Google AdWords Experience

A while ago I told you I was going to try out Google AdWords, and that I would let you know how it went. Well, my £30 voucher has been used up, so now I can tell you how it went.

Setting it up was easy enough, but I found the offer email confusing, as from my reading of the email I understood it would be totally free to me, and it wasn't. I had to pay £10, the £5 account activation fee had to be paid (it couldn't come out of the voucher), and the minimum payment was £10. At this stage I was already pretty disillusioned, but I figured £35 worth of advertising might be worth it for £10 expenditure, so I went ahead and paid the fee.

Creating the advert itself was easy, just enter a title, body, keywords and how much you want to spend a month. Google recommend at least £30 per month, but I went with £15 per month initially. One minor niggle was that the use of an exclamation mark in the advert title was unacceptable, so I had to write an explanation of why I had and it took several days before the advert became available on Google's own network of hosters. Another was that I was only allowed to advertise in the UK, not further afield, I sell a lot of games abroad, and would have liked to be able to advertise in the US and Australasia - sadly not an option.

I went for the following advert:

• Title: It's Alive! Card Game
• Body: Get the Frankenstein card game for only £15 + P&P
• Keywords: Game, Card Game, Card Games, Board Game, Board Games, Horror, Frankenstein, It's Alive, Eurogames

The reporting is excellent, you can get both graphs and the raw numbers, broken down by keywords, over any time frame from a single day to all time. You get running totals of how much you've spent, and the option of an advanced mode where you can specify exactly how the bidding works for an impression. I just went for the basic mode.

Pretty early on it was clear that the £15 a month wasn't working out for me, so I upped it to their recommended minimum of £30. With this level of spend I need to sell at least £30 worth of games through AdWords to make it worthwhile. Realistically more like £75 once the cost of the games and all the fees are taken into account. For marketing purposes I ask customers where they heard of my games when they buy one, they don't always answer, but often they do, so I was able to get a pretty good idea of the effectiveness of the scheme.

The results are shown below, impressions are the number of times the advert was shown, clicks (the only thing you get charged for) are clicks on an advert that take the browser to your website.

Keyword	Impressions	Clicks	Clicks/Impression
Games	10,277	8	0.000778
Card Game	8,602	14	0.001627
Board Game	3,985	2	0.000501
Board Games	2,581	4	0.001549
Card Games	1,996	4	0.002004
Horror	27	0	N/A
Frankenstein	19	0	N/A
Google Network	191,850	48	0.000250
Total	219,337	80	0.000365

Neither 'It's Alive' nor 'Eurogames' led to any impressions. From this it looks like plurals are slightly more popular, but it's definitely worth using both singular and plural forms as both return a decent number of impressions.

Unfortunately the bottom line is that the adverts, despite leading eighty people to my site over a month or so, didn't lead to any sales at all, and hence weren't worth the tenner I spent on them. Maybe the advert was badly worded, or the keywords badly chosen. Maybe directing random punters to a website about 'home-made' games was never going to work.

Jenga - Surprisingly Fun

Friday night at the pub we played Jenga. Our local is great - not only does it have a good range of constantly changing guest ales, it also has a few bar games including Jenga. I've also played Border Reivers in there before - a games-friendly pub.

Admittedly we didn't play vanilla Jenga, and a few drinks had been consumed, so my judgement may have been impaired, but it was good fun all the same. We played a variant where initially there are no rules, each time someone knocked over the tower they had to drink, but also invent a new rule to use in subsequent games.

The first rule we added was 'no testing' i.e. you have to take the first piece you touch, then after someone blew over the tower on someone else's turn, 'no blowing' was added - no surprise there! Then the rules started to get more interesting:

• On your turn you must be touching your nose (which forced one-handed play)
• You must take from the lowest full row
• You're only allowed to use you thumb and little finger
• You can only take one of the outermost blocks from the row

Of course any rules violations required drinking :-) Jenga was much more fun played that way - I can recommend it.

In other news, I got very little time for games last week. I had a couple of trips to London for work, both of which overran so I got home quite late a couple of times. Couple that with the washing machine failure (fixed!) I didn't manage to get to Paul's for games, and Dave was away for the week on a course. Although Beyond Monopoly! was on on Saturday, The Wife and I spent almost all weekend shopping for a new car (ours is finally on it's way out, and I'd like not to be responsible for its next service and MOT), so I didn't get along this week.

I also failed in my quest to do some more work on Codename: Network. I printed out some new cards, but I've not had time to fill them in or even cut them out. Hopefully I can do that this week.

This week will hopefully be better, I'm hoping to make it to Paul's tonight, and Dave's last games night before he moves to the South is tomorrow. I may even get some time to work on things on Friday - it's a Bank Holiday in the UK, but The Wife is on a course, so I'll be at home alone. I might see if Dave is suitably recovered from his work-leaving do the night before to play games/playtest in the afternoon.

Things Are Moving Forward

Wednesday I was working from home, so in my lunchtime I did the groundwork for the meetings with the manufacturer and my bank manager. My bank manager is being transferred to a different branch next week, so instead of dealing with the guy who I've built up a relationship over the last eighteen months I've got to start from scratch with someone else, typical.

Yesterday was like a picture postcard of everything I'm trying to avoid by moving full-time. I was hoping to go to Paul's for games in the evening, but I had to go to London for work, and the trains were running slowly because of damage caused by Wednesday's storms. After spending six and a half hours on trains and waiting in stations I finally managed to get home at 7:30pm, to find the washing machine was broken. By the time I had (maybe) fixed it, it was 10pm. No games. Still, I did manage to speak to Paul about daytime playtesting once I finish my job, and he's definitely interested :-)

I'm closer to having a confirmed leaving date at work, but there's a bit of a flap on about my leaving, especially as it comes during the absence of my boss who got promoted at the beginning of the year and is still to be replaced. I've probably got three or four weeks left - not sure which yet.

In game related news, I've had a better week of It's Alive! sales this week, with the interview I did for a German games site generating some interest. The editor of another German games site bought a copy as a result, and hopes to interview me in a few weeks once he's had a chance to play it. One of my German friends has also finished translating the rules into German, so I should be able to post them in the next few days and the publicise the fact - which hopefully will lead to more interest from the German-speaking parts of Europe.

I'm very excited about this change in direction, the difficult thing will be turning this energy into momentum for the company. I need to concentrate on getting rid of the last of It's Alive! and preparing Codename: Network for release, but I also need to build some excitement around Network, so there are customers waiting to buy it, and shops wanting to stock it. Of course I can't do that until I've chosen a name. How bad does 'Seize the Stellar Throne' sound? It's the best I've come up with so far.

First Steps On My Own

So, I've handed in my notice, I've four weeks (minus a few days holiday) left at work - then what?

First up, I need to get my company off to a good start. To help this I've a few meetings to line up over the next few weeks.

• Bank Manager - I need to keep my manager on side. My eighteen months free banking has just ended, but they apparently have a 'electronic' tariff which could save me some money. I also need to tell him my plans and see what advice he has.
• Small Business Advisor - I need to talk to someone about VAT-registering (which I know other publishers have done), and advice about how best to market my games.
• Manufacturer - I want to move into professionally manufactured games, but I know almost nothing about it. How do I reduce the cost? What little things make a big difference to the cost? What software should I use to prepare the artwork? Hopefully a meeting with a manufacturer will answer some of these qustions.

I'm now fairly convinced my next game will be Codename: Network, but it's still changing fairly rapidly as the designer and I try out new ideas. I need to spend a decent amount of time improving it, stabilise the rules, get a signed contract with the designer and then start on the artwork and publicity. I'm thinking of a pre-order drive, offering fans a chance to get the game early (and cheap) and by cutting out the middle-man making more money myself than I would if I sold to a shop. I also need to get shops interested in ordering the game in bulk. How to do that? I'm not really sure yet. One way is to contact the shops directly, another is to get gamers who want the game to contact their local shop (this already happened for It's Alive!), a third method is to get a distributor to stock the game and then run a solicitation advert in their trade magazine. I've no idea yet which one will work best.

It's an exciting time, but even with eighteen months experience in the industry, the change of situation, and hence business model will incur a steep learning curve.

Gulp! This is Scary!

The last few days I've been off work sick, and as a result I've had plenty of time at home alone to think. As a result I handed in my notice today to start up Reiver Games as a full-time outfit. Man, that's scary.

My reasoning was thus:

• Firstly, I can afford not to earn for a while to try it out, if it doesn't work, I'll just have to find another job.
• I think it might work!
• I'd love to do it - it's been a pipe-dream for ages now.
• The Wife is 100% behind it.
• I'm way too busy with a full-time job that involves a lot of travel to devote the time I need to Reiver Games.
• I've been in IT now professionally for eight years, and did six years in IT at University, time for a change.

So what does this mean for Reiver Games? I'm going to move into making professional runs, predominantly sold through shops & distributors, so my time will be spent doing the graphic design and trying to flog copies to shops and I'll obviously have much more time for playtesting, designing and developing games. I'm aiming for three professional runs by next April (not this April!), with maybe a hand-made run thrown in as a bonus.

