The Art of the Matter

Back when I ran Reiver Games I made four games. The first Border Reivers was a hand-made limited edition, and I did almost everything myself, including the art (except the box cover, that was an original painting by my dad, a retired art teacher and artist). It was ... basic. Very basic. But back in the days when a self-published game was a fairly novel item, it was enough to get me by, and didn't put off the 100 customers to whom I sold a copy of Border Reivers too much.

For my second game, I got a friend who was a computer games artist to do some really cool Frankenstein-themed art, and because he was a friend, I got it dirt cheap. It still added a £1 per copy to the total cost though, a not insignificant amount. While I loved the art on the It's Alive! components, I was less enamoured of the box art, and it received some criticism from punters, so when it came to making a second print run, this time aimed at shops at distributors, I asked him to do another box. Sadly, I don't think that box was any better.

My third game was Carpe Astra, and again I got the friend to do the art, again at mate's rates (though with a print run of 2,000 I could afford to pay a bit more this time, despite the fact I was aiming to sell to distributors and hence was pitching at 40% of retail for a manufacturing and art cost. Again I was a bit mixed on the art, I loved bits of it, but I think the box art could have been better, especially with the target market in mind.

For my final Reiver game I splashed out and hired bona-fide board game artist Harald Lieske to do the art. Harald's done the art for several games I own (Vikings, the Spiecherstadt, Puerto Rico) and several other famous ones (Dominion, The Settlers of Catan), so clearly a big name with loads of board game experience. He knows what looks good on a box and how to do all the art ready for printing. I was doing a relatively small print run (3,000 copies), so my budget was limited (but many times what I'd paid for the previous games!). We eventually reached an agreement where he'd meet my budget in return for simpler art than he was originally planning. I was delighted with how Sumeria turned out, it's still my favourite art associated with one of my games by quite some distance.

What brings this to mind is two things: Zombology and Kickstarter. With Zombology (which I've finally finished - one of my goals for the year ticked off already!), I went back to my roots and made a short hand-made print-run doing everything myself including the art and cutting out boxes and all the cards by hand. Actually, that's not strictly true, I took some of the icons from Game-icons.net, either as was, or slightly tweaked.

But the point still stands, the art is mostly mine and pretty basic, this is not a beautiful game. While I hope it's not so distracting as to put off the 28 customers I need to cover my costs, it's not winning any art awards.

In these days of Kickstarter, games need to be beautiful to attract punters, and despite the vast wealth of games on Kickstarter, generally the art is of a very high quality - it's almost expected. My friend Tim's game Toast is a great example of that. To set up a games company these days you need to either be a great artist (Daniel Solis, I'm looking at you), have a wealthy good friend who's an artist (do they exist?) or to fold a large art cost into the manufacturing cost of the game. I can't help but think that life would have been easier as Reiver Games or Zombology would have sold faster if I was a great artist or if I'd set up a partnership with a wealthy, games-loving artistic genius.

As I continue with my own game designing (and conceivably self-publishing), I want to work on and improve my artistic skills. Practice might not make perfect, but it's definitely going to improve my skills, which can't hurt in making my games easier to sell.

In other news, January was a staggeringly good month, 59 games played, Zombology construction finished and a weekend in Coventry with Tim and a weekend in York with Paul. I wish February would be as great, but a work trip to Boston, MA is going to get in the way of things, so I'm not expecting much. At least I'm hoping to finish off the print on demand version of Zombology as I planned in my 2016 goals.

What a Week!

This week, I've had three nights of gaming. Three!

Newcastle Playtest

Tuesday was the latest Newcastle Playtest session. I'd missed the last one, due to my trip to Germany last month for work, so I was especially keen to make it along this time. Also, Dan the organiser couldn't make it this month, so as his understudy it was important I was there. There were going to be three of us: Alex, Paul and I. Alex wasn't due until after 7:30, but Paul was coming along early so I went over at 6:30 with Codename: Vacuum and Zombology. It turns out that Paul had a work emergency so he didn't get there until gone 7:30, so I spent the first hour on my own. It was fine though since my replacement phone - after the Great Spontaneously Combusting Nokia Lumia Event of 2014 - had just arrived so I spent the hour installing apps and setting it up just how I wanted. Once Paul and Alex arrived the three of us played five (5!) games of Zombology. I was keen to show it to them since they hadn't seen it since I made the sweeping changes, which were largely done in response to their feedback. They both enjoyed it I think, and Paul commented that it was nice to spend the evening concentrating on a single game. I've got loads more ideas now for the next version, once I've finished with the NaGa DeMon copies. As time goes on I'm finding Newcastle Playtest to be more and more useful in the development of my games.

