Playtesting Again

Things have been going pretty well from a forward planning point of view the last couple of weeks. Sales are very slow at the moment though, as all my distributors have decent stock levels so I've just got to sit back until they sell through and re-order.

Last week I played It's Alive! and Sumeria at my Tuesday games night (and took two pre-orders for Sumeria from three players) and then at my Thursday games club I played Sumeria and Carpe Astra (and took two Sumeria pre-orders from three players). All the games were well received and the interest in Sumeria was very encouraging. On top of that I'm starting to get a few more Sumeria pre-orders. I'm thinking of doing an 'Introduction to Sumeria' review on BoardGameGeek. It would include photos of the prototype, and an explanation of the rules and how the game plays. Usually BGG reviews also include a critique by the reviewer, but my obviously-biased position would preclude that. I would hope that the review would boost awareness of the game and build some hype, but the risk is it's seen as blatant shilling and leads to a backlash against me, my company and the game. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not - what do you all think?

I've now sent all the prototypes of Wreck! (working title!) to the competition winners, and started to get some pretty positive feedback on that too. Of course the copies heading to North America won't arrive for several days - the early feedback is from the UK.

In addition, today I had my first playtesting session with some of my Tuesday night boys. A couple of them get a day or two off during the week, and they are very keen to help me playtest on those days. Since I'm keen to do playtesting during the day this works out really well for me. We played three games, a couple of games of Wreck!, one of a new card game that I hadn't yet played and a couple of another game which I'm seriously considering. All three games were well-received, but there are some theme issues around the new-to-me card game. We're going to meet up again during the day one day next week, hopefuly this will become a fairly regular thing.

Process

I'm continually trying to improve my process for releasing a new game.

It's Alive! was a special case, as I'd already released a limited edition, so I had a lot of feedback already on the game. Still, I mentally fixed a price in my head (£15, the same as the limited edition) and then struggled to get the manufacturing price low enough to make it affordable. As a result, I need to sell a lot of copies to break even. Still, it seems to be doing pretty well at the moment and the upcoming BoardGameGeek competition will hopefully boost awareness and lead to a few more sales.

With Carpe Astra things improved a little further. I sent some blind playtesting copies to friends in Europe and America, and although the price ended up being more expensive than I expected due to the collapse of the pound, my margins are still better than I managed for It's Alive! I know that sounds money-grabbing, but if my margins aren't good enough to sustain me then I'm going to have to quit the company - I need money to eat!

Sumeria saw a further improvement in playtesting best practice, I sent more blind playtesting copies out, and to proper blind playtesters (people I'd had no contact with previously). The price is more expensive, but my margins will hopefully be better again - still not where it should be, but in the right direction. Of course, since I'm paying for this in Euros again, there's a few months worth of exchange rate shenanigans between now and when I pay for it which could go either way (though forecasts say it'll head in the right direction). I got everything in place a little earlier too, and so I've been able to send out solicitation information on the game, with some artwork 2.5 months before the game will be released. Hopefully this will help boost early sales from distributors to shops and hence from me to distributors. I've also started pimping it with local game groups, I took it to my game night last Tuesday, my games club last Thursday and I'll be taking it to a few conventions in the next few months, trying to build pre-orders and some buzz.

I also need a game or two for Essen release. I've been looking for games for a while now and have a few prototypes that I'm considering. One of these I'm quite excited about, so I'm trying to improve my process yet again. I've recruited more playtesters (I had two extra groups for Carpe Astra, six for Sumeria and now I've got twelve for this one), and I'm getting the game playtested before I sign it up. That way if the feedback is disappointing, I'm not tied into releasing the game. Feedback has been pretty positive so far though.

There are several processes I have to manage: game selection, testing/development, manufacturing and sales. I'm an expert at none of these, which is why I need to keep pushing myself to improve things, instituting what I think is best practice, what I've heard is best practice or what my customers request from me. I can't afford to sit still, making the same mistakes or missing the same opportunities time and time again. The company requires me to improve things continually, so that I can make the best of every situation and make the company successful.

BoardGameGeek Metrics

One of the things I learnt as a computer programmer in my past life was that if you want to track progress keeping good metrics are the way to go.

At the moment I'm trying to improve awareness of my games, as the more people who know they exist, the more people might buy them. Most of my distributors are now pretty well stocked, so if I want to make any money I need to get people to buy my games, so that the shops re-order from the distributors and eventually the distributors re-order from me. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of the game buying public (even among those people who regularly use BoardGameGeek and hence are much more in the know than the average Joe who just wanders into a games shops every now and again) have never heard of my games.

So, as you'll know if you're a regular follower of this blog, I'm intending to run a competition on BGG in a week or so's time. The competition is more expensive than advertising on BGG, but it has a couple of advantages over advertising: it's not hidden by AdBlock (which allows you to turn off adverts if you support BGG financially) and it occupies pride of place on the BGG front page for two weeks. I'm hoping that running this competition will boost people's awareness of my company and my games - but how can I tell?

Firstly, I ran a market research questionnaire competition on BGG a couple of weeks ago. I'll run the same competition a few weeks after the main competition and compare the two results - hopefully that will show a big boost in awareness. But as someone spotted in the competition comments, the respondents are skewed towards people who already know me, so the results aren't very accurate (but seeing as the two competitions have the same bias I should be able to compare the results). What I really need is a way of tracking people's interest in my games without relying on them to put any effort in.

That's where BGG statistics come in. BGG tracks and publishes a whole bunch of statistics on each game in it's database:

Most (if not all?) of these statistics are updated each day. The only one I'm not sure about is Views, which I think might be the total number of BGG users who have visited the page at least once. This doesn't seem to change very often, and I'm not entirely sure what it does.

For the last few days I've been recording the rank, average rating, number of ratings, views, people owning, people wanting and people trading for each of my games to build up a baseline of how things change normally. I'll continue doing so while the competition is running to see how these statistics change from the baseline when a competition is in progress. Should be quite interesting...

Need More Playtesters

I'm looking for blind playtesters again, this time for a quick filler card game I'm considering publishing. It's a very short game with some similarities to 6 Nimmt!/Category 5, it will accommodate 3-6 players, probably 10+ and takes about ten minutes to play. I'm looking for six more playtesters, four in the US/Canada and two in Europe (the UK is already covered I'm afraid).

What's in it for you?

• You get a prototype copy of the game
• You get your name in the rules as a playtester
• You're entitled to a 50% discount on the finished product, if I publish it

What do you have to do?

• Play the game a lot with your game groups
• Make a note of: who played, whether they've played before, who won, play time
• Provide feedback on the game (including suggested rule changes)
• Provide feedback on the rules - how can I improve the clarity and completeness
• Suggest a name for the game and provide feedback on the theme

How do you sign up? Leave a note in the comments to this post stating which country you live in and why you'd make an excellent playtester. I'll pick the lucky recipients at the end of this week.

Another Curtailed Day

I spent most of the afternoon on the way to a from hospital and in a big-ass magnetic tube. But the day wasn't a total write-off.

I've spent the last couple of days making a prototype of Sumeria with the finished artwork. First I had to do all the layout of the punchboards and gameboard (I've not got around to doing the box yet) done, then I had to get it printed. That's never a simple job with my printer (an HP Deskjet 9800 which is nothing but trouble). When that was finally finished the next stage was to glue the art onto greyboard and cut it out.

Because all the punchboards are double-sided, I had to make sure the artwork lined up front-to-back. When doing Border Reivers back in the day, I came up with a method for doing this. In the artwork, I printed a couple of lines at right-angles that were a specified distance from the art. On the front I put them in the top left corner, and on the back I put them in the top right corner. Then when I glue the art, I cut the art to those lines and glue it to the same corner of the board - front and back. It works really well - the line-up rarely leads to a noticeable error.

The manufacturer wanted me to provide the art on one layer, and the die-line on another. In addition to this, I've added a third layer with crop marks showing me where to cut the prototype without being visible in my finished article, which the die-line would be. So once I've printed and glued the art, I then cut it out using the crop marks to show me where to cut. The finished article looks really good - Harald did a fantastic job on the art. The only thing I've tweaked is that I've 'filled in' the outline font he used on the tiles and board, I thought the original font looked pretty cool, but I thought it was a little hard to read.

Making my own prototype with the finished art and layout is important - it lets me test things out before I send the art to the manufacturers for printing. I've already found one problem - I'd done some of the counters the wrong way round on the punchboard - so instead of all the counters having the same image front and back, four of them had one image on the front and another on the back breaking the whole game! I had to fix it, print out again, re-glue it and then cut them out again. Having said that, the printers would probably have caught it (their data quality department was awesome for Carpe Astra), but it's better to be safe than sorry!

Tonight I'm taking it round to my games night - I feel a powerful need to show it off!

Action Stations! Action Stations!

Set condition one throughout the fleet!

Sorry for the lack of blogging in the last couple of weeks, I've been exceptionally busy. On the home front, we're buying a new house down South and I've been in discussions with my doctors about changing my MS treatment.

