I've been quite busy with work again this week, including another long day's trip to our corporate UK head office in Manchester. But regardless I bravely soldiered on and got loads of gaming in. It's a hard job but someone's got to do it and, selfless man that I am, I took one for the team. You guys owe me.
Wednesday's Games Night suffered extreme attrition and ended up just being Ian and me. We played Lost Cities, Firefly (one towards my ten plays goal!) with the Pirates and Bounty Hunters expansion (for the first time) and Carcassonne: The Castle (one towards play every game I own once this year). Firefly was done and dusted in only 65 minutes! That's about half the length of my shortest game to date. Ian and I have both played it a few times so we knew what we were doing and that made a big difference. I liked the new story card from the expansion, but we didn't really play and of the expansion PvP rules, just by being good space citizens rather than any determined effort not to.
Thursday's trip to Manchester was with DJ and Mal, two Games Night regulars who had cried off on Wednesday. As usual, we ended up playing a bunch of board games on the iPad during the journeys, mostly Carcassonne and Hey! That's My Fish! We also played a few games of my Martian Dice app on my phone :-)
Then Saturday I finally made it to Newcastle Gamers for the first time in what feels like centuries. It was a great evening, I only played a couple of games, but it was great to catch up with everyone there and the games were good ones that helped towards my ten plays goal (Homesteaders and Aqua Romana - which is now ticked off the list).
Finally, as I was leaving I spoke briefly to a few Newcastle Playtest regulars. Last time I went to Newcastle Playtest (also some time around 1530, I'm pretty sure Henry VIII was still on the throne), I'd left a copy of Zombology with Dan for him to take to the UK Games Expo playtest event. I've not seen Dan since, so I don't know if he got a chance to try it out, or what the feedback was, but I hope to see him next week. Olly said it felt like he hadn't seen me in ages, and I said that I'd missed the last couple of sessions due to travelling for work. I jokingly said it must have been weird having a session that didn't start with a couple of games of Zombology (it's our staple opening game while we wait for people to arrive). But it did! Dan took it along and they all played it without me! A good sign.
That and another event during the week are starting to restore my confidence. On Tuesday I was out of the office at a networking event where I bumped into a friend of a friend who recognised my name and company name from my badge. She asked if I was the game designer and we chatted about that for a bit. I told her about Zombology (She started it! I didn't pounce on her like a lion that hadn't been fed in months! Well actually I did, but in the sort of genteel way that's acceptable at a work conference). I happened to have the prototype on me (it was in my bag for Wednesday's train trip where it didn't see any action), so I showed it to her and explained the premise. The combination of zombies, wacky science and a £9 price point combined into enough excitement for her to pre-order a copy there and then. Maybe selling 150 won't be so hard after all...
Monday, July 13
Monday, July 6
In Flux and In Corporeal Form
Finally, after a few weeks of fannying on, I've finally printed out and constructed the new version of Zombology incorporating changes suggested during my trip to St. Louis at the beginning of June. I had the evening to myself last night as The Wife was out with friends, so after getting The Daughter to sleep I printed it out and made it all up. Excellent! Took long enough. I've been wanting to try this version out before sending it out for playtesting, but I have to miss this week's Newcastle Playtest because of travelling for work again, and I've not managed to fit a playtest in at work for a while either, so screw it, it's going out untested! It could be awful! It could be genius! Only one way to find out.
I've contacted a few friends who have done playtesting for me before to see if they'll try it out and give me some feedback, but what I really need is blind playtesters who aren't friends of mine and are willing to try it a few times and give me some honest, critical feedback. Fancy helping out? Let me know in the comments.
That's the 'Corporeal' part of this week's title. The 'In Flux' part refers to the fact that I'm still deciding what I want to do about Zombology. I've got three options as I see it:
If you'd asked me two weeks ago, I was utterly convinced that option 3 was the way I wanted to go, now I'm in the middle of a crisis of indecision. I'll give myself a couple of weeks to discuss it with The Wife and think things through, but then I'm going to have to make a decision and start acting on it.
Still, at least with the finished prototype I've actually made some concrete progress this week.
I've contacted a few friends who have done playtesting for me before to see if they'll try it out and give me some feedback, but what I really need is blind playtesters who aren't friends of mine and are willing to try it a few times and give me some honest, critical feedback. Fancy helping out? Let me know in the comments.
That's the 'Corporeal' part of this week's title. The 'In Flux' part refers to the fact that I'm still deciding what I want to do about Zombology. I've got three options as I see it:
- Give up on publishing myself and either make it freely available (print and play) or try to get a publisher to pick it up.
- Publish it in a time-light fashion, e.g. print on demand through a company like The Game Crafter or Drive Thru Cards.
- Or the original plan of a small, hand-made print run that I'll sell through my own website.
If you'd asked me two weeks ago, I was utterly convinced that option 3 was the way I wanted to go, now I'm in the middle of a crisis of indecision. I'll give myself a couple of weeks to discuss it with The Wife and think things through, but then I'm going to have to make a decision and start acting on it.
Still, at least with the finished prototype I've actually made some concrete progress this week.
Monday, June 29
A Moment of Reflection
Not much progress again this week :-( I was babysitting for a friend on Tuesday and used the evening to finish the graphic design (and add some further improvements) of the next version of Zombology, but then was too busy for the rest of the week to either print them out or playtest them.
I was hoping to get the printing done on Friday night while The Wife was at the cinema, but after a bad night's sleep The Wife cancelled, and my cousin popped in on a visit from Bath while showing her son local universities he's considering attending. I was also hoping to make it to Newcastle Gamers for the first time in months on Saturday, but instead we went on an impromptu camping trip to the wilds of the North Pennines (which were lovely!).
I missed the last Newcastle Playtest too due to a work trip, and I'm going to have to miss the next one for the same reason - I'm travelling a bit more for work now. Newcastle Playtest is only monthly, so I'm going to go three months without attending one, which is pretty pants for a supposed co-organiser.
All this has got me thinking. Am I really set up for another self-publishing company? I did pretty well last time around, but I had no kids at that point and The Wife was really busy with work so I had plenty of time in the evenings for making games and marketing. A weekend away at a convention was an easy sell at home because The Wife was busy and often worked some or all of the weekend anyway. Now I'm travelling more with work and have a family, do I really want to be going away from them on the weekends that I'm not away for work to demo and sell games at conventions?
Last time round I sold a good chunk of games at conventions. I went to The Cast Are Dice, Beer and Pretzels, The UK Games Expo and a few smaller ones. It was a good opportunity to promote my games because when you're running a small company with no marketing budget the vast majority of your intended audience have not heard of you, your company or your products. When I'm going on regular trips away for work, some of which eat up a weekend it's much harder to justify giving up another weekend away from The Wife and The Daughter for selling games. The Daughter's growing up so quickly at the moment that every missed moment counts. The work trips are also getting in the way of playtesting, my Games Nights and attending Newcastle Gamers. In addition to time for developing, manufacturing and selling the games, I also need time to test them, and at the moment it feels like I haven't got that time available.
I've got 13 pre-orders already, which is good, but that's less than 10% of the print run I'm planning. Can I sell the other 90-odd percent through free web marketing and the odd convention attendance? I don't know.
Anyway, I'm going to take a couple of weeks before I commit any money to the effort to check whether I'm sure I'll have the time to commit to making this successful, or whether I think I can make this successful with the time available to me. I'll also consider other paths to publishing one final time: print on demand, or selling to another publisher.
While I think about it, I'll get this next prototype printed out and tested, so at least I'm making some progress...
I was hoping to get the printing done on Friday night while The Wife was at the cinema, but after a bad night's sleep The Wife cancelled, and my cousin popped in on a visit from Bath while showing her son local universities he's considering attending. I was also hoping to make it to Newcastle Gamers for the first time in months on Saturday, but instead we went on an impromptu camping trip to the wilds of the North Pennines (which were lovely!).
I missed the last Newcastle Playtest too due to a work trip, and I'm going to have to miss the next one for the same reason - I'm travelling a bit more for work now. Newcastle Playtest is only monthly, so I'm going to go three months without attending one, which is pretty pants for a supposed co-organiser.
All this has got me thinking. Am I really set up for another self-publishing company? I did pretty well last time around, but I had no kids at that point and The Wife was really busy with work so I had plenty of time in the evenings for making games and marketing. A weekend away at a convention was an easy sell at home because The Wife was busy and often worked some or all of the weekend anyway. Now I'm travelling more with work and have a family, do I really want to be going away from them on the weekends that I'm not away for work to demo and sell games at conventions?
Last time round I sold a good chunk of games at conventions. I went to The Cast Are Dice, Beer and Pretzels, The UK Games Expo and a few smaller ones. It was a good opportunity to promote my games because when you're running a small company with no marketing budget the vast majority of your intended audience have not heard of you, your company or your products. When I'm going on regular trips away for work, some of which eat up a weekend it's much harder to justify giving up another weekend away from The Wife and The Daughter for selling games. The Daughter's growing up so quickly at the moment that every missed moment counts. The work trips are also getting in the way of playtesting, my Games Nights and attending Newcastle Gamers. In addition to time for developing, manufacturing and selling the games, I also need time to test them, and at the moment it feels like I haven't got that time available.
I've got 13 pre-orders already, which is good, but that's less than 10% of the print run I'm planning. Can I sell the other 90-odd percent through free web marketing and the odd convention attendance? I don't know.
Anyway, I'm going to take a couple of weeks before I commit any money to the effort to check whether I'm sure I'll have the time to commit to making this successful, or whether I think I can make this successful with the time available to me. I'll also consider other paths to publishing one final time: print on demand, or selling to another publisher.
While I think about it, I'll get this next prototype printed out and tested, so at least I'm making some progress...
Monday, June 22
Like a Glacier
Moving forwards, only very slowly.
The good news is that my company bank account is set up and ready to use, the bad news is that I don't yet have online access to it, and I want to make sure it's all up and running correctly and there's cash in it before I start spending from it.
In other progress this week, I've tweaked some art for Zombology, done a first draft of a company logo (now with my dad, a graphic designer and artist, for review) and I've selected a web hosting company for the company website. But still, slower going than I was hoping for. I need to get the holding web page ready to put up on the website once it's ordered and print out the new version with its rules tweaks this week too. Once it is physically realised, I can start testing this new version to check I've not broken anything with these minor rules changes.
I must do these things this week. Must. It's almost halfway through the year and I'm still a way off publishing the game.
The good news is that my company bank account is set up and ready to use, the bad news is that I don't yet have online access to it, and I want to make sure it's all up and running correctly and there's cash in it before I start spending from it.
In other progress this week, I've tweaked some art for Zombology, done a first draft of a company logo (now with my dad, a graphic designer and artist, for review) and I've selected a web hosting company for the company website. But still, slower going than I was hoping for. I need to get the holding web page ready to put up on the website once it's ordered and print out the new version with its rules tweaks this week too. Once it is physically realised, I can start testing this new version to check I've not broken anything with these minor rules changes.
I must do these things this week. Must. It's almost halfway through the year and I'm still a way off publishing the game.
Monday, June 15
Concrete Progress At Last
As I mentioned last week, one of the things I had to do this week was an appointment at the bank to open a bank account for my new hobby board games publishing company. This is an important step in my journey to being a publisher again: before I can sell games I need to get them manufactured and I need a website and a PayPal account, all of which require a bank account to fund.
The business adviser that I spoke to in the bank was impressed that I'd taken along all the games I'd (self-) published as Reiver Games. I wanted to give him an idea what I was talking about, but also to show him that this wasn't a crackpot idea, it was something I had some experience and knowledge about.
As it was it was unnecessary, he'd played Settlers of Catan with some friends a few weeks ago, so he knew exactly what I was talking about. Disappointingly, unlike when I created the Reiver Games account back in 2006, he didn't place an order!
The account was ordered on Thursday, there's some legal things they have to sort out, so it should be set up properly on Tuesday, then it's game on.
In the meantime, I've some tweaks to try out from my playtesting in the States and I'd like to give a few key playtesters access to the latest version to get their feedback while I start improving the art. I had great ideas initially about trying to do some comic style art myself, but I think it's more realistic to do some simple iconic art (more like 6 Nimmt!) rather than wait until I've improved my art skills to the point where they are good enough.
We've got a very busy week at work this week, so I doubt I'll be able to test it one lunchtime, but maybe it can get some action at Games Night on Wednesday.
Anyway, there's plenty to be getting on with now!
The business adviser that I spoke to in the bank was impressed that I'd taken along all the games I'd (self-) published as Reiver Games. I wanted to give him an idea what I was talking about, but also to show him that this wasn't a crackpot idea, it was something I had some experience and knowledge about.
As it was it was unnecessary, he'd played Settlers of Catan with some friends a few weeks ago, so he knew exactly what I was talking about. Disappointingly, unlike when I created the Reiver Games account back in 2006, he didn't place an order!
The account was ordered on Thursday, there's some legal things they have to sort out, so it should be set up properly on Tuesday, then it's game on.
In the meantime, I've some tweaks to try out from my playtesting in the States and I'd like to give a few key playtesters access to the latest version to get their feedback while I start improving the art. I had great ideas initially about trying to do some comic style art myself, but I think it's more realistic to do some simple iconic art (more like 6 Nimmt!) rather than wait until I've improved my art skills to the point where they are good enough.
We've got a very busy week at work this week, so I doubt I'll be able to test it one lunchtime, but maybe it can get some action at Games Night on Wednesday.
Anyway, there's plenty to be getting on with now!
Monday, June 8
Jack: 3 - US Axe Murderers: 0
As I mentioned last week, I've spent the most of the last week in St. Louis, MO at a conference for work. It was a long and busy week, but I managed to get a night off on Wednesday and that meant I could get over to the St. Louis Board Gamers Meetup at The Wizard's Wagon in University City.