Unfortunately, we found out after the event another designer had tried to attend. He'd hung around for an hour, but because I was sat there on my own playing with my new phone he'd not found us :-(

Games Night

Thursday was Games Night, and with enough attendees for two tables and a new phone to run my Firefly: The Board Game app, I was finally able to try it out. As with any live demo, it crashed once, but apart from that and the slightly wrong information about the number of cards in each deck, it worked.

I can't tell you how much time it saved, as we played with three instead of four, all who had played it before (unlike last time) and a different mission card. But it came in at 3 hours instead of 4 and it felt like it helped a bit.

TableTop Day

Finally, Saturday was TableTop Day, and with the father-in-law delaying his visit until next weekend, I was able to get along to Newcastle Gamers for their free all day session. I only went for a few hours in the evening after The Daughter had gone to bed, but was greeted with a cheer on arrival as I had broken the all time attendance record (I think I was the 52nd attendee that day!). I stayed for three and a bit hours, but managed to play six games including two games of AbluXXen, which was new to me. I took a bunch of games and ended up playing three of the ones I'd brought, including Sumeria, which I had a hankering for. I'd not played in ages and despite over a hundred more plays than my newbie opponents, I got my arse handed to me - the scores were 41, 33 and 21 (me).

All in all a great week's gaming, when you include the Zombology Playtest at lunch on Thursday and the game of Incan Gold after Firefly, I've played 15 games this week (and in fact in the first five days of April). That's going to help me meet my target for the year!

I Need To Buy This Game!

Aside: I'm on holiday at the moment. I've posted this automatically and I'll respond to comments on my return.

Back to the matter at hand. 'I need to buy this game!' is how the exposition for a game should make you feel. The exposition of a game is what I'm calling the short description of the setting and mechanics that you use to summarise a game.

When I ran Reiver Games I used the exposition for many purposes:

• A brief summary of the game at the beginning of the rulebook
• A description of the game on the back of the box
• The first paragraph on the game's webpage
• The summary of the game on its BGG page
• On posters at conventions
• In adverts in trade magazines
• Sellsheets to send to shops and distributors

If I decide to KickStart it, the exposition would be the first paragraph of the KickStarter page too.

Clearly, it's important. I've agonised over the exact wording of each of my games' expositions. They've been through several drafts trying to get them to a honed sharpness of hook. The exposition should leave you thinking:

That sounds fricken' awesome! I need that game. So badly that I'm willing to sell my family to fund its purchase.

Writing them is very hard. I'm not a copy-writer, or a master wordsmith. I'm just a software engineer and occasional board game designer. Moulding the English language to my will does not come naturally. I did an average job on the Reiver Games ones (scroll down a bit in the links below to read the Description sections):

• Border Reivers
• It's Alive!
• Carpe Astra
• Sumeria

They're functional, but not particularly exciting. They didn't work very well either. The number of you who sold your families to buy the games was considerably less than the number of games I bought from the manufacturers.

For Codename: Vacuum, I've got an early draft that tries to cover the steampunk to sci-fi transition and the deck-building nature of the game. But it's not very exciting yet:

It’s 1897 and the discovery of the anti-gravity metal Cavorite has the world powers are poised on the edge of a Space Race to claim the Solar System. Lead your nation to victory by building a deck of strategy cards that will shape your empire for 300 years. What will be the defining features of humanity at the dawn of the 23rd century? Conquest? Exploration? Reproduction? Greed? Technology? Choose a strategy. Advance your technologies. Race to ensure your choice is scored.

Upon reading that, I'm decidely meh. My family are safe. Needs some work methinks!

What's in a Name?

For many years I've been referring to new games by a codename that stands as a working title while the game is in development. It's Alive! was Codename: Monster, Carpe Astra was Codename: Network and Sumeria was Codename: Ancient before their official names were chosen or announced. And now I'm working on Codename: Vacuum.

If I decide to hawk it to publishers, job done, I can send it with the codename, since the publisher will almost certainly want to chose the name (and the artist and tweak the rules) themselves. However, if I decide I self publish again I'll need a real name for it at some point.

I've been toying with a couple of ideas (one of which I posited here to a conspicuous silence!), and it got me thinking about what makes a good game name.

Lots of euro games go for the place name option, e.g.: Goa, Macao, Cuba, Santiago, Puerto Rico; while more themed games chose something a bit more involved: e.g.: Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, Race for the Galaxy, Space Hulk.