I'll also have more time for blogging, so hopefully you'll be hearing more from me too.

What are the downsides? I've given up a well-paid job for no financial security whatsoever. I've enough money squirrelled away to last me a year, but there's every chance I could end up having pissed it all up the wall in a year's time, with nothing to show for it but a flat full of unwanted games. Professional runs means cheaper production, so I can afford to sell to shops and distributors, but it also means much more risk, and if I choose badly I could end up throwing lots of money after a game which no-one wants. I've got to be damn sure a game is excellent before I publish it, and I've got to make sure the production is right, as fixing problems could drive me under. So anally-retentive checking of everything before it goes to the printer is required.

Good decision? I'll not know for a while yet, but feel free to call me an idiot, commend my bravery or offer me spare change when I'm destitute in the comments below...

Meepile on BGG

A while back I was watching my daughters stack their meeples in a little pile and got the idea to make a game out of it. I started sketching some meeple like characters with on hand in the air, both hands in the air and in other strange positions. I decided the one hand in the air would look and work the best. I proceeded to cut out and paint the first "Meepile Megameeple". Then we set to work developing some super simple rules. MEEPILE has since been added to the BGG database and there has been an amazing amount of interest. One of the images is currently on the front page of BGG and has received just under 70 thumbs. The game itself has received so many hits that it's worked it's way up into the "Hot Games" list on BGG's front page. When I started getting emails asking for the game I made a couple dozen and created some packaging. Now just over night I have received over 30 requests for the game. I'll have to start on the next 2 or 3 dozen tomorrow. You can see the game at: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/35054 Just goes to show that you never really know!

Gaming Weekend

Last weekend I was in Newcastle visiting a bunch of friends I see far too infrequently. Mal had raised some concerns about Jorvik, which he'd played a version of at New Year. So I said I'd go up an play Jorvik & Network with the boys up there, to see if Mal preferred the latest version.

Friday night was spent at the pub with a surprisingly high turn out. As well as the usual suspects a few more of my old colleagues turned up. I finished working in Newcastle nearly two and a half years ago, so it was really good to see people again.

Saturday morning Mal fancied some Border Reivers. I'd not really played since I finished selling it last spring, as I don't suggest it any more (I don't want people to end up playing because they don't want to hurt my feelings by saying no), but I'm very happy to play it when someone else suggests it. Except for me, Mal is the person who has played it the most, we have a long running series, we must have played about thirty games together. In the beginning Mal couldn't win a game if his life depended on it, I must have won the first sixteen or seventeen games we played. But more recently, Mal had started to win as many as he lost.

This time he wiped the floor with me. We played five games on Saturday morning, and Mal won four of them! Properly owned. Still, it was fun to play, nonetheless. I couldn't help thinking of ways the game could be improved while we played, I had a few ideas that were interesting, but I don't know when I'll have the chance to try them out.

In the afternoon Chief & Linz came round and we tried out Network and Jorvik. We played a few three player games of Network (Chief and Linz weren't around at the same time), plus Chief & I had a couple of games of Jorvik. Network was the best received of the two games, I'll post the feedback questionnaire results in a couple of days.

That evening Mal and I headed into Newcastle to play some pool. I used to be quite good at pool, but I've not really played in years. I was expecting to be hopeless, but was pleasantly surprised when I wasn't too bad. Mal creamed me again though (13-4!). Need more practice.

Sunday morning, before I went home, Mal and I played a couple of games of Jorvik. He agreed that it had improved since he played it at New Year, but still wasn't a fan. The card placement options were just too confusing.

To round off a great weekend, The Wife and I played a few games of Race for the Galaxy on my return, then we went for a curry with Dave and Pip. Great stuff. I need more weekends like that!

February Report

I didn't get to play many games in February, but I did loads of creation, so all in all it was a pretty good month.

Play

Yeay! I finally broke out Twiglet during February which was great fun, it's a real shame that comes out so infrequently, but when you give up a whole day to play it that's a real limiting factor. Race for the Galaxy was a new purchase, and it lived up to the hype - The Wife and I love it. I also got to Beyond Monopoly! during February, and learnt a few new games. So despite only playing nineteen games in total it was good stuff. The multiples:

• Race for the Galaxy - 6 plays
• Gipsy King - 2 plays
• Cartagena - 2 plays

And the shrapnel: Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, Carcassonne, Citadels, The Thief of Baghdad, Salamanca, Age of Steam, TransAmerica and Diamant.

Of those, Gipsy King, Cartagena, The Thief of Baghdad and Salamanca were new to me, all at Beyond Monopoly! I was underwhelmed by Salamanca, and Cartagena we tried once with the cards open and once hidden - it didn't really grab me either way. I enjoyed both Gipsy King and The Thief of Baghdad though, couldn't really pick a favourite though.

Creation

It's been a mixed month for game creation. I've received a couple more submissions, Network has come on nicely, and I've had few ideas about Jorvik, but I've had to realise that I can't get a game ready in time for the Expo, so I'm not going there in an official capacity, I'm in discussions with the organisers about appearing in a different capacity - keep an eye peeled here for more info soon.

It's Alive!

It's been a fairly quiet month again on It's Alive! sales have been picking up since the Christmas lull, but last week was my first ever week of no sales for It's Alive! since it was released. I've run a competition on BoardGameGeek to try and raise its profile, and given a copy to a video blogger. There's a few things in the pipeline that will hopefully raise its profile over the next few weeks.

Jorvik

I got to play-test Jorvik with several friends, it's coming on, and has improved over the last few months, but it' not going to be ready for the Expo unfortunately. I need to work on the spatial complexity of the card placement.

Network

It's been a really exciting time on Network. I've really enjoyed backing and forthing with the designer, and I feel that the game is pretty nearly ready now. We've made a bunch of changes between us (with a little help from my playtesters) and it's all coming together. Watch this space!

All in all, a good month for creation.

Playtesting Night

Last night I had Paul W and Paul G round to playtest Codename: Jorvik and Codename: Network. Neither of them had played either game before so I was keen to get some fresh feedback. One of the problems with designing games (or any creative effort for that matter) is you end up too close to the subject matter. I've been working on Jorvik for about eighteen months now, and while Network is a bit newer the development has been pretty intense over the last few months. While I'm fairly sure the games have improved, I don't know how good they are. Getting a fresh perspective on them was really good.

I'd made a new prototype for Network on the weekend, it featured improved quality components which are easier to play with, better artwork, and hexagonal instead of square tiles. The tiles sounds like a big change, but it wasn't really, the square tiles were intended to be placed offset (like brickwork) rather than a regular grid, so they were adjacent to six other tiles (remind you of anything?). After a game I'd decided I really liked the hexagonal tiles, they allowed you more freedom in the tile placement, simplified the rules, and I find them more aesthetically pleasing too.

We started with a game of Network. I'd only played this two-player with the recent changes, so it was good to get a three-player game in. After the first game we discussed what they liked and disliked about the game. Paul W didn't like some spcial tiles which allowed you to connect your network of support, and yet visually appear at first glance to be disconnected, Paul G felt that some of the actions felt like they should have a monetary component but the game didn't feature any money at all.

So we decided to play another game with a different set of rules. To counteract a bad starting hand I borrowed the draw six cards, discard two mechanic from Race For The Galaxy, we re-labelled the bonus points as money and gave everyone a few to start off with. We made several of the actions require 'purchasing', and we took out the special tiles that Paul W didn't like. These sound like fairly drastic changes, and they changed things quite a lot, but at it's heart it's still the same game.

The new game was quite different to play, much tighter. Generally I think I preferred it, but the starting layout meant that I, as the 'player in the middle' got trapped, and had to spend quite heavily to counteract that. This time I lost (16, 21, 22) which may be due in part to this.

Next up was Jorvik. As this is a two-player game I let the two Pauls battle it out while I sat back and watched. It was interesting to see how the card placement options available slowed things down for first-timers. Having played this verion quite a few times I can usually see a good (if not optimal) play pretty quickly, and I can set things up to work well with lots of the cards (as I know the card distribution very well). The game ended in a fairly low scoring draw. In some senses this is good (I normally score much higher so there's definitely some skill involved), but the draw is worrying. Most people prefer a winner.

At the end of the evening I got them both to fill in a brief questionnaire, we discussed what they liked and disliked about both games and some possible changes that might improve them. Generally feedback was positive and the experience was worth its weight in gold. Having playtesters fill in a questionnaire is really useful, it can be hard to tell from someone's description just how much they like a game, whereas a questionnaire is more objective.

I'm in Newcastle this weekend, where I'll playtest both games with a different bunch of people. It's beginning to feel like both games are getting there - which will be ready first? Hard to tell.

