths cross, Whitney, that’s the plan!