I would want something that gives you a flavour of the game, but it also needs to meet certain criteria:

• There can't be an existing game with the same or a similar name
• It's got to Google well
• Ideally there's not a book/film/computer game with the same name
• It's got to sound enticing
• It ought to evoke the gameplay or setting

So Race for the Galaxy is out (taken) and Race for the Solar System is out (too similar). Sol is out (taken by a 2011 game, a forthcoming film plus brings back hundreds of BGG hits). Empire of the Sun is a film and book, Solar Empire is a 2012 game. So you can see there's a lot of competition!

Making up a word works in a lot of ways (it should be unique in the BGG database and should Google well), but it be awkward for searchers to guess the 'correct' spelling, plus it's difficult to evoke the theme, concept or mechanics of a game with a word that by definition doesn't mean anything.

I've been thinking about 'Full Steam to the Stars' or 'Steam to the Stars' for Codename: Vacuum. They both have a few things going for them:

• No competition: a BGG search of 'steam stars' brings back no hits and Google doesn't find anything with that phrase in the first page
• They both evoke the Steampunk initial setting of the game and the sci-fi finish with a sense of the transition in between
• Full Steam gives a hint of the race to ensure that your target victory conditions are ones that get scored

Of course, the downside is that I'm too close to them so I've no idea whether they sound rubbish or not. The name has to be interesting enough that if you saw it on a shelf you'd pick up the box or if you saw it in the BGG Hotness you'd click the link. I'm not sure either of those have that kind of appeal.

For Carpe Astra I ran a BGG competition to choose a name (the winner got a mention in the rules and, I think, a free copy of the game). I could do the same thing here, but it's a bit of a wasted effort if I hawk it to publishers and they call it something else.

What do you all think of (Full) Steam to the Stars? Got any better ideas?

Sumeria Computer Game v0.2

As promised last week, there's a new version of the Sumeria computer game available for download and testing.

This version is a big step up from the last version in that you can actually play the game! However, there's still some functionality missing: noticeably, there's no AI (all human players) and you have to play on a single machine (no play by email/online functionality).

The setup file will run on a windows computer, and requires version 3.5 of the .Net Framework. Please feel free to download and play it and post any feature requests, feedback or bug reports in the comments below.

Sumeria 2 Player Expansion

As I've mentioned before, when Sumeria was initially submitted to me it was for 2-4 players. During playtesting one of my playtesters spotted a problem with the scoring in the two player game. I was at this point sailing fairly close to the wind (sounds familiar!) and so Dirk and I made the decision to take the two player game out of the mix.

At a later stage we came up with a solution to the two player scoring conundrum, but by that point it was too late to add it back into the game.

Last year at Essen I had one game that had been out just over a month. I had very few distributors, so very few people owned a copy of it. It was to all intents and purposes a new release for Essen. This year I've a game that came out last September, and was at Essen last year, a game that came out last November (so hasn't been to Essen yet) and a game that came out in June. While most of my European distributors haven't picked up Sumeria, I can't really describe it as an Essen release - it's been out for three months.

There had been interest in the two player game and I had considered making an expansion at some point. When it became clear to me that sales over the Summer wouldn't be good enough to fund a new release for Essen (and in fact I've not received a submission that was ready to go in time anyway), I started thinking of ways to entice people to my stand. Since all three of the games I've got are theoretically available in stores - why come to my stand at Essen to get them when there's so many shiny new things coming out?

So I went back to the 2 player expansion idea. I wanted to make the expansion as cheap as possible for the buying public to make it more of a impulse purchase, and also to allow me to provide it as an Essen promo freebie - buy Sumeria at my Essen stand and you get this limited expansion for free!

That lead me down a particular route. If I sell a game to shops via distributors the retail price should be 5 times the manufacturing cost - i.e. if it costs me £2 to make it, it should retail for £10 (it doesn't work out quite like this - my margins are tighter). If however I only sell to people directly (at cons and via my website) then I can price it at 2 times the manufacturing cost (e.g. a £1 per copy manufacturing cost leads to a £2 retail price). I choose the latter route. The next decision was packaging. If you're selling to shops you want a nice pretty box that will look good on the shelf and attract peoples' eye. If you're selling directly you don't need that. The expansion can come in a baggie and the customer can store it inside the original box. This further cuts manufacturing costs (no box art needed and a baggie is much cheaper than a small box), and fits with my "small box, no wasted space" ethos. Again that cheaper option is the route I chose.