In a follow up, Paul W sent me some more considered feedback via email today too. Says he really enjoyed both games :-)

Busy Few Days

Four days of game-related busy :-)

On Saturday, Dave & Pip came round for a game of Twiglet with The Wife and I. It's the first time we'd played for ages, at least a year at a guess. We'd warned Pip it would probably last ten hours, but in the end came in at (only!) six and a half. The Wife made pizza and trifles, and we all got to drink beer and eat too much too. The Wife won, a good couple of turns before I could, but then I was the traders, and had a really military secret objective - no chance! It was great fun, nonetheless. I'd like to play it more often, but it's hard to find the time. I asked The Wife for the expansion for Christmas, but the shop she ordered it from cancelled it at the last minute, and we've not been able to find it since. Paul at Games Lore thinks a re-print is due so I guess I'll have to wait.

Sunday I spent making a new prototype for Codename: Network. The old one was directly scribbled on thick card, and using torn up bits of paper as cards. The new version has a slightly different theme (same type of theme but a different setting), and features pencil crayon colours and cards made out of actual card with some basic computer generated artwork. The thick card tiles also have paper glued on, but the glue warped them :-(

Tonight I finally made it to Paul's games night after about three weeks of aborted attempts, it was really good fun (playing games beginning 'Car' - guess which!) and we got to listen to Rammstein which was nice too. I got proper lamped in both games though. I seem to be on a losing streak.

In addition, as if three game-heavy days back-to-back wasn't enough, I've arranged for Paul to come round tomorrow to play-test Network and Codename: Jorvik. I'd done a new prototype of Jorvik on the computer but when I came to print it yesterday I'd accidentally deleted the files. D'oh. I need to do them again now. At least I've still got the felt-tip pen version for tomorrow.

Game Trade

I read Philip duBarry's Starting a Revolution blog. He's in a similar position to me, making games by hand trying to make a name for himself. Last week he posted that his new website is available, so I pootled on over to take a look. Very nice. Clean, informative and it has a flash demo of the game, cool!

The game looked interesting, so I contacted Philip, and he suggested a trade, It's Alive! for Revolution. Including shipping and the horrendous exchange rate the games are about equal ($38 for It's Alive! including shipping to the US, $42 for Revolution including shipping to the UK), so I agreed.

I'm paying my company for Philip's copy, since it's not fair to count a personal game as coming out of the company - it would be cheating the taxman and Yehuda out of royalties to do anything else.

I'll hopefully see my copy of Revolution in a couple of weeks, in the meantime, why not check out Philip's website & blog yourselves?

Update

It's been a while since I last posted so here's a brief update of goings on Chez Jack.

The It's Alive! competition got around 40 entrants, I chose the winner, and sent their game off yesterday. It's Alive! has also been feeling the love on BoardGameGeek, with a few of high ratings pushing it up to 924 in the rankings. I sold two copies last week, and three the week before that, so the post-Christmas slump may be coming to an end. I've been making about six a week, so I've a decent stack of finished games now: twenty-two ready to go.

Codename: Jorvik has been hinted at as my next release in time for the UK Games Expo, but I'm now suffering a crisis of confidence after some negative feedback. Can I get it ready in time? Maybe, maybe not.

Codename: Network has been through a couple more iterations, and is beginning to settle down. I have some worries about the theme (it might be too hard to sell in the UK), so I'm trying out ideas for a theme with broader appeal, I've had some ideas, as have The Wife and Dave, though I've not picked one yet.

I received a new prototype on Saturday, Codename: Element. I've not had a chance to try it yet though.

In other news, I bought Race for the Galaxy on Saturday, and I've already played this a whole bunch of times. San Juan, but with a bit more depth and a space theme - what's not to like?

It's Alive! - Free Copy to be Won!

Sumbit your It's Alive! themed joke to this geeklist for a chance to win a free copy of It's Alive! including postage anywhere in the world. Submit your jokes before Saturday lunchtime UK time to enter.

It's Alive! in Top 50!

...eurogames of 2007 according to this geeklist. I'm really pleased with that!

Shopping For Quotes

Now that I'm committed to Jorvik, I need to get a few things sorted out. I'm feeling the pressure, but like Dave suggested, it's a much needed kick up the backside. Yesterday I dropped out of my weekly games night at Paul's to work on the computer art for a new prototype. This evening, I've finished the art, so all I need to do now is print it.

Another thing preying on my mind is: How much is it going to cost? I've got a rough idea of what I think is a reasonable price, but can I get it made cheaply enough? Being only a card game it'll definitely be cheaper than It's Alive! And it'll be lighter too, which means postage will be cheaper (especially for Europe & the World).

This evening I sent a load of quote requests of to my usual suppliers:

• SpielMaterial.de - for the wooden priest pieces
• Stress Free Print - for all the printing
• W. MacCarthy & Sons - for the boxes

Initially, I was thinking I'd make tuck-boxes, but that looks really complicated and I had concerns about the gluing (though Phil did a nice job on Archaeology). The introduction of the priest means the box needs extra room for the wooden pieces, so I was afraid a tuck-box might get damaged in the post. As a result I've gone back to a rigid tray & lid box like Border Reivers and It's Alive!

I've already got the quote back for the boxes, just waiting on a few more...

What's In A Name?

Last night at the pub with Dave, we were chatting about Codename: Jorvik. He reckons it's nearly ready, and I was saying how the UK Games Expo guys offered the chance of a name-drop for my new game in their advertising, as long as I made up my mind soon. Dave reckoned I should bite the bullet, say it's going to be Jorvik, and then I'll pressure myself into doing the last bit of tweaking because I've now got a deadline.

Hmmm...

Why not!

Ok, so you heard it hear first (or second if you've been on BoardGameGeek this morning), Jorvik will be the next title from Reiver Games. Gulp. That was exciting. Panic!

The next thing to do is decide on a name. I started a thread on BGG to ask for ideas/advice. It's been pretty active with lots of feedback. At the moment it looks like sticking with 'Jorvik' is the way people are leaning. Got an opinion? Add it in the comments here, or over on the thread.

Once I've chosen a name I need to add it to the BGG database, update my website, tell the UK GamesExpo guys and start drawing some attention...

January Report

January was quite an exciting month. Lots on new games (though nothing that really grabbed me), but more importantly lots of progress on game designs.

Play

Quite a busy month in terms of games played, I saw Dave & Paul, etc. for games several times, and The Wife and I spent two weekends with Dunk & Lucy which all in all lead to lots of games played. Here's the popular ones:

• Magic: The Gathering: 10 plays
• Carcassonne: 6 plays
• PitchCar: 6 plays
• Carcassonne: The Castle: 4 plays
• Hey! That's My Fish!: 3 plays
• It's Alive!: 3 plays
• Lost Cities: 3 plays
• Incan Gold: 2 plays

I've not played PitchCar in a while, still love it though. Carcassonne is getting a new lease of life through The Tower expansion - adds a new level of conflict which I enjoy :-).

The shrapnel includes a bunch of new games: Age of Steam, Memoir '44, Mystery of the Abbey, Pirate's Cove, Poison, Power Grid, Puerto Rico, Relikt, Runebound, Settlers of Catan Card Game, Thurn and Taxis. Age of Steam, Mystery of the Abbey, Poison, Relikt and Settlers of Catan Card Game were all new to me. Age of Steam was my favourite, but it didn't really grab me 2-player - I guess it's more fun with more players. Dave and I got to play the second half of the Pont du Hoc Memoir '44 scenario we'd played on Vassal while he was in Afghanistan. I won! He usually creams me a Memoir '44. Still it was a good month for playing games.

Creation

Things are getting more interesting in the creation arena too. It's Alive! has been fairly slow this month, though that's hopefully a sign of a post-Christmas lack of cash rather than an actual slowdown in interest. But there's been some real progress on Codename: Jorvik and Codename: Network this month.

It's Alive!

It's been a quiet month for It's Alive!, it's received several more ratings on BoardGameGeek, taking it above 100 ratings and well into the top 1,00 games (it peaked briefly at 962). Not many sales though. I've still not had a sales free week since I released it, but I'm just scraping that at the moment. There was the bulk sale to a shop in Italy which was great though. I need to put more effort into publicising it. I've started running a Google ad for it using a voucher I received from them, I'm still not sure whether that's worth it though, it's not lead to any sales yet. I've also contacted a new local train company which has just started operating. The tables on the trains have monopoly boards and chess boards printed on them, and the on-board shop sells those games. I've contacted them to see if they'd like to sell my games too - they've not responded yet. I've also just contacted BBC Radio 4 who in an advert for a Saturday morning show yesterday said "we're always interested in hearing about people's passions". Let's put that to the test!

Codename: Jorvik

Jorvik has been through a few crucial changes recently. The addition of priests seemed to improve the game, and with a little tweaking to make playing them more interesting they've really added to the conflict and choices within the game. I've only played the latest version four times, but it's far and away the best yet. I'm now doing some temporary artwork on the computer, so that I can quickly knock out prototypes for testing. I'm hoping to lend Paul and Lisa a copy next week, and get some more games in with my copy too. I now need to speak to my Dad again, to get some more sketch artwork prepared.

Codename: Network

It's been a fun month for Network too. I had an idea for a re-theme that I shared with the designer, along with the addition of a new narrative mechanic. The theme is pretty topical at the moment (though more interesting to a US market than a UK one), and I liked the concept of having to describe to the other players the story behind your moves. I sent my suggestions off to the designer, and he played them and came back with more. We've backed and forthed like this a few times now, and it feels quite exciting and really collaborative, despite the fact that he lives in America.

