It's Alive! Progress

It's Alive! was release four weeks ago and the last four weeks have been a bit of a blur. I thought I'd give you an update on how things are going.

Orders

The orders are still coming in thick and fast, though thankfully slower now than I'm making the games. I've got ninety-seven orders, nearly a third of the whole print run, and it's only been out a month! Most of this week's order are as a result of my Geek of the Week thread on BoardGameGeek.

Construction

I've now made thirty-nine copies, all but one of the original forty boxes I made in the run-up to the UK Games Expo. I've started another batch of boxes and hope to construct another six games this weekend, while The Wife is working. I've been averaging six games a week since the Expo, but we've had a few weekends away, and I've been away a fair amount for work during the week too. I need to step up construction, or those at the end of the list will have to wait a long time. Fortunately, the box-makers in London have come back to me with a quote, so I can pursue them to make some of the boxes for me. I can't afford to get all the boxes made, but I think I can afford one hundred and fifty of them, so that will allow me to break the back of the waiting list, as once the box is made it only takes forty minutes to make the rest instead of an hour and a half for the whole thing. That should up my production rate to at least twelve games a week.

Sales

I've now shipped thirty copies (including those I sold at the Expo). As I finish a batch I contact the next group of people on the list of orders, so I'm getting through them.

Feedback

I've now got twenty-four ratings on the Geek for It's Alive!, ranging from 6 to 8.5. The average is 7.62 so when this gets up to thirty ratings this should debut pretty well in the rankings. Because there will be more copies of this available than Border Reivers I expect more ratings in the long run, and hence the Bayesian averaging will have less effect. We shall see. In other news Scott Nicholson of Board Games With Scott didn't especially like it (he's the only six rating), but he's only played it once, and with five players, which might explain his disappointment. In other news, Border Reivers is now the 1840th best games in the world, as another rating has come in.