I'm catching up on sleep after the convention.
Humanity slowly returns.
This week is half-term in Newcastle though, so the kids are off school.
And my sister and her family are visiting us twice, to and from their trip to Edinburgh.
So I'll not make much progress on Eurydice things.
And then on the weekend, it's Paul's mini-convention in Yorkshire.
Yorcon.
For me it's 48 hours of gaming with friends.
I'm taking a couple of prototypes too.
Will have to get one of them finished first!
I'm one of those people who needs a lot of sleep.
Eight hours a night.
This weekend I ran a convention along with four friends.
It was a lot of work.
And at times quite stressful.
I've been sleeping badly for a couple of weeks now.
Awake for hours in the middle of the night.
Lots of last minute issues with vendors, suppliers and the venue space.
Brain whirring.
Or worrying it would be a disaster.
But it's done now.
Visitors seemed to really enjoy it.
People asking us to run it again.
There were no major issues on the days.
But it wasn't perfect.
There's lots of things we can improve on.
And several of the exhibitors had a poor show.
Including Eurydice.
Which was really weird as we had a brilliant show at a similar event in the same place last year, and this one had more people!
Plus our website sales have dried up too :(
This weekend is the first Tyneside Games Expo.
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It's a progression from the Northeast Tabletop Expo that Gareth of Farplace Games ran for the last couple of years in Gateshead.
The new version is run by me and four friends.
We're all experienced convention attendees.
Three of us are experienced convention exhibitors.
John has been on the organising committee of large sci-fi conventions.
And Sarah has helped to organise political party conferences.
It's been fifteen months of hard work.
In five days' time we find out how we did.
It's been exciting.
And gruelling.
And stressful.
The last couple of weeks I've had a few sleepless nights, which is unusual for me.
I'm really hoping it will be a success.
The north east deserves its own convention.
Especially with Airecon ending next year :(
I've got three days off work this week.
Several last minute things to do.
And some time that I need to work out how to spend in the most productive way.
As an added bonus, Eurydice will be exhibiting there, so I get to see Paul this weekend too!
We're getting close to our next Gamefound campaign launch.
Which I pushed back last week.
And we're less that two weeks from Tyneside Games Expo.
Which Paul is attending as Eurydice Games.
And I'm one of the organisers.
I'm extremely busy.
But things are coming together.
And we've signed a game by another designer.
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I'm making a little progress on the next prototype of that every day.
I have a job (thankfully only 4 days a week now!).
And a family.
And now two side hustles.
I'm a busy man.
I've a todo list longer than most best selling novels.
It makes it difficult to see the wood from the trees sometimes.
So I've added another step to my daily habits.
What's my Most Important Thing to do tomorrow.
One thing.
That I need to complete or make progress on.
A priority.
Some much needed focus.
As a result, I've made loads of progress on our next Gamefound campaign this week.
Biggest concern at the moment is the new EU law.
Which is going to make things harder (impossible?) to handle EU orders.
I'm still investigating that...
Last financial year was awful.
We ran a Gamefound campaign during the year but didn't fulfil it until this year.
So all the costs.
And none of the sales.
We kept our cashflow up by running Meta ads.
Lots of Meta ads.
They worked.
Sorta.
We ended the year with some cash.
But made a massive loss.
The ads were barely paying for themselves.
This year is better.
We fulfilled a Gamefound campaign, but didn't run one.
All of the sales and few of the costs!
We've also massively reduced the ads.
They are still trickling along.
But ad spent is way down.
We're on course to have our third best year of sales.
And our second best year for profit.
Next year we're looking to do more events.
Run a Gamefound campaign and fulfil it.
Plus another new game I hope.
Back in November I went down to four days a week in the day job.
It was amazing.
I got so much done on Mondays.
While awake.
Rather than trying to cram it in at the end of a long work day after family commitments.
We've just had six weeks of summer holidays.
So the kids have been off school and I've been hanging out with them on Mondays.
Plus a Bank Holiday last week.
Today is my first Monday by myself in a couple of months.
I've loads to do.
Some exciting stuff.
Plus Tabletop Scotland admin.
Work on the next FlickFleet campaign.
Best crack on!
Mum and dad have left.
The kids go back to school this week.
Things are starting to return to normal.
But this coming weekend we’re away at Tabletop Scotland.
Our penultimate convention of the year.
It’s a fun one.
We stay with friends.
There’s a great vibe.
We have historically done pretty well for sales.
Looking forward to it.
But also catching up on things.
I’ll have more time to catch up on things afterwards.
Mondays are my own again once the kids go back to school.
And I can get stuff done in the evenings and on the weekends.
There’s loads to do!
My parents are here this week.
It's lovely to see them.
We Facetime almost every week.
But I only get to see them in the flesh three times a year.
Needless to say progress will be slower this week.
Last week my father-in-law and his partner were here.
Also nice to see them.
Also slower progress.
I've got a few projects on the go though.
And they are ticking along.
Slow progress is better than no progress.
It all adds up.
In 2006 I started self-publishing board games with Border Reivers.
In 2008 I became a hobby publisher, hand-crafting a 300 copy run of It's Alive! by Yehuda Berlinger.
In 2009 I became a proper publisher, getting a professional second run of It's Alive! done, followed by Carpe Astra (with Ted Cheatham) and Sumeria (by Dirk Liekens).
It went badly.
I lost a ton of money and wound up Reiver Games in 2011.
Eurydice Games was always intended to be different.