I need to release a new game at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham in June, what it's going to be, I've still not completely decided - but at least I've got some options now...

Jorvik - Getting There...

I played Jorvik and couple of times on the weekend with Dunk, and a couple more times last night with Dave. Dunk described it as 'A working game now' and Dave as 'Nearly ready'. Not the most exciting of endorsements, but they show that progress is being made in the minds of my play-testers.

By exploring last night's scores you get some more interesting information. It's a card game, so luck of the draw is a factor, but to what degree? Here are those scores (individual round scores in brackets):

Dunk	Dave	Jack
(10,18) 28		(12,23) 35
(15, 29) 44		(16,28) 44
	(9,18) 27	(15,24) 39
	(15,19) 34	(13,26) 39

What can I possibly get from that? Well, here's a few things:

• There's not a huge amount of luck - my scores don't vary by much and I know what I'm doing
• It's a game you get better at with practice (the most experienced player usually wins, the least experienced shows improvement)
• It's possible to turn things around in the second half of the game (the loser of the first half doesn't necessarily lose the whole game)

The first point has been influenced by a couple of things, a decent hand-size means a player has more choice, coupled with the addition of a new rule which boosts the weaker cards - your draw is less important if all the cards are roughly equal in 'value'.

This probably comes down to working out how to use the priests to greatest effect, and learning the deck composition which helps guide how to position your cards to benefit from likely future draws.

I struggled for a long time with the last point, but in the end it turned out to be as simple as make the first round lower scoring than the second.

I need to do some more testing, and will probably tweak the deck slightly as I work out how the addition of the priests has changed the relative value of each card, but it's getting there. I now need to speak to my Dad some more about the artwork.

It's Alive! - 100 Ratings

It's Alive! now has 100 ratings on BoardGameGeek. The average is 7.08, which is enough to push it well inside the top 1,000.

Interestingly, only 87 people list it as owned, despite 217 sales. I guess either a lot of my customers aren't active on BGG, or they don't track their games collection on it.

In other news, my Google AdWords ad campaign is not working at the moment - I have a support call in. Once it's fixed and I have some statistics, I'll get back to you with how effective it's been.

Hello, My Name Is Jack...

... remember me? It's been a hectic week at work, and as a result my blogging has suffered, but I've still managed to get some work done on the games.

It's Alive!

Lots to report on the IA front. I've managed to build up some stock again after my bulk sale to an Italian shop, eight copies again, not as many as I'd like, but the post-Chrimbo lull means that it's enough at the moment.

On Wednesday I was stuck in London for the night with work, so I popped along to Swiggers board games club to pimp/demo/sell It's Alive! I'd set myself the target of two sales, and was slightly disappointed with only one, but I got to meet Nigel Buckle, designer of Celtic Quest who'd bought a copy of Border Reivers from me last year. He was along demoing his next game Ascendancy which is being published by JKLM Games in time for the UK Games Expo in Birmingham in June. Ascendancy is like a quicker version of Twilight Imperium apparently. People seemed to enjoy It's Alive!, but no-one was feeling the love. The last game was the most fun, despite someone wandering over and slagging it off to the players just as I was trying to explain how to play. I tried out the variants I'd posted on BoardGameGeek in a couple of the games - good fun, perhaps a little less harsh.

I also received a £30 voucher for Google advertising, so I'm trying that out too. It's early days yet, when I've an idea about how effective it is, I'll let you know.

Codename: Jorvik

I've made a couple of tweaks to Jovik. I had the ideas several days ago, but I'd not got around to trying them out. I saw Dunk on the weekend, and while The Wife and Lucy were out dress-shopping for their (Lucy & Dunk's, not Lucy & The Wife's) wedding, Dunk and I played a load of games including Jorvik. I've started making a prototype on the computer, but this was still using my lurid felt-tipped version, with some hastily scribbled additions in pen. They're a definite improvement, and once I've finished making a (slightly) prettier computer version I'm going to lend that to Paul and Lisa for blind playtesting. It's getting there. Doing the computer version really feels like it too, it's settling down now.

Codename: Network

Dunk and I also got a couple of games of Network in too. The first one showed off most of my changes to good effect, but it was too easy to play and didn't feature enough interaction. We made some fairly major changes, and then tried those out. It was a definite improvement. I sent them off to the designer, and less than 48 hours later he'd tried them out and come back with some more changes. They sound really interesting, maybe I'll get a chance to modify my prototype accordingly and try it out with Dave on Wednesday. I'm getting a real buzz out of collaberating with the designer on Network. When he sent it in, it was in a much earlier state than I wanted really, and I nearly discounted it on that basis. But because he knew it needed a lot of work he's very keen to try out improvements and I can be more involved with the design.

Anyway, that's enough for now, I've almost used up my lunch-break!

Almost!

I've got a few copies in stock so I've been pressing on with my accounts. I've done up to last July now, and seeing as this financial year has been much busier things are going much slower. Still, I now know that I had almost as much turnover in the first five months of this financial year as I got in the whole (nine months) of last year. Yeay!

I've been trying to be a bit more active on BoardGameGeek in an effort to bring It's Alive! to the attention of more people. It's working, I got two orders on Wednesday after posting it on a Geeklist, one from the US and one from Sweden. Went I went to the Post Office at lunchtime to post those copies I got talking to the Postmaster. It turns out he has a passing interest in party games, and was interested in seeing my catalogue. Ain't got no catalogue, but I promised to take a copy in next time I'm in there. After selling a couple of copies of Border Reivers to my bank last year, selling a copy to the Post Office would be the next logical step. I'm incorrigible.

I've also been thinking more about Codename: Jorvik and Codename: Network. I've had another idea for Jorvik which improves upon a previous idea. It's no longer a pure card game, but the addition of two wooden pieces won't push up the weight or price by much, and I think they add quite a lot to the game. Network I've still got issues with my scoring ideas, and I think I might boost the number of categories from six to seven, to improve player interaction.

Busy Sunday

We spent Saturday helping a friend decorate - which left me with only Sunday to work on my games. I wanted to get my books done for last financial year (6th April 2006 - 5th April 2007), and I also needed to make a few games as I was out of stock again.

I'd previously got my Mum (who used to do this professionally) to show me the ropes, and over the last few days I'd got the other stuff I needed ready in preparation. I was missing an invoice from a supplier, so I got them to send me a duplicate, and I had to print out a few invoices I only had on the computer. I also had to get my PayPal transactions printed out. Foolishly I'd not requested a monthly report from PayPal initially, and since I can only get those for the last three months (needless to say I've now turned them on), I had to download a spreadsheet of all the transactions for that year, and then format them myself into a reasonable layout for printing. With all that done, all I had to do today was fill in the books for the nine months from July '06 to April 5th '07 (I didn't start trading until July). I still needed to phone Mum several times during the day to answer various special cases I wasn't sure about. In the end it took the better part of the day, but it's done now, so I've got two weeks in which to fill out the tax return form online. The Wife made me promise to catch up and then do them every month, which makes a lot of sense, as I've been much busier this financial year, so there's a lot to do, and leaving it all to the last minute would be a bad idea.

This evening I made four copies of It's Alive! so I can fulfil any orders I get. Tired now.

No Stock -> Stock -> No Stock

After weeks of no stock over Christmas due to the TNT fiasco, I finally got the boxes. Sigh of relief.

I've spent this week making some games, getting some stock back in. I've made twelve copies over the course of the week, which has been great. I figure that twelve copies is a nice minimum stock level to have, more copies than I've sold in any preceding week except when I've sold in bulk to a shop. I've also slightly tweaked my cutting out method which makes things quicker I think. Initially I made a few mistakes, but I've tweaked it still further, and I think it should be less error-prone now. So I'm feeling quite good about things, decent stock levels, slightly quicker method for making It's Alive! Good week.

Then I run out of stock again! I got an enquiry from a shop owner in Italy who had played a friend's copy. They wanted to stock it in their shop. I offered them the same deal as the UK shops I'd dealt with (12 copies at 70% MSRP + shipping & handling), and they ordered. I've found a new courier who'll deliver to Europe for £24 GBP too, which is good to know. Now it's an excellent week :-)

In other news, I got to try out that new version of Networking with Dave on Tuesday, he enjoyed it though the scoring was obviously broken. I suggested my changes to the designer (who's already published!) and he loved them. Superb week! Now all I need to do is fix the problems with the new idea, and see if I can get it working.

At Last!

This morning the boxes finally arrived from the boxmaker via TNT. I waited in all morning (as I had done on two previous days) but this time they turned up. Ninety-two boxes in pristine condition despite all the backing-and-forthing. Some of these were already spoken for, I'd received three orders from the States over the Christmas break, and just after the boxes arrived I received another from the UK - great timing! First thing I did was count them, I thought I'd only sent eighty-three copies of the artwork to the boxmakers, so getting ninety-two back was an unexpected bonus. Next thing I did was write a cheque - I was invoiced for the boxes before Christmas when they were first due to arrive, and the terms were that I had to pay within thirty days. I figure I've waited long enough, any longer and I might forget. After that I popped to the Post Office and posted the four copies off, just in time to catch today's post.

