Company History
Where it all began…
This is Andrew Tullsen, Founder of Print & Play.
Andrew has been playing games all his life. In his early childhood, he played the standard fare: Tic-Tac-Toe, Jenga, Uno, Monopoly, Battleship, Chess, Backgammon, Clue, Pictionary. Then he started playing “wargames” like Stratego and Risk. He eventually ordered Axis and Allies, at the recommendation of some of his friends. This was his introduction to the entire subculture of gaming. Not having a lot of spending money, he started looking into “free games”. He found games that he could download and print out for free from the internet, and he printed out Battle for Moscow and First Blood: Battle of Guadalcanal.
He then discovered BGG (boardgamegeek.com). He had been on the site before, as he was in this variant frenzy for Axis and Allies. He probably had collected a hundred of variants and new rules. He even was devising some himself. He joined BGG purely to download some higher resolution pictures of some of the Axis and Allies games. About that time, he purchased his own computer and received a free printer with it. If he only knew what that printer would do to him…
Andrew jumped headfirst into BGG. It was his Facebook for gaming. He spent a lot of time there, finding hundreds of more free games he could print out. His tiny inkjet printer quickly became his new friend. Soon after he began to upload pictures of his own creations, people were asking him for copies for themselves. He realized he could save money by buying paper and parts in bulk. He then found he had a lot of excess parts and started selling them to make some side money to support his “free gaming” hobby.
Andrew started Print & Play Productions officially on June 3rd of 2009, from a page on BoardGameGeek.com. He got a $500 loan from his family and siblings and went off to Craigslist to look at used printers. He got a couple of used machines and was off. Two and a half years later, He finally buckled down and built his own site out of WordPress and a plethora of different plugins. He was still living with his family at this point, and his bedroom was becoming the prime office space. It was getting a bit crowded, and every wall was full of stuff, stacked up to the ceiling. At that point he started employing his siblings and teenage friends from church.
The business continued to grow a little more each year. Once he finished up high school, Andrew started going to college (Portland State) which was a 45min bus ride away. Still living at home, he was working full time and going to school a little less than full time. Eventually, he realized he was trying to do too much. Soon after, he left school and started working on the business full time.
By October of 2013, his bedroom was VERY full and the garage was about half full of board game stuff. He decided to start looking for office space. He looked at a small office in Vancouver, WA (just across the border from Portland, Oregon) and signed the papers for it that day. A week later, he was astonished at how much more space he had after everything was organized!
One year later, October of 2014, the once large office space had become not so big anymore and stuff was once again stacked up to the ceiling and the pathways were barely a person wide. Andrew rented the office across the hall and had a moving-in party. Half of the stuff was transferred and there was more space once again!
As of February 2015 Print and Play Productions was purchased by AdMagic and we have been a part of their team ever since! We work closely with Admagic, handling their clients who need smaller print runs for prototype, preview and review. We also work with Breaking Games (the board game publisher and our sister company) to help publish new titles.
At the beginning of 2021 Andrew decided to step back from P&P to spend time with his growing family and explore other new and exciting projects. He leaves behind a capable team, full of true board game geeks who cannot wait to see what the future holds for Print & Play!