How to Brainstorm Successful Games
Podcast

How to Brainstorm Successful Games

The counterintuitive brainstorming rule that made Exploding Kittens a global hit

Amantha Imber and Elan Lee
Amantha, 2025
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In this episode of the How I Work podcast, organizational psychologist Amantha Imber speaks with Elan Lee, the game designer behind the record-breaking success of the card game, Exploding Kittens. Lee reflects on how Exploding Kittens made Kickstarter history by mobilizing an existing fan base, designing for social interaction, and turning a simple gameplay loop into a global phenomenon. Lee offers a fresh look at how creativity thrives under constraints, how to discern which terrible ideas could evolve into great ones, and why sellability is as essential as originality.

Summary

Exploding Kittens made Kickstarter history by raising almost $9 million in 30 days.

Game company Exploding Kittens got its start in 2015. Founders Elan Lee and Matthew Inman drew on the large community around Inman’s online comic, The Oatmeal, to launch a 30-day crowdfunding campaign for their inaugural card game, Exploding Kittens. By the campaign’s end, the pair had raised nearly $9 million from some 219,000 backers, making Kickstarter history. In addition to leveraging The Oatmeal’s fan base, Lee and Inman created early engagement by purposely including typos on the campaign’s preview page, which led readers to get in touch to help “fix” the page.

Lee got the idea for the Exploding Kittens game from the Russian roulette scene in the movie The Deer Hunter. Lee identified Russian roulette as a form of gameplay loop — a simple interaction that players repeatedly engage in as they play the game. He adapted the concept to create a card game where drawing the “Joker” causes...

About the Podcast

Elan Lee is the co-creator of the massively popular card game Exploding Kittens and CEO of the company behind it. He co-founded 42 Entertainment, served as chief design officer for Xbox Entertainment Studios, and pioneered alternate reality games with projects like The Beast, developed for Steven Spielberg. Organizational psychologist Amantha Imber hosts the How I Work podcast, speaking with world-class achievers about the strategies, habits, and mindset shifts that underpin their success.

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