Independent

If I had to describe Eurydice Games in a word it would be Independent. Not in the Indie sense. Though we're that too.

Independent in the sense we do everything ourselves.

Self reliant. To a fault.

Not because I'm a control freak (though I probably am). But because it's free. In money, if not in time. And we started with very little money.

It opens doors. 

We design the games ourselves. No royalties.

Paul makes the games by hand in his garage. It means we can do small runs: 200-400 copies. Which costs a lot less than the 1,000 minimum order of your standard Chinese factory.

And ships them himself. So no freight and fulfilment charges.

I do the website. And the graphic design. And the marketing. And the social media. And the bookkeeping. So no contractor fees.

But things are getting missed. 

Due to lack of time. We have jobs. And families. 

And now we have some money.

Independent doesn't scale.

Time to lose control.

Contract

Last week was rubbish. This one was better.

I've designed lots of games. Most of them are rubbish. Or broken. Or at best mediocre.

A few, I believe, have merit. I've invested my time, my effort and my money in self-publishing those. Self-publishing. It’s a bit of a vanity project isn’t it?

I've also signed and published other designers' games. Under contract. Games I felt were good enough to invest my time, effort and money in. Objectively. I didn’t have an emotional connection to them - these weren’t my babies.

US Army / Public Domain

I've never had a game published by someone else. Signed a contract with another publisher. Had someone decide my game was good enough for them to invest their time, effort and money in. Crossed that hurdle.

I'm not sure why that seems significant. But it does.

I've been publishing games since 2006. Six titles. Thousands of sales.

A few years ago a (non-industry) friend got a board game published. I was proud and happy for him.

And a tiny bit jealous.

This week I signed a contract. From a publisher. Might I cross that hurdle?

It's Alive! With Yehuda

Yehuda was in York for a couple of days so I invited him round to our tiny flat. It also gave me a chance to give him his free copies of It's Alive!, a couple for other Israelis to save them postage, and to get mine signed.

I've been reading Yehuda's blog for well over a year now, but I never expected to meet him. It was a bit weird, this was the first person I'd got to know over the internet that I'd met in person. Put your minds at rest dear readers, there were no red carnations in button-holes and his daughter Tal was there as a chaperone!

Firstly I handed over Yehuda's copies, plus two others for other Israelis that Yehuda had kindly agreed to take home with him to save them the postage costs. Then I got him to sign a couple of games, those for me, my family and Dave (who had helped out at the It's Alive! launch at the UK Games Expo). We talked about how It's Alive! was going, and what my plans were for the future. We played a couple of games (one basic, one advanced), and then a couple of games of PitchCar which Yehuda had never played before.

Before we called it a night we signed a slightly amended contract, which changed some wording I was worried about, and amended the sub-licence fees that Yehuda was interested in.

It was a nice night, and it was great to play the game with the designer.

I've now heard back from the printers that they can do the boxes for It's Alive! I can only afford 150 of them unfortunately, but even that will save me over 110 hours work, so it's worth doing. I just need to send them the artwork and pay them for their troubles. This means that the waiting time for those towards the end of the orders list for It's Alive! should significantly decrease.

In other news I now have four prototypes on the way from three designers in the US and UK. I need to start thinking about Reiver Games' next game, and at the moment neither Jorvik or Artist are ready enough for consideration. I foresee a big play-off on the horizon when we play all the games back-to-back to help me in my decision-making process.