The name (suggested by Derek Hohls) was a clue - don't look back, do things differently.
We've spent the last 8 (or nine if you include Zombology!) years self-publishing small runs of FlickFleet and the roll and writes.
It's been different.
No professional runs.
Lots of Gamefound/Kickstarter campaigns.
All games we've designed ourselves.
There's been a few games I've wanted to publish on others' behalf though.
Sadly, none of them have got anywhere.
So we're still a SELF-publisher.
Or a wannabe publisher.
That might be about to change.
Fingers crossed!
I’m back.
And, as is often the case after a good holiday, knackered.
It was amazing.
Four countries.
Six cities.
Sixteen trains (should have been 11, there were some issues!).
And four days canoeing and wild camping.
Now I’m back.
There’s loads to catch up on.
I’m ploughing through it.
Plus trying to incorporate the ideas I had for Planet 9 and Jotunsaga while I was away into new versions of those prototypes.
Plus, I need to crack on with the next FlickFleet campaign and the games convention.
Busy, busy!
We’re halfway through our holiday.
We did a few days of trains and cities, and missed connections and delays.
Then four days canoeing the wilds of central Sweden.
Just the wind and the waves for company.
Glorious weather, camping on sandbanks.
It was super relaxing.
An amazing adventure.
Now we’re back in civilisation.
Hopefully with less travel disruption!
Die Speicherstadt is a board game I’ve owned for probably 15 years.
By Stefan Feld.
The art is by Harald Lieske, who I got to do the amazing art for Sumeria.
And today I’m in it.
It’s the old warehouse quarter of Hamburg in Germany.
We’re spending the day here on our train holiday around Europe.
In November I went down to four days a week in my day job.
I’m incredibly lucky that we can afford it.
It’s allowed me one day a week to focus on Eurydice and Tyneside Games Expo.
Previously they were consuming all my spare time around a full time job and a family.
Now I have some free time.
And I can work on the companies when I’m awake, not after a full day’s work and family responsibilities are done.
They’ve been amazing.
Then crack on until it’s time to collect my youngest from school.
We’re now into the holidays.
So Mondays are family time now.
Today I’ll do my walk with the girls.
And play games with the youngest while the eldest goes shopping with friends.
Progress will be slower for the next six weeks!
But it's time well spent.
I've spent the last week or so working on our next quarterly newsletter.
This one is focused around all the cool stuff fans of FlickFleet have done.
From scenarios to ships.
Guides to ...
Translations to holistic rulebooks.
So much cool stuff.
Done by fans of the game.
We're so grateful for all their contributions.
As usual there's a recommendation for something cool I've come across in their too.
If you're interested, scroll to the bottom of this page and subscribe here in the next few hours to get it!
One of my daily habits is now business development.
Every day I try to do something to drive Eurydice Games forward.
Some days it's tiny.
Some days it's big.
But progress. Every. Single. Day.
I group it into three categories:
We're still not at the point where we're sustainable outside of crowdfunding or conventions.
An ordinary month's web sales don't cover our overheads.
Last year I tried to fix that with ads.
It fixed the cashflow, but broke the profitability.
We spent way too much on ads.
This year I'm trying something different.
I've scaled the ads right back.
I'm trying to do more social media.
More reaching out to press.
Longer campaign previews.
I've even started a Tiktok.
It's pushing me out of my comfort zone.
But I'm giving it a try.
It's a low effort thing that might pay off given time.
A few weeks ago I had a new game idea.
Flip and write game using an ordinary deck of cards.
Inspired by War of the Worlds.
With a schlock 50's sci-fi vibe.
So far I've hand-sketched a few sheets and tried the first quarter of the game.
That bit kinda works now.
For the next bit I wanted to get something on the computer so I could crank out sheets.
That's done now.
Let the playtesting begin!
We've spent a lot of money on Meta ads over the years.
Slowly upping the ad spent on each FlickFleet campaign.
Even spending a little on the roll and writes.
It's brought in pledges, I'm sure of it.
Last year we tried something different.
Tried to run the company more traditionally.
Using (more) ads year-round to bring in enough sales to cover overheads.
It worked.
Sort of.
The overheads were covered.
Cashflow was mostly stable.
But the ads didn't perform well.
The ad spend was so high we made a massive loss.
This year is much better because we've recognised the sales from last year's campaign.
And all the costs hit last year.
And we're spending a lot less on ads.
The small amount we are running is performing pretty well.
... according to Meta.
In my experience, that doesn't scale well.
Our last crowdfunding campaign for Gal4Xeon was our best roll and write by a factor of more than 2.
And we spent nothing on ads.
Not a penny.
We're not quite covering our overheads.
Except for events and good weeks of web sales.
But we're not burning cash.
I'm considering not advertising the next FlickFleet campaign.
I'll need to do something else to bring in followers and backers though.
I've got a few months to think on that...
I'm working on a couple of new products at the moment.
Not new games, just new formats.
It's at the fun 'what are the possibilities' stage.
One is a printed version of Gal4Xeon.
I'm trying to price up a tiny run.
Not sure of the demand at this point.
Or what it will include.
I've asked for input from our Discord and Facebook followers.
Not what I would have expected.
Wondering if we can get something together for Tabletop Scotland in September.
At the moment our lowest priced product at conventions is the standard FlickFleet at £35.
Money's tight for a lot of people at the moment.
If we had a game for less than £20 it might be a good option.
And Gal4Xeon did well.
Got great reviews.
Worth a shot I think.
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