I've been to this conference four times in a row now. The first time in Vancouver I met up with Tao who runs Starlit Citadel (who had been a supporter of me in my Reiver Games days). The second time in Minneapolis I got to go to the Fantasy Flight Event Center twice on two consecutive nights with gamers who collected me from my hotel, drove me to a restaurant for dinner, then to the Center for gaming and then finally back to my hotel (thanks Alfredo, Jay and Fred!). Last year in Baltimore I got nothing, but this year I struck gold again.
Dan posted on the Meetup page that he could meet me at a coffee shop opposite a Metro station and then drive me over to The Wizard's Wagon. Which he did after first recommending a take out place and something good from the menu. We played seven games (variously with Dan, Patrick, Rebecca, Chris, Jim and Kit) including a couple of playtests of six-player Zombology (from which I got some new ideas to try out). At the end of the night Kit also introduced me to Medina by Stefan Dorra which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was a great game, coupled with very attractive city construction during play. There's apparently a re-print coming fairly soon. Finally Dan drove me back to my hotel in time to meet up with my colleagues for a final couple of drinks on our last night in St. Louis. Thanks Dan for a great evening!
That's now three times I've agreed to meet a random American whom I've only met on the internet, get in his car and get driven to an out of town location, and not once have I been axe-murdered. Board gamers are awesome!
I'm back now, and The Wife is away for a couple of days with work tonight and tomorrow. I'll be using my free evenings to make a new version of Zombology to try out some of the ideas generated in America, and to prepare for Thursday morning's meeting with the Bank Manager. We're almost off to the races!
I've been to this conference four times in a row now. The first time in Vancouver I met up with Tao who runs Starlit Citadel (who had been a supporter of me in my Reiver Games days). The second time in Minneapolis I got to go to the Fantasy Flight Event Center twice on two consecutive nights with gamers who collected me from my hotel, drove me to a restaurant for dinner, then to the Center for gaming and then finally back to my hotel (thanks Alfredo, Jay and Fred!). Last year in Baltimore I got nothing, but this year I struck gold again.
Dan posted on the Meetup page that he could meet me at a coffee shop opposite a Metro station and then drive me over to The Wizard's Wagon. Which he did after first recommending a take out place and something good from the menu. We played seven games (variously with Dan, Patrick, Rebecca, Chris, Jim and Kit) including a couple of playtests of six-player Zombology (from which I got some new ideas to try out). At the end of the night Kit also introduced me to Medina by Stefan Dorra which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was a great game, coupled with very attractive city construction during play. There's apparently a re-print coming fairly soon. Finally Dan drove me back to my hotel in time to meet up with my colleagues for a final couple of drinks on our last night in St. Louis. Thanks Dan for a great evening!
That's now three times I've agreed to meet a random American whom I've only met on the internet, get in his car and get driven to an out of town location, and not once have I been axe-murdered. Board gamers are awesome!
I'm back now, and The Wife is away for a couple of days with work tonight and tomorrow. I'll be using my free evenings to make a new version of Zombology to try out some of the ideas generated in America, and to prepare for Thursday morning's meeting with the Bank Manager. We're almost off to the races!
Monday, June 1
Hello From Sunny St. Louis
I'm writing this at 3:30am in my hotel room listening to Mongolian Folk Metal, clearly not yet on US time :-( And St. Louis isn't very sunny either.
The last week has been a bit of a blur. I drove to Bristol, then Devon, then went to Plymouth for a few hours to see Dave, one of my old friends from York who had the temerity to move four hundred miles away. It was great to catch up again, Dave had been around during the founding of Reiver Games and even came to the UK Games Expo with me back in 2007 to help out on my stand. But since he moved down south we've seen very little of him, 400 miles is a long way to travel with a two year old!
After that we had a few days in a rented farm 'cottage' with eleven other members of my family - 14 of us in total! It was a lovely week, and we even played a few games - gaming is not something I generally do with my family (usually the in-laws), by my sister, brothers-in-law and even my mum got involved. We played five back to back games of Zombology one night and I've taken a few more orders off the back of that!
The day after driving back from Devon I was collected at 6:30am for my trip to St. Louis, MO. I'm out here for a week for work, but I spent a chunk of the flight time playing board games on my iPad with my boss Ian and I'm hoping to make it along to the St. Louis Board Gamers MeetUp on Wednesday evening at a Wizard's Wagon. We'll see!
I'm back on Friday, when I hope to start making progress on publishing Zombology again...
Monday, May 25
The Elephant In The Room
This post is being posted automagically while I'm on holiday in deepest, darkest Devon with the entirety of my fairly large family (14 of us! In one house!). It might take me a few days to respond to comments as I'm not sure if they have the internets in Devon yet.
So I'm getting back into hobby board game publishing as I'm sure you're all aware. I've got a game to publish (Zombology) and some startup funds and a business plan. Go me!
I've bravely decided to eschew KickStarter and just make a small hand-made run like I did in the early days of Reiver Games. I keep harping on about how I've done this before, and I know what I'm getting myself into, yadda, yadda. I've run the numbers and I think I can sell 150 copies at a reasonable price and yet still make enough money to cover my (non-time) costs and the overheads and hopefully have enough left to invest in potential future projects. I made 100 copies of Border Reivers (my first game) by hand and sold them all within a year and then 300 copies of It's Alive! by hand and sold those all within a year too. So 150 sounds pretty achievable, right?
The only thing is that I made Border Reivers in 2006 and It's Alive! in 2007. That's years ago. Literally. Since then, everything's changed. Back in the day there were only a few of us hobby publishers hand-crafting games in our basements/garages/living rooms. If you were a rabid collector of board games with a ton of money you'd won at the casino there weren't that many options to get your hobby publisher fix so by just being there and talking on BGG occasionally, I made a surprising number of sales.
KickStarter changed all that. Now everyone can pitch their hobby game to a room full of people who've just splashed out on something similar. If you want to support the independent hobby publisher which of the 1,500 KickStarter projects you've heard about in the last month are you going to back? All of them? Probably not.
When you've got KickStarter projects up the wazoo all of which have funded on day 3 of 30 and hit the stretch goals that means the components are linen-finished and the artwork was done by Banksy and the game pieces are made of real gold and stone and steel and wood and it comes with miniatures and expansions and the moon on a stick, why would you spend more money on yet another game?Especially one that's been hand-crafted by an idiot and illustrated by the same and the components are cut out by hand and made of paper and card and not even gold inlaid, linen finished card?
There's the question. Is there still a market for my handmade games? Is it big enough for a print run of 150 copies? We'll soon find out...
So I'm getting back into hobby board game publishing as I'm sure you're all aware. I've got a game to publish (Zombology) and some startup funds and a business plan. Go me!
I've bravely decided to eschew KickStarter and just make a small hand-made run like I did in the early days of Reiver Games. I keep harping on about how I've done this before, and I know what I'm getting myself into, yadda, yadda. I've run the numbers and I think I can sell 150 copies at a reasonable price and yet still make enough money to cover my (non-time) costs and the overheads and hopefully have enough left to invest in potential future projects. I made 100 copies of Border Reivers (my first game) by hand and sold them all within a year and then 300 copies of It's Alive! by hand and sold those all within a year too. So 150 sounds pretty achievable, right?
The only thing is that I made Border Reivers in 2006 and It's Alive! in 2007. That's years ago. Literally. Since then, everything's changed. Back in the day there were only a few of us hobby publishers hand-crafting games in our basements/garages/living rooms. If you were a rabid collector of board games with a ton of money you'd won at the casino there weren't that many options to get your hobby publisher fix so by just being there and talking on BGG occasionally, I made a surprising number of sales.
KickStarter changed all that. Now everyone can pitch their hobby game to a room full of people who've just splashed out on something similar. If you want to support the independent hobby publisher which of the 1,500 KickStarter projects you've heard about in the last month are you going to back? All of them? Probably not.
When you've got KickStarter projects up the wazoo all of which have funded on day 3 of 30 and hit the stretch goals that means the components are linen-finished and the artwork was done by Banksy and the game pieces are made of real gold and stone and steel and wood and it comes with miniatures and expansions and the moon on a stick, why would you spend more money on yet another game?Especially one that's been hand-crafted by an idiot and illustrated by the same and the components are cut out by hand and made of paper and card and not even gold inlaid, linen finished card?
There's the question. Is there still a market for my handmade games? Is it big enough for a print run of 150 copies? We'll soon find out...
Monday, May 18
Marching Forward
It's been a week of steady progress this week. I've been working on a logo for my new games publishing company with my dad (a retired art teacher, artist and graphic designer). I don't really want to announce anything about the company until I've got all its accounts set up, and that's waiting on having a bank account to pay for them. I've an appointment with the bank when I get back from the U.S., so that should all get moving then. I'm going to use last week's blog post as my business plan when I go to the bank, that and my previous experience running a board game publisher should carry me through I hope. That blog post also led to a couple more pre-orders, so I'm slowly climbing towards break even point already.
Before then, the main things to work on are the Zombology graphic design and a draft website, plus any Zombology art I feel capable of making. I've got a bunch of time this week before I go on holiday - I'm babysitting for a friend on Monday night and then have four hours on trains on Wednesday as I head down to Sheffield for my quarterly hospital visit. I'm hoping to get next week's blog post written as well as make some progress on Zombology during that time.
One of the other things I'm working on is trying to streamline the rules around the Gurus a bit. Gurus represent an expert in each of the six suits in the game and they provide their owner with an in game benefit in their suit. Initially they all start out neutral, but during the game players can recruit them (or steal them from an opponent). Functionally they work pretty well, but it's a bit clunky and hard to explain, so it will be good if I can come up with something similar enough to still work well, but simpler to explain and smoother to play. We tried something on Thursday lunchtime, but it seemed like a step backwards, so that's fallen by the wayside.
In other news, I had a second consecutive Games Night last week (I've only managed four in the last nine weeks!), but sadly it's the last for another three weeks as I have a week's holiday immediately followed by a trip to St. Louis for work. While in the States I'm going to try to make it to a St. Louis Board Gamers MeetUp on the Wednesday, like I did a couple of years ago in Minneapolis, should be fun!
At Games Night I managed to tick another game off my ten plays list, King of Tokyo is safe too now. But I'm starting to think about another purge (not using anti-aircraft guns!). There's seven or eight games that are great games, but we just don't play them at Games Night, so I'm thinking quite seriously of getting rid of them to free up some more shelf space...
Before then, the main things to work on are the Zombology graphic design and a draft website, plus any Zombology art I feel capable of making. I've got a bunch of time this week before I go on holiday - I'm babysitting for a friend on Monday night and then have four hours on trains on Wednesday as I head down to Sheffield for my quarterly hospital visit. I'm hoping to get next week's blog post written as well as make some progress on Zombology during that time.
One of the other things I'm working on is trying to streamline the rules around the Gurus a bit. Gurus represent an expert in each of the six suits in the game and they provide their owner with an in game benefit in their suit. Initially they all start out neutral, but during the game players can recruit them (or steal them from an opponent). Functionally they work pretty well, but it's a bit clunky and hard to explain, so it will be good if I can come up with something similar enough to still work well, but simpler to explain and smoother to play. We tried something on Thursday lunchtime, but it seemed like a step backwards, so that's fallen by the wayside.
In other news, I had a second consecutive Games Night last week (I've only managed four in the last nine weeks!), but sadly it's the last for another three weeks as I have a week's holiday immediately followed by a trip to St. Louis for work. While in the States I'm going to try to make it to a St. Louis Board Gamers MeetUp on the Wednesday, like I did a couple of years ago in Minneapolis, should be fun!
At Games Night I managed to tick another game off my ten plays list, King of Tokyo is safe too now. But I'm starting to think about another purge (not using anti-aircraft guns!). There's seven or eight games that are great games, but we just don't play them at Games Night, so I'm thinking quite seriously of getting rid of them to free up some more shelf space...
Monday, May 11
The Economics of a Small Print Run
This week I've been making some real progress on my second incarnation as a hobby publisher of small print run games. I've booked an appointment at the bank to set up a business account and I've been getting quotes for printing Zombology too.
When doing a small print run, just as with a large print run, there are three variables you need to balance against each other: total cost, cost per game and quality.
The three are tightly linked: better quality increases both total cost and cost per game; a bigger print run increases total cost but decreases cost per game due to economies of scale; reducing cost per game lets you increase quality or decrease total cost.
As a hobby publisher who has publicly eschewed KickStarter, all three of these are very important:
Bearing all this in mind I've priced up the cost of box card and printing for 50, 100, 150, 200 and 300 copies. I made 100 copies of Border Reivers by hand and then 300 copies of the first print run of It's Alive! again by hand, so these numbers aren't ridiculous. I've used the same print company as for those two games so I know what quality to expect. I reckon I could sell 50 copies pretty effortlessly - I've already got 8 pre-orders from people who didn't know which game I was going to make or what price I was going to charge! When my friends and family find out I'm sure I can get a few more sales and then a minimal amount of advertising on BGG would wrap up the rest. 100 is a bit more of a stretch, I managed it with Border Reivers, but I had more time to devote to it back then and went to several conventions to raise awareness, which will be a trickier now that I've got a kid. 150 or 200 would be hard work this time round I think and 300 really hard. I managed it with It's Alive! But at that point I'd been doing it for a year or so and had a decent following and a mailing list and everything, none of which I have any more. So it's all down to the numbers:
50: £7.84 per copy, total price £392, profit (if I sell them all at full price and before expenses mentioned above) £108
100: £5.28 per copy, total price £528, profit £472
150: £4.44 per copy, total price £666, profit £834
200: £4.11 per copy, total price £822, profit £1,178
300: £3.66 per copy, total price £1,097, profit £1,903
50 copies is not going to break even once the overheads are accounted for, they'll almost certainly come to more than £108. 100 copies is much better, but at 150 it gets interesting. I'm willing to invest/risk £1,000 in this venture (plus a bot-load of my time for free!), and 150 copies falls well within that. So that's a tick (check for Americans). £4.44 is less than half of £10, but also actually less than half of £9. £9 retail would reduce the cost for Americans by $1.55 and Europeans by 1,38€. It would also shave £150 off my potential profits, but £684 is still plenty for the overheads I'm expecting and should leave some money behind so that I've got more money to invest in another game if I want to in the future. Tick!