On the work front, I've been very busy with Sumeria and some playtesting. After complaining last week that I was suffering from a lack of playtesters down South I finally got around to asking some of my new gaming buddies if they'd be interested in doing some playtesting for me, and they are :-) Even better news is that a couple of them a free during the day on a Tuesday so I can get some playtesting done in 'work time' rather than giving up another evening during the week - time when I can hang out with The Wife. Unfortunately, this Tuesday is a no-go since I have to go into hospital for the MRI test I was promised a couple of weeks ago, along with some blood tests. But soon!

I've decided to step up my blind playtesting. Sumeria was the first time I did 'proper' blind playtesting where I got some random people who I had no previous contact with to play a game completely from the rules. I got five people (and their respective gaming buddies) involved, two in the US, two in the UK and one in Europe. All good so far. What I probably did wrong was leaving it so late. By the time the blind playtesting started, I was already signed up to publish the game and had only a couple of months to deal with any feedback. The feedback has been really good and very useful and I think the game has improved as a result of it.

I'm now looking for blind playtesters for another game. This is one I've not yet signed, so I'm using the blind playtesting to inform my signing decision, not just to improve the rulebook and tweak the rules. I'll post another thread asking for volunteers shortly. In the meantime, I've got the prototype copies printed, I just need to cut out the cards and round the corners, ready for sending off to the playtesters.

I've also started the Sumeria layout - constructing the art from the designer into a finished product. I really enjoy this work, but it's pretty time-consuming. The first thing I did was the rules. I had some rules that were written and had some rough diagrams in, the next step was to add the background image and get images of the components into the diagrams. The images needed to be cropped to remove the bleed around the components and then downsampled to an appropriate size. I added some simple effects (a dark outer glow) to the components so they stood out from the background of the rulebook. The 'finished' rulebook has been out to my playtesters for comments and I've made a few minor tweaks based upon their feedback. I hope to post the rules to my website and BoardGameGeek fairly shortly. Then I need to create a translation grid and send that off to Michael so he can start translating the rules into German (Sumeria, like It's Alive! will have English and German rules in the box).

After the rules, I laid out the art for the tiles and counters onto the punchboards. For this I need to combine the tile and counter art into three sheets (with a front and back for each). I need to ensure the front art and back art match and line up and that the distance between each component is sufficient for the cutting process. I've printed out my own copy too, which I'll glue onto board and cut out for my prototype copy. I want a prototype with finished art ready to take to games clubs and conventions so I can start building some buzz. I'll need this copy for sending to the 'UK Game of the Year' judges in May too.

All I've got left to do now is the game board and the box, despite having to place my order this week, the manufacturers don't need this artwork for six weeks or so, which makes it slightly less urgent!

It feels good to be really busy again :-).

Bad Jackson!

Tomorrow, I'm off to York to see my friend Paul for some playtesting. I've yet to set up a playtest group down here in the South, and it's being made slightly more difficult by the distances. In York I was spoilt. I had a decent-sized games club and several gamer chums all within a mile or two from my house. I could easily arrange a weekly playtesting night, and get people to travel the short distances to my house. In addition, Paul is around during the day, so Paul and I could do some playtesting during the middle of the day, when I'm working (playtesting counts as work!).

Now we've moved to a small village of maybe 2,000 people. It's in a rural area, the nearest large town (80,000 people) is about nine miles away. I've joined a couple of game groups, one 15 miles away, the other 25 miles away, with whom I get some regular gaming in on weekday evenings. These club members are probably the most likely candidates for a playtesting group, but the distances mean that people may well not be interested in trekking to mine (or a local pub function room) to play games that might be rubbish (submission quality is a mixed bag, some good, some not so good - it's hard to tell beforehand which category it falls in!).

In the meantime, I'm pissing my environmental credentials up the wall and driving 160 miles to hang out with Paul tomorrow. It'll be good to see him, and it will mean a good few hours of playtesting with someone who's opinion I trust, but it's a long way and a lot of fuel...

Pound Woes

The British pound has slid again against the dollar and the euro. It's a mixed bag for me, but it's not good for Sumeria.

When the pound is weak it's cheaper for US and European customers to buy from me in GBP. Since most of my customers buy in GBP, this makes it a more attractive prospect for them, since they get it cheap (while I still get the full amount). Unfortunately, at the moment most of my customers have decent stock levels, so I can't use that as a lever to get further sales.

A few of my US customers buy in USD. They prefer the stability of knowing how much they are going to pay for the games, month in, month out. A weak pound doesn't affect these customers, but it means I get more GBP for an order than I would, had they bought when the pound was strong. All good so far.

The problem with a weak pound is when you want to buy something overseas. I got Carpe Astra manufactured in Germany by Ludo Fact. The production quality was excellent, and I was reach impressed by the customer service too. At the time when I was pricing up the print run, they were noticeably cheaper than getting the game manufactured in the UK. I had to pay half up front (I was a new customer) and half on delivery. The half up front was fine, but by the time it came to pay for the second half, the pound had started its slide. The game ended up costs me more than I had bargained for, which ate into my margins.

I'm going to use the same company for manufacturing Sumeria. However, the pound has slid much further since November, though it has at least climbed a bit since its woeful near-parity showing between Christmas and New Year. This time, I don't need to pay anything to the manufacturer until after the games arrive. I'm hoping that by mid-June the pound will have sorted itself out a bit. If so, the game will become cheaper to manufacturer and I might even be able to reduce the RRP on the game accordingly. I have to pay the (German) artist shortly in Euros however, so I'm going to take a hit on the exchange rates on that transaction.

For the moment, it's all up in the air - which is a little worrying! Needless to say, I'm watching the exchange rates like a hawk, and looking at forecasts too.

Feeling Chipper!

It feels like Spring today. The sun is shining, it's fairly warm and most importantly I can get out in it! My course of steroids at the hospital finished today and already I'm walking better, which is great, I was beginning to feel a bit confined to the house.

On the work front there's not been a whole heap of progress, what with all the trips to hospital, though I have managed to read several books. The good news on the payment front is that most of the late payments have now arrived, and those that haven't, I've spoken to and so I'm less worried about the money not turning up.

I've also received the finished artwork for Sumeria from Harald (the artist). It looks awesome - I'm really pleased with it. This means that next week I can do the graphic design, laying out the art ready to send to the printers.

I've also got to do a few chores next week (the books for February) and some more marketing (sending out the next quarterly newsletter).

It'll be nice to be able to get stuck in again properly.

Strange Week

It has been a very odd week for me so far. On Monday I decided to go to York for the day, I was running low on shipping boxes, and hoping for a restocking order from the US. It would also give me a chance to do some playtesting with my friend Paul while I was there.

Tuesday started sensibly enough, I had a doctor's appointment about another MS attack I've been experiencing since the beginning of last week. The doctor made a phone call and I had an appointment at the local hospital that morning! Great. I went home grabbed a book (it can take while) and set off to the hospital. I was hoping for a few tests, and then a meeting with a neurologist who would prescribe me steroids to bring the attack to a swift conclusion (I've had the steroids a couple of times before and they've worked wonders). The tests started with blood tests (normal enough) and proceeding through ECG (seemed a little excessive) and then a chest X-Ray! By early afternoon not much had happened so I made some enquiries. The neurologist wasn't in today - I would need to stay in until tomorrow! This seemed totally excessive (I was just lying there taking up a bed, reading my book) and I'd only paid for parking until early evening, so I tried to talk them into letting me home that evening. They let me, provided I returned by 8am today to see the neurologist.

Early start this morning, and I got to the hospital at 7:40am (the traffic was better than I was expecting), I saw the neurologist (who did some basic tests, booked me in for another MRI scan and prescribed the steroids - yeay!) and then had the infusion later this morning. I managed to get home around lunchtime today, which was much better. I've got to go in for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon and Friday afternoon too. I've also got a canula in my left hand so I've got to try to avoid using that.

On the work front, I've received the first consignment purchase orders from Alliance (yeay!) and I've been struggling to get paid from some of my other distributors, for orders placed in January. It's really frustrating. We've got an agreement in place where they pay thirty days after invoicing (NET 30). Some of then are now nearly a month late. Much as I would like to cease dealing with the tardy companies, I need them, without them my games won't end up in shops and will sell far fewer copies. Still, I received two lots of payment today, and two more have told me the payment is en route. One has responded to my earlier chases, but still not paid and another hasn't responded at all.

I try to be a good customer, I try to make sure that the payment is received on or before the due date (paying early if by a bank transfer, to ensure it clears by the due date, or posting cheques to arrive by the due date), I just wish my customers were as scrupulous.

Hopefully, tomorrow will see an improvement in my symptoms and the arrival of some more money!

Questionnaire Preliminary Results

I've started collating the results of the questionnaire I ran on BoardGameGeek yesterday. The competition still has 36 hours left to run, but I've already received well over 250 responses - it's been far more successful than I was expecting. I've collated the results for the first 10 pages of responses, and it's pretty interesting so far.

The questions were designed to be asked now and after the big BGG competition in a few weeks time to gauge how successful the competition was at raising awareness of my brand and my games. This was just the baseline.

Question 1: Are you aware of Reiver Games?