Although I've got no stock at the moment, the arrival of the boxes mean that I can make more tomorrow, so hopefully by the end of tomorrow I should have a good few copies.

In other news, the exciting news I alluded to in my last post is not that The Wife is pregnant (nice guess though, Dunk!). It's something else...

Looking Forward to 2008

This is Reiver Games' third calendar year (I formed the company in July 2006), and I've been lucky enough that things have gone from strength to strength. In 2006 I decided to go for it, and released my first game design. Border Reivers did well, getting positive reviews and selling well. In 2007 I released the first Reiver game by another designer, Yehuda's It's Alive! It was launched at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham in June, where I also sold out of Border Reivers. The Expo was my first 'trade show'-style convention and it was a huge success, with my entire stock disappearing in 3.5 hours and I took a further thirty orders. By the end of the year I'd sold two hundred out of the three hundred run of It's Alive! So how do I hope to improve things in 2008?

Games

So far I've concentrated on one game at a time, with the exception of those first 3.5 hours at the Expo. This year I don't want to spend any time without a game to sell, hopefully overlapping the runs a bit better so I have periods when I have two games available. I also hope to release two games this year, as opposed to one each of the two previous years. To achieve this I'm hoping to release a submission (as yet to be decided) and one of my own games (probably Jorvik). Releasing a submission will reduce the burden of development on me, and Jorvik is fairly easy to manufacture, being a simple card game. There is also the possibility of a professional run of It's Alive! assuming it sells out in a reasonable amount of time, and continues to be well-received. I'm thinking I'm going to stick to getting the boxes professionally manufactured even on the hand-made runs, as this provides a notable step-up in quality, and saves me about an hour per game construction time. These are goals that are a stretch, but you've got to set goals that are achievable, while being challenging or you'll never get anywhere.

Conventions

In 2006 I went to two conventions: The Cast Are Dice and Psychocon. In 2007 I managed four: Beer & Pretzels, the Expo, The Cast Are Dice and MidCon. While this definitely introduced me to a larger audience I also started being more honest with myself about the cost of attending conventions. In 2006 I paid for all the food, hotels and travel myself, only charging the business for convention fees and commissions. Last year I started charging everything to the company, and keeping track of how much the trip cost me / made me as a whole. The Expo was a clear winner, with a huge take, and a healthy profit after paying for fuel, hotel for The Wife, Dave and I and the convention fees (a whopping £75). The others all made me money, but not a huge amount. As a result I'm considering attending fewer conventions this year not more. But the most exciting one is obviously Essen in Germany, which I would really like to attend this year. There's not much point unless I've got a lot of stock though. The Expo is a cert, Essen and TCAD are likely. Others are possible, but unlikely.

Surprise!

I'm also hoping to be able to make a pretty big announcement in a few months time - keep your eyes peeled!

It's Alive! in Top 1,000!

Everyday I check the BoardGameGeek page for It's Alive!. I want to see what Geeklists it has been added to, who's rating it what, who's saying what about it and to track its overall position in the BoardGameGeek chart. For the last month or so it has been hovering just outside the top 1,000 (out of nearly 30,000 games in the database). Today it cracked it! 995 :-) This is especially impressive since the charts are weighted towards games that have been rated by lots of people, so small run games like It's Alive! will find it harder to break in.

This comes two days after I sold the 200th copy (though of course I can't ship it yet because TNT are still pissing around with the rest of the boxes. Two hundred copies out of the three hundred run in seven months. I'm pretty pleased with that. Once I get the boxes I'll make a song and dance out of that, the publicity will hopefully lead to more sales.

December Report

Another month, another monthly report.

I'm going to resist the urge to do a retrospective on the year, I figure there's enough of those doing the rounds at the moment. Instead, I'll do this monthly report and a look forward to what I hope to achieve with Reiver Games this year.

Play

It's been a very busy month in terms of games played. There were a few games nights at Paul's that I actually managed to get to, Dave returned from Afghanistan, I made it to Beyond Monopoly!, the odd game over Christmas with family and then a New Year's Eve party to round things off. I managed not only a lot of games played, but also learnt a fair few new ones, which is always nice, and helps my game design.

Here's what I got up to this month:

• Incan Gold: 13 plays
• Carcassonne: 10 plays
• It's Alive!: 4 plays
• Loopin' Louie: 4 plays
• Magic: The Gathering: 4 plays
• micropul: 3 plays
• Apples To Apples: 2 plays
• Carcassonne: The Castle: 2 plays
• Guillotine: 2 plays

Plus the shrapnel with one play each: Byzantium, Canal Mania, Capt'n Clever, 6 Nimmt, Citadels, For Sale, Hare and Tortoise, Hey! That's My Fish!, O Zoo Le Mio, Race For The Galaxy, Ticket To Ride, TransEuropa and Wyatt Earp.

Micropul, Byzantium, Capt'n Clever, Hare and Tortoise, O Zoo le Mio, Race for the Galaxy and Wyatt Earp were all new to me. Micropul I played solo online, and it seemed like an interesting game, but the abstract nature puts me off slightly, and the artwork, while pretty could be more informative. Byzantium was a really nice game with an interesting mechanic in that all players play both sides of a conflict. Capt'n Clever was surprisingly deep for a kids game. Hare and Tortoise (which won the Spiel des Jahres the year I was born!) felt a little dated, but had a nice mechanic in the use of triangular numbers to control movement. O Zoo le Mio was another nice game, fun and attractive but nothing outstanding. Race for the Galaxy was my favourite new game of the month, like San Juan, but more involved and space-themed. Finally Wyatt Earp just didn't do it for me, something about it just seemed clunky. Special mention to Carcassonne: The Tower, which was my favourite new game (including expansions). The last of the main four Carcassonne expansions, the in-laws gave it to me for Christmas (though The Wife chose it - she rocks!). It adds a new dimension (literally - vertical!) to Carcassonne, and a lot more conflict to the basic game. It was this that boosted Carcassonne so high up my list of plays this month - great fun :-).

Creation

Despite the huge number of games played I still got a decent amount done from a creation point of view. The problems with TNT and the It's Alive! boxes meant I had some time on my hands. I've used this to do a lot of work on Codename: Jorvik, try out a few ideas for Codename: Artist and got a few plays of Codename: Harvest and Codename: Harry in.

Jorvik

Jorvik has come on leaps and bounds this month, I've tried out loads of new ideas, some worked, others didn't but overall progress has been made. I'm hoping to finish it this year, so I need to keep trying things out.

Harvest

I've played a few games of this, my latest submission. The game seems quite neat, and has some nice ideas, but I've some concerns about the learning curve. It's quite easy to make a mistake the first couple of times you play and that can really hurt you. Seeing as a lot of my potential customers will only play it once at a convention, I can't afford to have them put off by a bad play. I've made some suggestions and the designer is trying them out.

Escape

I've not done much on Escape this month, I turned it down last month, but the designer has come back to me, and is going to try out some changes to address the reasons why I turned it down.

Artist

Only one play of this, but it showed quite clearly how knackered the latest attempt at scoring was. The final score: me: 134, brother-in-law: 10. That needs a lot of work! I've added a couple more things which make it slightly more 'Euro', but I'm not sure whether this is a good idea. It's an abstract, so making it a Euro-abstract hybrid might mean it ends up appealing to fans of neither.

In other news, I need to do my tax self-assessment by the end of the month, so I started it in anger last night, and then got stuck. Fortunately my Mum used to do books as a living so I asked her what to do. It's not that much fun.

Happy New Year!

Just a quick Happy New Year! from Creation and Play.

I've a couple of longer posts coming up, but for the moment I'm pretty busy. I had an excellent New Year, playing a lot of Carcassonne with The Tower expansion (a gift from the in-laws). It's excellent, adding a lot of conflict to the game - there was an awful lot of swearing punctuating our games :-) I also found out that TNT, who were supposed to deliver the It's Alive! boxes again (third time!) on New Year's Eve, that they've gone missing again!. Needless to say I was not best pleased, but a few games with friends finally managed to improve my mood.

I'm off now to send Yehuda his royalties for It's Alive!

Deep Space DrillerAce

Hello - Just wanted to let you all know that the first run of my abstract strategy game Deep Space DrillerAce has been produced and it's in the database at BGG. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/33657 This is the "Friends and Family Edition" and it's limited to 50 signed and numbered copies. Based on the interest so far I will probably do another run. Happy New Year everyone.

Reprints

I'm considering re-printing games that are now out of print as a different avenue for Reiver Games.

I've started a Geeklist on BoardGameGeek for people to suggest games that need re-printing, and it's generating some interesting ideas.

In other news, I woke up at 6:20am this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep. Mal is visiting, so I couldn't go in the living room, and I didn't want to disturb The Wife seeing as we've a late night planned tonight, so I just lay there in the dark. My head was buzzing with ideas about Codename: Network, one of the submissions I've received, which could hopefully improve it...