We have a plan! Now I've just got to get the artwork done and get all the company stuff set up...
P.S. Anyone want a lovingly hand-crafted, limited edition copy of Zombology for only £9 plus postage and packing? ;-)
When doing a small print run, just as with a large print run, there are three variables you need to balance against each other: total cost, cost per game and quality.
The three are tightly linked: better quality increases both total cost and cost per game; a bigger print run increases total cost but decreases cost per game due to economies of scale; reducing cost per game lets you increase quality or decrease total cost.
As a hobby publisher who has publicly eschewed KickStarter, all three of these are very important:
- Total cost: this plus some money for the overheads is my stake in the gamble of running a company. It's coming out of our family's savings, so I don't want this to be too high or I'd be being very irresponsible. First time round there was just The Wife and I in full time employment, and we had some money from an unexpected windfall to invest, but it's different once you've got a kid - priorities change. So low total cost is important to me.
- Cost per game: in addition to the manufacturing cost I need to pay for: a website, advertising, PayPal fees, convention attendance and many other things. I've previously stated that I want to keep cost per game around 50% of retail so that the sales will cover the other things and hopefully make a small profit. I'm not going to take a salary (again!) but I want the company to at least pay for itself, and if I make a profit I'll have more money to invest in potential future games. Keeping the game price low is also important for boosting sales, especially in other countries. I'm aiming to make the game retail at around £10, which is in the same ballpark as 6 Nimmt! and other similar games in the UK. But that's $15.50 at today's exchange rate in America or 13,80€ in Europe both or which are quite high for that type of game, plus there's shipping on top to make it more expensive still for people outside the UK. Clearly with a small print run I'll be selling directly - there's not enough margin for shops or distributors to take a cut.
- Quality: I'm aiming for a similar quality to Border Reivers, the first game I self-published back in my Reiver Games days. The cards were on decent card stock and professionally laminated to protect the ink, the box was a tray and lid one with wrap-around artwork, that looked similar to, if not quite up to spec of, a professional game. With a small print run you don't have enough copies to amortise the cost of an artist, so I'm doing it myself (an obvious weakness in the quality). The cards will be cut out by hand but at least the corners will be rounded, so again, it looks of reasonable quality.
Bearing all this in mind I've priced up the cost of box card and printing for 50, 100, 150, 200 and 300 copies. I made 100 copies of Border Reivers by hand and then 300 copies of the first print run of It's Alive! again by hand, so these numbers aren't ridiculous. I've used the same print company as for those two games so I know what quality to expect. I reckon I could sell 50 copies pretty effortlessly - I've already got 8 pre-orders from people who didn't know which game I was going to make or what price I was going to charge! When my friends and family find out I'm sure I can get a few more sales and then a minimal amount of advertising on BGG would wrap up the rest. 100 is a bit more of a stretch, I managed it with Border Reivers, but I had more time to devote to it back then and went to several conventions to raise awareness, which will be a trickier now that I've got a kid. 150 or 200 would be hard work this time round I think and 300 really hard. I managed it with It's Alive! But at that point I'd been doing it for a year or so and had a decent following and a mailing list and everything, none of which I have any more. So it's all down to the numbers:
50: £7.84 per copy, total price £392, profit (if I sell them all at full price and before expenses mentioned above) £108
100: £5.28 per copy, total price £528, profit £472
150: £4.44 per copy, total price £666, profit £834
200: £4.11 per copy, total price £822, profit £1,178
300: £3.66 per copy, total price £1,097, profit £1,903
50 copies is not going to break even once the overheads are accounted for, they'll almost certainly come to more than £108. 100 copies is much better, but at 150 it gets interesting. I'm willing to invest/risk £1,000 in this venture (plus a bot-load of my time for free!), and 150 copies falls well within that. So that's a tick (check for Americans). £4.44 is less than half of £10, but also actually less than half of £9. £9 retail would reduce the cost for Americans by $1.55 and Europeans by 1,38€. It would also shave £150 off my potential profits, but £684 is still plenty for the overheads I'm expecting and should leave some money behind so that I've got more money to invest in another game if I want to in the future. Tick!
We have a plan! Now I've just got to get the artwork done and get all the company stuff set up...
P.S. Anyone want a lovingly hand-crafted, limited edition copy of Zombology for only £9 plus postage and packing? ;-)
Monday, May 4
Feeling Like A Publisher Again
In 2004 I was a hobby games designer. In 2006 I became a hobby board game publisher. In 2008 I became a (bad!) professional board game publisher. In 2011 I was a failed entrepreneur and really didn't feel like designing games any more.
When I had the idea of Codename: Vacuum at the end of 2012 I started my second incarnation as a hobby games designer. And that's where I stayed for nearly three years.
My Reiver Games failure hung over me, so I've been in no rush to get back into publishing. I know just how much hard work goes into hobby publishing (hand-made Border Reivers-stylee) and how many copies you've got to make and sell to be successful in the professional arena. Also, my confidence took a bad knock: games I thought would sell really well didn't sell and the game I had designed personally was the weakest of the games I published as Reiver Games.
So for the last two and a half years I've been a hobby games designer and nothing more. That's been fun, and I've now got a great support network in the form of Newcastle Playtest. All this time my games have been slowly developing. I've been keen not to rush into publishing again with a sub-par game.
This year's goal of hobby publishing a game is finally starting to take shape and once again I'm starting to feel like a publisher (albeit a hobby self-publisher). Rather than designing the games or doing the basic graphic design required for a prototype, I'm starting to think in terms of production.
This weekend I've made a new prototype of Zombology, trialing a net for a wrap around box label (currently just a white sheet - no art at all).
I'm also working out how best to arrange things on sheets of paper to minimise printing costs. I've got a quality bar that I want to stick to (as good as Border Reivers), and depending on cost I'm going to have to choose a print-run size based on where the economies of scale make it affordable.
All this has happened before, and all this will happen again!
When I had the idea of Codename: Vacuum at the end of 2012 I started my second incarnation as a hobby games designer. And that's where I stayed for nearly three years.
My Reiver Games failure hung over me, so I've been in no rush to get back into publishing. I know just how much hard work goes into hobby publishing (hand-made Border Reivers-stylee) and how many copies you've got to make and sell to be successful in the professional arena. Also, my confidence took a bad knock: games I thought would sell really well didn't sell and the game I had designed personally was the weakest of the games I published as Reiver Games.
So for the last two and a half years I've been a hobby games designer and nothing more. That's been fun, and I've now got a great support network in the form of Newcastle Playtest. All this time my games have been slowly developing. I've been keen not to rush into publishing again with a sub-par game.
This year's goal of hobby publishing a game is finally starting to take shape and once again I'm starting to feel like a publisher (albeit a hobby self-publisher). Rather than designing the games or doing the basic graphic design required for a prototype, I'm starting to think in terms of production.
This weekend I've made a new prototype of Zombology, trialing a net for a wrap around box label (currently just a white sheet - no art at all).
I'm also working out how best to arrange things on sheets of paper to minimise printing costs. I've got a quality bar that I want to stick to (as good as Border Reivers), and depending on cost I'm going to have to choose a print-run size based on where the economies of scale make it affordable.
All this has happened before, and all this will happen again!
Monday, April 27
Starting Another Games Publisher
A few months of lacklustre progress on anything except my German language Windows Phone app seems finally to be coming to a close. A few of you will remember my ill-fated days running Reiver Games (read the history of this blog for a lesson in how not to run a board games publishing company). Now I'm at it again.
At the beginning of the year I announced my intention to get back into board game publishing (but not via KickStarter!) but I've made next to bot-all progress on that so far. The recent re-imagining of Zombology into a true semi co-op game and the resulting good feedback that has elicited has got me fired up once again and ready to kick off Games Publisher II (a working title!).
I've chosen a company name (which will remain secret until I've claimed the web domain!) and need to start the process of starting another company (does this make me a serial entrepreneur?).
I also need to start work on the art of Zombology more seriously. I'm intending to do it myself, since a very small print run has almost no room for an art budget. I've got some skills, but they are pretty limited so I need to work out what I can do to an acceptable level and temper my vision accordingly.
I'm going to ask my dad (an artist and the cover artist for Border Reivers) to help me come up with a logo for my company, and at the same time I need to get a company bank account set up so that I've got an account with which to start paying for things. I'll need this in place before registering the web domain and getting some hosting organised. I'll be doing it all properly again, which means more hours of bookkeeping and tax returns: joy.
It's all getting very exciting. The current plan is a 50-100 copy print run of Zombology depending on the cost of the printing. I want a number that I'm fairly sure I can sell out in around a year. I've got 8 pre-orders already (before I'd even chosen a game to publish - they're keen!), and I hope to get a few more under my belt before I get the printing done.
I'll be doing some rudimentary marketing as time goes on via a combination of Twitter, Google+ and BoardGameGeek, which started with a poll on Google+ this week to choose the last two suits. I'm happy with Healing Crystals, Homeopathy, Vegan Diet and Psychotherapy, but was less pleased with Reiki and Acupuncture. I asked for suggestions here last week and got several good ideas and then put them up to the vote on Wednesday. Magnets was a clear winner with Aromatherapy a strong second. The suits are locked!
At the beginning of the year I announced my intention to get back into board game publishing (but not via KickStarter!) but I've made next to bot-all progress on that so far. The recent re-imagining of Zombology into a true semi co-op game and the resulting good feedback that has elicited has got me fired up once again and ready to kick off Games Publisher II (a working title!).
I've chosen a company name (which will remain secret until I've claimed the web domain!) and need to start the process of starting another company (does this make me a serial entrepreneur?).
I also need to start work on the art of Zombology more seriously. I'm intending to do it myself, since a very small print run has almost no room for an art budget. I've got some skills, but they are pretty limited so I need to work out what I can do to an acceptable level and temper my vision accordingly.
I'm going to ask my dad (an artist and the cover artist for Border Reivers) to help me come up with a logo for my company, and at the same time I need to get a company bank account set up so that I've got an account with which to start paying for things. I'll need this in place before registering the web domain and getting some hosting organised. I'll be doing it all properly again, which means more hours of bookkeeping and tax returns: joy.
It's all getting very exciting. The current plan is a 50-100 copy print run of Zombology depending on the cost of the printing. I want a number that I'm fairly sure I can sell out in around a year. I've got 8 pre-orders already (before I'd even chosen a game to publish - they're keen!), and I hope to get a few more under my belt before I get the printing done.
I'll be doing some rudimentary marketing as time goes on via a combination of Twitter, Google+ and BoardGameGeek, which started with a poll on Google+ this week to choose the last two suits. I'm happy with Healing Crystals, Homeopathy, Vegan Diet and Psychotherapy, but was less pleased with Reiki and Acupuncture. I asked for suggestions here last week and got several good ideas and then put them up to the vote on Wednesday. Magnets was a clear winner with Aromatherapy a strong second. The suits are locked!
Monday, April 20
Crowdsourcing / Market Research
It's been a good week. I've had my first Games Night for four weeks (and sadly last Games Night for another three due to work travel) and a few more good playtests of Zombology.
I'm now ready to call my first game that I hope to self-publish in my second innings as a board games publisher: It's Zombology.
Last week I made some changes to the scoring of Zombology, making it a true semi-co-op game along with tweaking the way the gurus work to make them more useful/interesting.
We played four games back-to-back at Newcastle Playtest. These guys have played it a lot. Over the last year and a half we've played it at the beginning of almost every session, often a couple of times. It's been through a lot of changes and incarnations, and people are still willing to play it, which is nice. This time the feedback seemed much more positive, Paul who usually doesn't enjoy it said he'd enjoyed it and finally 'got' this version and later Alex described it on twitter as "straight up 'published game'-level fun".
We played a few more games on Thursday, a couple of three player games at lunchtime, and then a couple of seven player games at the beginning of Games Night. DJ and Mal (both of whom have tens of plays of various versions under their respective belts) had good things to say: DJ said it was the best game of it he'd played and Mal (who had said the last version felt further from ready than the one before it) said: 'Don't make too many more changes, it's ready to publish'. Gav's feedback email was entirely positive too.
So I'm ready to start the process of publishing a game again. At least, almost ready. I've got my checklist to work through and there are a few other things I need to sort out, including getting a few playtest copies out to other groups. Before I do that, I need some help - which is where the title of this post comes in.
I need an exposition. A paragraph or so that explains the game and makes it sound so fantastic that your only option on reading it is to wire me vast sums of money to sate your powerful need to play this game immediately. Currently I have:
Zombology
Unlikely cures vs. the zombie apocalypse
Zombitis is sweeping the globe: it's already killed millions and billions more are at risk. There's no government stockpiled vaccines and pharmaceutical companies have nothing. You and your peers are mankind's last hope. Just a couple of months ago they were ridiculing your 'advanced projects agency' for its crackpot ideas, now they're praying that it might just work. You've got eight weeks to try to cure the zombie plague, will you be heralded as one of the heroes of mankind, or will you back the wrong method and remain a crackpot to the end of your days? Work together to achieve a cure or try to trip up cures that you don't support. Time's running out...
Which, let's be honest is weak. This is not my strong suit. So I'm appealing to you my loyal readership for some advice/improvements.
Also, I need six things that are unlikely to cure Zombitis. Currently I have:
I'm now ready to call my first game that I hope to self-publish in my second innings as a board games publisher: It's Zombology.