• A: Reiver whatnow? Never heard of them.
• B: I've heard of them, but not played any of their games.
• C: I've played one or more of their games, but don't own any of them.
• D: I own one of more of their games.

I expected that the answers would be A > B > C > D. There's obviously going to be some bias involved though - still not sure what.

Lots of people had heard of at least one of my games, but not my company. I guess that's to be expected, but it shows that the brand of my company is comparatively weak. Also, I was surprised at how few people had played one of my games but didn't own any. Especially in comparison to how many owned at least one of my games. Not sure why that is. It could be because there aren't many copies of my games in circulation so few people have played one, it could be that most people who play one of my games buy it (I wish!), or it could just be that people who own one of my games were more likely to respond.

Question 2: Are you aware of It's Alive!?

• A: Never heard of it.
• B: I've heard of it, but not played it.
• C: I've played it, but don't own it.
• D: I own it.

Again, I expected that the answers would be A > B > C > D. Since It's Alive! had been around the longest (several years if you include The Menorah Game incarnation) I expected more people in B, C or D than Carpe Astra or Sumeria.

This was more or less as I expected. Again the confusing ratio of C to D though. At least 35 people had heard of It's Alive! but not Reiver Games. Even with a game that's been out since June 2007, 20% of respondents had never heard of it. I've run an ad campaign on BGG and two on Boardgame News but they seem to have a limited reach.

Question 3: Are you aware of Carpe Astra?

• A: Never heard of it.
• B: I've heard of it, but not played it.
• C: I've played it, but don't own it.
• D: I own it.

Again, I expected that the answers would be A > B > C > D. I expected less awareness than It's Alive! since it's only been available for four months and there are less reviews available at the moment.

40% of people have never heard of it, and half as many respondents say they own it compared to It's Alive! According to the BGG ownership stats, one third of the number of people who own It's Alive! own Carpe Astra, so that might give some indication of the bias towards Reiver Games owners in the responses.

Question 4: Are you aware of Sumeria?

• A: Never heard of it.
• B: I've heard of it.
• C: I've want to play it.
• D: I want to buy it.

Again, I expected that the answers would be A > B > C > D. I expected less awareness than Carpe Astra even, since this has not been advertised yet. With no rules available, I was expecting very few people wanting to buy it.

Woohoo! I got this one right :-) Two-thirds of respondents have never heard of it (less than I was expecting) and several people are interested.

As several people noted, just by asking these questions I've raised awareness of the company and the games. Not one of the respondents could answer all As in a weeks time - they'd have to answer all Bs at least. Hopefully I've pushed a few into the C or D categories too :-) 82 new people are aware of my company, 47 new people are aware of It's Alive!, 95 new people are aware of Carpe Astra and 166 new people are aware of Sumeria. Reiver Games is number eight in the list of hot companies on BGG today. Plus I've got some really useful information to help me target marketing in future. Not bad for at most 13 quid.

Market Research

Here's another area I'm not very good at. This blog is turning into one long 'I'm hopeless' rant! On Tao and Pinebars advice I'm conducting some Market Research on BoardGameGeek. I'm doing it in the form of a small competition, to give people an incentive to take part - there's a free game up for grabs.

I'll run a similar competition/questionnaire after the main BGG competition has run its course to see how effective it has been at boosting awareness of my brand.

Feel free to enter, it's open to everyone.

Update: I meant to post this first thing this morning, but experienced some user error! The competition has received over 75 entries, and it's generally getting good feedback ('Thanks for giving us this opportunity' not 'stop pimping your games already'). It looks like there's a lot of potential for the main competition, lots of people have never heard of me or my games, and several have heard of the games but not the company.

Short Term vs. Long Term

Seth Godin has just posted his 3,000th post. In it he encourages his readers to post something really interesting today in honour of that achievement. No pressure!

I've received a couple of direct orders today, possibly due to this GeekList on BoardGameGeek, where my games (and Ad Astra!) are getting some good feedback.

This brings me to a conundrum. Do I take their money (and get a larger cut for myself) or direct them to a local retailer (and build up my company in the marketplace)? One is thinking short-term:

I normally get 40% of retail, if I sell direct to the customer I get 100% of retail, minus 15% tax - that's 45% more for me! Yeay!

The other long-term:

They'll ask for it at their preferred retailer. Either they'll sell it (and possibly re-stock) or they'll ask their distributor for it. Their distributor will either sell it, or order it from me. Since a distributor order is usually 30-70 copies, this will make me more money in the long run (and might even get my games into more shops and/or distributors). Yeay!

If the customer emails me first I'll always suggest looking in a local retailer, but once they've placed an order I'm not so rude as to refund their money and tell them to look elsewhere - that would be a pretty stupid thing to do. Some customers like ordering direct from the publisher, they know I'll make more money that way.

In the long run though, the only way this company is going to work is if tens of distributors sell my games to hundreds of shops who in turn sell my games to thousands of customers. For that to happen several things need to fall into place:

• Distributors want to stock my games, either because I've contacted them and the games sound like they'll sell well, or because their retail customers have contacted them asking for it.
• Retailers want to stock my games, either because they've seen the games on a distributors stocking list or because customers have been asking for it.
• Customers want to buy my games, either because they've seen them in a shop or listed on an online store, or because they've played them and liked them or they've seen some of my advertising/seen them on BGG.

In most cases it's better when the customer asks for a game, as that convinces the stockist that there is a market for it. I can try to convince the distributors/shops that people will buy my games, so they should stock them, but when one of their customers is stood there with a dirty wad of cash they want to spend, that's going to be much more convincing than yet another unknown game company hawking their wares as the 'next big thing'.

As with any game, my games aren't for everyone, but bringing them to more people's attention means bringing them to the attention of more people who will like them. How best to do that? That's the 1,000,000 dollar question. I was considering running a poll on BGG to gauge how many people were aware of my company and my games (thanks for the idea, Pinebars!) but now I'm thinking I'm best off waiting until after the competition has run there. Maybe before and after would be more use?

Playtesters Rule!

The feedback from my playtesting team continues to roll in. In many ways this is the first time I've done things properly (though still on a pretty small scale).

With Border Reivers, my first game, I played it a lot with friends and family, but I didn't try blind-playtesting until the game was nearly ready. I hired a pub function room in York and invited members of my local games club (Beyond Monopoly! along to try it out. I'd not been to the club yet, so it was blind in the sense that I wasn't testing it with people I knew, and though I (or The Wife) watched, taking notes, the players had to learn from the rulebook - we didn't teach them how to play. By the time I got around to blind playtesting, the game was pretty much finished - I was very happy to make changes to the rulebook to improve its clarity, but I was pretty much set on the rules. It's a weaker game as a result.

My second game, It's Alive! had been extensively tested by the designer, Yehuda Berlinger, so the game was pretty much ready to go. I tweaked the components to allow more players and changed the theme, but in essence I made very few changes. Again, there was a blind-playtesting night at a local pub, again with people from my local games club. This time I knew the people a little better, so their objectivity may have been slightly clouded.

Carpe Astra I tested mostly with hard-core gamers, and the blind playtesting was done with a group in America and a group in Germany. I didn't hold a pub night and had a relationship with both the groups abroad.

For Sumeria I opened the blind-playtesting up to people by holding a competition that was advertised here, on BoardGameGeek and Boardgame News. I had no connection with the people I selected based on my arcane criteria - I'd never met any of them (I think!), I hadn't corresponded with them previously and as far as I was aware they weren't massive fans of my games or my company. In addition to the competition winners, a couple of other groups are playtesting Sumeria, one in Wales and one in Germany.

I've been getting lots of high-quality feedback from the playtesters. They (and their friends with whom they play the game) aren't always huge fans of the game but they've been coming up with some great ideas. I see my role in this as acting as a mediator between the playtesters and the designer. I'm not going to make changes that the designer doesn't approve of, that doesn't help me at all. I've not passed all the suggestions on to Dirk, some of them don't fit with the game so I've rejected them. That's not to say they are wrong - just that they would take the game in a direction I don't want it to go. Now Dirk's back from his holiday he's started coming back to me with some changes too. It feels really positive, making last minute tweaks to further improve a great game.

One of the more major changes is to do with the 2-player game. One of my playtesters spotted that the 2-player game was very different from the 3- and 4-player game. The 2-player dynamic removed one of the most interesting things about the scoring. I'd not noticed this, nor had any of my other playtesters spotted it yet. Once he'd brought it to my attention it was obvious and I couldn't think of any way around it. Most people hadn't spotted it, but for those that did it really broke the 2-player game. So there were three choices:

1. Ignore the problem - most people don't see it anyway
2. Try to find a fix for the problem - probably by adding '2-player only' rules
3. Ditch the 2-player game.

One was right out. That's a crap solution to the problem. Two is an option, but one of the things I really love about Sumeria is the depth of the game, coming from very simple rules. Adding more special case rules will clutter things up, make it more complicated. The archetypal Eurogame is one with depth, very simple, streamlined rules and a wafer-thin theme. Sumeria fits that bill as it stands, adding 2-player fixes could break that simplicity. The third option has strengths and weaknesses. Lots of people want to play 2-player games. Removing this option will make the game attractive to fewer people. It will however keep the rules simple and since several of the components were only needed for the 2-player game reduce the manufacturing cost.