The expansion arrived at my house last Monday. I'd chosen to have it delivered to my house instead of the warehouse since it would be quite small and I was expecting it to be delivered by a courier. Instead a 7.5ton lorry turned up with the expansion on a pallet. It was five medium-sized boxes, which failed to even fill the bottom of a pallet - seemed like overkill! The lorry driver helped me cut the shrink-wrapping off the pallet and lift the five boxes off the pallet, which I then carried into my office. Opening the first box the expansions looked like exactly what I was expecting - no surprises there.

It's not been a completely smooth ride though. On top of the mental week of Essen travel disasters, there was a small problem with the expansion. In the two player game each player takes four turns per round, whereas in the three and four player games you only get three. The sticker in the expansion is designed to cover the three space turn track with a new four space turn track.

Unfortunately the sticker is a bit too transparent, so if you put it over the turn track as designed you can see the old turn track underneath. It looks rubbish.

Fortunately there is a solution: Cut the sticker in half between the three and four spaces and throw away the 1-3 bit. Add the 4 bit to the board just below and to the right of the three space printed on the board.

Works fine :) But it's a bit inconvenient and doesn't reflect especially well on my production values. I think I'll include a slip of paper in each bag at Essen explaining this fix.

Back - Sort Of

Well, I've had a week off, mostly spent lying in bed and I have to tell you I'm exhausted!

The treatment I was receiving last week was five days of intravenous infusion with an experimental drug. The drug (originally used for treating Leukaemia) works by intentionally destroying your immune system. Since in MS your own immune system starts attacking the myelin sheaths that insulate your nerves in your brain and spinal cord, the study doctors figure that killing off your immune system and letting it regrow might fix the problem. The results of previous clinical trials have been very encouraging.

Of course, the downside is I've just spent a week being pumped full of very toxic chemicals and now I have no immune system, so I'm very vulnerable to infection and food poisoning. Also, I'm completely knackered, despite not having done anything for a week. I'm under Doctor's orders to take things very easy for a couple of weeks.

Much as I'd like to continue lying on the sofa watching telly (it was pretty much all I was capable of this weekend), I've got a swollen inbox now after a week off, and I need to get the art for the Sumeria 2-player expansion to the manufacturers by Friday, so I can't just totally slack off.

I'm also keen to make some progress on the Sumeria computer game which has been on hold for a few weeks. I'll have to see what I've got the energy for...

Sumeria 2-Player Expansion

Sumeria was originally submitted to me as a 2-4 player game. I played the 2-player version several times and really liked it.

During play-testing, one of my blind playtesters found a weakness in the two-player game that made the second city-state worth less than the third (and the choice of influence counters pretty meaningless). Since the 2-player version also added to the cost of the game (since it needed extra wooden pieces), Dirk and I decided to drop it so the game was only 3-4 player. Later in play-testing a slight change to the 2-player rules fixed these problems, but it stayed out of the game as released.

Until now! I've decided to release the 2-player version of Sumeria as a promo expansion at Essen. What's the deal? Buy Sumeria from me at Essen and you'll get the limited edition promo expansion free! It includes 6 extra trader pieces in each of the four player colours, a sticker to add to the board to show a fourth player turn per round and a rulesheet (in English and German again). All wrapped up in a plastic baggie.

If you've already got a copy of Sumeria (well done :-) ), the expansion will be available to pre-order from my website shortly, and if I have any left after Essen they will continue to be available there. To keep the cost to a minimum, I've decided on baggie packaging rather than a small box, this means it probably won't be available in shops ever, but I hope it will only cost £2 plus postage and packaging from my website.

This is my first time making both an expansion and a convention promo, it will be interesting to see how it goes...

Sumeria V0.1

Well, the whole trying to run this through BoardGameGeek thing didn't work very well - it's down at the moment :-(

So I'll do it here instead. The first version of the Sumeria computer game is now available (ish!) on my website: Sumeria computer game with any luck if you download that MSI file and then run it, it will install Sumeria on your computer.

First a few provisos. This is a very early version to get some feedback about the user interface - very little actually works yet. What does work:

• You can install it
• You can start a new game from the Game menu
• You can choose the number of players, their names and the colours they play.
• You can highlight a state by moving the mouse over its tile
• You can set up the game by seeding the board with the appropriate number of traders.

What doesn't work? Anything else! Most notably you can't play the game. There's no AI and you can't get the game to work across the internet with remote players - it's three or four humans around the one computer.

The next release will incorporate feedback on this one and allow you to play the game on a single machine with no AI.

I'd really appreciate any feedback you have on what I've done so far - in the comments here for until BGG is back up.

