Published with permission from The Enterprise

Salt Lake City, UT - September 24, 2003 - Brigham Young University graduates Jeremy Young and Matt Molen were in town last week to launch a new board game aimed at the LDS market, "The Settlers of Zarahemla." It is the first of several strategic games aimed at the Christian market by their Inspiration Games brand.

Although the company now is based is Seattle, the business partners met when Young hired Molen as the first employee at his high-tech startup, VServers LLC, a Utah County-based Web hosting company he eventually sold to Micron Electronics for more than $50 million in December 1999. An evening spent playing board games, which Young used to loathe, saw Molen introduce his boss to the 1995 Game of the Year, "The Settlers of Catan," which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.

"I immediately fell in love with the game," said Young, who just as immediately saw the business potential. Ironic, since "I always told myself I was never going to go into an inventory-based business. The Web-hosting business was nice - we were selling air and charging people's credit cards every month by hitting a button on a computer."

To date, Inspiration Games has invested $150,000 adapting the mechanics of "The Settlers of Catan" for the LDS market. "The Settlers of Zarahemla" borrows its setting from The Book of Mormon, the major canonical work for the LDS Church. As part of a tribe in ancient South America, two to four players gather and trade resources in order to build up civilizations and a temple in the land of Zarahemla. Players also must beware of the Gadianton Robber, who will occupy their lands while stealing essential resources.

The new game will be available for purchase everywhere LDS products are sold, including Deseret Book, Seagull Book and Tape, the BYU Bookstore and online at www.ldsliving.com beginning the first week of October.

"We predict that we'll be able to sell 100,000 copies in the next two or three years, in this particular market," Young said. "What's great about it, too," he added, noting the popularity of strategic games, "is we could probably sell 20,000 or 30,000 copies in the secular market in that time frame as well."

Inspiration Games is one brand of Uberplay Entertainment LLC, whose principals include Young, Molen and Guido Teuber, whose father designed "The Settlers of Catan." Under the Uberplay moniker, the company will release mainstream games like "High Society," while Inspiration will target the Christian market with "Zarahemla" and, set for release in November, "The Ark of the Covenant," based on the 2001 German Game of the Year, "Carcassonne."

Uberplay released several titles this year, with another 10 planned for 2004. Inspiration Games will release another two to three titles next year, Young and Molen said.

Ultimately, Young said, the goal is to take board games to a new level in America, where most board games are bought as gifts, played once, then sit on shelves. Meanwhile in Germany, board games are a billion-dollar business, he said.

Said Young: "What we want to do is do it right, and do a business out of board games. And to try to have the success that Germany has in the largest consumer market in the world, which is the United States."