After talking to Dirk, we've decided to go for option three.

Facebook Marketing

Two posts in one day! Madness.

I've been on Facebook for a while now. At the beginning it was all about Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies, but since then I've grown as a person and login very rarely. I just got en email from a shop who suggested I create Facebook pages for my games. It seemed like a good idea, so I've just spent the last hour or so knocking up a page for It's Alive!, Carpe Astra and Sumeria. As with all things social and networking these pages are linked together by people. If you're on Facebook (and you like the game!) you can become a 'fan' of it. When you do your friends see that you're a fan and they can follow the link for more information, or to become a fan themselves. In theory, it could lead to a huge groundswell of interest. Or not. At the moment all three games have one fan - me!

Feeling Chirpier

The sun is shining today :-)

I'm also starting to get some more positive feedback on Sumeria from my playtesters, and one of them (who hadn't noticed I was a co-deisgner on Carpe Astra) sent me a nice email about how much he liked Carpe Astra and how he's spread the word amongst his friends.

Back on topic:

If you have a weakness you're definitely best off recognising the fact and then trying to do something about it. I'm aware that marketing is not my strong point, so I've admitted it (here and on BoardGameGeek) and asked for advice. The next step is to do something about it. What though? My friend Wilka has recommended a few blogs that I've added to my RSS reader, I'm enjoying Seth Godin's the most of his suggestions, I was previously aware of it due to the Yak-shaving story but I'd not been following it. I should also get my hands on a decent book on the subject, as yet I don't know what that is though.

Of course, if I had more money I'd be able to hire a decent marketing guru, but in the meantime, I need to be able to do an adequate job by myself. Reading through the blog's Wilka recommended they make a lot of hay about Twitter the micro-blogging tool (it allows you to post blog-style comments about what you're doing limited to 140 characters in length). What do you think? Is it worth Twittering as well as these longer blog posts? Does anyone care? Would anyone read it?

Another big thing on those blogs is Word-of-Mouth. Getting customers to market your product for you to potential customers by being enthusiastic enough about your products to convince others to try them. How do you cultivate Word-of-Mouth? I've no idea yet - that's something I'll have to work on!

Update:

I'm still catching up on the backlog of posts from the blogs Wilka recommended. One of them, Brand Autopsy, had posted in December this list of great marketing books published this year. Look's like a great place to start...

Feeling Low

When choosing a game to publish you're hoping that enough people like it to buy all the copies you've manufactured. If you sell out, you can then decide whether or not to re-print, but selling out has to be your first goal.

With any game there will be people who like it, people who are ambivalent towards it and people who don't like it. If you've chosen well there will be people who love it and there may well be people who hate it. You're hoping that enough people like it enough to play it again with new players, and that some of those will like it enough to play it again with new players and so on. So you're hoping that despite the 'cult of the new' the game will attract enough 'let's play X again' players and not too many 'God no,not X - that's terrible/dull' players.

The playtest copies of Sumeria are now out in the world and the feedback is starting to trickle in. I'm convinced it's a great game - I personally love it and in my first rounds of playtesting several of my playtesters really liked it too though a few were only slightly positive/ambivalent. So I was hoping that the blind playtesters would on average be positive towards it - convincing me I'm made a good choice that would prove largely popular.

So far, the feedback has been decidedly 'meh'. Don't get me wrong, this is great and what I needed to hear, but it's got me in low spirits. Admittedly some of the playtesters ended up playing the game wrong (due to a lack of clarity in my rules) and some others found some weaknesses in the 2-player game that either need to be fixed somehow or require the 2-player version to be stripped out (which would co-incidently remove the need for some of the components and hence reduce the cost both for me manufacturing and for the customer). I've also had several ideas for changes which could improve things significantly (or not!).

Personally, I found that the game improved the more you played it as you found out how to improve your strategy, and most of the feedback so far is from people who've only played it once or twice. But this is important feedback. If you play a game once and think it's 'alright' you're more likely to move on to something different rather than play it again. I was hoping the simple rules (very Euro-esque: clean, simple, no exceptions and short enough to fit on 4 sides of A4 with lots of diagrams) would be popular with the Euro crowd and the wafer-thin theme not too much of a problem.

I don't think the problem with the early feedback was close friends being too positive - I've had plenty of negative feedback from them in the past for other games. I think it was just their kind of game, and as I get a bigger sample of the game playing public I'm getting a more accurate judge of what proportion of gamers will really like it. My initial sample was biased (not in a personal way, but just by being a really small sample that just happened to be made up of a high proportion of people who really like the game).

This, combined with the decidedly mediocre ratings it's started to pick up on BoardGameGeek and the drop in the scores of It's Alive! and Carpe Astra (both of which are really popular with some people) over the last couple of months have got me down. Just to prove it never rains but it pours, I also heard the returns I was hoping for from Alliance this week won't start until next month, so my figures for this month will be quite poor. Next month should be great and I'm still on target for the year, but disappointing nonetheless.

I was in two minds about posting this, in case this post was read by my blind playtesters and then influenced them to be more positive in their feedback, but I figure I should trust them to be honest - they don't know me and have no reason to want to please me. In the end I figured this blog should be about the ups and downs of running your own games company so it can stand as encouragement/warning to those who are considering a similar move. I can't just keep posting about how great everything is, especially when I'm feeling quite down about things.

Marketing

Marketing is really one of my weakest areas - I have no idea what I could or should be doing in this arena. There are a few different levels of marketing, to the different customers in the supply chain:

Marketing to Distributors

Distributors are my main customers, the vast majority of my sales are to distributors, who then sell to shops/online stores and then on to the final customers. I've put the most effort into this form of marketing, though very little money. I've been sending emails and making phone calls to potential distributors and I've had some degree of success. I've picked up 17 distributors for my games, ranging from the US, to lots of Europe and Taiwan and New Zealand. The big weaknesses in my coverage are: Australia, Eastern/Southern Europe and Canada. Eastern and Southern Europe has the added problem that my games aren't available in the languages of those regions. Shipping to the US is very expensive unless I send a lot of games via sea freight, so I'm considering a flooring deal in the US. The same goes for Australia, which also has a fairly small population, so the market is smaller as a result. My best chance of picking up Asutralian distribution might be to wait until I have more titles and then try to get an Australian distributor interested in a mixed pallet.

Marketing to Shops

This is the area I'm weakest at. I've emailed a bunch of UK shops to tell them my games are available, and had replies from just over half of them. My coverage of UK shops seems to be pretty good. Not knowing the companies elsewhere I've not done any of this abroad. I'm hoping that the distributors will do some of this themselves (they've got stock to shift after all), but I'm wondering what more I can do to help the distributors (and hence myself).

Marketing to Customers

This is where I've spent the most money. I've run ads on BoardGameGeek and Boardgame News. I figure if the customers want it, they'll ask their favourite stockist, who will ask their distributor of choice, who will ask me. This has already happened in the US (it's how I picked up Brown Box, Inc. as a distributor). The problem is while Carpe Astra is definitely a geek's game, It's Alive! has broader appeal. Advertising where I do is never going to reach those other people. Also, while BGG is the larger market of the two, lots of people on BGG pay money to hide the adverts.

How can I improve?

I asked this question in BGG a while ago, and received lots of advice. One of the suggestions was a BGG competition. This has several advantages over straight advertising:

• You're offering something for free, so people are more interested
• You can make the competition require knowledge of the game, hence driving people to your website
• BGG AdBlock doesn't cover competitions - so you reach all the BGG users
• Competitions get pride of place in the 'News' section at the top of the front page

As a result they are more expensive! But, I'm going to suck it up and run one shortly.

Another thing that came out of the thread was a former Marketing Assistant for Fantasy Flight offered to help. In exchange for a free copy of Carpe Astra and It's Alive! he offered to ring around the big shops in the US, bringing my games to their attention. The games are relatively cheap for me, so I took him up on his offer. Hopefully, this will help US availability and awareness, if it does I'll try to make more use of him (for more recompense).

I still don't know the best things to do to help build my company, but I'm learning all the time so hopefully in a few years time I'll be good at this (or I'll have hired someone who is!). In the meantime, any advice you've got is gratefully appreciated. And if you want to support me, ask your local shop to carry my games. Unless you run a shop, in which case ask your distributor of choice to carry my games. Alternatively, you can just buy a couple of thousand games from me directly!

Goals

I've been thinking about where I want to go with the company. At the moment, my first full-time year is on track, but even if I meet my goals for the year, I'll not make a profit (I spent a lot of money getting Carpe Astra and It's Alive! manufactured, too late in the year to recoup the cost). I've worked out my targets for next year, which include a significant growth in sales. If I meet them I hope to turn a profit next year and be able to take some money out of the company.

But what do I want to do long-term? Get to the point where I can pootle along, making enough money to live on? Or dominate the world?