Sumeria Computer Game

The first bit of work I did on the Sumeria computer game was a bottom up approach, write the code which kept track of the game mechanics and state. Though it was great to get it working there was very little to show for it, apart from a test suite that told me all my tests were passing - there was no UI at all.

The last couple of days I've been concentrating on getting some UI written so there's something to show for my efforts. There's not much, but enough to show you what I've achieved so far. Initially I've been working on getting the beginning of the game set up and displayed and the basic UI coded. The next step will be to get the game playable, but at least it visibly does something now!

Initially, the game shows an empty window (I'll put a splash screen there eventually), and allows you to read the rules (from the Help menu) and start a new game (from the Game menu):

Starting a game creates a game and shows the players position and the board and tiles as at the start of the game:

Although you can't do anything yet, I've included a couple of UI feedback mechanisms. When you move the mouse over one of the state tiles at the bottom of the board, that tile and state tile it corresponds to are highlighted:

Similarly, when you move the mouse over a settlement, that settlement, its state and state tile are all highlighted:

It's not much, but you can already see where I'm hoping to go with this.

I'm intending to run this as a semi-Agile development effort. I'll be releasing early versions for feedback from members of the game-playing public. I hope to post the first version (with basic UI but nothing working game-wise) on Wednesday. If you'd like to take part in the testing, or just look at what I've done, please subscribe to this BGG thread where I'll post release announcements and download instructions.

Computer Versions of Board Games

Last night I started working on a computerised version of Sumeria. Why invest the time and effort to make a computerised version of an existing board game? What's in it for the (potential) customer?

• It allows people to quickly and easily see if it's a game they would like without the expense of a purchase.
• It's a chance to learn the rules where they are constrained and don't rely on someone's interpretation of the rulebook.
• It allows you to play when you can't get a group together.
• Some allow you to play offline - i.e. each player takes his turn and then notifies the others it's ready for theirs - this requires much less player time in one go than a full face-to-face game.
• In a thinky game, perceived downtime is reduced since you're not sat waiting for an opponent to have a go - you're just notified when he has.

Sounds good so far. So why don't all publishers make (or allow to be made) computerised versions of their games?

• It might lead to fewer sales: why buy a game if you can play it online for free?
• It's expensive in terms of time and effort. Programmers aren't cheap - I know - I used to be one.

You can do essentially three different type of computer-based board games:

• Real-time against the computer (AI)
• Real-time against human opponents
• Offline against human opponents

Each has their pros and cons. Against the computer only means you don't have to worry about network programming or database interaction - the whole thing can be done more simply. In one sense - you need to come up with some AI that the computer players use, which is more difficult. Real-time against other people means you don't need to write any AI, but the downside is you need to write all the code necessary for client-server interaction. Interactive games are probably better for simpler, quicker games, where there is little downtime waiting for an opponent to have their go. You will probably need to provide some form of instant communication too - a chat window or voice communications. Finally, the offline method is like an old play-by-email game, but with a better interface. On your turn you get a notification (via email for example) that it's your turn. You get to see what has changed since you last looked and then you take your turn and the next player is notified. This method will turn a short, fun game into a very long experience, but for the more complicated games it might take the pressure off a bit, allowing players to concentrate more on their strategies without the pressure of the other players leaning over the board asking you to hurry up!

I'm thinking I'll try to get version for Sumeria against the computer working first, if that works ok I can always look at getting the offline version done afterwards. I'm working in C#.

I Could Do With A Twitter Account

I've just had confirmation that Sumeria arrived at the warehouse on Friday.

All systems go!

Pre-orders

I've spent the last four days painting rooms in my new house with my parents who came up for a few days to help out (thanks Mum and Dad!). I've also been sorting out the Sumeria pre-orders briefly in the mornings and evenings.

Friday morning I posted the new version of the website as planned and sent the emails to all my pre-order customers. I don't feel comfortable taking their money up front, months in advance of the product arriving, so instead all I do is take a note of their name and email address and add them to the list. When the games are delivered I send an email to all the pre-order customers telling them how to pay or offering them the chance to pull out if they've changed their minds. Doing it this way makes it easier for people to pull out, which might be considered a bad thing, but I'd much rather that, than customers felt like I'd been sat on their money for ages, or they had to fight to get a refund if they'd decided to buy it through another channel or no longer wanted it. As it happens only one person has dropped out at this point, since they figure they can get it cheaper locally when it becomes available.

