The empire of Jose “Chille” DeCastro is in a precarious position a day before the Memorial Day Holiday in the United States as he’s seeking $150,000.00 in financing to fund the production of the first 10,000 copies of his Constitution HQ board game.
DeCastro claims that he came up with the idea for the game while he was jailed in the Clark County, Nevada, Correctional Facility last year, serving a since overturned conviction for obstructing an officer and interfering with a traffic stop.
After his release, he spoke extensively about his assembly of a prototype of the game using wadded up bits of toilet paper on a board made of sheets of paper he was able to take in with him as he was imprisoned in the segregated room known as “the hole.”
His story has changed a bit over the year since his release, but the idea remained the same. He intended to teach toe United States Constitution and Bill of Rights to the masses. His version of history, originally intended to teach inmates who were locked in jail or prison systems in perpetuity, became a historical game aimed at families.
As it evolved over the past year, so did the requirements he says are needed to truly play the game. He built a gigantic wall of history, combining elements of his history of the prison system and history of lynchings in America with his new focus on the history of the constitution on one on the longer walls in the furniture store space that he’s converted into a studio in L.A.
His wall being key to his teachings, with hundreds of hours of teaching he personally planned to deliver to support the game.
The form of the game also changed over time. Once billed as a traditional board game, in its latest iteration, it has become a card-based game comparable with the original “Trivial Pursuit” board game from the late 1980s.
DeCastro displayed packets of cards on a late week livestream last week. The art on the cards was AI generated by one of his fans, while the cars themselves were put together digitally by a person in Indonesia.
Previously, DeCastro decided to display all of the cards he had digitally for a fact check and error checking session on a live stream. With the very first card having an error, he quickly became deflated as there were significant errors on every card he displayed. Ultimately giving up on the session as it was not “the proper venue” to move forward.
He would later admit that the first print of the cards would have errors, and he would personally replace the cards with errors for free as his fans identified them.
Last week, with printed cards in packages in front of him, he marveled at the fact that all of the prototype cards had been printed, and he’d soon be assembling the game for the first time.
The. First. Time.
Tradition board games take years if not decades to make it to big box stores. Millions of dollars are spent coming up with new concepts for games, let alone for new variations of existing games.
What would be considered minor changes to games are play tested, focused grouped, and millions are put into determining if the change is viable based on the impact the move would have on the existing fan base and how many new fans it would mean to bring in.
Games themselves are likewise, as a whole, play tested, test marketed, had market studies done, and are put through the ringer on costs and overheads. Everything is done, even with an independent board game manufacturer, to make sure that the game itself is marketable and that the production of the game would not bankrupt the company even before the game was on the shelf.
Big Box stores plan their entire schematic of what toys and games they’re carrying well in advance, changing out the toy aisles four times a year with new product line ups. To make into a big box store for a Christmas 2025 launch, DeCastro would have had to have his game assembled and brought a proven track record with him simply for consideration.
Even a Christmas 2026 launch may be too late to think about at this point as he’s still in the process of prototyping his game. He says that he determined the $49.99 price point that he’s using to for presales of the game by going to a big box store and looking at prices of games he considered to be similar to his product.
On his last livestream, he repeated his claim that his print shop would not print the first run of the game unless he ordered 10,000 copies of his cards. He also announced that he was seeking $100,000.00 in financing for his game.
Selling the game on his own, that would mean that the base $62.00 taken in from a single sale ($50.00 for the game and $12.00 for shipping), means that $27.00 is gone per unit for just the cards, presumably the board with it and shipping.
The $35.00 left from that sale – in a vacuum with no other costs – would mean $350,000.00 in pie in the sky figures if every game sold and… just enough to pay his financier back with interest and to fund a second run of the game.
But we know the world doesn’t work like that.
If the board game pieces aren’t manufactured by the same print shop as part of his initial $150,000.00 investment, more money must be raised to manufacture them. Then there’s packaging, storage, assembly, replacing and shipping the numerous cards with errors, taxes, paying his workers, paying himself a basic salary, replacing the art on the game for trademarking purposes (you can’t trademark AI generated art), paying for future print runs, and the cost of paying that $150,000.00 investment back…
…and there’s not enough left at the current price point to make his board game dreams come true.
There are reasons why most games are printed overseas. China and other countries have thousands of businesses that are set up to produce games and game pieces cheaply. DeCastro could significantly cut costs by printing outside of the United States most of the time.
Finally, there’s financing.
Jose “Chille” DeCastro is 50 years old, and his legacy consists of several thousand unwanted 5A Cop Cards and trifold products. While once semi-popular to the conspiracy kids on TikTok, DeCastro often gives away more of the product than he sells. He devalues each actual sale to the point where he’s essentially losing money on every sale.
Despite his claims of living in New York City as a high-level executive “for a decade,” he’s yet to show that he can successfully market anything. Let alone to the point where anyone can trust him with a $150,000.00 investment in a product that was designed to fail.
He has no assets to seize when the product fails, as he owns no property other than a “self-driving van” and his dog Charlie. While he may someday come into “go away” money from all of the lawsuits he’s currently filing, he’s proven time after time that he’s not good at suing people and that the millions of dollars he’s suing for more than likely isn’t coming any time soon.
It doesn’t seem like he has a current business plan. He certainly doesn’t have a plan for making an actual profit off of the Constitution HQ product. Anyone financing his $150,000.00 loan must go into the deal knowing that they’re not going to see a return on the money, and more than likely will not get their money back.
He’d probably be better off going through Kickstarter to raise the funds for the game. Though Kickstarter requires a working prototype for campaigns, he’s almost to that point. He says he has the prototype cards printed and can get a board made to satisfy their requirements.
While going a Kickstarter route may add a year or two to his overall production, there’s not a lot of risk for his investors and he can get his fans involved in the process.
Plus, maybe through Kickstarter he can convince Americans that they want to gather around the kitchen table to play a game that is “inspired by” Trivial Pursuit featuring the Constitution written by AI and produced by a man who has no visible track record of success.
At this point, though, he has a mess on his hands that won’t be solved by suing Justice of the Peace Ann Zimmerman, YouTuber Dale “Lackluster” Hiller, YouTubers Kate Peter and Blue Bacon (again), or the State of Nevada.
He needs to hunker down, focus on the product, and find a way out of the hole he’s dug. Can he do it? Maybe. Will he do it? GET YOUR TRIFOLDS HERE, 5 given away for every single trifold purchased! I’ll give you my whole product line digitally when you sign up for my website!