There are a bunch of case studies. I'm going to use American companies that do strategy games as case studies, I don't know enough about the German ones and most of the UK ones are run as hobbies (Ludorum, Ragnar Brothers, Fragor), with only Warfrog and JKLM that I know about as a full-time job.

The ones I'm going to concentrate on are: Fantasy Flight, Rio Grande, and Steve Jackson. I don't know anything about Days of Wonder or Z-Man.

Fantasy Flight are the 800lb Gorilla founded in 1995. Their 'American' games are often licences, feature nice art and cool components. According to the Inc.com 5,000 fastest growing companies in the US their 2006 turnover was $6.2 million dollars, and they had 28 employees in 2007. Nice.

Rio Grande, founded in 1998, predominantly re-publish German games in English, although with Dominion they are branching out into publishing original titles. Again, according to the Inc 5,000, in 2007 Jay had a second employee and a turnover of $4.2 million dollars. That's a lot of turnover per employee.

Steve Jackson Games, founded in 1980, tend to focus on role-played games and lighter games such as Munchkin. According to their 2008 stakeholders report their turnover was $2.9 million dollars and they have 18 full-time employees. 75% of their turnover comes from Munchkin! If you've got a winning product - you need to keep it in print.

So there's a few different results and a few different methods of getting there. So what are my goals in terms of games, turnover and staff?

Games

I want to concentrate on publishing new games. Although re-printing already popular games is a bit less risky (you've got some indication of how popular they are already) I'm not that interested in that, whether it's first English editions of otherwise foreign language games or re-printing out of print games. As to what type of games, I'm still not sure. It's Alive! was fairly light auction game, Carpe Astra a more thinky brain-burning game, Sumeria will be a more family Euro-type game. I think a range is best to start of with, until I find my feet.

Turnover

It's clear from the numbers I've shown above that there is plenty of money in the games market. But as a newcomer I've got to fight with the established companies to get my share of it. I'd like to get to the point where I can earn a decent living from the company and ideally employ some staff to do the bits I'm not so good at (marketing). It would also be great to have someone to playtest/co-design with during working hours. Fantasy flight do a lot of their games design in-house, and to get to that point you need a whole bunch of talented people on hand. I guess I'd like to be turning over £1 million in 10 years. That's a hard goal, but as the above has shown, it's possible.

Employees

As far as I'm aware Z-Man is a one man show. Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande does a stirling job with only one other employee. Steve Jackson and Fantasy Flight are much bigger companies which give them some strength in depth, holiday/sick cover and means they can do a lot of work in-house. I'd like to get several staff (maybe 5 or so) in that 10 year period. Enough so that I can offload some of the drudgery, share in the games design/playtesting and recruit people with skills I'm missing.

Roadmap

How do I get there? That's the hard question. I need to keep coming up with successful games. I need to sell out the print runs I do to maximise my return on investment. I need to strengthen my relationships with distributors and expand my list of distributors to increase the reach of my games. Alliance Game Distributors (the largest distributors in the US) has over 2,000 customers. If each took one copy of Carpe Astra it would have sold out. And that's not including any European or Asian sales. If I can get to the point where I'm regularly doing medium-size print runs (5,000 - 10,000 copies) with 5 or more games in a year I'll be doing alright. Getting there from where I am now is going to be the difficult part. At the moment I don't have enough capital to do runs that large, I need to work up to that. Each game I do has to at least break even, that way I'm growing the money in the company. I think marketing will help there - increasing customer and shops knowledge of my products. What's the best thing to do there? I'm not yet sure. More on that in another post.

Playtesting

This week I'll be mostly playtesting. I've received several prototypes in the last few weeks, and along with some games that I've had for a while, I need to start going through them. Since the move down South my playtesting has dropped right off. In York I had a weekly playtesting night, but I've yet to set one up down here, I need to get to know a few more gamers first.

I got a couple of games in at Tim's on Saturday and today I'm soloing a few submissions for the first time. Soloing a game for the first time lets me see if the game is worth putting in front of playtesters when I get a chance to hook up with some.

I'm also trying to put some effort in on Codename: Nine, my sci-fi license idea. I've been making some notes and trying to get a game flow in my head. I've not made any prototype bits yet, or started playtesting - I'm just trying to capture the feel of the original and then I can start mocking things up.

I also need to go and collect some more stock, probably on Wednesday weather permitting. I've plenty of It's Alive! at home ready to ship out, but only one copy of Carpe Astra!

Sumeria Sketch

I've just received a sketch idea for the Sumeria box cover from Harald (the artist).

As usual, click on the image to see a larger version.

It's a first draft idea for the cover of the box. I love it. Especially the rich, red colour scheme, the Sumeria font and the hieroglyphs in the background at the top. What does everyone else make of it?

Russin' Frussin' Printer

I've an HP Deskjet 9800 A3 printer so I can print large format artwork. In general, I'm fairly happy with it, but I didn't get the prototypes in the post today, and it was all down to the printer.

The first problem occurred yesterday. I wanted to print out the board art, ready for gluing onto the greyboard, but my printer was having a hissy-fit. It was printing everything mirrored. All the text was backwards and the art was reversed. Weird. After a while rooting around in the printer settings I found a 'mirror-image' setting, which was inexplicably ticked. I un-ticked it. Tried again. Still mirrored.

Next stop was HP's support forums. I searched and couldn't find anything, so I tried their 'Instant Chat' support feature. Well, I would have done, had I been able to use it, I needed a product code and a serial code, the serial code was clear enough on the back of the printer, but the three things that could have been the product code didn't work, and the 'where do I find the codes' section only covered computers, not printers.

Time for a general Google search. This throws up a potential driver problem, and suggests installing the drivers for an entirely different printer, and using those drivers to interface with the 9800. Finally, it works!

Today I was trying to print the rule-books and it took a while to get the right settings in InDesign to get it to print the A5 rulebook in booklet format. Even when I thought it was working it was offsetting everything on the page so that some of the text and art was clipped. Needless to say I've wasted a lot of paper and (very expensive) ink in the last couple of days.

I've now got everything printed successfully, the rulebooks folded and stapled, and the boxes made. All that remains is the spray-gluing and posting, which I'll do tomorrow.

Getting The Prototypes Ready

Now that the antibiotics are kicking in and I can put weight on my ankle again, I'm pressing on with making the Sumeria prototypes to send out to the lucky winners of the competition I held a couple of weeks ago.

The prototypes are going to be fairly rough and ready, but they'll give an idea of the components and are perfectly playable. I've made tray and lid boxes using the same techniques as I did for Border Reivers and the limited edition of It's Alive! I've not bothered covering them though - I'll just add a label to the top and that's it. The wooden pieces are almost the final pieces, a little shorter for the traders, and the pawns will probably be similar - but not exactly the same.

Today, I'll get out my colour printer (currently in its box under a stack of other boxes) and print the boards, city-state tiles and influence counters. These have some rough prototype art that I've knocked up on, so they are the things that will change the most between prototype and real versions. These will then be glued onto thick card and cut out. I'm still trying to work out how to do a quad-folded board - the only other one I've made was a single fold - much easier!

The last thing to do is to update the rules. They are currently in a text file with no diagrams. This is fine for my personal testing purposes, but if I want to get good feedback about the clarity of the rules these need to be as finished as I can make them - so I'll include diagrams featuring the prototype art.

I'm hoping to get the prototypes in the post by Wednesday, we'll have to see how successful I am at that, and how much the snow affects things!

Good News, Everyone*

* who is waiting for a prototype copy of Sumeria.

The wooden pieces arrived from Germany on Friday - nearly a week before I was expecting them! This has caught me by surprise, to some degree. I spent most of last week doing financial things, not preparing the prototypes.

I've a few things to do, I've already sorted the bits and bagged them up ready to go. Yesterday I prepared the boxes ready for cutting out - I'll do that this afternoon. I also need to print out the boards, tiles and counters and glue them onto some thick card, add some diagrams to the rules and print them out. I hope to have everything done by Tuesday. Things have been slowed down by an infected wound in my (good) ankle, which caused the whole ankle to swell up and is so painful I can't really walk at the moment. I've been prescribed some antibiotics though, so hopefully things should start improving by tomorrow.

Making these prototypes, especially bagging the bits and making the boxes really reminds me of the good old days with Border Reivers and the first edition of It's Alive! It's a lot more fun when you don't have to do hundreds of them though!

In other (good) news, a restock order from America and the returns from one of my consignment customers means that I'll be halfway to my target for February by the end of day two :-)

Value Added Tax

I've spent the last couple of days doing my VAT return. So I thought I'd cover a bit about why I'm voluntarily registered for VAT and what it entails. I'm not sure how this works in other countries, and hence how useful it'll be to readers from overseas - but I think it's pretty similar throughout Europe at least.

VAT is a sales tax that is supposed to be charged when it's sold to a personal customer (rather than another business). It's charged on almost everything, and when you buy something in a store that is mostly used by personal customers it's usually included in the price you see advertised (and not really mentioned). In the UK its recently been cut from 17.5% to 15% in an attempt to boost our faltering economy.