This time, with the imminent launch event at the UK Games Expo, a lot of my UK pre-order customers are electing to collect their copies at the Expo. This is better for everyone, since they don't have to pay postage and I don't have to go to the Post Office and paying cash means PayPal don't take a chunk out of my earnings :-)

I'm still waiting to hear from twelve of my pre-order customers who I'm expecting to post copies to. These will hopefully pay over the next few days (if they do it before 9am tomorrow I'll be able to ship their copies from York tomorrow afternoon). When I don't hear anything I'm never sure whether they've silently changed their minds and want to back out, haven't got around to it yet or my email hasn't got through. I usually send a chaser email after a week or so, just in case the first one didn't make it.

Tonight I'll be addressing all the packaging for those customers who've already paid. That way all I have to do in York tomorrow is slip a copy in the packaging and take it to the Post Office.

Tomorrow I'm setting off early and heading up to the warehouse (I'll phone them before I leave as I haven't had any confirmation that the games have arrived). In York I'll pick up enough copies for the pre-orders and then hand-deliver a few to friends before posting the rest. I'm staying the night at Paul's and going to his Monday night games night that I used to attend when I lived in York. Tuesday I'll fill the car to the gills and drive home. I should be home in time to check my email to see if any more pre-orders have paid while I've been away and get to the local Post Office.

Wednesday will be a slightly quieter day, I've got to wait in for a removals company survey and I'll also send off the first couple of stocking orders (US and Germany).

Busy, busy, busy :-)

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.

Postal Theft

Yesterday was a very busy day. In addition to a bunch of business stuff I needed to do, I also needed to sort out a few things regarding the new house we're buying, which took much longer than necessary.

I did manage to get to the Post Office just in time to send the Sumeria prototype to the UK Games Expo guys to allow them to judge it for Game of the Year. I also had a few prototypes to send back to designers at the same time.

I've just heard from the UK Games Expo guys that the packaging for the Sumeria prototype arrived today as expected, sadly the contents are absent without leave. This was my only prototype, so now I have to quickly knock up another prototype to send off to them. Hopefully, this one won't go missing again.

In other news, the people who played Sumeria at the weekend have started to rate it on BoardGameGeek, so it's climbing nearer towards the 30 ratings it needs to get ranked, and I've been sent a Russian translation of the rules to Sumeria which I need to layout and post on my website. Things are moving on...

Good News / Bad News

Which do you want first?

The increased discount has lead to a lot of extra pre-orders for Sumeria, which is great, I could do with some more, but every little helps :-). I've mentioned it here, on BoardGameGeek and in my newsletter, plus W. Eric Martin has tweeted about it on Boardgame News. Not sure where else I should mention it really. Maybe Facebook?

The bad news is that I've been blacklisted by Microsoft. Since my last email newsletter went out, all Microsoft email addresses are bouncing my emails. So that's: @hotmail.com, @live.com and @msn.com. This is really annoying. I've sent out the newsletter and they've received it, they then reply asking above the Sumeria deal and when I reply to them it bounces. At that point I have to resort to re-sending the email from my personal GMail account.

This is especially annoying since the wording of the bounce email seems to imply that the blacklisting is in response to a Microsoft customer complaint. Everyone on my list is on my list because they have asked to be there. At the bottom of each email there are 'unsubscribe' instructions. Now I've got to find out how to go about un-blacklisting myself.

Tomorrow I'll be doing some more sales visits to local-ish shops, so most of today will be spent preparing for that. I popped into a couple in Bristol (we were down there for the weekend visiting family) - one seemed quite interested in It's Alive! and Sumeria, the other had a very small stock of board games, including Carpe Astra :-)

Pre-Orders

Pre-orders are a great way to cut out the middle man and help both the publisher and the customer. Publishers usually offer the pre-ordering customer a discount in return for either cash up front (helping to pay for the production) or a commitment to buy the game direct from the publisher.

Pre-ordering helps the publisher by providing them with more income that they would get selling the games through shops and distributors and also providing early return on investment. Normally, selling to distributors it's at least a month after delivery that the publisher will see any money, since the usual invoice terms are NET30 (payable 30 days after invoicing). In the case of cash up front (which I don't do!) it also allows the publisher to part-finance the production of the game using customers money - which reduces the risk. It also gets some copies of the games out in the hands of the playing public very quickly - which will hopefully lead to quicker referral sales where someone who has played someone else's copy wants one of their own.

Pre-ordering also helps the customer - it allows them to get the game cheaper than retail price, and sooner than they would be able to through the shops.

Sounds great so far - who doesn't it help? The shops and distributors that have been cut out as middlemen! Although, if the early copies that went to pre-orderers get played and lead to more sales then it will indirectly help them. Obviously, once the game has widespread distribution continuing to sell it at a crazy discount from the publishers website will really hurt the shops, since the publisher can definitely sell it cheaper than shops. For that reason, once the game is available most publishers close their pre-order offers, so as not to undercut the shops who are also their customers.