Last week I made some changes to the scoring of Zombology, making it a true semi-co-op game along with tweaking the way the gurus work to make them more useful/interesting.
We played four games back-to-back at Newcastle Playtest. These guys have played it a lot. Over the last year and a half we've played it at the beginning of almost every session, often a couple of times. It's been through a lot of changes and incarnations, and people are still willing to play it, which is nice. This time the feedback seemed much more positive, Paul who usually doesn't enjoy it said he'd enjoyed it and finally 'got' this version and later Alex described it on twitter as "straight up 'published game'-level fun".
We played a few more games on Thursday, a couple of three player games at lunchtime, and then a couple of seven player games at the beginning of Games Night. DJ and Mal (both of whom have tens of plays of various versions under their respective belts) had good things to say: DJ said it was the best game of it he'd played and Mal (who had said the last version felt further from ready than the one before it) said: 'Don't make too many more changes, it's ready to publish'. Gav's feedback email was entirely positive too.
So I'm ready to start the process of publishing a game again. At least, almost ready. I've got my checklist to work through and there are a few other things I need to sort out, including getting a few playtest copies out to other groups. Before I do that, I need some help - which is where the title of this post comes in.
I need an exposition. A paragraph or so that explains the game and makes it sound so fantastic that your only option on reading it is to wire me vast sums of money to sate your powerful need to play this game immediately. Currently I have:
Zombology
Unlikely cures vs. the zombie apocalypse
Zombitis is sweeping the globe: it's already killed millions and billions more are at risk. There's no government stockpiled vaccines and pharmaceutical companies have nothing. You and your peers are mankind's last hope. Just a couple of months ago they were ridiculing your 'advanced projects agency' for its crackpot ideas, now they're praying that it might just work. You've got eight weeks to try to cure the zombie plague, will you be heralded as one of the heroes of mankind, or will you back the wrong method and remain a crackpot to the end of your days? Work together to achieve a cure or try to trip up cures that you don't support. Time's running out...
Which, let's be honest is weak. This is not my strong suit. So I'm appealing to you my loyal readership for some advice/improvements.
Also, I need six things that are unlikely to cure Zombitis. Currently I have:
- Healing crystals
- Vegan diet
- Psychotherapy
- Homeopathy
- Reiki
- Acupuncture
Monday, April 13
Zombology: The Final Straight?
It's been yet another very busy week, despite the Bank Holiday. The builders finished our new bathroom on Friday, so the house is slowly returning to normal and I can wash at home (which is awesome!).
Tuesday night was Newcastle Playtest, which again was fantastic. I've said before what a great bunch they are, but they've really had a transformative effect on Zombology and Vacuum and I'm sure the same will be true of the other games I work on in the future.
I took Zombology, Dragon Dance and Border Reivers on Tuesday, but I didn't really feel like playing any of them. Zombology was in a bit of a rut, I'd not really had time to properly update Border Reivers, and Dragon Dance hadn't changed since the end of last year. We all got a drink in (did I mention it's held in a pub? Genius!) and then started chatting about games. Alex had an idea he wanted to try out of a semi co-op game. Paul said that a semi co-op should be winnable by more than one player, unlike Zombology, where either someone won or everyone lost.
That's when the lightbulb above my head lit up.
Zombology has been in a weird place for a month or two. I came up with a new version a month or so back that fixed some problems with the previous version but the newer version was worst than the one it 'fixed'. I had no idea how to move on, and I didn't really want to roll back to the previous version, because bits of it were clearly broken.
The idea of more than one winner struck me as really interesting, so we discussed some things we could do and then sat down to try them out. Despite the changes being incredibly minor (just the scoring changed) the game felt completely different. People played co-operatively (and also aggressively!), there was table talk and strategising, some of the weaker cards were suddenly much more important and everyone seemed to enjoy it - even those people who previously had definitely not been fans. We played four games back to back and I was really happy with how it played.
For most of this year I've been thinking that Zombology would probably be the game that I would self-publish this year, but I wasn't happy with the game as it stood. Now I'm much happier. I need to play it a bunch more times (with different numbers of players and different people) but I've got a much better feeling about this version. I'm excited again.
I'll have to print a new version to tweak a couple of things, but we're definitely getting there!
In other news, with five plays this year I've managed to cross Galaxy Trucker off my list of games I own but that I've yet to play ten times. Four of the five plays have been on the excellent iPad app with my boss on the way to or from Manchester on the train. But they count in my book!
Tuesday night was Newcastle Playtest, which again was fantastic. I've said before what a great bunch they are, but they've really had a transformative effect on Zombology and Vacuum and I'm sure the same will be true of the other games I work on in the future.
I took Zombology, Dragon Dance and Border Reivers on Tuesday, but I didn't really feel like playing any of them. Zombology was in a bit of a rut, I'd not really had time to properly update Border Reivers, and Dragon Dance hadn't changed since the end of last year. We all got a drink in (did I mention it's held in a pub? Genius!) and then started chatting about games. Alex had an idea he wanted to try out of a semi co-op game. Paul said that a semi co-op should be winnable by more than one player, unlike Zombology, where either someone won or everyone lost.
That's when the lightbulb above my head lit up.
Zombology has been in a weird place for a month or two. I came up with a new version a month or so back that fixed some problems with the previous version but the newer version was worst than the one it 'fixed'. I had no idea how to move on, and I didn't really want to roll back to the previous version, because bits of it were clearly broken.
The idea of more than one winner struck me as really interesting, so we discussed some things we could do and then sat down to try them out. Despite the changes being incredibly minor (just the scoring changed) the game felt completely different. People played co-operatively (and also aggressively!), there was table talk and strategising, some of the weaker cards were suddenly much more important and everyone seemed to enjoy it - even those people who previously had definitely not been fans. We played four games back to back and I was really happy with how it played.
For most of this year I've been thinking that Zombology would probably be the game that I would self-publish this year, but I wasn't happy with the game as it stood. Now I'm much happier. I need to play it a bunch more times (with different numbers of players and different people) but I've got a much better feeling about this version. I'm excited again.
I'll have to print a new version to tweak a couple of things, but we're definitely getting there!
In other news, with five plays this year I've managed to cross Galaxy Trucker off my list of games I own but that I've yet to play ten times. Four of the five plays have been on the excellent iPad app with my boss on the way to or from Manchester on the train. But they count in my book!
Monday, April 6
A Friend Who Games
I'm notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people: I'm hopeless at keeping in touch with the friends I went to school with; I'm not in touch with anyone I went to university with; I've had many jobs over the years, and the only former colleagues I'm still in touch with are the guys I used to work with in Newcastle (and now work with again mostly).
There is an exception to this rule of rubbishness however. When I lived in York I met many friends through board gaming. Paul was one of my key Reiver Games playtesters and I used to attend his games night twice a week for many years. Despite leaving York in 2009, we've kept in touch and we see each other every couple of months either in York or Newcastle for hanging out with our families and late night gaming. We had planned to meet up for the Easter weekend in Newcastle, but then I was invited to a wedding in York.
It was Dave's wedding, another gaming friend from our time in York. Dave and I had got on famously after originally trying to arrange a game of Space Hulk together. After a year or two, Dave moved to Plymouth - which, as far as I can fathom, is about as far from York or Newcastle as is the moon. Dave and I have met up about four or five times in the eight years since he left York, but as a gaming buddy we stay in touch if only by occasional emails. Another gaming buddy who I've managed to stay in touch with.
When I pulled out of having Paul and his family up for Easter due to attending Dave's wedding, Paul invited us to stay with them in York instead. So instead, we had a long weekend of gaming (in an awesome confluence of events, the bathroom is being replaced at the moment, so instead of four days at home with no facilities to wash ourselves, we got to be at a friend's house - with a shower!).
We left Friday morning and we hung out with Paul's family on Friday afternoon, Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, and with Dave and his wife and friends all day Saturday and Sunday morning. Plus I got late night gaming in on Friday and Sunday with Paul and Saturday with Dave. It was an awesome weekend, and I start the month of April with eighteen games played in the first five days including three towards my ten plays goal!
Tomorrow is Newcastle Playtest, I'm hoping to take along Zombology, Dragon Dance and possibly some hand-scribbled cards for a new version of Border Reivers.
Coincidentally, Terry, Andrew and Graham, my gaming buddies from Bedford (which I left 3.5 years ago) and I are still in touch too. Via twitter, the occasional convention or games weekend. A gaming friend is a friend forever!
There is an exception to this rule of rubbishness however. When I lived in York I met many friends through board gaming. Paul was one of my key Reiver Games playtesters and I used to attend his games night twice a week for many years. Despite leaving York in 2009, we've kept in touch and we see each other every couple of months either in York or Newcastle for hanging out with our families and late night gaming. We had planned to meet up for the Easter weekend in Newcastle, but then I was invited to a wedding in York.
It was Dave's wedding, another gaming friend from our time in York. Dave and I had got on famously after originally trying to arrange a game of Space Hulk together. After a year or two, Dave moved to Plymouth - which, as far as I can fathom, is about as far from York or Newcastle as is the moon. Dave and I have met up about four or five times in the eight years since he left York, but as a gaming buddy we stay in touch if only by occasional emails. Another gaming buddy who I've managed to stay in touch with.
When I pulled out of having Paul and his family up for Easter due to attending Dave's wedding, Paul invited us to stay with them in York instead. So instead, we had a long weekend of gaming (in an awesome confluence of events, the bathroom is being replaced at the moment, so instead of four days at home with no facilities to wash ourselves, we got to be at a friend's house - with a shower!).
We left Friday morning and we hung out with Paul's family on Friday afternoon, Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, and with Dave and his wife and friends all day Saturday and Sunday morning. Plus I got late night gaming in on Friday and Sunday with Paul and Saturday with Dave. It was an awesome weekend, and I start the month of April with eighteen games played in the first five days including three towards my ten plays goal!
Tomorrow is Newcastle Playtest, I'm hoping to take along Zombology, Dragon Dance and possibly some hand-scribbled cards for a new version of Border Reivers.
Coincidentally, Terry, Andrew and Graham, my gaming buddies from Bedford (which I left 3.5 years ago) and I are still in touch too. Via twitter, the occasional convention or games weekend. A gaming friend is a friend forever!
Monday, March 30
Like A Phoenix From The Ashes
I've spent half of this week in Germany for work, on a flying visit which left me with little time to see anything of Berlin. I did however get to see Konrad, one of my core playtesters and a friend who's supported me since the earliest Reiver Games days, who just happens to live in Berlin. Convenient.
I knew that Konrad was interested in Codename: Vacuum, and I'd promised him a copy of it after he was so helpful during my NaGa DeMon 2013 competition. It wasn't quite ready to send then, so I tweaked it a little and then got completely distracted by Zombology and later Dragon Dance.
It's been over a year since I'd played Vacuum, and until recently I hadn't even really thought about it at all either. About a month or two ago I had some ideas to streamline some of the clunkier bits and simplify a few things (I was also intending to complicate some others!). I started work on those changes on a recent train journey, but then I've run out of time to finish them off.
Seeing as Vacuum comes in a box the size of Race for the Galaxy, shipping it to Germany wouldn't be cheap, so it made sense to take Konrad a copy while I was over. Konrad kindly invited me to his flat one evening and offered to cook me dinner, so we had a plan.
Like all the best-laid ones, it all went to pot. I had little time before the trip to finish off making the changes I had in mind for Vacuum (and what little time I did have I spent programming my new German language app), so I didn't have a finished copy to take with me. Instead I crammed my personal copy (with the cards from Feb 2014 and the rules from August 2013!) in my suitcase, and told Konrad I'd leave it with him and send him updated cards when I'd finally got around to finishing them.
We had a great evening, a lovely meal followed by a game (and great discussion) of Vacuum and then a couple of games of Alchemy, one of Konrad's designs, which I really enjoyed. Konrad was even kind enough to give me a copy of that (which thanks to a smaller box than Vacuum meant that I had room in my suitcase for a little souvenir for The Wife and The Daughter). The game of Vacuum was a little embarrassing (it had been so long since I'd last played that I'd forgotten a number of rules until halfway through the game), but really useful, refreshing my memory of what works and what doesn't. Afterwards we had a lengthy chat about what Konrad liked and didn't like and my ideas for the next version, which Konrad's input has already simplified further.
A great trip all in all, and it's good to get back into Vacuum, the game that started my second wind of games design, post Reiver Games debacle.
I knew that Konrad was interested in Codename: Vacuum, and I'd promised him a copy of it after he was so helpful during my NaGa DeMon 2013 competition. It wasn't quite ready to send then, so I tweaked it a little and then got completely distracted by Zombology and later Dragon Dance.
It's been over a year since I'd played Vacuum, and until recently I hadn't even really thought about it at all either. About a month or two ago I had some ideas to streamline some of the clunkier bits and simplify a few things (I was also intending to complicate some others!). I started work on those changes on a recent train journey, but then I've run out of time to finish them off.
Seeing as Vacuum comes in a box the size of Race for the Galaxy, shipping it to Germany wouldn't be cheap, so it made sense to take Konrad a copy while I was over. Konrad kindly invited me to his flat one evening and offered to cook me dinner, so we had a plan.
Like all the best-laid ones, it all went to pot. I had little time before the trip to finish off making the changes I had in mind for Vacuum (and what little time I did have I spent programming my new German language app), so I didn't have a finished copy to take with me. Instead I crammed my personal copy (with the cards from Feb 2014 and the rules from August 2013!) in my suitcase, and told Konrad I'd leave it with him and send him updated cards when I'd finally got around to finishing them.