When a VAT-registered business sells to another VAT-registered business the price is shown as 'ex. VAT' (the actual price) and 'inc. VAT' (the price they pay). That's right - VAT registered businesses pay the same price as a personal customer. So why register for VAT? First there's a legal obligation: if your turnover is over a certain threshold (currently £67K in the UK) then you have to register. My turnover is nowhere near that - so why did I register?

The idea behind VAT is that it's only really paid once - by the end consumer. Everyone else in the supply chain charges it on their sales (outputs) and pays it on their purchases (inputs). But the two cancel each other out. Each quarter you submit a VAT return to HMRC, telling them how much VAT you charged on your outputs and how much you paid on your inputs. You then pay them the difference (if you charged more than you paid) or get a rebate (if you paid more than you charged). It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's it in a nutshell. If you're VAT registered you're only really paying the ex. VAT price on purchases (saving you the 15% extra for VAT which you claim back) and you're only really charging the ex. VAT price on your sales, and taking the extra 15% on behalf of HMRC.

Since this is reducing your costs, and your customer's costs (they're only really paying your ex. VAT price) it seemed like a good idea. Sure, when you sell directly to a customer (e.g. at a convention or for pre-orders) the VAT comes out of that, but you're making a decent margin on those (almost) MSRP sales anyway.

Being VAT registered means you've got to keep your books up-to-date (which you should be doing anyway) and you've got to keep a VAT account - a record of all your sales and purchases, including how much VAT you've paid and charged. It's an added faff, but when you're making the occasional large sale to a distributor it's not too onerous. Admittedly, when I've a hundred or so individual pre-orders going out over a few days it's a hassle, but again: margins!

I've spent the last few days doing accounting-type things since the deadline for my latest VAT return (Oct-Dec '08) is tomorrow and the deadline for my income tax return for last year (April 6th 2007 to April 5th 2008) is also tomorrow. I did the income tax return first (in the UK you don't normal have to do them, since income tax is usually taken out of your wages automatically). The VAT return was Wednesday afternoon & evening and all day Thursday's work. First I had to bring my books up-to-date (bad Jackson - no banana!). I'd left off doing November and December, which was mostly due to November being a big job due to the Carpe Astra pre-orders. Once that was done I needed to fill in the VAT return. It's a simple form (nine boxes, two of which are calculated for you!), but my VAT account (which I do in OpenOffice Spreadsheet) was a bit too simplistic. It worked fine for the previous return, but this time I'd bought some things in the EU (Carpe Astra) and sold some things to the EU (my new European distributors and a few shops at Essen). There's a few boxes that I'd been able to leave blank last time that I had to fill in this time, and the VAT account took some re-jigging to do that.

Last time I got a hefty rebate, having bought the entire It's Alive! print-run at the end of that quarter, but not sold much yet. This time I owed a lot :-(

In summation then, if you're intending to buy your games in the EU, run your business in the EU and sell mostly to distributors, then I think being VAT-registered is a good idea. Of course, I'm not an accountant, so don't treat anything I've said as gospel!

The Price Of Games

You see a lot of complaints these days about the prices of games, whether it's the price of games coming into the UK or the price of games in the US. Why are prices where they are?

There are four links in the chain: manufacturer, publisher, distributor and shop/online store. Each one has costs and each one needs to make some money or they won't be around for long.

Manufacturer

The manufacturer's costs include: set-up costs for all the manufacturing (things like litho-printing plates, die-cut tools), staff costs, electricity, ink, paper, cardboard, wood and the assembling time. These will have increased recently (especially the electricity costs and the transport for cardboard, paper and wood). Plus the manufacturers will need to make a cut for themselves - I've no idea what the manufacturer's mark-up is.

Publisher

This is obviously the one I know the most about! The publisher's costs include: the manufacture, shipping from the manufacturer, royalies, advertising and warehousing. In addition, there's a few minor incidentals that might be easily forgotten: registering for barcodes, taxes, phone calls (all over the world), etc. I've read in a few places you should aim for a margin of 100%, i.e. if the game costs you £3 to manufacturer, you should charge £6 for it at wholesale. I've not managed to get a 100% margin on anything yet, but it's a goal! Out of that have to come your warehousing and advertising costs and some profit for your company/wages.

Distributor

The distributor buys games at around 40% of retail and sells around 60%, so a 50% markup. Distributors costs include: paying the publisher, warehousing, advertising to their customers and shipping (both from publishers and to shops). Distributors seem to do ok on their 50% margin, they generally have several staff - even the smaller ones in smaller countries. Distributors can improve their cash-flow by taking games 'on consignment', they take the games, but only pay for them once they've sold them. Consignment deals usually require the distributor to regularly report how many games they've sold, so the publishers can invoice them for those sales. Publishers can often get more for games on consignment since there's less risk involved for the distributor and the deal helps the distributor's cash flow at the expense of the publisher's cash flow.

Shop

A shop has a very different situation from an online-store so I'll treat them separately. First the physical bricks-and-mortar shop. The shop gets what sounds like a big cut. If it was manufactured for £3, sold to a distributor for £6, sold to the shop at £9, then the RRP is £15. The shop's cut is £6, the largest of all. But, unlike everyone else, they have to pay expensive rent on retail space, rather than a cheap warehouse and/or office. Additional costs include: staff, taxes (certainly in the UK VAT would come out of their cut).

Online Store

An online store occupies the same link in the chain, but they can run their business very differently. Without the costs of retail space and with fewer staff they can reduce their outgoings. They can run their business from a warehouse in a low-rent area, and through the internet can reach a lot more customers. For the successful ones, this means they can buy in greater bulk and hence earn discounts from the distributors. This allows the online stores to offer the games at a discount below the RRP, which further increases their market share.

Why are game costs so high? The currency fluctuations at the moment haven't helped. A game from a German pulisher that costs a distributor 8 Euros, was at one point £6.15, which led to a RRP of approximately £15.40. If the same distributor re-orders the same game from the same publisher at the same price at the moment, the exchange rate changes everything. The game now costs the distributor £7.54, and the RRP changes to £18.70 a hike of £3.30 or 20%. Further to this, the high oil prices recently pushed up shipping prices, and seeing as these affect the publisher and distributor these increases are multiplied through the margins.

So in answer to the early question: it's complicated!

How Many Copies?

How big to make a print run is a classic publisher conundrum - where you're publishing board games, books or pretty much anything else where the cost is largely made up of the components of the finished article (unlike computer games where the cost is mostly development, not production).

If you make too many then you're going to be left holding the ball. You'll be paying the costs for warehousing your stock, you're unlikely to break-even and hence will end up out of pocket and it'll be very demoralising.

Conversely, if you make too few, the cost per item will increase, possibly pricing your product out of the market or significantly reducing your margins. Even if your product is affordable and you sell out of your print run - do you do another printing? Will the demand that appears to be there evaporate before the re-print reaches the market?

You've got to hit the sweet-spot, where your product is competitively priced, your margins are enough for you to run your business on and you ideally sell out of the whole print run. But where is that sweet spot? That's really hard question to answer.

I don't have a really good grip on the market yet, I'm too new to it. So instead I'm doing the smallest runs I can afford - possibly a mistake, but it's the least risky route to take and at the moment I can't afford too much risk.

The way I determine the print run size is to price up the cost of the components, artwork, playtesting materials and designer's royalties. On top of that I add my cut which includes: marketing, my salary (hopefully at some point!), warehousing and transportation. This is the wholesale price. Wholesale is approximately 40% of retail (the distributors and shops need to make a cut too), so multiply that figure by 2.5 to get the retail price. Now we have a problem. It's a £25 game and the price I've just got from my calculations is £250. Hmmm. Needs some work. So then I try to bring the cost down. I can change the components for cheaper ones (though I'm loathe to end up with something that feels cheap - I think the quality of Carpe Astra is just right), cut the art budget or make more copies.

Making more copies makes things cheaper for two reasons: fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs are things like artwork, the artist will charge the same whether you make 10 copies or 250,000 copies. If they charge £2,000 and you make 10 copies the art adds £200 to the price of the game (times 2.5!), if you make 250,000 copies it adds 0.8 pence to the cost. The variable costs are things like printing and components. It costs more to print 250,000 copies than 10 copies. But the increase is not proportional. Modern factory manufacturing is at its best when it's churning out loads of the same things. There are set-up costs and labour costs associated with changing tasks. So the more you make of something the cheaper each one gets. So printing 250,000 games is cheaper (per copy) than printing 10 copies.

So the aim is to make as many copies as I can to reduce costs. But wait a minute, a minute ago I said that making lots of copies is too risky. If I make too many I'm stuffed, I'll lose money - not make it. And, there's another problem: Capital.

When I made It's Alive! and Carpe Astra that was my first time dealing with two different manufacturing companies. I had to pay half the estimated price up front (you pay for way they deliver - which can be within 10% of what you asked for, e.g. if I asked for 2,000 copies they can deliver and charge for anywhere between 1,800 and 2,200). The other half was due around the time the games were delivered. This time round I'm a known quantity, so I get slightly better treatment (I've got a month to pay after invoicing - around the time of delivery). Still, I'll not get a chance to recoup much money before the manufacturing bill is due. Pre-orders pay when the games are ready, but most of my sales go to distributors on 30 days payment terms - I'll get no money from them until after I pay for the manufacturing. So in addition to not wanting to make too many games, I can only make as many games as I can afford to pay for before I start selling the game itself.

