ABOUT

Cosy Cub Games is based in Cardiff, Wales, and is currently a team of one (with lots of help from my brilliant and supportive life partner).

This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of companies and designers out there doing just that. I would never claim to be the only one invested in such ideas. I am however passionate about sustainability and growing our own awareness to the issues around us, and I believe board games to be a singular opportunity to do so.

I grew up with parents who were active in the idea of the Transition Town - a grass roots movement aimed at raising the resilience of local communities and preparing them for the post-oil world. A commendable notion. This has certainly affected how I think about and view the world. Something that I have noticed, as I’m sure others have too, is that how despite many people having the best of intentions, often when we come together we get bogged down in how best to do things, and very rarely actually do the things we set out to do. This is commonplace in committees of any shape or size, but seems especially common in those looking for a green and sustainable path forward. Everyone wants to be heard, and everyone wants to be right, and everyone wants to be seen to have had the right idea. Often the loudest voices end up leading, despite not necessarily having the best ideas.

I believe this is because our world teaches us to be ruthlessly competitive, and so even when we come together with common purpose, we don’t know how to engage with the marketplace of ideas in a truly collaborative sense.

Now. I’m not saying that I can fix this. What I am suggesting however is that there is a role that board games can play in helping to create a narrative that has community and collaboration at its core, whilst still encouraging our competitive spirits. I am aiming to be part of this movement, and I hope you will join me in doing so.

Thanks for finding your way to my website. I’m Benjie, or Benjamin Talbott if you want to get formal, and I run Cosy Cub Games.

I set up this company with the aim of creating a vehicle that could engage the board game community with ideas that I feel are important to explore. Games can and absolutely ought to be fun for the sake of being fun; they are, at the end of the day, entertainment. However, the more I thought about everyday messages we receive in the world around us, through adverts, our favourite TV shows, social media, everyday interactions with friends or strangers, the more I realised that these messages are present in board games too. I saw this as an opportunity to help shift our personal storytelling away from reaping resources to a perhaps kinder more considerate stance towards our planet and our communities.

John Hardy Music

2013 – Current

As well as board game design, my main income has come from writing music for TV and film. This has been an overwhelmingly positive experience, and I’m very grateful to have been involved in some excellent productions working with some very fine and talented folk. I currently co-direct ‘John Hardy Music’ with John, and intend to continue to write when I can, but I realised it was finally time to focus on my main passion - telling stories.