En Français!

I'll be spending this morning laying out a French translation for It's Alive! that I've received from a French customer. He's sent me the translation as a word document, so I'll get it into PDF form and put it on my website.

Carpe Astra is coming along nicely, I'm still taking a few pre-orders each day (now that the ad is up on Boardgame News along with a preview by Eric Martin. Interest seems fairly high, and the distributors are getting in line to stock it too, which is great. I need to contact a few shops in the UK, see if I can drum up some interest via that route.

Once those two tasks are out of the way my next order of business is to do some more work on Jorvik and possibly my sci-fi game, back to game design for the first time in ages :-)

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.

Wow! That's A Nice Surprise

So as you saw, I offered my American chums a special offer limited to the first five people to reply to a post on BoardGameGeek. This happened to coincide with Eric Martin of Board Game News writing an article about Border Reivers. Then I sat back, wondering if I'd get any takers.

I did.

Boy, Did I. Yesterday I sold six copies, including one to a friend of a friend who's played the game a fair bit and wanted a copy as a present. But the five free shipping copies disappeared in twelve hours. That's six copies in twelve hours. I keep track of my weekly sales, and yesterday was my best ever week of sales. In one day. Sweet!

The publicity is still paying off, I sold another copy today to the States, which means I've now sold out of the stock I made over Christmas. I really need to make some progress on the batch I started last week, I've been very busy, so they've been on the back burner. Now I really need them!

Tomorrow I'm going to Beyond Monopoly for a bit, then to Leeds to meet a potential artist for Codename: Monster, and then I'm having friends round for games in the evening! Busy day.

Woohoo!

I found out today that the copy I recently sold to the States was as a result of the BBC MindGames review - so it has generated some interest at least.

I was worried that the address looked wrong, so I held off posting the copy for nearly a week, while emailing trying to get the address confirmed. I eventually posted it on Monday without getting confirmation, as I was getting worried about hanging on to the money for so long without posting the copy. Today I got confirmation that the address was correct, and I was thanked for my customer service! I was worried I'd be berated for dragging my heels - so that was good.

I also heard back from Rick Thornquist, the old editor of Board Game News about an article he was considering doing on Border Reivers several months ago. He had emailed me to let me know that since I'd emailed him Eric Martin had taken over (which I knew about), and to forward the conversation to Eric. Eric also contacted me the same day to see about an article - excellent!

I also got permission to demo and sell Border Reivers at Beer and Pretzels in May - it'll be my largest convention yet.

Today was a good day.

I'm In The Press: Part Two

Last night I received my advance copy of BBC MindGames magazine featuring the review of Border Reivers. The review is on the This Month page, and if you're familiar with the format it's the large review at the top of the page. It features a really nice photo of the game and box, the company URL, the price, a text review, a summary and a star rating (out of five). The review is generally pretty positive but is critical of the readibility of the rules - this was to be expected as I had to go down to teach the reviewer how to play the game.

Overall I'm really pleased with the review, here's hoping it generates some sales...

I'm In The Press!

I got home from work tonight to find a big envelope waiting for me - it's Issue 121 of Flagship Magazine featuring an interview with yours truly on page 12. Cool.

They've somehow made me sound a lot more interesting than I remember being :-)

It's quite exciting, and hopefully it'll generate some sales... Thanks to Mike Dean for the interview questions, and Flagship for publishing it.