Steve Jones, founder of Blue Panther LLC (now celebrating its 10th year in the board game business) has been involved with games for a long time. Starting back when disco was giving way to punk and electronica Steve was playing D&D (yes, he does have the original rules, no, it is not for sale) and most of Avalon Hill, SPI and SJGames (too bad Steve Jackson got that cool company name first) titles. Soon after, he founded Blue Panther Enterprises, which ran play-by-mail games where a new turn was guaranteed super fast every week - games like The Final Campaign, Empires For Rent and The Boys of Summer.
Many years later, Steve mixed business (lean manufacturing) with boardgames, which resulted in the formation of the first Print-On-Demand boardgame company. Everything is made in USA (except dice). Blue Panther is a game publisher AND manufacturer specializing in small print runs. The first games he designed Central Pacific, Courtyard and Nepal were all wood-games followed soon by other games from many designers (who later on went to great things in the game industry). Blue Panther makes games, dice towers and trays, and custom components. They also do alot of work for other game companies and crowd-funded games. New games include Meeples To The Mothership and Cock & Bull, with an upcoming zombie co-op Dead Things and an election game: Bull Moose: The 1912 Campaign.
Our thanks to Blue Panther for donating the spiffy custom flat dice for the game design contest on Sunday.