Monday, April 17

Unique, Hand-Made Games

I've been thinking more and more about making games again and, in particular, returning to the glory days of Reiver Games when I made games by hand, selling out of print runs within a year.

The first couple of years of Reiver Games were very successful by any margin - my print runs sold out and I doubled my stake each year. With the sudden influx of cash from my life insurance I was able to reconsider my position so I quit my job and starting trying to run Reiver Games as a real publisher. I spent a couple of years doing that full-time, not drawing a salary and publishing games professionally. The games were manufactured by professional companies and I started selling through shops and distributors. In many ways I continued to be successful, getting my games picked up by twenty-one distributors on three continents, and selling thousands of games. But the sales were coming in too slowly and I hadn't invested enough capital to make two simultaneous print runs, so when the second edition of It's Alive! was delayed at the manufacturers I took out a bank loan to fund Carpe Astra. The bank loan fees, along with the costs of warehousing my games, were such a constant drain on my finances for the next few years that I eventually ran out of cash. In hindsight I should have delayed Carpe Astra, it needed more work and ended up being the least successful of my games.

The first couple of years of Reiver Games spanned July 2006-2008. Way before Kickstarter and the boom of social media. Many things have changed beyond recognition in the last eleven years. Not least my personal situation, I've gone from being a carefree young man to a father of one with another child on the way and from being a fit martial artist to having an incurable disease to being essentially healthy again thanks to a clinical trial of a new treatment.

Clearly I'm unable to just give up my job for a laugh these days - so that is not an option. With a baby on the way I'll have very limited time around my full-time job to spend on running a company - I'll certainly not be making games that take three hours to construct by hand like I did with Border Reivers - my first game.

I've learnt a lot about game design over that time, and I'm sure that both Zombology and the current version of Codename: Vacuum are better games than my other efforts (Border Reivers and Carpe Astra) and possibly even comparable to It's Alive!, the most successful game I published. I sold nearly 3,500 copies of that, so surely selling 100 copies of a hand-made run wouldn't be that difficult?

Eurydice Logo

With all these changes, especially the changes in the marketplace that have occurred since Kickstarter overhauled the way games are made, I wonder whether there's still a market for small runs of hand-made games. The biggest problem I foresee would be how do I make people aware of my games? How do I be heard over the endless clamour of Kickstarter announcements? With a young family and a full-time job, I'll have very limited time for marketing activities and I'll not be shlepping round shops and cons like I did the first time round. What about me and my games will pique peoples' interest enough to get them to take an interest in (and possibly buy) my games?

That's the question I would need to answer before I set things in motion. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!

4 comments:

GamesBook said...

I still think its worth testing the waters for a limited hand-made run via Kickstarter. E.g. 100 games at $20 each is a fixed target of $2000. I am also curious to see how that goes in terms of validating the market for others follow suit.

For the first time in 30+ years of fiddling with ideas for games, I finally think I have one which I would not be embarrassed to try & sell to people... but running a KS from Africa will be too much of a challenge because of shipping costs...

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Derek,

Yeah, I've considered that a couple of times. While Kickstarter has clearly transformed the industry and enabled many companies to make games they couldn't have funded any other way, I'm still very wary of it - I fear there's a lot of stuff on there that's not yet ready for production, but they've got a nice video and cool art so it pledges like hot cakes.

A hand-made run of Zombology would take about 45 mins/per copy to make, so if I spent six hours a week making them (plus the marketing, etc.) I'd be making eight copies a week - it would take about a quarter to make them all. So I'd need some way to convey the time delay between copies.

I've not ruled it out, but I'm leaning away from Kickstarter, but that might doom me to failure! I'm still thinking things through.

Do you want me to take a look at your game?

Cheers,

Jack

GamesBook said...

@jack ... many KS take months to fulfill their final delivery. You could even have a more innovative (?) model whereby early adopters ("get your game within a month"!) might pay more...

My game needs more "internal" playtesting but I appreciate the offer!

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Derek,

That's a good idea. Let me know when you have something you'd like me to take a look at!

Cheers,

Jack