We had a great evening, a lovely meal followed by a game (and great discussion) of Vacuum and then a couple of games of Alchemy, one of Konrad's designs, which I really enjoyed. Konrad was even kind enough to give me a copy of that (which thanks to a smaller box than Vacuum meant that I had room in my suitcase for a little souvenir for The Wife and The Daughter). The game of Vacuum was a little embarrassing (it had been so long since I'd last played that I'd forgotten a number of rules until halfway through the game), but really useful, refreshing my memory of what works and what doesn't. Afterwards we had a lengthy chat about what Konrad liked and didn't like and my ideas for the next version, which Konrad's input has already simplified further.
A great trip all in all, and it's good to get back into Vacuum, the game that started my second wind of games design, post Reiver Games debacle.
Monday, March 23
Ich Bin Ein Berliner
And I don't mean a jam doughnut.
Actually, I'm not a Berliner at all. But I am in Berlin. My fourth trip to Germany (after a couple of trips to Spiel in Essen in 2008 and 2009 with Reiver Games, and a trip to Tübingen last year for work) is my first visit to Berlin.
Sadly, as with so many work trips, I'll get to see almost none of it: just the airport, the hotel and the conference centre (in this case the Technical University of Berlin). It is not however a total washout (like last week was, my only progress in anything was a play of Eclipse towards my ten plays goal thanks to a very busy week at work).
Tonight I am meeting Konrad, a Reiver Games customer of old who has become one of my best playtesters in recent years (he's won both of the last two NaGa DeMon competitions I've run). I've brought along my current copy of Vacuum which he's keen to play and I intend to leave it with him and then post him just the new cards when they are ready. I'm hoping to Playtest some of his games too. Once tonight is over I'm entering a bit of a gaming drought as I'll be going three weeks without a Games Night due to this trip and then having our bathroom replaced. I'm hoping to get some gaming in over Easter though, we'll be down in York seeing two lots of gaming friends...
Actually, I'm not a Berliner at all. But I am in Berlin. My fourth trip to Germany (after a couple of trips to Spiel in Essen in 2008 and 2009 with Reiver Games, and a trip to Tübingen last year for work) is my first visit to Berlin.
Sadly, as with so many work trips, I'll get to see almost none of it: just the airport, the hotel and the conference centre (in this case the Technical University of Berlin). It is not however a total washout (like last week was, my only progress in anything was a play of Eclipse towards my ten plays goal thanks to a very busy week at work).
Tonight I am meeting Konrad, a Reiver Games customer of old who has become one of my best playtesters in recent years (he's won both of the last two NaGa DeMon competitions I've run). I've brought along my current copy of Vacuum which he's keen to play and I intend to leave it with him and then post him just the new cards when they are ready. I'm hoping to Playtest some of his games too. Once tonight is over I'm entering a bit of a gaming drought as I'll be going three weeks without a Games Night due to this trip and then having our bathroom replaced. I'm hoping to get some gaming in over Easter though, we'll be down in York seeing two lots of gaming friends...
Monday, March 16
Impromptu Holiday
The good news is that on Thursday evening, after Games Night, The Wife and I decided to take a long weekend away, so we were in a little cottage in rural Northumberland enjoying an impromptu short break for the last few days - hence the late blog post. We had a lovely time and even got some gaming in (it's been ages since The Wife and I have played games together, the sleep disruption caused by The Daughter has left us too tired in the evenings to do much other than slump).
The bad news is that I'm not making any progress on anything this week due to the holiday and work commitments so I'm not going to have Vacuum ready to take to Germany next weekend. I'll have to post a copy to Konrad on completion after my trip to Germany :-(
Still, I'm on holiday! Yay!
The bad news is that I'm not making any progress on anything this week due to the holiday and work commitments so I'm not going to have Vacuum ready to take to Germany next weekend. I'll have to post a copy to Konrad on completion after my trip to Germany :-(
Still, I'm on holiday! Yay!
Monday, March 9
They Tried and Failed?
... They tried and died. That quote seems somehow appropriate this week.
It's been another busy week. Monday I was travelling for work with Ian again, so there was iPad gaming on the train (complete with another game of Galaxy Trucker, towards my ten plays goal) and then Tuesday was Newcastle Playtest.
I was pretty knackered though, so I left about nine o'clock after three games of Zombology and one of Dan's Ming Voyages. It was a really good turn out with eight of us including two new people and it was good to get some games of Zombology in with more players than the usual three or four we manage in my work lunchtime sessions. We played two games with six players and then when the new members arrived we played an eight player game. Because I'd missed the session last month it was the first time these guys had seen the most recent (and fairly large) changes. They liked some aspects of it, but weren't so keen on others, especially the reduction in control. The previous version let you keep a card between rounds. This gave you a lot more control as you could prevent a card going to an opponent, and could keep a card that would potentially let you complete one of the suits, thereby controlling which suits were scored at the end of the game. The downside was that all the good cards were being kept by players, completely knackering the drafting element.
I'm ok with it not being a very strategic game, it's supposed to be a 10-15 minute filler like 6 Nimmt! which also has very little control. I also like the way the drafting gives you increasing information about which cures are possible as the game plays out.
Between us we had a few new ideas to try out, and on Thursday lunchtime I got to try out one of those - dealing all the cards up front. This was a spectacular failure. It tried, and died! With only three players and all the cards dealt at the beginning of the game you know by the end of the third turn which suits can be cured (in our case: none!), which sucks a lot of the fun out of it.
I've some other ideas from Tuesday to try out, but they need new components, so will take a little longer to organise.
Thursday was Games Night which included a couple more games of King of Tokyo (which is fast becoming a favourite) towards my ten plays goal. Both our games were six player and we found there was very little incentive to stay in Tokyo till the start of your next turn for the two points. The winners of both games never went in to Tokyo at all! We're considering trying a house rule next time to encourage Tokyo hogging ...
Finally, on the weekend I did a bit more work on my German app. A bit of refactoring and adding some new functionality. It's slowly coming together.
This week I really need to crack on with Vacuum so I can try it once before I go to Germany. Ideally, I need to get it printed and playtested during the week...
Good progress on my goals for the year this week, but not on my more pressing aims regarding Vacuum and Germany. I need to sort myself out!
It's been another busy week. Monday I was travelling for work with Ian again, so there was iPad gaming on the train (complete with another game of Galaxy Trucker, towards my ten plays goal) and then Tuesday was Newcastle Playtest.
I was pretty knackered though, so I left about nine o'clock after three games of Zombology and one of Dan's Ming Voyages. It was a really good turn out with eight of us including two new people and it was good to get some games of Zombology in with more players than the usual three or four we manage in my work lunchtime sessions. We played two games with six players and then when the new members arrived we played an eight player game. Because I'd missed the session last month it was the first time these guys had seen the most recent (and fairly large) changes. They liked some aspects of it, but weren't so keen on others, especially the reduction in control. The previous version let you keep a card between rounds. This gave you a lot more control as you could prevent a card going to an opponent, and could keep a card that would potentially let you complete one of the suits, thereby controlling which suits were scored at the end of the game. The downside was that all the good cards were being kept by players, completely knackering the drafting element.
I'm ok with it not being a very strategic game, it's supposed to be a 10-15 minute filler like 6 Nimmt! which also has very little control. I also like the way the drafting gives you increasing information about which cures are possible as the game plays out.
Between us we had a few new ideas to try out, and on Thursday lunchtime I got to try out one of those - dealing all the cards up front. This was a spectacular failure. It tried, and died! With only three players and all the cards dealt at the beginning of the game you know by the end of the third turn which suits can be cured (in our case: none!), which sucks a lot of the fun out of it.
I've some other ideas from Tuesday to try out, but they need new components, so will take a little longer to organise.
Thursday was Games Night which included a couple more games of King of Tokyo (which is fast becoming a favourite) towards my ten plays goal. Both our games were six player and we found there was very little incentive to stay in Tokyo till the start of your next turn for the two points. The winners of both games never went in to Tokyo at all! We're considering trying a house rule next time to encourage Tokyo hogging ...
Finally, on the weekend I did a bit more work on my German app. A bit of refactoring and adding some new functionality. It's slowly coming together.
This week I really need to crack on with Vacuum so I can try it once before I go to Germany. Ideally, I need to get it printed and playtested during the week...
Good progress on my goals for the year this week, but not on my more pressing aims regarding Vacuum and Germany. I need to sort myself out!
Monday, March 2
Back to App Development
Not much to report this week. I've not made any more progress on Codename: Vacuum ahead of tomorrow's Newcastle Playtest and my trip to Germany at the end of the month. Nor any progress on launching my company and getting back into Games publishing.
It's not been a total washout though. I've played three games towards my ten plays goal (Galaxy Trucker on the iPad with Ian on the way to Manchester on Tuesday and then Chinatown and King of Tokyo on Games Night on Thursday).
I've also started in earnest on my next Windows Phone app. Again it's a personal app that I'm going to make available to others, this time for helping me to learn German.
I learnt German for a couple of years at school and then again via evening classes while I was running Reiver Games. Since getting a smart phone I've tried (and got very frustrated with) a few apps for learning German. Then I got Duolingo which is absolutely awesome. I've been recommending it to everyone it's so good. But it's not perfect.
I learn best when I can visualise data in tables. Things like verb conjugation and adjective declension just make sense to me in tabular form rather than introduced piecemeal through an array of real sentences. So I'm making an app for that so I can help myself learn German in the way I find easiest. Hopefully as it develops and becomes more functional I can make it available and help others too.
It's not been a total washout though. I've played three games towards my ten plays goal (Galaxy Trucker on the iPad with Ian on the way to Manchester on Tuesday and then Chinatown and King of Tokyo on Games Night on Thursday).
I've also started in earnest on my next Windows Phone app. Again it's a personal app that I'm going to make available to others, this time for helping me to learn German.
I learnt German for a couple of years at school and then again via evening classes while I was running Reiver Games. Since getting a smart phone I've tried (and got very frustrated with) a few apps for learning German. Then I got Duolingo which is absolutely awesome. I've been recommending it to everyone it's so good. But it's not perfect.
I learn best when I can visualise data in tables. Things like verb conjugation and adjective declension just make sense to me in tabular form rather than introduced piecemeal through an array of real sentences. So I'm making an app for that so I can help myself learn German in the way I find easiest. Hopefully as it develops and becomes more functional I can make it available and help others too.
Monday, February 23
Stay On Target!
If you've been following this blog for a couple of years you'll know that Codename: Vacuum was the first game I started designing when I got back into Games Design, a couple of years after I wound up Reiver Games, having lost a ton of money in the process. Reiver Games had been a great experience and a lot of fun and I'd met some fantastic people through it that I still consider good friends, but watching your company slowly wither and die kinda sucks the fun out of things and I'd gone off games design for a bit. As the highs and lows of Reiver Games faded from my legendarily poor memory, I started thinking about games design again, and Vacuum was the first of those ideas to be realised in actual cardboard.
I started working on it back in November 2011, and after a couple of years of frequent changes and regular playtests it took a back seat as I focused on Zombology in 2014. I've not really touched it since February last year and despite a couple of ideas during the year, I've done nothing. So much so that this year it didn't make an appearance in my goals at all. Had I not even thought about it once all year, that wouldn't get in the way of my goals at all.
With the NaGa DeMon winners' copies all posted I'm finally in a position to crack on with achieving this year's goals, the largest of which is to become a hobby publisher again.
But instead, I've spent the week working on Vacuum again. I had another four hours of train journeys on Wednesday, this time down to Sheffield and back for my quarterly hospital check-up. I spent that time designing in my head and then starting the graphic design for a new version of Vacuum. The last version was alright, but a couple of the strategies were quite dull and the game took up too much space for what it was.
I've started on a new version which I hope to finish in a week or two so that I can make a copy to take with me to Germany at the end of March. I'm off to Berlin for a conference with work, and I hope to meet up with Konrad, my NaGa DeMon winner two years on the trot and a keen supporter of Reiver Games from back in the day. Konrad has expressed an interest in Vacuum and his feedback on Zombology and Dragon Dance has been really helpful, so it'll be great for both of us If I can get it done in time!
But, I also need to stay focused on my goals, with two months down already, I'm going to have to crack on. In the words of Gold Five: Stay on target!
In other news, Robin David is interviewing me via email for his blog. I'm famous again! ;-p
I started working on it back in November 2011, and after a couple of years of frequent changes and regular playtests it took a back seat as I focused on Zombology in 2014. I've not really touched it since February last year and despite a couple of ideas during the year, I've done nothing. So much so that this year it didn't make an appearance in my goals at all. Had I not even thought about it once all year, that wouldn't get in the way of my goals at all.
With the NaGa DeMon winners' copies all posted I'm finally in a position to crack on with achieving this year's goals, the largest of which is to become a hobby publisher again.
But instead, I've spent the week working on Vacuum again. I had another four hours of train journeys on Wednesday, this time down to Sheffield and back for my quarterly hospital check-up. I spent that time designing in my head and then starting the graphic design for a new version of Vacuum. The last version was alright, but a couple of the strategies were quite dull and the game took up too much space for what it was.
I've started on a new version which I hope to finish in a week or two so that I can make a copy to take with me to Germany at the end of March. I'm off to Berlin for a conference with work, and I hope to meet up with Konrad, my NaGa DeMon winner two years on the trot and a keen supporter of Reiver Games from back in the day. Konrad has expressed an interest in Vacuum and his feedback on Zombology and Dragon Dance has been really helpful, so it'll be great for both of us If I can get it done in time!
But, I also need to stay focused on my goals, with two months down already, I'm going to have to crack on. In the words of Gold Five: Stay on target!
In other news, Robin David is interviewing me via email for his blog. I'm famous again! ;-p
Monday, February 16
New Games Company Checklist
So, as I'm sure you're aware by now, I'm aiming to get back into games publishing this year. It'll be small scale, just a small number (50 or 100) of hand-made, signed copies of a simple card game (Zombology or Dragon Dance). There's a bot-load of things I need to do before the game is ready to sell, so I need to spell those out and then start working through them. This list is not necessarily in order, but some of the later things depend on earlier ones. I'm not going to do a Gantt chart though, that would be too much like work.
