Stagnant

It's been a slow week.

Photo by Luismi Sánchez on Unsplash

With everything going on it's understandable.

But we need to get to the point where we're sustainable.

Which means more website sales.

And better crowdfunding campaigns.

Gal4Xeon got off to a great start.

Quickly passed the number of followers Exodus had at the beginning.

With 3 months to go before launch.

It was gaining 10 followers a day!

Then 9.

Then 8.

Then 5.

This week it was 1.4.

I tried running a competition, but it didn't get any entries!

I need to be using my Mondays to drive improvements in these areas.

Just need to work out what's the most effective use of my time...

At least I've made good progress on the Gal4Xeon graphic design and another game idea this week.

Recovery

It's possible the website is fixed.

I think I've found the issue with the false orders.

And fixed it.

Meta is no longer reporting false sales.

And after a week and a half of no orders, we've had 5 in the last 5 days.

A return to normality.

And breathe.

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash

With that load off my mind, I've been able to spend some time on the new roll and write.

The last few changes have been minimal.

It's stabilising.

Which means it's time to do a first cut of the written rules.

Which is required before I can start sending out playtest copies.

And getting some real feedback.

And hopefully some ideas for improvement.

Weirdness

It's been a bad week for the website and ads combo.

We normally get 7-10 orders a week.

Pretty reliably.

We spend a chunk of money on Facebook ads to get that.

Last week we had none.

Not one.

That hasn't happened for years.

We've been spending the same amount on ads though.

And here's where it gets really weird.

Facebook reckon their ads have brought in 21 sales this week.

21!

But we've had none.

What!?

I even placed an order myself to check the website was still working.

It is.

But the ads are screwed.

Need to fix that somehow...

Seven

This week has been bizarrely good for website sales.

Last three weeks have been within 50p of each other.

This week was more than double them!

And I’ve no idea why!

Not complaining though.

That’s eased our ongoing cashflow issues.

And it’s, in combination with the VAT rebate that’s coming shortly, means we can make some long over due payments :)

But that’s an aside.

The main focus of this week has been…

FlickFleet SEVEN.

Our seventh FlickFleet campaign.

The campaign is created.

There’s a very basic holding page.

Which already has over 100 followers!

In addition to starting work on the campaign, I’ve been reviewing the fan submissions.

Starting to shortlist them.

Playtesting is next :)

Demand

We ran some ads during the Gamefound campaign.

Which is still open to late pledges

The ads led to a bump in website sales as they always do.

The ads finished when the main campaign finished - at the end of October.

But website sales remained high.

Higher in fact.

The average for the last eleven weeks has been double the average of the preceding quarter.

Which itself was crazy high.

Website sales have been amazing.

And I’ve no idea why!

No ads.

The traffic comes from mostly Google.

With Paul having been ill, then hospitalised, then recovering, then at mine last weekend, then recovering again, we have struggled to keep up with demand.

We’re on top of it again.

Thanks to a quieter week this week.

I’m guessing the Christmas present traffic has peaked now.

Still don’t know where they heard of it.

Or what drove the demand.

Very grateful though, whatever it was!

Dichotomy

Website sales are up.

A lot.

Like, a lot a lot.

Average weekly sales since the beginning of October are double May-September and almost 30 times January-April.

Thirty!

It's been amazing.

The new website has helped a lot.

As have a lot of really good reviews.

We are featured in the latest Senet magazine too.

We're getting lots of new FlickFleet fans!

Yet the Gamefound campaign didn't do as well as the last two.

And the pledge manager is way lower than Xeno Wars.

I though the new fans might join in for Expansion 1 which is cheap and out of stock.

Or the great new reviews and cheaper shipping would convince more people to give it a try.

I want to understand why before the next campaign.

Visitors

This week I fulfilled our Rocky ‘Roid campaign. It’s available from our website now.

Now available!

And spent a lot of time working on the website.

My goal at the moment is still financial stability.

The company needs to make enough cash every month to cover our overheads.

It’s never reliably done that.

We’ve survived by running crowdfunding campaigns.

And living off those.

For the last two months we’ve managed it though.

Website sales alone have been enough.

And I haven’t started running any ads yet.

It’s all been off the back of some great reviews.

The review traffic is drying up now though.

Need to get more visitors to the website.

So I’ve been doing some SEO work.

And starting to think about the ads.

Extras

With the Gamefound campaign for Xeno Wars (almost) complete, I can move to the next item on my list.

The website.

One of the advantages of getting it redone was a proper shop.

With shipping calculations.

So we could easily add more products.

A couple of weeks ago I added Xeno Wars and the Xeno Wars P&P files.

This week it’s been extras.

The scenario booklet.

Extra dice.

Extra asteroids.

Pretty!

Next up is extra nebulae. And extra wreckage.

We’ve a couple of playmats left too. Might put them up.

Then move along to the next item on my list.

It’s a long list!

Success

Rocky ‘Roid was over 500% funded.

The ads didn’t do very well though, probably broke even at best.

Still, FlickFleet is going great.

Website sales for the last five weeks are over 13 times our normal sales.

13. Times.

That’s crazy.

A run of great reviews.

More people finding out about FlickFleet.

The Expo. 

A bit of buzz.

It’s been great. 

At the beginning of the year we had 4 weeks without a sale. 

This week we had eight consecutive days of sales.

It’s our best ever week for sales outside of a convention or crowdfunding fulfilment.

Feels like we’re building momentum.

Filling

I’ve spent the week sorting out the website shop.

I’d offered to do it, rather than the web developers.

It’s taken a decent chunk of time.

But we’re getting there.

I need better images for the bundles.

Then I can add the boxes of flicks.

Then the extras, starting with asteroids.