It's a fine line to walk. The real money is in big print runs, but I'm not yet in a position to do those, so I have to stay small. This means smaller margins and more expensive games. Hopefully, I'll get a winner that I can re-print confidently soon.

And The Winners Are...

Thanks to everyone who offered to playtest Sumeria for me. I was overwhelmed by the response - thanks!

I've chosen the winners for the playtest copies using some incredibly arcane judging criteria:

• UK: Andy Evans
• Europe: E Decker
• North America: FunkyBlue & Sorrellbo

I'll be contacting the winners via email/Geekmail shortly. Thanks to everyone who volunteered - better luck next time!

Sumeria

Wow! What a response. Not only did I get three or four times more comments than a single response has received before, but the most hits for the blog ever in a day, by a factor of three too. I hope some of you hang around and continue to read!

Sumeria is moving along fairly swiftly now. I've signed Harald Lieske (Sutter's Mill, ...aber bitte mit Sahne, Dominion) to do the art and I've started getting the bits together for the prototype copies. I've placed an order with Spiel Material to get the necessary wooden bits (there's quite a lot) and I've got a manufacturing quote from LudoFact, the Germans who did a great job on Carpe Astra. I'm getting enough bits to make five prototypes. I'm sending two to the US, one to the UK (there's already another couple in the UK, mine and Steve's) and one to Europe (there's already another in Europe too). I'm trying to hit my main markets where I already have distribution (hence no Asia or Australasia - sorry!). The fifth set of bits I'll hang onto and use to make a prototype with the finished art to submit to the UK Game of the Year award which is given out at the UK Games Expo.

With an artist decided and a manufacturing quote I've been able to finalise the price at £25 - higher than Carpe Astra because of the large number of wooden pieces and the quad-folded board. I've started taking a few pre-orders too.

I'll decide today where the prototype copies are going, then I can start getting them together. I'll knock up a rough box, add the wooden pieces from Germany when they arrive and add a board and the tiles which I'll have to paste-up and cut out by hand. It will be a return to my roots, making games by hand :-)

In other news, I've just signed a distribution agreement with Alliance Games Distributors, the largest distributors in the US to carry my games. They are going to start with It's Alive! and then hopefully take some Carpe Astra shortly. I've also received an order from a Taiwanese distributor, so things are looking up. January is looking to be my second best month ever, after October which got a huge boost thanks to Essen.

Playtesting Three: Blind

The third stage of playtesting is 'blind playtesting'. By this point you've an almost finished game and an almost finished rulebook. You provide this to people (ideally not friends and family - but people who can be honest with you) and let them learn the game from the rules - rather than being taught the game by you. You can either watch them, taking notes but not teaching them how to play, or for more un-biased feedback you can just send them a copy of the game and let them send you the feedback.

As usual, there are pros and cons. To get good feedback on the rulebook, the rule book needs to be nearly finished - it doesn't need final art, but it should have the diagrams and almost final layout. The playtesters are likely to provide feedback about the game rules too: They like it; they don't; what about changing this rule or that rule or the components. You'll have to be able to judge the feedback according to your goals. A lighter gamer might suggest something that makes the game simpler, and which makes the game much better in their eyes. A heavier gamer might suggest a change that makes the game deeper. Which do you use? Or neither? You'll need a pretty good idea of where in the market you want to position the game, and judge the feedback according to those criteria. Since this is something you'll likely do near the end of the game's development it's hard both to accept changes (you're happy with the game as it is) and conversely it's hard to stop fiddling with things. You need to be able to judge the suggested changes objectively against your criteria for the game (harder said than done) and draw a line under the game when you're happy with it.

Hopefully, at this stage you've got a great game that everyone loves. Be prepared for some people to hate it though. If you get negative feedback, you'll need to judge whether it's due to a flaw in the game, or just not the playtester's kind of game. Again, this can be difficult.

Want to find out what blind playtesing feels like? Help me playtest Sumeria. I'm looking for four volunteers, two in the US, one in the UK and one in Germany/Europe. It's a family euro-game so: simple rules, fairly deep gameplay, plenty of choices, wafer-thin theme. If that's not your kind of thing please don't apply, I don't need hardcore American gamers telling me it's rubbish because of a lack of plastic miniatures and dice-based combat!

What's in it for you?

• You get a prototype copy of Sumeria months before it's released
• You get your name in the rules as a playtester
• You're entitled to a 50% discount on the finished product

What do you have to do?

• Play the game a lot with your game groups
• Make a note of: who played, whether they've played before, who won, play time
• Provide feedback on the game (including suggested rule changes)
• Provide feedback on the rules - how can I improve the clarity and completeness

How do you sign up? Leave a note in the comments to this post stating which country you live in and why you'd make an excellent playtester. I'll pick the lucky recipients at the end of this week.

Finding My (Gaming) Feet

It's always hard when you move to a new area. You don't know anyone or where anything is. It takes a while to find your feet and get settled in.

Gaming is helping me get to know some people down here this time. When I moved to York I knew there was a board games club there, but it took me best part of a year to actually make it to Beyond Monopoly! through which I made several good friends and managed to organise a playtesting group. This time I'm going to be more organised.

In advance of our move, I asked around on BoardGameGeek for information about the area and got introduced to a few people that way. Yesterday I had one of them round for an afternoon of gaming :-). Matt and I played two games of Race for the Galaxy, two games of Dominion and my first game of Le Havre - Uwe Rosenberg's follow-up to the extremely popular Agricola.

I'm hoping to join another local group on Tuesday and then make it along to Matt's games club on Thursday. Games are a great medium for making new friends :-)

Today's main order of business is sales. I've got to wait in for the courier to collect the first order from my new German distributor, so I figure I might as well chase up all my contacts in distributors that haven't yet ordered as well as a few who's orders I'm waiting on.

Moving Forward

I'm back properly at work now and there's a few things on my plate:

Yesterday I completed (but couldn't file due to a technical issue) my self-assessment tax return for the tax year from April 2007 - April 2008. This was for before I quit my job to concentrate on Reiver Games full-time, so it's fairly small fry and I wasn't drawing a salary (not that I am yet!). The return took nearly a full day, it was more complicated than the previous year's and as a result I needed to spend a decent chunk of the day on the phone to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. There's only so much time you can spend listening to hold music before you lose the will to live. Still the bottom line is: last year my turnover was 250% higher than the previous year (actually only 9 months) and my profit was 1000% higher. This year there will be a huge jump in my turnover, but I doubt I'll be profitable, having had to pay the manufacturing cost of It's Alive! and Carpe Astra up front and only having seven months to sell It's Alive! (it was delivered in September) and four and a half to sell Carpe Astra. Still, in the current economic climate I think I'm doing ok. Not stellar, but ok.

Today began with a trip into town to meet my new Business Specialist at the local branch of my bank. I took along It's Alive! and Carpe Astra and she loved them, she was very impressed. I think she was also impressed by how the company was doing too. We chatted for an hour and a quarter and I think I'm off to a good start with the new branch.

This afternoon, I was back to struggling with the technical issue for my tax return. After several calls I've managed to fix the problem (the error message: 'You're logged in elsewhere, or your agent is logged in at the same time' means 'This text box accepts up to 255 characters, without carriage returns' - that's some quality programming!), so I'm just waiting for the system to acknowledge that I've filed, so I can pay the tax I owe on my Reiver Games profit for that year.

In other news, I've picked up another German distributor, I'll be sending them their stock on Monday, their order came in too late for today's courier deadline.

In other news, a US distributor wants to return the consignment stock of It's Alive! they took at Essen, they thought they were getting a North American exclusive but I didn't. The crossed wires led to me sorting out deals with several other US distributors and them ending with a lot more stock than they wanted for a non-exclusive deal. They want to return 240 copies of It's Alive! Sounds terrible, but conveniently another distributor in the next state wants 250 copies of It's Alive! I can see a deal where the other US distributor gets a cheap shipping deal, as instead of paying to get the games from the UK by sea, they just pay for a couple of hundred miles haulage :-) Now that was well-timed!

Back Online

We moved down South last Monday/Tuesday. Since then I've had no internet access. I've been making trips into Bedford (about eight miles away) when I can, to use the free wifi in the Bedford Creative Arts Gallery. But the company has been effectively on hold for nine days.

I've tried to keep things going: I've collected some stock from my warehouse, shipped an order of Carpe Astra to Germany, I've been investigating shipping costs for a large order to a new US distributor and I've been getting manufacturing and art quotes for Sumeria. But without regular internet access I've felt very cut off.

Now I'm back online all the time, I'm trying to close a few orders that I've been waiting on for a while and sort a few other things out that I've been waiting on.

Jack's back!

I Feel (Almost) Human Again!

