On Students

What proportion of game ideas find their way to fruition? How many fledgling flickers are halted at ideation, at prototype zero, at first playtest—or are eventually lost altogether in the winding weeds of life's responsibilities?

I am humbled by the number of factors that helped keep Keeps in play over the prior year and a half. To name a few:

1. First and foremost, the steadfast dedication of my sister Elaina has not faltered. Even disregarding artistic salience, she is a force to be reckoned with. The intense quality of the game and its peripherals are hers alone, and keep me caring for the project through the low times.

2. It amazes me that we have progressed to a technological point in society where any person can both secure manufacturing of a card game and spread the word and physical product so easily. I say "easily" only in comparison to what might have been impossible for someone like me just 20-30 years ago. Hello, internet.

3. My family and friends have been open and willing to helping in parts of the project. This is mostly in the form of playtesting, but includes advice throughout. Shoutouts to Bryan Behl, Marc Moody, and Jeffrey Lu.

The final pillar of support is the topic of today's blog: my students.

The school I teach at is no ordinary one. Today we are graduating only our second class of seniors, yet in those two years we have accrued accolades becoming of more established and resourced institutions. I'm not bloating or gloating here, it's just facts. We are a school for competitive academics and we have done that name justice.

I say this to emphasize the caliber of the students capable of these things and the light that sheds on why they are so important to me. I don't refer to their stellar performance, but their character, ethic, and teamwork which are a requirement for it. So why am I writing about this in a blog on a website for a card game? I'll let this clip from this video @ 29:15 with 13,000 views so far explain it.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/8a854e_531a8902ac1c48b49570398389c9823c/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Yeah. My students are that awesome.

It's the livestream of the awards ceremony at the 2026 National Science Olympiad competition at the University of Southern California this past weekend. While waiting for the presentation to start, the stadium cameramen were doing zoom-ins on unsuspecting crowd members, broadcasting their reactions to the Jumbotron. It was really an excellent way to keep the stadium alive while waiting, and apparently, an even more excellent way for my students to spread the good word of Keeps. Watching the first 30 minutes of the video, you'll find four or five more occurrences of this.

This event is not singular. I've talked before of how Keeps games at national competitions are coincidentally good coverage for the game. But what I haven't mentioned is that my students make it happen without me even asking. I can't show you guys the pictures very often, as I want to maintain their privacy, but they really like Keeps. They bring it on stage with them, they play with members from other states, they post about it online. Here's our web traffic from the past month; see if you can spot the night of the livestream:

The last two weeks of school have been somewhat ...unproductive. During/after AP testing, there are usually not enough students on any given day to teach, and those that remain roam the halls looking for a room with friends in it to play some cards. For this purpose, it seems Keeps has become the official card game for our campus. Every five or ten minutes I have some students coming in to ask to borrow a copy. There are no less than four games going on in my room at any time. Even when I visit other teacher's rooms, I find four desks pulled together, a game of Keeps atop them.

Obviously this is a good indicator for whether it is a fun game or not: if you won't take my word for it, take theirs. But it's more than that. Just yesterday, we had an end-of-year banquet for our science team, where the seniors give their misty-eyed sendoff speeches and general bittersweet merriment is to be had. Besides reminding me why I teach and coach in the first place, the students banded together to craft and sign a custom card for me:

Maybe the cerebral nature of academic competition biases my students towards a predisposition for liking Keeps. Or maybe it's just their way of showing support for their coach. But whatever it is, it's the vital drip that keeps me going through this project. This energy, this smiling exuberance for my little creation, for our little creation... what more must be said? I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do all I could to share it with the world.

-David