Meanwhile Paul has been filling his house.

With finished extras.

A lot of Option 13s

He’s going to be shipping a bunch of stuff soon.

Then there’s base games and the expansion boxes to do.

Progress!

Confluence

It’s all coming together.

The new website is finally live.

I’ve spent the week populating the shop part - the basics are in there now, but there’s loads more to come.

The big boxes arrived and Paul has done a test assemble.

Both big and boxy!

They are the last delivery we were waiting for the Gamefound campaign.

Paul’s working flat out, pulling long days laser-cutting.

He’s now made 320 deluxe Xeno Wars and is moving on to the extras.

Feels like we’re starting to get there!

Return

Today we’re driving back to the North.

I’ve a bunch of housekeeping tasks to do on my return.

And then the invoices. Still thinking if I can somehow automate that process to save time in the long run.

Next up after that is Xeno Wars. And Coalescence.

And we need a better web shop setup. Our current one is pants.

We’re starting to pay Paul from next month. We need the website to support sales between Kickstarters - not to hinder them.

We also need to get the next Kickstarters lined up ready to go.

Brand

We're looking to get our website overhauled.

It needs some love. I've kludged it together using raw HTML (and a little Javascript).

It's weak.

We found a designer we liked. 

Can't afford him yet, but he wanted to rebrand us first.

New logo. New colour scheme. New look.

We need it. 

Homemade. And it shows.

I kludged our logo together too. With help from my dad.

The colour scheme is essentially the same as Reiver Games. 

He presented his ideas to us this week. 

Paul and I have been thinking about them, tweaking a couple of things.

I've also mocked up a quick re-brand of the website.

Looks much better already  - though it still needs a chunk of work.

Letting Go

I'm a tolerable graphic designer. Or passable maybe. Adequate.

I really enjoy doing it, but I don't have a flair for it.

Until now, to keep costs down, I've done it all myself.

The website.

C-

The game boxes. The rules. The cards.

But it's homemade. And it looks it.

Thanks to the success of our last kickstarter we've finally got some cash in the bank.

We're thinking of investing it in some professional graphic design.

Make the website and the games look much better.

They really need it.

I'll miss it though.

Website

We need to up our game to be more successful.

One part of that is more website sales.

Our website is largely based on my previous game company’s one. It’s pretty dated.

A bit 00s!

I’ve created it by hand using HTML and a little bit of JavaScript.

Like the last one it had PayPal buttons for payment. Again pretty dated.

As part of a larger effort to create a better website, I’ve integrated card-based payment using Stripe as the (default) option. And done some re-design.

It’s still using a button per product though - no shopping cart. But it looks much nicer.

And the processing fees are cheaper.

We had our first Stripe sale last week. It works!

It’s a first step.

Next we need to completely overhaul our website so it doesn't look so homemade. And dated.

Brief but Thankful

I usually write my blog posts in my lunch break at work or, failing that, at the weekend. This week I’ve spent my lunch breaks finishing off my new website (any feedback appreciated!) and this weekend we’re going away to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary! So needless to say I’ll not be spending a decent chunk of our holiday writing a long blog post!

So this is a short one to say: in your quest to be successful at designing games (or whatever else it is that you want to achieve) make sure you have a support network. One or more people who love you and want you to be happy and succeed. They could be a partner, spouse, parent, child, sibling or best mate. Find them and treasure them - their support is priceless.

And thank you to The Wife for being mine for the last 21 years!

New Website Feedback

My friend Dunk is trying to get into web design, and as a portfolio project he's giving my website an overhaul. If you've got some spare time I'd appreciate it if you could compare the current website with this version of a new homepage (with no working links) and let me know in the comments what you think.

I'm also interested in what you think the current website is missing, or what cool new stuff you'd like to see.

Planning Ahead

Quite a lot of my website refers to Sumeria as a forthcoming game. In addition, there is no way to buy Sumeria yet from my website, there's a bunch of information about signing up for the pre-order and the pre-order page that I create to allow pre-order customers to quickly and simply pay for for their pre-orders via PayPal doesn't exist yet.

The pre-order window, as always will close when the games arrive at my warehouse. This is to avoid undercutting the shops and online stores that I rely on for most of my business (either directly or through a distributor). On Friday, when the games arrive I've got to make all those changes to the website.

The only problem is that my parents arrive for a few days this afternoon, and I'm going to be decorating our new house with their help on Friday - so I can't take a few hours to overhaul my website.

I keep a copy of my website on my computer, in case a failure at my ISP leads to a loss of data. I can make the changes I need to my website on that copy, and then all I need to do on Friday is upload the new version, a matter of a few minutes work.

As part of these changes I need to create PayPal 'Pay now buttons' for Sumeria (pre-order price and full price with the three shipping prices). There's probably a better way to do this than creating six different buttons, but that works and I don't have a huge amount of time today.

New Website

I've not changed any of the content, just migrated it to PHP, to remove some duplication, making it easier to add new games in the (near!) future. If you get a chance, check out the site and check I've not broken anything!

On The Road Again

This installment of Creation and Play is brought to you from my hotel room in Windsor, second (or possibly third, fourth or fifth) home of Her Majesty The Queen.

I'm trying to do some work on my website while I'm away. Today I updated the events section after visiting MidCon. The next stage is to post a translation of the rules of It's Alive! into Italian, done by Fabio Bernieri, one of my customers. I'm going to edit the rules section to allow you to switch between languages via little flag buttons. It'll probably take a day or two. But I've got tonight and tomorrow night to kill...

In other news, I've asked for a prototype of one of the two submissions I got last week, it sounds interesting, I need to play it to see how it works. For the moment it shall be known as Codename: Scythe.