They've Found It!

That's right, according to TNT, they've found my box of boxes. It's due to be delivered on Monday 31st, so all being well I can send off my sales then. Of course, they've still got to deliver it to me, and let's be honest, they've not got a great track record when it comes to delivering stuff to me.

In other news, it's been a fairly quiet Christmas for games, with a few games of Magic with The Wife, and a couple of games of Incan Gold with my family. I've had a few games design ideas though, an all new game inspired by my 4 month old niece, and some ideas to improve (I hope!) Codename: Jorvik. Must get scribbling. In other news, I'm still putting off doing my accounts for last year despite bringing everything down here. Time is running out though.

Good News & Bad News

There's still no news about the missing boxes, lost by TNT en route from the London boxmakers. I rang them again today, now their inventory system is experiencing some problems, so they are not sure where they are. I'll try again after Christmas. I figured it wouldn't be too much of a problem, I wasn't expecting many sales over Christmas, but I sold two yesterday (saving me from the ignominy of my first week without a sales since It's Alive! was released). I had to send the poor customers apologetic emails, warning them I was out of stock for at least a week, possibly longer, and offering them a refund. Fortunately, both were very understanding, and didn't mind waiting. Still I feel like bad for providing poor customer service, and slow turn-arounds on their orders.

We're now down in Bristol for Christmas, staying with The Wife's family. I've had a chance to get four games of Codename: Jorvik in (using the new scoring suggested by Dave and a couple of other scoring simplifications), and one of Codename: Artist. Artist's scoring is way out, I managed to win a game 134:10 - needs a lot of work, it should never be possible to crush someone like that - I aim for much closer scores.

In other news, Merry Christmas everyone!

Gah! Stupid TNT!

Today I was working from home, and the rest of the It's Alive! boxes were due to arrive. Needless to say they haven't. I phoned TNT and they couldn't find them, so I'm not going to get them now until New Year's Eve at the earliest. So if I get any orders over Christmas they'll have to wait.

They don't even know if they've lost them, so I may never get them, which will be a huge faff as I'll need to claim the money, get the artwork printed again and then get the boxes made again, which will take several weeks.

Last time TNT managed to deliver my boxes plus a job-lot of Cisco Routers, so their ineptitude is pretty staggering.

Russin' frussin' couriers.

Reiver Games: Trustworthy

When I arrived home this evening in the post there was an invoice from my boxmaker. So what? I can hear your thinking (good ears, huh?). This invoice was different, in a quite exciting way. I've received my fair share of invoices up until now, but they've all been along the 'You gave us X pounds, so we're grudging giving you something in return' variety. This one was of the 'Here's some stuff, you've got thirty days to pay us, or we're sending Big Joe round with his 2x4 and his Rottweilers' variety. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's right. I'm now a respectable businessman, so respectable, people will give me things before I pay for them. Sweet!

In a bizarre addendum to this, the invoice is for 92 boxes, I could have sworn I only gave them 83 copies of the artwork! Either my basic ability to count has left me (damn you, maths degree!) or they're giving me boxes for some other game too! Anyway, I'm feeling a little light-headed (hence the whimsical nature of this post), I must be coming down with something. In a vain effort to ward off whatever lurgy is headed my way, I'm going to go round to Paul's and drink mulled wine (medicinally, honest) and play games.

Now all I have to do is remember to pay the damn invoice.

Go National Express!

I had to go down to London on fairly short notice today. I get the train, which takes just under two hours. GNER used to have the franchise that allowed them to operate the London-Scotland (via York) trains, but lost it recently to National Express. I write this to you from the train, as National Express have decided to allow all customers free use of the WiFi on the trains - yeay!

As I'm still without boxes for It's Alive! I've had yet more time to think: What's Next? On BoardGameGeek last night I asked what games people thought were best for small publishers like myself to publish. It led to an interesting discussion, with the general feeling being things like It's Alive! quick and simple games that are easy to explain, fairly cheap and have fun themes. The next two games of my own that I've got in the pipeline are a historical 2-player game and an abstract game, so perhaps they are not the best games to be going with. This information will guide my choice for RG0003, the next game I publish.

What are your thoughts? Themed or abstract? Light or heavy? Short or long? Number of players? Cheap or expensive? Bear in mind som of the choices are mutually exclusive!

Naked Games!

Don't get excited, it's the games that are naked - not the players!

Monday I had to take the day off work as the one and only bus to work was cancelled (I found out later the bus company had received a batch of dubious fuel, and all the buses were stalling - they had to empty and refuel them, which took several hours). So, I've a day to myself, with no plans - what to do? Let this post be a warning to you, as I list just how much games design/hobby publishing takes over your life.

Well, I was in town already, and I had a game to post to The Netherlands and some sales cash to pay in to the bank. Neither the Post Office or the bank opens until 9am though, so I spent twenty minutes wandering round town aimlessly in the cold, until they opened. Then in went the money and off went the game. The Wife in her infinite wisdom recommended that I make some games seeing as I had the day off and I had no stock. Usually the first thing I need when making a game is the box in which to place the pieces, but the box delivery wasn't due until Tuesday (I'm finally getting them Friday - I have to wait in for a plumber to fix our leaking washing machine). In an unusual step I made the game components without boxes to put them in, just building a pile of game components. During the course of the morning I managed four games worth. Hence the 'naked games' of the title (You can see their bits!).

In the afternoon, my mate Dave (who's already on holiday for Christmas - jammy sod!) came round and we playtested a bunch of games. Codename: Jorvik of mine (which has changed a lot since he last saw it), and two submissions he'd not played yet: Codenames: Harvest and Harry. I'd only played Harvest once myself (it's the most recent addition to my prototype collection), and although Dave was screwed by a slight error in play compounded by an unlucky card draw, he still enjoyed this most of the games we played. We gave Harry a go too, but we played slightly modified rules, and there was one rule we weren't sure about. It's good but I'm not sure it's good enough :-(

Out Of Stock!

After a run on It's Alive! orders, I'm now out of stock temporarily. I sold ten this week, which cleaned me out, and I can't even make any more until the boxes arrive on Tuesday. I can't take Tuesday off work though, as I've my departmental Christmas meal at work, so I might not get them until Wednesday.

As a result I've decided not to go on the radio, since telling everyone what a great Christmas present It's Alive! would make will backfire if I can't get any ready in time to deliver before Christmas.

Instead of making games, I've managed to get a few games of Jorvik (soloing still) in today around my weekend chores, plus a first play of Codename: Harvest - my latest submission. Jorvik went well (including taking down the extra information I mentioned a couple of days ago). I tried one strategy that I thought might be unbalanced, and although it got a much large score than before, the other player won! Choosing that strategy boosts your points, but it also helps your opponent.

Playing Harvest brought home to me the importance of blind-playtesting - where you give the game and the written rules to someone who has not played it before and get them to play the game from the rules. Although the rules seemed very well written when I first received them, it's not until you try playing the game that you realise where all the small cracks are - what do you do in this situation? Does this card work like that or slightly differently? I've now got a bunch of questions to email off to the designer. First impressions were promising though.

How Random Is A Card Game?

One of the factors that is often used to describe a board/card game is randomness. How much will events outside your control such as drawing cards, dice rolls or other random factors affect your chances of winning?

While playtesting Codename: Jorvik, I got to thinking that a good way to determine the level of randomness is to play a game between people of equal skill using the same strategy. Don't have an evil twin? Play against yourself. In games where you score the game, play against yourself a bunch of times, and the look at the scores that result. If they vary a lot, then there is a lot of randomness, if they don't (or you get a lot of draws) then there isn't.

I've also stepped up my recording of my games of Jorvik. At first I was just recording scores, and who started (in an attempt to spot any first player advantage). Now I'm adding a few others to the mix:

• Which cards are left over? The game may finish with cards not used, recording those might spot cards that get used less often, or weaker cards.
• How many cards are left over? Is using all your cards a better (or worse) strategy?
• Strategy used - Does one strategy consistantly win?

Recording these details as I play will allow me to spot (slightly more scientifically than 'a feeling') potential problems with the game, and adjust it accordingly. In particular, I'm expecting to change the distribution of cards a fair bit in response to the info I get.

In other news I sold six of the nine copies I've got in the flat at the moment on the back of the review on Joystiq.com yesterday, which leaves me some to take down to Beyond Monopoly!, my local games club when I pop down tomorrow. Oh, and the local radio station have invited me back on Monday morning to talk about board games (and It's Alive! in particular) in the context of the Christmas board games sales spike.

RG0003

With construction stalled on It's Alive! (I've bagged all the bits and I've no boxes at home to make any more copies until the next delivery from my boxmaker), I've had some time to think more about the third game from the Reiver Games' stable. I've a few promising submissions, and I've one more en route. Two of my games are nearly ready too, Codename: Jorvik and Codename: Artist.

I've been working from home the last couple of days. With time to kill at lunchtime and after work, I've spent some time giving Jorvik a thorough run-through. It's a 2-player card game, with an estimated play time of 15 - 30 minutes. I've played a bunch of games solo, trying out different ideas quickly to see what works and what doesn't.