My goal is to get a decent chunk of the way through this list before all the copies are pre-ordered! I've now got seven pre-orders and I still haven't confirmed which game it will be! Bizarre.
In other news, I made it along to Newcastle Gamers again this week which was great and had a second Games Night in a row! Things are picking up.
- Choose a company name. Reiver Games is gone, I need something different. I'd quite like something that alludes to a cautionary tale as Reiver Games went too far too fast and crashed and burned as a result. I was thinking Daedalus Games, but there's something very similar already. Jack in the Box Games was another idea, for obvious reasons.
- Register the company with HMRC. Fun.
- Set up a company bank account with some cash in it. I'll need this before registering a website or buying any materials.
- Choose which game. Almost certainly Zombology, but I'm not quite ready to commit just yet.
- Website and PayPal account. Need to do 1 and 3 before this.
- Price up the components. I'm aiming to sell the game for £10, which means I want to spend about £5 per copy on components and printing, so I've got money left over for marketing, website costs, etc. I'll need to get quotes for the raw materials and printing, and then work out how many copies I need to make to make it affordable. More copies make each individual one cheaper, but require more of my time to make, market and sell, plus more cash outlay at the beginning.
- Finish designing the game. Relies on 4, naturally.
- Do the art and graphic design. I can't finish this until I've finished 7, but I can definitely make a start as the games aren't going to change dramatically between now and release. Doing the art and graphic design is both a challenge to get myself to learn new skills and also a way to save money. The art on Sumeria cost a few thousand Euros, I can't afford that if I'm making 50 copies that I want to sell at £10 each.
- Buy the raw materials. For Zombology this is just the box card (I'm making the boxes myself, these are going to be lovingly hand-crafted games!). For Dragon Dance there's the box card, dice and wooden counters, plus some plastic baggies.
- Get the printing done. Obviously this relies on 8. I'll try StressFreePrint first as they were who I used for Border Reivers and the first hand-made edition of It's Alive!
- Start assembling the boxes, which relies on 9. Boxes are pretty easy to make and I can make these up ahead of time to save time once the artwork arrives.
- Start cutting out and assembling the games.
- Start taking cash, relies on 5. Unlike KickStarter, I don't want to start taking cash until I've got the games pretty much ready to ship.
- Start shipping finished games.
- Marketing. It sounds a bit late in the day to start marketing a product, but unlike KickStarter where the aim is to get people all hyped up before you've got anything concrete to give them, I will be aiming to stay ahead of my orders once i've cleared the initial pre-order backlog. With each game taking an hour to make and free time at a premium I'll want to drum up some trade after I've sent all the pre-orders and built up a small stock. I'll still be blogging throughout (which also counts as marketing!) and I might get lucky and get another blog post picked up by BoardGameGeek News or reddit which would be a bonus in terms of exposure.
- Fame and fortune! (As if!)
My goal is to get a decent chunk of the way through this list before all the copies are pre-ordered! I've now got seven pre-orders and I still haven't confirmed which game it will be! Bizarre.
In other news, I made it along to Newcastle Gamers again this week which was great and had a second Games Night in a row! Things are picking up.
Monday, February 9
A Glorious Week of Gaming
After the long drought and then last weekend's gaming trip down to Bedford to see Terry and Andrew, who I used to game with weekly when I lived in the south, I've had another week of decent gaming.
The gaming didn't start until Thursday - the beginning of the week was games-free since I missed Tuesday's Newcastle Playtest session. But Wednesday night I finally made the January 2015 edition of Zombology and Thursday lunchtime we got to play it. Three times!
There were loads of changes from the December version (which I sent to Spain and Germany last week to my NaGa DeMon winners - Derek, your copy is ready to go, but I need to get to a Post Office for a customs label). The Boffins have become Gurus and are now treatment specific, the Fatal Mistake cards have gone along with some of the more complex rules. The new rulebook is actually significantly shorter (a good thing to my mind). I've also taken out the play a card, keep a card rule that knackered the drafting aspect.
With only three plays it's hard to tell if it's better or worse, but I tweaked a copy of things during the games and I've another idea I'd like to try out this week (that doesn't require any new components or printing - yay!). It's easier than I was expecting, I don't know it that's just luck of the draw from a small number of samples or a genuine effect, it should become clearer after more plays...
Then Thursday evening it was back to my weekly Games Night for the first time in a month, which was a great evening despite finishing unusually early. We played six games (mostly fillers) and somehow I managed to win four and tie another one. An unusually high win ratio!
Finally, we rounded the week out in style when Paul (who I used to game weekly with when I lived in York) and his family came up to stay for the weekend. Paul and I played games late into the night on Saturday (or what counts for late in my house: nearly 1am!) and then snuck another game in on Sunday afternoon during The Daughter's nap.
It was a great week of gaming, I've played two more games on my need to play this year list (Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia and Homesteaders), plus a couple of new to me ones: Bang: The Dice Game (much better than the card original) and Coal Barons. Plus it was great to catch up with old friends, guys who I used to game with every week and now see far too infrequently.
The gaming didn't start until Thursday - the beginning of the week was games-free since I missed Tuesday's Newcastle Playtest session. But Wednesday night I finally made the January 2015 edition of Zombology and Thursday lunchtime we got to play it. Three times!
There were loads of changes from the December version (which I sent to Spain and Germany last week to my NaGa DeMon winners - Derek, your copy is ready to go, but I need to get to a Post Office for a customs label). The Boffins have become Gurus and are now treatment specific, the Fatal Mistake cards have gone along with some of the more complex rules. The new rulebook is actually significantly shorter (a good thing to my mind). I've also taken out the play a card, keep a card rule that knackered the drafting aspect.
With only three plays it's hard to tell if it's better or worse, but I tweaked a copy of things during the games and I've another idea I'd like to try out this week (that doesn't require any new components or printing - yay!). It's easier than I was expecting, I don't know it that's just luck of the draw from a small number of samples or a genuine effect, it should become clearer after more plays...
Then Thursday evening it was back to my weekly Games Night for the first time in a month, which was a great evening despite finishing unusually early. We played six games (mostly fillers) and somehow I managed to win four and tie another one. An unusually high win ratio!
Finally, we rounded the week out in style when Paul (who I used to game weekly with when I lived in York) and his family came up to stay for the weekend. Paul and I played games late into the night on Saturday (or what counts for late in my house: nearly 1am!) and then snuck another game in on Sunday afternoon during The Daughter's nap.
It was a great week of gaming, I've played two more games on my need to play this year list (Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia and Homesteaders), plus a couple of new to me ones: Bang: The Dice Game (much better than the card original) and Coal Barons. Plus it was great to catch up with old friends, guys who I used to game with every week and now see far too infrequently.
Monday, February 2
After The Drought, The Deluge
Believe it or not it had been several weeks since I last played a board game against a human opponent. I've had to cancel the last three of my regular Thursday Games Nights for various reasons and I've been putting off playtesting at lunchtime as I've had a bunch of ideas in my head for Zombology that I've not gotten around to doing the graphic design on, let alone printing out.
The gaming drought ended on Tuesday with a trip to Manchester for work with my boss Ian, a regular Games Night attendee. I always take my iPad which is stacked with board game conversions so we played a bunch of those - I think ten all told!
That evening I was babysitting for some friends and I put the hours to good use, doing the graphic design for the box labels and the rule books for the NaGa DeMon winners' copies of Dragon Dance and their bonus copies of Zombology. With that finally done I could print them out on Wednesday and finish the copies off ready for posting:
There was no Games Night again on Thursday, but only because I was off to Bedford on Friday night for a Games Day with Terry and Andrew, two of my gaming buddies from my time in the south.
I spent Friday and Saturday nights' train journeys doing the graphic design for the next version of Zombology which has some sweeping changes from the December version. As yet I don't know if it will make things better or worse, but it will be interesting to see how it pans out, once I've printed it out and got it to the table. I'm trying to address a few things: one is some issues with the graphic design, another is a few things to add theme. I've also got some concerns about how easy it is for one of the players to win (as opposed to everyone lose).
In addition, a recent change allowing players to keep a card between rounds, which has been almost universally popular, is disappearing. The change was introduced to give the players more control and to make the game more strategic but, to be honest, a ten minute drafting game needs to be fun more than strategic. Allowing players to keep a card meant that the good cards were retained so the drafting aspect was knackered - it was only the dross going round.
As with any large changes to a game, I'm expecting that some bits of it will be an improvement and some bits a step backwards. I'll have to play it a few times to work out which are which and then start honing the game again.
Or the new version might just be dreadful and I'll have to roll back to the previous version!
Saturday's games day was a great day. It was great to catch up with Terry and Andrew and we played seven games, of which I'd only played Fresco, Firefly and Las Vegas before. The games I was introduced to: Machi Koro, Orleans, Red7 and Roll for the Galaxy were all entertaining, with Roll for the Galaxy being my favourite of the day. Roll is similar to Race and clearly of the same theme and feel, but it's different enough to have made it high up on my wish list. Race is a favourite with my Games Night crowd and I think Roll will be too.
Plus a game of Firefly is a step towards having played every game I own at least ten times :-)
This week Games Night is back and then my friend Paul is up from York on Saturday. The deluge continues!
The gaming drought ended on Tuesday with a trip to Manchester for work with my boss Ian, a regular Games Night attendee. I always take my iPad which is stacked with board game conversions so we played a bunch of those - I think ten all told!
That evening I was babysitting for some friends and I put the hours to good use, doing the graphic design for the box labels and the rule books for the NaGa DeMon winners' copies of Dragon Dance and their bonus copies of Zombology. With that finally done I could print them out on Wednesday and finish the copies off ready for posting:
There was no Games Night again on Thursday, but only because I was off to Bedford on Friday night for a Games Day with Terry and Andrew, two of my gaming buddies from my time in the south.
I spent Friday and Saturday nights' train journeys doing the graphic design for the next version of Zombology which has some sweeping changes from the December version. As yet I don't know if it will make things better or worse, but it will be interesting to see how it pans out, once I've printed it out and got it to the table. I'm trying to address a few things: one is some issues with the graphic design, another is a few things to add theme. I've also got some concerns about how easy it is for one of the players to win (as opposed to everyone lose).
In addition, a recent change allowing players to keep a card between rounds, which has been almost universally popular, is disappearing. The change was introduced to give the players more control and to make the game more strategic but, to be honest, a ten minute drafting game needs to be fun more than strategic. Allowing players to keep a card meant that the good cards were retained so the drafting aspect was knackered - it was only the dross going round.
As with any large changes to a game, I'm expecting that some bits of it will be an improvement and some bits a step backwards. I'll have to play it a few times to work out which are which and then start honing the game again.
Or the new version might just be dreadful and I'll have to roll back to the previous version!
Saturday's games day was a great day. It was great to catch up with Terry and Andrew and we played seven games, of which I'd only played Fresco, Firefly and Las Vegas before. The games I was introduced to: Machi Koro, Orleans, Red7 and Roll for the Galaxy were all entertaining, with Roll for the Galaxy being my favourite of the day. Roll is similar to Race and clearly of the same theme and feel, but it's different enough to have made it high up on my wish list. Race is a favourite with my Games Night crowd and I think Roll will be too.
Plus a game of Firefly is a step towards having played every game I own at least ten times :-)
This week Games Night is back and then my friend Paul is up from York on Saturday. The deluge continues!
Monday, January 26
A Digital Digression
As I've discussed over the last couple of weeks, one of my goals for this year is to get back into hobby publishing, like I did in the early years of Reiver Games. I've got all year to do that though and there are more pressing things on my plate - like the NaGa DeMon Winners' copies of Dragon Dance (and bonus Zombology) to finish and get in the post.
I've made no progress on either of those things this week though. Not even taken any more pre-orders for the as yet unannounced game (still at 4/50!).
Instead I've been focusing on a couple of my Windows Phone apps. I'm technically a programmer by profession, but over the last few years I've been moving into more of a project management/team leadership role, so I don't get to do much actual coding anymore. I still enjoy it, but with little practice in the office my skills are atrophying, so I've been making a few apps for my Windows Phone (bought because I could make apps for it in the languages and tools I 'use' in my day job). Several of these apps have an audience of one (Codename: Vacuum randomiser and recorder anyone?), but a couple of them, while written for my use and as a coding exercise, potentially had a bigger audience, so I've uploaded them to the store.
The first of those, BGG Last Plays was an app version of the excellent Last Plays by BGG User Heroku App. I wanted this as I'd set myself a goal of playing every game I owned at least once last year, and I was using that webpage to keep track (but I wanted a few extras that were easier to implement in app format). One of my goals for this year is to make another version of this which makes it easier to keep track of this year's gaming goal: To have played every game in my collection at least ten times.
The most recent app I've added to the store (which is starting to get some downloads finally) was a pass-and-play version of the Martian Dice game by Scott Almes.
I had a trip away for work this week, so I had an evening to kill, plus five hours on trains, so I took my laptop and decided to work on my apps. The first priority was fixing a crash in Martian Dice that had been reported three times in a week (despite only 16 people owning it!). I had a stack trace showing me where it happened, but couldn't reproduce it myself. Still the stack trace was enough information to fix the problem. No soon had I done that, then my mate Mal pointed out a rather glaring bug in the undo functionality: if you rolled any tanks in a turn you could forget them by clicking undo! That totally broke the game :-( So I fixed these two problems (and made a couple of usability tweaks recommended by a user on BGG).
With the urgent things fixed, and still some time to spare, I moved onto making the Last Plays app support my new goal. I've added the ability to sort by the number of games played, and to select a number of plays below which a game is highlighted. 26 days into the year and I've already completed one of my goals for the year! I've also added a link to the game's BGG page if you press and hold its listing in the app.