My pre-ordering process has always been: I offer a 30% discount to anyone who signs up before the game arrives at my warehouse. Once it has arrived, I email everyone who has signed up offering them the chance to pay (and get the cheap copy), or ignore it - no obligation to buy. It's all done using PayPal buttons and a hidden webpage (a page on my website with no links to it, other than the one in the emails I send out). I also offer free delivery to anyone who wants to collect the game at a forthcoming convention.

Seeing as there's a credit crunch on and everyone is feeling the pinch - I've decided to increase the pre-order discount on Sumeria to 40%! Yup, if you pre-order you get it for £15 instead of the usual £25 (plus postage and packing). I had hoped the exchange rate between the GBP and the Euro would enable me to reduce the retail price of Sumeria from £25 to £22 (same as Carpe Astra) but unfortunately nothing is doing on that front so I'm doing this offer instead to help out my most loyal customers. If you're interested just send me an email. If you've already pre-ordered, don't worry, you'll get the extra discount too.

Case Study: Getting Sumeria to the Printers

I thought it might be interesting/useful to see what is involved when sending a game to the printers.

I'm getting Sumeria manufactured in Germany by Ludo Fact, the same company that did such an excellent job on Carpe Astra. So what is the process?

The process begins many months before the game is ready, by requesting a quote from the manufacturers. I tend to ask for quotes for a few different sized runs so I can see how much cheaper per game a larger run would be, and how much more expensive in total it would be. For example I asked for quotes for 2,000, 3,000 and 4,000 copies of Sumeria. The quote comes back and Ludo Fact show a breakdown of where all the costs come from (e.g. the cost of the box, the board, the punchboards, the wooden pieces, etc.) so you can make a few changes if necessary in an attempt to reduce the price or improve the component quality. Ludo Fact show their quotes with the cost per 1,000 games so you can easily compare the prices, but they don't include the cost of proofs and tooling costs and obviously you need to consider additional costs such as bank charges, prototyping costs, art costs, etc.

Ludo Fact take about 8-10 weeks to manufacture a small run like one of mine, and they don't require everything up front. The first time you order they do want half payment up front, but for later runs they will accept payment on delivery. The 8-10 weeks is due to the time required to manufacture the wooden pieces, so in the first instance all they need is a signed order so they can go ahead and place the order for the wooden pieces from their supplier. They will send out a 'white sample' of the box and boards to show you how the various bits will fit together inside the box. The white sample is made from all the correct materials, just not printed, so it can be used to check the weight of the finished item as well.

The next stage for Sumeria was to FTP the artwork for the punchboards and the gameboard, and that wasn't required until two weeks after the order was placed. The artwork is checked over by their data quality department (who are very thorough and found several problems with the Carpe Astra art - but none with Sumeria :-) ), and if necessary new art is requested. Once the art has been approved you are sent a proof and a plot for each component. The proof is colour-accurate showing what the components will look like. If you've ever tried printing colour files you'll notice that each printer prints slightly different colours, which in turn are slightly different from how they appear on the screen - the proofs are guaranteed to be the same as the finished items. Since you pay extra from the proofs you can choose which components to have proofs of, and you can choose to have proofs that are slightly smaller than the finished item, or only cover some of them (e.g. a selection of cards from the deck - not all of them). Plots on the other hand are not colour accurate (and in fact are often hideously garish!), but they show all the components and any cut lines for you to check that things line up correctly. These need to be checked and approved in writing to the manufacture to allow them to proceed.

The last of the artwork for Sumeria (the box and rules art) was required a further two weeks after the boards art. Again, it gets FTPed to their server, their data quality department check it over and send out the proofs and plots for approval.

The final piece of the puzzle will be a production run sample of the wooden pieces (complete with a zip-loc bag which they'll send on to me when the wooden pieces arrive at their factory from the suppliers.

Once everything is ready at their factory they will assemble the games, box them, shrink-wrap them, put them in cases, put the cases on pallets and shrink-wrap the pallets. About a week later those will arrive at my warehouse, and I'll get an invoice to pay for the manufacturing.

Sumeria is about half-way through the process at the moment - I sent them the last of the artwork on Monday, and I've received the proofs and plots of the boards, with the box and rules due early next week. I'm due to receive the games in week 21, a week before the UK Games Expo where Sumeria is due to be launched.