The rules have changed in minor ways after each play as I tweak things, and I think it's definitely improving. I'm trying to smooth things out so the rules are as simple as possible while providing a challenging and fun game. I'm also trying to get it to involve some player confrontation, but not too much. The recent changes I've made have simplified card placement, at the expense of slightly more complicated scoring. By easing the restrictions on card placement it's easier to play cards, and hence your less likely to be unable to play a card on your turn. It also simplifies the rules (in terms of complexity and word count). The slightly more complicated scoring thematically makes sense (which is important to me), and gives you a secondary goal for card placement - which makes the game slightly deeper (it's still pretty light fare). I'm going to play it a bunch more, trying out a few more ideas. Once the rules settle down a bit then I'll be ready to try it out on a few friends, write the rules up and get some blind-playtesting done.

For the moment, though, it's back to the tweaking and solo-play.

In other news, It's Alive! has been reviewed on Joystiq.com. The reviews lead to three sales within half an hour of posting, and seeing as I've only got nine copies finished at the moment pending further boxes, this could get interesting...

Back In The Country

Well, I'm back, and after another debacle where Delta lost my luggage again (two for two - outstanding!), I'm back in the saddle.

I arrived home around lunchtime yesterday, and promptly read my emails, caught up on the blogs I read and posted the game orders I'd received while in the States. I've been off work today as well, catching up on sleep and writing a GeekList on BoardGameGeek about where I've sold games to, and how my customers heard about my games. If you're making games yourself, the information might give you a few ideas, and will hopefully prove useful.

This afternoon I'm going to make a bunch more games, but I've only got seven more boxes left until the box manufacturer ships me the rest, so that will be the limiting factor.

In other news, the designer of Codename: Escape got back to me yesterday about his game. The email I'd sent him didn't enunciate why I wasn't willing to publish it very clearly, so if he's willing to move on a couple of things that might still be in the running.

November Report

Another month has passed in a blur. I've been pretty busy once again for work, and a busy month for games too. Since I've been out of the country so much, I've not ended up playing many games, but I've still been busy.

Play

Not a huge amount of games played this month, but I attended MidCon so It's Alive! has a good showing. Also several games played for the first time, thanks to Paul's games nights.

• It's Alive! - 13 plays
• Magic: The Gathering - 6 plays
• San Juan - 2 plays

Plus three games playing once, and all for the first time: Fearsome Floors, League of Six and San Marco. Of the three, Friedemann Friese's F-alliterating Fearsome Floors was the one I like least - a bit too chaotic for my tastes. There wasn't much between League of Six and San Marco, both solid Euros, but I guess I have a slight preference for League of Six - plus it's Czech! I live there for a couple of months, so I have a soft spot for it.

Looking forward to December, I hope to make it to Beyond Monopoly! my local games club once, plus with less travel for work, holidays with our families and the return of my gaming buddy Dave from Afghanistan, I'm hoping for a decent month of gaming.

Creation

Turning to creation it's been a pretty good month. Sales of It's Alive! have been almost twice last month's poor showing. I've received a whole bunch of prototypes too.

It's Alive!

It's been a good month for It's Alive! Twenty sales, plus a few orders by friends, and my first sales to Japan and Sweden. It had a disappointing outing at MidCon, but a good month over all. I also decided to get the last lot of boxes professionally made. The professional boxes are slightly higher quality, and getting the last few made will save me about eighty hours of construction.

Codename: Escape

Unfortunately I've had to drop this one. I enjoyed the game, but the theme (which is some ways is superb), is a little too controversial. I wanted to tweak it a little, make it more fantastic and less controversial, while still in the same vein. The designer wanted to keep the original theme, which of course he's entitled to do, so I've passed it over. Hopefully it'll see the light of day elsewhere.

Codename: Harvest

Another new submission, which after reading the rules, I've requested in prototype form. Hopefully it will have arrived by the time I get home.

Hello From The Big Apple

This week I'm in the US for work. We arrived in New York on Monday, and after our conncting flight to Washington was delayed by a couple of hours it was promptly cancelled. So we decided to stay in New York, since we were due to return on Tuesday anyway. Despite both us and our luggage being in JFK airport, we couldn't retrieve it, it had to go on the plane the next morning, and after a few round trips to Dulles airport, I finally got my luggage back on Thursday :-(.

After a few days work, we've got a few days off to enjoy the city, and yesterday afternoon I visited a couple of NYC game shops. First I dropped in to Neutral Ground where the staff were very friendly and helpful, then The Compleat Strategist which has an awesome number of games. My main aim was to discover a reasonable retail price for It's Alive in the States. At the moment, making them by hand my only option is to price them according to what it costs me to make them, but that's expensive by US standards, not least because of the exchange rate. Judging by games in these shops that I know the price of in the UK, $25 seems about right. Do my US readers agree?

In other news, it's been a pretty good week for sales, with three sales to the US and my first sale to Sweden. They'll all be shipped on my return.

It's been a while...

Sorry I haven't posted in some time, but have been busy, and well you know how things get sometime! But I thought I'd post a little update.

Firstly, Archaeology - The Card Game has basically sold out, I have a few copies left. I will be doing a second print run soon with a couple of very minor rules tweaks, just to clear up a couple of issues. The response has been good, lots of friends have passed it on to their friends etc, I think I have sold 10 or 15 copies to people who are passing it on to others they have played with. That is the most rewarding thing I think, knowing that people are actually wanting to get their own copy once they've had a play.

Secondly, I have a handful of games quite far into playtesting for my next release. All are again card-based games, although not all play like card games in the traditional sense. It is amazing what you can "use" cards for as the components in a game! More news on the next game soon I guess!

Anyway, catch you all later, Phil

It's Alive! Italian Rules Up

This evening after my course finished I posted the Italian rules for It's Alive! on my website.

One of my Italian customers offered to write them, and post them on La Tana dei Goblin which is apparently the premier board games site in Italy. I told him that was fine, but I'd like to post them on my website too. Which brings up some interesting questions:

1. Did I make any errors converting the PDF to HTML?
2. Has he made any spelling, grammatical or punctuation errors?
3. Is it a fair translation?

Speaking no Italian, I've no idea about the answers to any of these questions. Google Language Tools can help a little with question three. The quality of the translaton back into English is pretty flaky, but it's good enough to understand that the content is basically the same.

How do I answer questions one and two though? The best I can think of for one is to get the original translator to check my format conversion, and two is to hope that I can find another Italian speaker willing to check. Without any budget to spend on this, I think these ideas are the best I can hope for.

Anyone speak Italian? I'd appreciate a second pair of eyes.

In other news, I've had an offer from one of last week's two Japanese customers to translate the rules into Japanese. That would be an even harder language to check! I'd also appreciate it if anyone else wants to translate the rules into their first language, all I ask is that you include the copyright notice, and let me post your translation (attributed to you with a link) on my website.

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.

MidCon 2007 Report

Sunday I went to MidCon in Birmingham. I wasn't sure about the wisdom of attending, It's Alive! had been launched in Birmingham, so I was afraid that everyone there would already have seen it, and bought a copy if they wanted one. As a compromise, I only went for the day on Saturday, saving myself the cost of a hotel and more meals.

Friday hadn't finished until 1am, as I had to make myself a packed lunch (another way to reduce costs) as well as making games. The alarm went off at 6am, and as I had a fairly tight timetable to catch my train I leapt out of bed, had a shower, had breakfast and then set off to the station. I slept for most of the train journey, and arrived feeling at least partially awake. After a moment to orient myself, I set off and arrived at the convention at about 10am.

I had with me ten copies plus my demo copy of It's Alive!, two signs, a mailing list sign up sheet and some pens, my receipt book and a couple of prototypes (Jorvik and Escape). My plan was to demo and sell It's Alive! until 6pm, test some prototypes for an hour and then leave at seven for the 7:30pm train, which would get me home around 10pm.

On arrival there were no tables free, but while we were waiting (for half an hour) for the extra tables I got to meet Martin Wallace a legendary British game designer, who was there paytesting his latest prototype among other things. I finally got a table, but things didn't noticably improve until after lunch. Despite over 130 people at the convention I didn't get much action, and those who did play weren't buying. By lunchtime I was feeling fairly despondent. But the afternoon went better. I sold three copies (below my target of five), one to people who had played it at The Cast Are Dice with me, and I ended the evening with three games with a family who had bought at TCAD, and loved it, playing it regularly at home. Several people told me they enjoyed it after buying it at a previous convention. Talking of loads of people, there were lots of people there who either already owned a copy, or had played before. I recognised almost none of them! While feeling low at lunchtime, I wondered whether this was yet another symptom, but on reflection, it's probably just a natural response to having met so many people at conventions over the last year or two.

In the end I didn't have time to playtest my games, I just went to the toilets to take my medication (want to feel dirty? Try injecting yourself in hotel toilets!), and then headed off (getting lost in the process). All in all, slightly disappointing, but I'm beginning to think I'm reaching saturation point at conventions, and should concentrate on the internet, where I've reached a far smaller percentage of the market.