On Saturday night I published both of these updates to the Windows Store - they should both be available now.
With these out of the way, I can now focus on the NaGa DeMon winners' copies of Dragon Dance and Zombology. I've printed and made the games, it's just the rulebooks and box labels outstanding. I've got a few hours on Tuesday night while babysitting for some friends that I can apply to this task, plus if necessary a bunch of hours on trains on the weekend, while I go down to Bedford to see my mates down there for a games day.
I've made no progress on either of those things this week though. Not even taken any more pre-orders for the as yet unannounced game (still at 4/50!).
Instead I've been focusing on a couple of my Windows Phone apps. I'm technically a programmer by profession, but over the last few years I've been moving into more of a project management/team leadership role, so I don't get to do much actual coding anymore. I still enjoy it, but with little practice in the office my skills are atrophying, so I've been making a few apps for my Windows Phone (bought because I could make apps for it in the languages and tools I 'use' in my day job). Several of these apps have an audience of one (Codename: Vacuum randomiser and recorder anyone?), but a couple of them, while written for my use and as a coding exercise, potentially had a bigger audience, so I've uploaded them to the store.
The first of those, BGG Last Plays was an app version of the excellent Last Plays by BGG User Heroku App. I wanted this as I'd set myself a goal of playing every game I owned at least once last year, and I was using that webpage to keep track (but I wanted a few extras that were easier to implement in app format). One of my goals for this year is to make another version of this which makes it easier to keep track of this year's gaming goal: To have played every game in my collection at least ten times.
The most recent app I've added to the store (which is starting to get some downloads finally) was a pass-and-play version of the Martian Dice game by Scott Almes.
I had a trip away for work this week, so I had an evening to kill, plus five hours on trains, so I took my laptop and decided to work on my apps. The first priority was fixing a crash in Martian Dice that had been reported three times in a week (despite only 16 people owning it!). I had a stack trace showing me where it happened, but couldn't reproduce it myself. Still the stack trace was enough information to fix the problem. No soon had I done that, then my mate Mal pointed out a rather glaring bug in the undo functionality: if you rolled any tanks in a turn you could forget them by clicking undo! That totally broke the game :-( So I fixed these two problems (and made a couple of usability tweaks recommended by a user on BGG).
With the urgent things fixed, and still some time to spare, I moved onto making the Last Plays app support my new goal. I've added the ability to sort by the number of games played, and to select a number of plays below which a game is highlighted. 26 days into the year and I've already completed one of my goals for the year! I've also added a link to the game's BGG page if you press and hold its listing in the app.
On Saturday night I published both of these updates to the Windows Store - they should both be available now.
With these out of the way, I can now focus on the NaGa DeMon winners' copies of Dragon Dance and Zombology. I've printed and made the games, it's just the rulebooks and box labels outstanding. I've got a few hours on Tuesday night while babysitting for some friends that I can apply to this task, plus if necessary a bunch of hours on trains on the weekend, while I go down to Bedford to see my mates down there for a games day.
Monday, January 19
Self-Published Run: Specification
It's been a great week on the blog here, thanks largely to W. Eric Martin of BoardGameGeek covering last week's blog post - thanks Eric!
I've not yet decided whether it'll be Zombology or Dragon Dance that I try to self publish this year (currently leaning towards Zombology) but either way there a bunch of things that are the same for both.
In other news, I've not much to report this week. The Daughter's been sleeping badly again, so early nights all round and The Father-in-Law made an impromptu visit on his way back from Scotland for the last half of the week. Next week I'm away for a couple of nights for work, so I'm hoping to start making some progress on finishing of the NaGa DeMon winners' copies of Dragon Dance. And, despite the fact that I've not settled on a choice of game, I've already got 4 pre-orders!
I've not yet decided whether it'll be Zombology or Dragon Dance that I try to self publish this year (currently leaning towards Zombology) but either way there a bunch of things that are the same for both.
Printing
I'll get all the artwork printed professionally (but digitally, not litho - for a small print run the litho set up costs are prohibitive). The box and cards will also be laminated, which makes them more durable and the print more hard-wearing. Professional laminating is nothing like the lamination pouches that you can get done in most offices, it's almost unnoticeable. The cards and box for Border Reivers were both laminated in this way and I was very happy with the results. For Border Reivers and the first edition of It's Alive!, I used a digital print company who have since changed their name to StressFreePrint. They'll be my first port of call as I was very happy with their service and products in the past.Box
I'm going to hand-make tray and lid boxes and then wrap them in printed labels. The boxes will be 123 x 95 x 20mm, the same as most two deck card games (think 6 Nimmt! or No Thanks!). This means they will be small and pretty cheap to post.Cards
The cards will be laminated as described above and have their corners rounded, very similarly to Border Reivers.Other Bits
Zombology is 108 cards and a rule book. Dragon Dance has some other components: eight dice and a number of wooden bits. The wooden bits would be published game quality (I'd get them from SpielMaterial.de again) but generic, I'm thinking yellow wooden discs for the dragon's life tokens and red wooden hearts for the knight's. I've got my eye on some nice Chessex dice, but I'm not sure my budget would stretch to it.Price Point
I'm aiming for £10 per copy as the retail price for both games which is about what you'd pay in a store (not online) for that sort of game in the UK. That's $15 or 13€, both of which are a bit expensive for what it is, but I'm expected most of my orders to come from the UK (friends and family will probably feature heavily!). Seeing as it's a very short run I'm not looking to get it into shops or distributors, so all of that (minus PayPal fees for online sales) will be going to me. I want to charge twice what it costs for the components so I've some money left over for website, playtest materials and potentially I'll can make a profit toward making a bigger game next year if it goes well. So my budget is £5 per copy for the materials and the printing. I've no idea yet whether this is feasible, but that's my goal at this point. So that's £250 for 50 copies or £500 for 100 copies.In other news, I've not much to report this week. The Daughter's been sleeping badly again, so early nights all round and The Father-in-Law made an impromptu visit on his way back from Scotland for the last half of the week. Next week I'm away for a couple of nights for work, so I'm hoping to start making some progress on finishing of the NaGa DeMon winners' copies of Dragon Dance. And, despite the fact that I've not settled on a choice of game, I've already got 4 pre-orders!
Monday, January 12
Why Aren't I KickStarting?
Since announcing my intention to get back into board publishing as part of my 2015 goals post last week, the question I've been asked the most is:
When I started Reiver Games back in 2006 my family consisted of myself and The Wife. The Wife was in the middle of a PhD and fairly busy so I had some time to kill in the evenings. I was quite happy to commit to 300 hours of Border Reivers assembly plus the numerous hours I spent posting copies and on promotion and half-arsed marketing.
These days things have changed. I'm now a dad and I want to spend my free time with The Wife and The Daughter doing family things and enjoying these fleeting moments of The Daughter's childhood. When The Daughter goes to bed, I want to spend time with The Wife. My priorities are totally different. So I can't commit to a massive expenditure of time. Which makes making the games by hand sound even more ridiculous, but it's not. There's method to my madness (I hope).
With a small run there's less monetary investment and much less worrying about stock clearance. I don't need to market to shops and distributors (which took a lot of effort) to get widespread availability and I don't have to worry about ongoing warehousing costs. Plus, I've done this all before, so I've got experience and knowledge, plus (I hope) some potential customers from my Reiver Games days.
But probably the biggest benefit is a known budget in terms of both time and cost. With KickStarter, people expect you to offer stretch goals and different pledge levels. Until the KickStarter is complete and you know exactly how much money you've raised and how many people you've got at each level you've no idea what you're letting yourself in for. I've got a full time job and a family, the last thing I need on top of that is an unspecified amount of work I have to do in my spare time that I'm contractually (and morally) obliged to.
With a run of 50 or a hundred copies, where each copy takes about an hour to construct, I know exactly what I'm letting myself in for. Plus, I don't expect to have sold out of the print run before I start it, so initially there will be less that than amount of work and then just a trickling amount from then on as the last of the stock slowly sells through.
This is something I can prepare for and plan for, and something I can do in my evenings after The Daughter goes to sleep. It's achievable around my job and my family, both of which I consider higher priorities.
This time round I'm not in it to make a fortune, or to try and go full time, I'm just in it to make games and hopefully bring some gaming joy to some of my customers.
Oh, and I've already got two pre-orders, despite the fact that they don't know which game it is yet!
In other news, this week I managed to make it to Newcastle Gamers for the first time since October! It was a great evening and I managed to get in three games, two of which contribute towards my goal of having played every game I own at least ten times. Both the games I played on Games Night helped as well! Off to a good start...
So, why aren't you KickStarting the (yet to be decided!) game?It was the first question the guys at Newcastle Playtest asked and the first question that came up on twitter too. I've spoken at length before about my concerns with KickStarter for board game publishing, but to be honest that wasn't really the deciding factor.
When I started Reiver Games back in 2006 my family consisted of myself and The Wife. The Wife was in the middle of a PhD and fairly busy so I had some time to kill in the evenings. I was quite happy to commit to 300 hours of Border Reivers assembly plus the numerous hours I spent posting copies and on promotion and half-arsed marketing.
These days things have changed. I'm now a dad and I want to spend my free time with The Wife and The Daughter doing family things and enjoying these fleeting moments of The Daughter's childhood. When The Daughter goes to bed, I want to spend time with The Wife. My priorities are totally different. So I can't commit to a massive expenditure of time. Which makes making the games by hand sound even more ridiculous, but it's not. There's method to my madness (I hope).
With a small run there's less monetary investment and much less worrying about stock clearance. I don't need to market to shops and distributors (which took a lot of effort) to get widespread availability and I don't have to worry about ongoing warehousing costs. Plus, I've done this all before, so I've got experience and knowledge, plus (I hope) some potential customers from my Reiver Games days.
But probably the biggest benefit is a known budget in terms of both time and cost. With KickStarter, people expect you to offer stretch goals and different pledge levels. Until the KickStarter is complete and you know exactly how much money you've raised and how many people you've got at each level you've no idea what you're letting yourself in for. I've got a full time job and a family, the last thing I need on top of that is an unspecified amount of work I have to do in my spare time that I'm contractually (and morally) obliged to.
With a run of 50 or a hundred copies, where each copy takes about an hour to construct, I know exactly what I'm letting myself in for. Plus, I don't expect to have sold out of the print run before I start it, so initially there will be less that than amount of work and then just a trickling amount from then on as the last of the stock slowly sells through.
This is something I can prepare for and plan for, and something I can do in my evenings after The Daughter goes to sleep. It's achievable around my job and my family, both of which I consider higher priorities.
This time round I'm not in it to make a fortune, or to try and go full time, I'm just in it to make games and hopefully bring some gaming joy to some of my customers.
Oh, and I've already got two pre-orders, despite the fact that they don't know which game it is yet!
In other news, this week I managed to make it to Newcastle Gamers for the first time since October! It was a great evening and I managed to get in three games, two of which contribute towards my goal of having played every game I own at least ten times. Both the games I played on Games Night helped as well! Off to a good start...
Monday, January 5
2015 Goals
The last couple of years I've set myself some goals for blogging and playing and designing games (see: 2013, 2014). I want the goals to be achievable, but also a stretch, so they encourage me to push myself and learn new things. This year, in addition to the usual three categories, I'm adding a fourth: app development :-)
I'll use this second goal to hone my collection a bit again, and give me a chance to gain a better understanding of some of the longer games in my collection. Games bought during 2015 are excluded.
Only one goal? Yes, but it's a biggy. The Wife bought me a graphics tablet for Christmas, so I'm going to use that to hone my illustration skills and along with Adobe Creative Cloud (which is damned expensive, but I get a discount as a CS3 owner and I'm putting Christmas present money towards it). I'm already tinkering with some Bayeux Tapestry inspired art for Dragon Dance!
This is a real challenge. It'll probably be either Zombology or Dragon Dance, whichever is the better game (and most sensibly priced) in a run of maybe 50 copies, or one hundred if there's a surprisingly high demand. I'll be blogging artwork and sketches for feedback throughout the year. Why a limited, handmade run you ask? Despite the lure of KickStarter, I'm still uncomfortable with it and it was the large print runs that I couldn't get working with Reiver Games. The two handmade limited editions I did: Border Reivers and the first edition of It's Alive! both sold out quickly and made me money (excluding time spent!). A short print run is a known quantity that I can manage around my family and work commitments and I know exactly what I'm getting into, having done it successfully before.
The exciting and challenging bit will be doing the art myself - this will require learning lots of new skills.
There, that's enough to be getting on with! Wish me luck...
Blogging
Last year I wanted a 10% growth in page views, to blog every week, to take part in NaGa DeMon and to gain ten new followers. I hit most of those, except the followers one which, to be honest, I don't really care about, so this year's goals are:- 45,500 page views (taking me to 183K in total), another 10% growth
- Blog every Monday
- Do something for NaGa DeMon (I've enough games on the go, so it might not be starting a new one...)
Playing games
Last year I wanted to play every game in my collection at least once and play at least 365 games in total. I'm going to mix it up a bit this year:- Play at least 365 games during 2015
- Have played every game in my collection (with the usual exceptions) at least ten times.
I'll use this second goal to hone my collection a bit again, and give me a chance to gain a better understanding of some of the longer games in my collection. Games bought during 2015 are excluded.
Designing Games
I'll keep it simple here, yet excitingly different. This year I want to release a self-published, self-illustrated board game in a limited edition, like the good old days of Reiver Games.Only one goal? Yes, but it's a biggy. The Wife bought me a graphics tablet for Christmas, so I'm going to use that to hone my illustration skills and along with Adobe Creative Cloud (which is damned expensive, but I get a discount as a CS3 owner and I'm putting Christmas present money towards it). I'm already tinkering with some Bayeux Tapestry inspired art for Dragon Dance!