The Saga of the Box Design

When you get your copy of Sumeria (you are all going to buy one, aren't you?), take a minute to look at the back of the box, and consider briefly just how much of a bitch it was for me to do.

The saga begins on Friday with me (your sheepskin-clad, over-muscled hero - though I like to think with slightly more intelligence than your standard-issue barbarian hero) trying to get the box and rules artwork to the printers in Germany by the end of the day. I decided fairly early on that I wouldn't have time on Friday to get the box tray art done, so I checked that the box art could wait until Monday without delaying things too much. With that out of the way my plan was to finish the rest of the art, get it FTP-ed to the printers and then go to a local print shop to get a printout of the board done. I had two print-outs of the board with me, my home-made quad folded board with the final artwork but a bunch of printing errors from my printer and the colour-correct proof from the German manufacturers which they had folded in quarters to fit in an envelope - so I couldn't use either of those.

The trials began sending the rest of the artwork to the printers. My computer decided to inexplicably go very slow on-and-off during the afternoon (at one point it took half an hour to shutdown) so by the time I finally got everything sent off it was 4:30pm. Running a bit late. I thought I'd better check what time the print shop shut and they shut at 4:45pm. Damn, I'd missed them and would have to go Saturday morning.

Saturday morning, with visiting parents in tow, I went to the print shop and got the print out of the board done. We spent the rest of the day hanging out with my folks, and the next morning I got Dad to help me with setting up a photo of the game. When it came to make the mock-up board for the photo I realised the print shop had somehow managed to print it out 80% of the correct size, so it would no longer fit with all the other components. Grrrr. Still, I got Dad to help me set up the home-made board, and show me how to get a good photo of it. We could do the layout and tweaking with the photo of the home-made board and I could get a correct print out on Monday and drop that in instead. We took the photos, picked one, did the layout and then in the evening I did the associated stuff (barcodes, logos, descriptive text, etc.). I then got Michael (thanks!) to do a German translation of the box text and in the meantime I went back to the print shop, got a correct size print-out, came home, glued it onto some board (I just made a full-size open board, rather than faff around making a quad folding board that I can't do tidily) set the picture back up, took some more photos stripped out the background in the photos and added the new photo to the box.

Getting it done was far more complicated than it needed to be, but I'm very pleased with the end result:

You Know You've Been Neglecting Your Blog When...

You get emails asking if you've died.

I've been busy. And not busy. Last weekend The Wife and I went to Newcastle for a couple of days break. It was great, we got to hang out with our friends up there and just chill out for a couple of days. On our return we've been busy sorting out stuff for the house we're buying and I had to make an unscheduled trip to York.

Wednesday I had to go to York to collect the white sample of Sumeria which had been sent to my old address (I'd forgotten to inform the German manufacturers that I'd moved house). The white sample is a box, insert, punchboards and gameboard all covered with the correct paper. The punchboards aren't punched and there's no printing done, but it gives you an example of the size, weight and finish of things. Sumeria will be in the same size box as Carpe Astra and the board and tiles will be on the same 2mm thick, linen-finished card as the Carpe Astra pieces. I was really impressed by how professional Carpe Astra felt - the Germans really do a great job.

To make the trip up to York worth the effort, (there's six hours driving involved) I spent the night at Paul's, got to hang out with him and Lisa, play some prototypes and then the next morning I popped in to Travelling Man (the comics and games shop in York) and went to their Leeds head office. I used the trip as a sales trip - introducing Carpe Astra (which neither store had picked up yet) and Sumeria and enquiring how It's Alive! was doing. In the York branch, It's Alive! is apparently a regular seller - they always re-order it if it's sold out and it sells out fairly often. Since moving from selling copies personally at conventions and through my website to selling to distributors I've no idea how well things are doing - so it was nice to get some positive feedback from the shop floor. It was also good to be able to tell them that Carpe Astra had spent most of the last two weeks at the top of the BoardGameGeek Hot Games list.

On my return an email from Ted informed me that Carpe Astra has been added to Bruno Faidutti's Ideal Game Library and got an honourable mention in Mike Siggin's Sumo Awards. Two more pieces of information that would have been good to be able to mention had I known about them one day earlier! Still, I'm planning to do some more sales trips early next week and I'll be able to use that information then.

Things are now very busy - I've got to send the box art and the rules for Sumeria to the printers today (though I'm not going to be able to send them all today - the box bottom will have to wait until Monday :-( ) and my parents are coming to stay for the weekend this evening - so I've some preparation to do for their visit too. My dad used to be an art teacher, so I'll be able to rope him into helping with the box bottom design and the photo of the game over the next couple of days.