It was a great week of sales in the end, despite the slightly disappointing convention. I sold ten copies, which was my best week of sales for seven weeks (when I sold a bunch to a shop). That includes two copies to Japan. Excellent! Of course the Self Published and Gorgeous Geeklist on BoardGameGeek helped :-).

In other news, I was not receiving any emails over the weekend. I could fortunately check on PayPal for sales, but I was not getting the notification emails, nor anything from BGG or my tests. It was very annoying.

I Must Pay More Attention

Three times over the last week I've spotted a mistake on my website. They've all been related to It's Alive! now being available. It's been available for over four months. Chump! I had references to It's Alive! not being ready yet, but available for pre-order on four separate pages, but when it became available I only changed the main one. The Wife spotted one mistake on the weekend and since then I've found three more. I need to be a lot more careful when making such a major change to the website to ensure it stays consistent throughout. I guess that explains why I've had several emails from people asking me if I had copies of It's Alive! ready/available.

In other news, I sold my first game to Japan today :-) I'd previously sold one to Singapore, but this was my first sale to Japan. I'm also seriously considering getting the rest of the It's Alive! boxes professionally made. When I released the game I was swamped with so many orders, and it was taking me an hour and a half to make the game. I got just under 150 boxes made for me and that enabled me to make a game in 40 minutes, at no increase in budget, since I was just spending money I had been refunded after my printers failed to laminate the artwork. The extra 80 boxes would increase the cost of the run, but not to the point where I would be selling at a loss, it would just eat away at my profits, but the boxes are better quality, and it might well be worth the cost to free up seventy hours of my limited free time.

Moon Melee

I just had my second game added to the database at Boardgamegeek.com. MOON MELEE came about because someone posted an idea on BGG and I decided to run with it, develop some rules and make a prototype and play test it. It had to change quite a bit from his original concept but that's what always seems to happen after a prototype is built. I bounced ideas off Edward Balyka (the one who posted the original concept) and my daughter and I played and tweaked it for a few days. I ironed out the rules we all agreed on the final version and I made some nice components. It's just a simple abstract strategy game but I find it to be a lot of fun to play. Of course I had to slap a theme on it! No matter how simple a game is I still think it deserves a theme. Here's the blurb on BGG: In the not too distant future, war and fighting have been banned on the planet earth. All disputes are now resolved on the moon, through hand to hand combat. Each nation involved in a dispute chooses its 7 most powerful warriors to compete in a decisive battle. Moon Melee is an abstract strategy game in which players play cards to determine the movement of their warriors. The warriors are represented by dice and have a life force of 6. Players take turns moving and attacking their opponents. When a warrior is reduced to a zero life force they are removed from the game. The game takes place on a 7 X 7 square grid. The player with the most life force after 3 rounds is declared the winner. Hop on over and take a look see. I'm planning on submitting the rules, cards and board files for free download if people want to make their own version of the game. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/32910

Everyone Needs A Mascot

I had a good week last week, selling a bunch of copies, after a relatively dry spell. The weird thing was, it seems like it's my mate Carl's fault.

Between my business travel and his time off work, I've not seen much of him recently. I went over to chat to him and during the conversation he asked me how the games-selling business was going. "Slowly," I replied. "You should sell more games," he advised. I got a couple of sales shortly after that. I ran over to tell him. "You should sell more games," he said grinning. I sold a couple more. This was beginning to get freaky. I told him again, this time I was fairly incredulous. "You should sell more games."

That evening a couple of friends came round, and they both bought a copy. Carl it seems is my lucky mascot.

We were both in again today. I wandered over to say hi, and told him about his special powers. "You should sell more games." I've sold another two today.

Run your own company selling games? I'll hire him out for a modest fee...

Not Quite As Many As Planned

I only managed to get eight games made last night in the end, instead of the twelve I had planned. Still, at least I managed to build up some stock. Tonight Paul's games night was cancelled so I figured I'd get the last four done, and be back to my old twelve a week rate. Especially with a convention to go to next weekend. I managed to get one done before I realised I'd forgotten to take my medicine. D'oh. So I promptly injected myself in the left arm. I think it went a little deep. It feels like I've been punched in the arm, hard. It's going to make doing another three games this evening tricky, as I use my left hand to hold the steel ruler in place while cutting against it. I'll see how it goes. I'm not very hopeful though.

In the meantime, I'm posting on BoardGameGeek where appropriate, to try and raise the profile of It's Alive! and Reiver Games. The good news is that It's Alive! has received a few more ratings, and after a few negative ones that caused its average to drop a bit it has received a few more positive ratings and climbed a bit higher. It's now got a couple of nines and more eights than sevens once again.

What A Difference A Couple Of Days Make

Only a few days ago I was disappointed that It's Alive! sales had slowed down. Having been away so much for work my stock had dwindled and with very little stock I didn't want to make too much noise, as I didn't want to end up with sales I couldn't satisfy due to lack of stock.

Now that I'm back at home more, I've built up my stock and started making some noise again. On the weekend I mentioned It's Alive! in a thread on BoardGameGeek, and another BGG member recommended it too (thanks, Philip!). That lead to a couple of sales. Then on Sunday I sent out a newsletter to my mailing list. I got a couple of orders from that too as Christmas presents. Finally, we had a couple of friends round last night, and they both wanted a copy too. I've sold as many games in the last two days as in the previous three weeks. The moral of this tale, is instead of worrying myself, I just need to do something about it.

It meant again that I was out of stock, but fortunately I was off work today, so I'm aiming to get back up to twelve in stock.

Down In Bristol

We're down in Bristol this weekend visiting The Wife's family, but I've managed to get a little gaming in.

On the way down we stopped off at Dunk and Lucy's and saw Tim and Vicky too. Dunk and Tim are two of my oldest friends so it's always good to see them, but sadly it's fairly infrequent. We went out for dinner and then spent a couple of hours catching up. When the ladies went to bed, Dunk, Tim and I had a couple of fairly drunken games of Codename: Escape which I had brought along to show them and folks down in Bristol. We played a variant on the rules as submitted, which I'd played with Paul on Thursday. They both enjoyed the game and recommended it for publishing. I need to play it a lot more times though before I make a decision.

I popped over to my parents' house for dinner last night, and after dinner finally finished off the prototype of Jorvik I started a while ago. I've also coloured the cards quickly with meaty felt-tip markers, I don't care how tidy it looks, it just needs to make the prototype easier to play. Because I expect the distribution of cards to change I don't want to invest too much time in making the cards as I expect to have to make more and bin some of the ones I've already made.

In other news, It's Alive! has finally received a real panning on BoardGameGeek. Ted Alspach, creator of the Board 2 Pieces cartoon strip on Boardgame News, and designer of several games has given it 2.1 out of 10! I guess he really didn't like it.

October Report

It's been a long time since I did my last monthly report, I've been too busy with It's Alive! and travel for work. Now that things have calmed down a bit I'm going to start up again.

Play

I had the joint highest number of monthly plays since records began (admittedly only last August). Last time round it was because we'd been on holiday with a group of friends, this time because The Wife and I had a hankering for Magic: The Gathering again. I also got to Beyond Monopoly! once which led to the following playlist:

• Magic: The Gathering: 40 plays!
• Carcassonne: 5 plays on holiday
• Pirates of the Spanish Main: 2 plays on holiday
• It's Alive!: 2 plays

Plus the shrapnel: San Juan, No Thanks! and the Sherlock Holmes Card Game.

Sherlock Holmes and No Thanks! were new to me (I thought I'd played No Thanks! before, but I was thinking of 6 Nimmt). Of the two I prefered No Thanks!, but neither of them bowled me over.

It was really nice to play more games with The Wife, I love it when she's in the mood for games - she even bought San Juan :-).

Creation

This was a month of frantic travel for work, so I didn't have much time for making games, but I've made a few It's Alive!, talked Jorvik artwork with my dad and received yet another prototype (Codename: Escape).

It's Alive!

It's been a slow month for It's Alive! both in terms of production and sales. Now I've got a few weeks at home I'm going to step up production and build up a decent stock again, and I've a few ideas to boost sales over the next few weeks. There's a couple of conventions on the horizon that I'm considering...

Codename: Jorvik

Codename: Jorvik has been ticking along. I tried another idea (taking Dave's excellent idea to the next level), mainly for production/packaging purposes, but it seems to be working, and I need to finish the prototype so I can test it properly. Paul has offered to test it for me, he and his wife are big 2-player gamers, so they're the perfect target market.

Codename: Escape

Yet another prototype turned up during October. In fact, rather conveniently, it arrived at the Post Office (I wasn't in when they tried to deliver it) the day before my local games club met. I collected it from the Post Office and took it with me, and we got a game in at the club. I love the theme (and it certainly attracted plenty of attention), but I'll need to play it a few more times before I really get a feel for it.

In other news, I'm toying with the idea of going to a convention in Birmingham this month. Why only toying? It'll be fairly expensive, and I launched It's Alive! at a convention in Birmingham in July. I'm worried that everyone there who might be interested will have already seen/played/bought it.