This is a real challenge. It'll probably be either Zombology or Dragon Dance, whichever is the better game (and most sensibly priced) in a run of maybe 50 copies, or one hundred if there's a surprisingly high demand. I'll be blogging artwork and sketches for feedback throughout the year. Why a limited, handmade run you ask? Despite the lure of KickStarter, I'm still uncomfortable with it and it was the large print runs that I couldn't get working with Reiver Games. The two handmade limited editions I did: Border Reivers and the first edition of It's Alive! both sold out quickly and made me money (excluding time spent!). A short print run is a known quantity that I can manage around my family and work commitments and I know exactly what I'm getting into, having done it successfully before.
The exciting and challenging bit will be doing the art myself - this will require learning lots of new skills.
App Development
I'm learning German again, using the excellent Duolingo. In many ways it's superb, but I'm the sort of person who likes to learn from structure, so being able to visualise tables of pronouns and verb declensions really helps me. In the vein of my current selfish app development, I want to make an app to help with that. I also want to release a new version of BGG Last Plays that helps me track this year's different plays goal.There, that's enough to be getting on with! Wish me luck...
Monday, December 29
2014: The Year in Review
2014 has been a pretty good, if slightly strange, year. It started on New Year's Eve in the house on my own. Thanks to radiotherapy for my overactive thyroid I had to keep my distance from The Daughter for three weeks. With her only 16 months old it was going to be very unfair for me to always be around but never come near her or give her a cuddle, so The Wife and The Daughter stayed in Bristol after Christmas and I came home on my own and got nuked. I got the dose on New Year's Eve in the afternoon, that evening I was at my most radioactive - so I didn't even go out and see friends. Definitely the second crappiest New Year's Eve of my life.
The next three weeks I was home alone, so I got to live the bachelor life style: eating like a student and playing games all the time - I even got a game of Twilight Imperium III in! On the way to rescue The Wife and The Daughter I stopped in at Terry's and had a day's gaming with my old Bedford group. I used to see them for games every week, but since moving to Newcastle (about 250 miles away) I don't get to see much of them at all. The rest of the year was busy but good fun, with a trip to Baltimore for work (but no impromptu gaming this time!), a convention (Beer and Pretzels in Burton again with Terry). But in November we had some bad news which derailed my NaGa DeMon efforts a bit.
My five and dimes for this year were:
My most popular posts of the year were:
That's enough wittering for now, so until next week's Goals for 2015 blog post; I hope you all had good years too, and here's hoping next year will be even better!
The next three weeks I was home alone, so I got to live the bachelor life style: eating like a student and playing games all the time - I even got a game of Twilight Imperium III in! On the way to rescue The Wife and The Daughter I stopped in at Terry's and had a day's gaming with my old Bedford group. I used to see them for games every week, but since moving to Newcastle (about 250 miles away) I don't get to see much of them at all. The rest of the year was busy but good fun, with a trip to Baltimore for work (but no impromptu gaming this time!), a convention (Beer and Pretzels in Burton again with Terry). But in November we had some bad news which derailed my NaGa DeMon efforts a bit.
Games Design
I'd set myself a few goals in 2014 for games design:- Make four more versions of Vacuum
- Get Zombology ready to submit to a publisher
- Do NaGa DeMon again
General Gaming
My goals for gaming in 2014 were:- Play at least as many games as there are days in 2014
- Play every game I own at least once*
My five and dimes for this year were:
- 63: Zombology - the joy of designing a short game is that you can test it quickly, over and over again
- 28: Ra - mostly on the iPad on the train
- 27: Martian Dice - including testing my Windows Phone app with friends
- 26: Coup - a Games Night staple
- 25: Hey! That's My Fish! - on the train
- 23: Dragon Dance - all since the beginning of November!
- 23: Carcassonne - on the train again
- 18: Love Letter - at Games Night
- 16: Rumis - great fun
- 16: Race for the Galaxy - mostly with the Alien Artifacts expansion (sans orb bit)
- 13: 6 Nimmt! - at Games Night
- 12: Stone Age - on the iPad
- 11: X-Wing Minis - with Dave mostly
- 10: Lords of Waterdeep - on the iPad and in the flesh
- 10: Pandemic - on the iPad mostly
- 10: Stormy Seas - all on Christmas Day! This is straight onto my wishlist
- 9: 7 Wonders - still popular at Games Night
- 7: Hive - no idea when I played this!
- 6: Codename: Vacuum - early on, before I focussed on Zombology
- 6: Coloretto - Games Night filler
- 6: No Thanks! - Games Night filler
- 6: Hol's der Geier - Games Night filler
- 6: Die Speicherstadt - Games Night
- 5: Firefly - Love this, just wish it was shorter, so it fit comfortably in a Games Night
- 5: Puerto Rico - on the iPad
- 5: Forbidden Island - iPad, I don't own the cardboard version
Blogging
My goals for blogging this year were:- Write a blog post every Monday
- Get 40,000 page views
- Gain 10 new followers
My most popular posts of the year were:
- A discussion of timing in games
- What are your favourite playtestion questions
- Picking up Border Reivers again and launching my Firefly: The Board Game app
- (Some of) the Zombology NaGa DeMon winners' copies arrived
- My iPad gaming
Windows Phone Apps
In addition to playing, designing and writing about board games, this year I started developing board game-related apps for my Windows Phone, a few of them are personal apps for helping me design or test my games, but three of them seemed of interest to others, so I made them freely available this year. Between them they've only had 60 downloads, so they're not wildly successful, but I did them for my own interest and as programming exercises, so if they are useful to anyone else at all that's an added bonus. I'd like to keep up the app designing next year too.That's enough wittering for now, so until next week's Goals for 2015 blog post; I hope you all had good years too, and here's hoping next year will be even better!
Monday, December 22
Progress, At Last!
It's been a funny old week. It was meant to be my last week of work before I had two weeks off for Christmas. But it didn't quite go to plan. In a bad way. And then a good way!
Monday morning I'd booked off to go to a Christmas show with The Daughter and The Wife. So we had a lie in, I came round gradually, slowly achieved consciousness and then sprinted for the toilet. Where I spent the rest of the day. The Wife and The Daughter went to the show without me, only to find out on arrival that it was cancelled, as the cast too were stricken with a stomach bug.
Tuesday I managed to get up and get dressed and didn't have to sprint anywhere thankfully, then Wednesday I was back at work, if still not 100%. I say work, but it was the day of our Christmas party, so after spending the morning trawling through a couple of days worth of emails, we went on a team building trip in the afternoon and then out for the night. Clearly I still wasn't right - I had a couple of small beers and left at 9:15!
I'd kept some holiday back in case of having to take some to look after The Daughter if The Wife got sick, which meant I could finish for the year on Thursday at lunchtime. I promptly spent the afternoon doing all my chores so that on Friday I could finally make some progress on the NaGa DeMon winners' copies of Dragon Dance.
I finished off the boxes and printed and cut out the cards, so all that remains to be done is design, print and attach the box labels and write, print and fold the rules. I've also decided to give the three winners a copy of the latest version of Zombology, so I printed out four copies of that too. The only copy I cut out and boxed of that was mine though, so I've got it in time for the Christmas holidays, in case anyone in my family or The Wife's family fancies playing it.
After a couple of weeks of nothing to report it's nice to be making progress again!
All that remains is for me to wish you a Merry Christmas and thank you all for reading my blog this year. I hope you all have a great break.
Monday morning I'd booked off to go to a Christmas show with The Daughter and The Wife. So we had a lie in, I came round gradually, slowly achieved consciousness and then sprinted for the toilet. Where I spent the rest of the day. The Wife and The Daughter went to the show without me, only to find out on arrival that it was cancelled, as the cast too were stricken with a stomach bug.
Tuesday I managed to get up and get dressed and didn't have to sprint anywhere thankfully, then Wednesday I was back at work, if still not 100%. I say work, but it was the day of our Christmas party, so after spending the morning trawling through a couple of days worth of emails, we went on a team building trip in the afternoon and then out for the night. Clearly I still wasn't right - I had a couple of small beers and left at 9:15!
I'd kept some holiday back in case of having to take some to look after The Daughter if The Wife got sick, which meant I could finish for the year on Thursday at lunchtime. I promptly spent the afternoon doing all my chores so that on Friday I could finally make some progress on the NaGa DeMon winners' copies of Dragon Dance.
I finished off the boxes and printed and cut out the cards, so all that remains to be done is design, print and attach the box labels and write, print and fold the rules. I've also decided to give the three winners a copy of the latest version of Zombology, so I printed out four copies of that too. The only copy I cut out and boxed of that was mine though, so I've got it in time for the Christmas holidays, in case anyone in my family or The Wife's family fancies playing it.
After a couple of weeks of nothing to report it's nice to be making progress again!
All that remains is for me to wish you a Merry Christmas and thank you all for reading my blog this year. I hope you all have a great break.
Monday, December 15
Too Busy!
Last week I thought I was going to be busy, but in the end I was too busy and ended up getting very little done indeed. I managed to finish the boxes for the NaGa DeMon winners' copies, but sadly that was it.
This week was supposed to be even busier. I had a work night out lined up for Monday and our Christmas party on Wednesday. We've got lots of corporate visitors at work and lots of meetings and we've got to get ready for our trip to Bristol to visit my in-laws and my family for Christmas.
Sadly, I'm not going to get much done for a different reason, I woke up this morning racked with another stomach bug. I'll be spending most of the next couple of days in 'the littlest room' I fear. Joy.
So, I doubt I'll get much done this week either. I do have a chance on Friday night to make some progress I think, but as feared it's going to be January before the NaGa DeMon winners' copies are winging their way to the winners. Sorry for the delay!
This week was supposed to be even busier. I had a work night out lined up for Monday and our Christmas party on Wednesday. We've got lots of corporate visitors at work and lots of meetings and we've got to get ready for our trip to Bristol to visit my in-laws and my family for Christmas.
Sadly, I'm not going to get much done for a different reason, I woke up this morning racked with another stomach bug. I'll be spending most of the next couple of days in 'the littlest room' I fear. Joy.
So, I doubt I'll get much done this week either. I do have a chance on Friday night to make some progress I think, but as feared it's going to be January before the NaGa DeMon winners' copies are winging their way to the winners. Sorry for the delay!
Monday, December 8
Busy, Busy
With NaGa DeMon done you'd expect things to be calming down, but not so much - this week has been one of lots of little things that needed attending to.
I've promised copies of Dragon Dance to the three most helpful TGWAG competitors, so I've started making those copies. I'd bought or scavenged the wooden pieces and dice before the start of November, but there's plenty still to do: boxes, cards and rules. On Saturday I started getting the boxes made and will finish them off tonight. The cards and rules require getting the printer down from the box room, which is a bit of a faff, so I'm put that off until all my printing is ready. So I've also done the graphic design for another version of Zombology - that's ready for printing.
I've also been working on my Martian Dice Windows Phone app which is nearing completion. I made a candidate for the final build at the beginning of the week and that's now being tested by a bunch of friends. I'm hoping that this will be my most popular app so far (I've got 50 downloads so far across all three apps put together!), so I've been putting some work into a web page for it and getting some mild publicity ready.
Once Martian Dice is out there my next focus will probably be Christmas, but then after that I've another idea for an app to work on next year (in addition to Vacuum, Zombology, Dragon Dance, Border Reivers second edition and maintaining all my existing apps!).
First up though, Dragon Dance NaGa DeMon winners' copies...
Monday, December 1
NaGa DeMon 13: Finito
Well, it's December, so NaGa DeMon is done. And what a weird one it was. For the first half of the month I was kind of stuck. My first version of Dragon Dance was far better than I was expecting, reasonably well balanced and it played more or less how I was thought it would. That's unheard of for a first prototype of mine. I was playing it loads during lunchtime at work, alternating between it and By Election - my friend Sam's NaGa DeMon game. After about fifteen plays (including some from Konrad) I finally pushed the boat out and made a second version, incorporating some of the detailed feedback from Konrad and some ideas I'd had or that had been suggested by my playtesters.
That version, while a bit more interested, sucked. It was hideously broken, so heavily weighted in favour of the dragon that there was little point in playing it. So I had an idea of how to change things to fix it up, which I wrote up ready to post once I'd tried it.
Then I got sick (after it had swept through the family) then we had some bad news that put everything else on the back burner. My parents came up a week earlier than planned to help babysit The Daughter and my spare time ended up being spent entertaining guests rather than printing, designing or playing Dragon Dance. Also, after making big promises that I would get more involved with other people's NaGa DeMon efforts (including the aforementioned Konrad, who played my NaGa DeMon game one night in preference to his own) I did nothing. About which I feel quite bad - sorry Konrad!
With little time to practice the new fixed up v2, I posted it anyway and then finally another tweak right at the end of the month. The first hardly tested by me, the other completely untested. A very disappointing end to the month.
Page views were way down on last year as a result (though still my second best month in the eight year history of Creation and Play). However, I still managed to make four different versions and played it nearly twenty times. Plus, TGWAG was another huge success with nine participants, at least two people printing it out and Konrad playing it and given some excellent feedback. Thanks everyone, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. The final league table is as follows:
| Name | PIPs | PIAL | Free game? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sir Konrad/@pidaysock | 33 | Knight Sergeant | Yes |
| Derek Hohls/@gamesbook | 16 | Squire | Yes |
| Eblasco/@7isprime | 15 | Squire | Yes |
| Roberto | 8 | Footman | No |
| @MTTJ_Patrick | 5 | Footman | No |
| @kimacus | 4 | Serf | No |
| Mal | 3 | Serf | No |
| @toddderscheid | 2 | Serf | No |
| @thefrugalgamer | 2 | Serf | No |
So the free copies will be winging their way to Konrad, Enrique and Derek early in the new year. Thanks again!
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