Wednesday, April 8

Take The Blue Pill

God alone know what the title's going to do to the Goggle ads. I've been receiving emails for some time with that advice and I've finally taken them up on it.

Yesterday morning I went over to the hospital at Cambridge about my gammy eye. Unlike the hospital in York (3 miles from our flat there), the Cambridge hospital is 45 miles away, so The Wife had to take the morning off work too to give me a lift there (since my gammy eye is stopping me from driving at the moment)- thanks! I was expecting them to say: 'You've had too many treatments recently to receive any more steroids', but they prescribed me some again. Yeay! Unfortunately, they've given me some little blue pills to take instead of the IV treatment I usually get. These pills taste foul, by some length the worst thing I've ever tasted, and I've got to have five a day for five days :-( Still, my vision is improving already, so it's not all bad.

Today I'll be making the final corrections to the Carpe Astra and Sumeria German rules and getting them both up on my website. The competition seems to be continuing well, I'm not yet sure whether it's having any affect on sales, but by the end of the month (even if I've not had any re-orders from my stocking distributors) the consignment returns should indicate whether there's been a spike in sales or not.

My games have gone off the boil on BoardGameGeek a bit, with Carpe Astra dropping to fourth in The Hotness list, Sumeria is still in seventh and It's Alive! now way down the list. Also, my company has dropped from first to second. I've been surprised how much higher Carpe Astra has been in the list than It's Alive! throughout the competition, I guess fewer people had heard of Carpe Astra, so it got more click-throughs.

In other news, when I asked about free publicity, W. Eric Martin from Boardgame News gave me a chance to write a piece for BGN about game submissions to publishers. That's going to run tomorrow, so I'd imagine I'll be getting a few submissions fairly soon.

9 comments:

n_r_a said...

Hi again, Jack.

What kind of games are you looking for at the moment?

Best regards,

Néstor

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Nestor,

Mostly I'm looking for cheap to manufacture, light fun offerings, in the same vein as It's Alive!

Cheers,

Jack

Isamoor said...

Do Rummy inspired card games count? (Single Deck games etc.)

Jackson Pope said...

Yes and no. I don't like games that could be played with an ordinary deck of cards, or are too similar to a public domain game such as Rummy. Bet if it's got a fun theme, is significantly different and is made from a 'non-standard' deck of cards, I'll take a look. Please email me a brief overview in the first instance, with the theme, list of components and major machanisms.

Cheers,

Jack

n_r_a said...

Bad news for me then. The 2 games I've submitted are complex to manufacture.

:D

Good luck in your quest. I hope I can help you soon.

Néstor

byronfrombyron said...

Well, Jack, I'm working on one that I'd eventually like to send you, but it's early in development; I'm still getting to a first, very rough prototype. Part of my problem's just not staying of the 'net and working on it after work. I get a little done each week, but it's going to have to go through at least one more version after this before I could send you a prototype.

Jackson Pope said...

I'm looking forward to seeing it. Make sure you get some blind playtesting done too - not just solo, friends & family.

Cheers,

Jack

byronfrombyron said...

Absolutely. I expect the process to take some months at this point, which is a little discouraging, but getting it right is important.

Jackson Pope said...

Yeah, you'll definitely get a better impression from a publisher if the rules are well-written and the game has clearly been thoroughly tested.

Cheers,

Jack