I hope everyone had a nice break for Christmas. I spent most of it lying on the sofa watching The West Wing. And not in a good way. I came down with a stinking cold on Christmas Day. By Boxing Day (which was the day we were spending with my family), I was feeling worse, and when we sat down for dinner the others noticed that despite being in a fairly small room that had just been used for cooking and now had ten other people in it, and despite wearing lots of clothes I was shivering. Yes, I now had a fever :-( I promptly went to bed, and slept on and off for the next few days, except at night when I just lay there unable to sleep. Fun. Still, I'm feeling much better now, still not right, but it's just a cold again, nothing fatal (i.e. not Man-Flu).

Today I'm back in the saddle. I'm working on Sumeria now in earnest. Over Christmas I approached a German artist (who had left me a leaflet at Essen - I really liked his portfolio and I thought his style would suit Sumeria really well). I'm getting together the details for him to get a quote. Then I'm going to get a manufacturing quote request off as well.

I'm vaguely considering moving Sumeria forward. I'd like to release a new game at the UK Games Expo and another at Spiel '09. The original plan was to launch Sumeria at Essen (I think it would be the perfect game for the family audience), but now I'm thinking timing might be an issue. The UKGE is at the beginning of June, I'd want to have the games back from the manufacturers a week or two before hand to allow time for some delay at the manufacturers. It'll probably take eight to ten weeks to manufacture again, so I need to have everything ready by the end of March. If I go with Sumeria first that gives me three months to get it priced up, get all the artwork and final playtesting done. If I go with something else I have three months to choose something, playtest it, choose an artist, get it priced up, get the art done and get the final playtesting done. Sounds a bit tight...

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope you all have a great Christmas - I'm off for a few days, down to Bristol to see my family and my in-laws. I'll take a few prototypes with me, though I don't know whether I'll get a chance to try them out - I'll have to see what people are in the mood for.

In other news, I got my present a few days early. Last night we won a game of Battlestar Galactica. Yes, the humans won! Victory is sweet. I'm seriously considering retiring now.

Winding Down For Christmas

The orders I'm waiting on are unlikely to arrive before Christmas now. My distributors have been very busy in the run-up to Christmas by all accounts and several of them close between Christmas and New Year for stock-taking. I'm still hoping that several of the orders arrive in time for me to send them off before we move. Two of them sound hopeful, with another saying it'll be last week or the week before! Not holding out much hope of that one arriving any time soon. I had tried to gain some information on the rough size of the US order, but they won't give me a ballpark figure, they'd rather wait until they are ready to place the real order.

On the weekend I bought myself an external USB hard drive. I needed something to backup my data onto and it seemed like the best option. Being a computer-based company I'm particularly sensitive to data loss, and my laptop isn't that new :-/ Still, I finally got around to getting a drive, and on Saturday I wrote a little shell script that performs the backup. I plan to do weekly backups, and the disk will hold around twenty of them without any clever-ness (to do with only storing changed files), so that seems ideal.

I've been doing a fair amount of playtesting recently, but of new stuff, not the stuff I've had for a while. I think my next playtesting project is to send out some blind playtesting copies of Sumeria to get some objective feedback and some new ideas. To do that I'll need to make a bunch of prototypes. I'll need to get some wooden pieces (probably from Game-Components.com in Germany, though the weakness of the pound versus the euro means they'll be pretty expensive), make some boards (I'll probably wait until after we move and I've my own garage to doing the gluing in) and update the rules. Not making any changes to the game rules, but improving (I hope!) the rulebook by adding examples and clarifying a few things.

Polyglot Games

My Belgian distributor wants to translate Carpe Astra into Dutch. Cool! I thought I'd use this as an excuse for a discussion of languages in games.

It's Alive! is a language-independent game. The only text is on the rules, player aids and the box, the game components feature nothing but numbers on the cards. As such, it's prime translation material. Numerous customers have translated the rules into their own languages: Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Japanese. When I did the second version, I got Michael (thanks, Michael!) to translate the rules, box and player aids into German, so I had a multi-lingual version. This was especially useful for trying to break into the large German market, but also at Essen.

Michael sent me his translation in the form of a 'translation grid', where each sentence or caption on a diagram was in a separate box with the German translation alongside. This was a really useful way of clearly showing me which bits of the German translation corresponded with which bits of the English rules - making it easy for me to layout the German text with the diagrams correctly.

When it was time to do Carpe Astra I chose to do a single language version only due to the large quantities of English text on each card. Although the text on the card wasn't really necessary (it's a combination of an English language description of the diagrams on the top half of the card and some flavour text which has no in-game effect), I figured it would detract from a German version if the only thing you got in German was the rules, everything else was in English only. As a result - mono-lingual game :-(

However, things are now moving along. The Dutch translator asked if I could provide the text in a form that was easy to edit. Since I had done the rules layout in InDesign, and he didn't have access to that package I offered to send him a translation grid. Then it struck me. Why not provide the translation grids for my games on my website? It will allow people to easily translate the rules into their own languages if they want, which only helps me. The Carpe Astra one is up now, the It's Alive! one will follow later today.

In other news, I'm in negotiations now with another publisher to do another version of It's Alive! in another language, hopefully that will bear fruit in a few months time.

Sumeria Exists

Sumeria is now listed on my website and BoardGameGeek now. You can add it to your want list, Steve!

In other news, I've heard back from a couple of the distributors whose orders I'm waiting on. One of them will come in at the end of December/beginning of January (in time for my move) the other a week or two later (too late). But it's good to know they are coming.

Time's Running Out

I've six orders that are 'coming shortly'. I'm keen to get these sorted before I move for several reasons:

• I want to get Carpe Astra in more shops as soon as possible
• The move itself is going to disrupt things, I'm going to be spending a couple of days on the move, and when we get to the other end it'll take me a few days to sort out internet access
• As part of the move I've got to pay to transport my games from my current warehouse (near my house in York) to one down south. I'll pay per pallet, so the fewer games (and hence pallets) I've got the cheaper this will be.

Of course while I'm keen to get these orders done as soon as possible, I can't progress them until I've actually received the order. Distributors are obviously very busy in the run up to Christmas, so it's no surprise these orders are taking a while. Still, it's damn frustrating.

I've had a chance to play one of the Bruno Faidutti prototypes a few times over the last weeks. It's got real potential (it's a fairly light, fun game with plenty of screwage), I've suggested some changes and Bruno seems ok with them. I've got to make a couple of changes to the prototype over the next couple of days in time for my last York playtesting night tomorrow. I'll try them out and see if they improve things or make them worse...

Playtesting Two: Follow the Leader

A couple of weeks ago I did a post about solo playtesting, while hinting that it was part of a series. So, finally, here is part two, about taught playtesting.

Once you've got the prototype into a workable state (i.e. it's not totally broken, or dull!). The next stage is to play it with others. In the first instance, it's best to just play the game with you teaching it to the other players.

Why bring others on board? Two main reasons: other impressions and other strategies. Playing the game by yourself is not a huge heap of fun, especially if the game has any hidden information (you have to pretend you don't know what's in the other players' hands and what hidden actions they've taken). With real players it's easier to see how the game works when the information is truly hidden. You know what you think about the game, what about everyone else? Publishing is all about guessing whether other people will like a game enough to buy it. The more accurate your guess the fewer duds you'll publish and the better hits you'll get. Playtesting lets you get a sample of the gamer public and see what they think. If they all love it, then hopefully it will be a success, if they're not bothered or hate it then maybe you're best off dumping that game, or significantly re-working it.

I should note at this point that the playtesters' feedback is a sample of the public as a whole, but they are not a random sample and like any other sample can be affected by bias. This is especially true when you do the majority of your playtesting with friends and family. Don't be surprised when they love your game. They want to support you and will do that by telling you the game is great and asking to play it again. This bias is why the next phase is so important. At this point the game is likely to change every time you play it, or you might be wheeling out something that sounded good on paper but when you play it is shockingly bad. Friends and family are great for this, as they have more patience with your misses than the gaming public. At this point honest friends are worth their weight in gold. Someone who can play your latest darling and say: 'Man! That was shit! I mean _really_ bad.' to your face is much more useful than someone who thinks it and doesn't say it or is just predisposed to liking it because it's one of yours.

The other big advantage of playing with other people is getting other ideas and strategies. You've played it a lot solo, it's great. It works really neatly. They you play it with Bob and he uses a different strategy, one you'd not considered. All of a sudden your great little game is broken :-( Yeay Bob! Much better you find this out before you invest thousands of pounds (dollars, euros, etc.) in the manufacture of the game - it's not too late to make changes at this point. Fix the problem and try again.

While you are still making a lot of changes time spent writing a great set of comprehensive rules is probably time wasted. Why invest time writing a set of rules with lots of diagrams explaining move 'A' if when you finally play that version, it turns out that 'A' is actually a bit weak and you have to replace it with move 'B' instead? While the rules are very fluid it's not worth the effort creating an awesome set of rules and hence you can't blind playtest it (more on this next time). So you have to teach it to your testers. Taught playtesting isn't the be all and end all, you have to taken into account the bias in the feedback you get and obviously without a set of written rules to learn from you're not going to get much in the way of rules feedback. But it serves a purpose, and it's very valuable if you are aware of its pitfalls.