Showing posts with label Publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Publishing. Show all posts

Friday, June 22, 2012

GameSalute

I've submitted a few games to GameSalute, and they've given me some positive feedback.  I had a great talk with Dan Yarrington today; I'm really hoping I can work with them to get my games out to a wider audience.  They seem like a really great organization for independent designers; very much like a traditional publisher in some ways (very useful ways, like playtesting, manufacturing, distribution, graphic design, etc.) but also cognizant of the modern indie game realities of Kickstarter and group funding, and willing to let designers retain input and some design control through the design and production process.  Apparently growing like gangbusters, too.

Really exciting - I hope we can make it work for some of my designs.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Books vs. games

I've just finished writing the first draft of a novel - a project I've been working on off and on for seven years. Now that it's done, I've been doing what I should be doing, namely having people read it and give me feedback, and of course, doing what I should not yet be wasting time doing, namely looking into publishing options. I was struck by the similarity between the process for books and the process for games.

 For both, you have two basic options - try to get a traditional publisher to put it out, or try publishing yourself.

 The big problems with the traditional route, for both books and games, are:

  • Only a tiny fraction of games/novels get published 
  • Whether you get published or not, the path there is fraught with rejection, expense, and heartache 
  • It takes forever 

The big problems with the self-publishing route are:

  • You have to invest in printing up your book/game up front
  • You may never, ever attract an audience, so your print run and the money that you put into it will be wasted
  • Your work will be perceived as (and may well be) lesser quality than the published route, which comes with editing, consultation, and revision built in.

In both industries, there are new, inexpensive options for print-on-demand, which is awesome.  With games, there's The Game Crafter, SuperiorPOD, and others.  With books, there's Lulu, CreateSpace, and many more.  These options offer a chance to sell your books or games one at a time, so there's no big investment up front - that's a huge sea change from even ten years ago.  Unfortunately, they're also somewhat expensive, so there's not much room for a profit margin going this way.

There are two big differences, though:

  1. With books, there are now e-readers like the Kindle and Nook.  The customer already has these things.  That's great for authors, because you can send them a digital file at essentially no cost to yourself, so even at a low price, you get a good return per book.  It's good for readers, because they can get books for very low prices (after they've shelled out for the reader, that is) if they're willing to buy from indie authors and risk the chance that the book is crappy.
  2. With games, there's Kickstarter, which has become a big new funding mechanism for games.  Actually, it's really more of a pre-sale mechanism, which gets the game designer or publisher the money they need up front.  That means there's no risk of financial ruin for the designer/publisher, because they already have the money.  The risk is distributed amongst many customers, who have less money at stake and risk only that the game will suck.
So, what's the lesson here?  Two things.

First, it would be awesome if there were some kind of widely-used standardized e-game platform (like the Kindle or Nook) that you could have people buy and then distribute games to.  I know, in a lot of ways this is just a software problem - almost everybody who buys games has a computer or iPad or xBox or something, and there are boardgame implementations for all of these.  But most of those platforms aren't ideal for boardgames, and the coding is nearly all one-off, customized.  If you had a standardized platform that could handle typical game-related mechanics (large board, cards, dice, tokens, etc.), you could design a game, implement it for the platform, and distribute it to everybody who has one, for a low cost.  There are attempts to do this online - boardgame simulators, places like SpielByWeb and Yucata.de - but these are still web-based, and not usually something a family would sit around and do together.  There have been some efforts to do something like this (e.g. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/468008685/global-gamespace) but I'm not familiar with any that have succeeded to the point of having dedicated hardware and a real boardgame feel.

Second, it would be cool to use Kickstarter for novels. A number of book projects are in fact funded via Kickstarter, but the ones I've seen usually books with very high production costs, like books of photos, or comic books, or that kind of thing.  There is a fiction section on Kickstarter, too, though, and it has some novels listed.  As a novel writer, if you knew you had sales lined up for a book, and you had the money in hand from your Kickstarter campaign, you could use that funding to support yourself while you worked on the book, allowing you to dedicate more time to it and finish faster.  You'd also cut out the commissions you have to pay, either to a traditional publisher or to Amazon and Barnes and Noble for distributing e-books.  Given that e-books are on the rise, and that printing books is pretty cheap, I think  Kickstarter is probably far less important to getting a book published than it has been to getting a game published.

Just spitballing here, but it's been an interesting thing to consider.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Kickstarter for retailers

An interesting post on Kickstarter from Tao, the guy (?) running the game store Starlit Citadel, a Canadian hobby game store in Vancouver.  He describes some of the difficulties game stores have in supporting Kickstarter campaigns.  Even though he'd like to carry some of the more popular or interesting Kickstarter projects, he can't make it work financially without a fairly generous retailer package.

The only way I think it might work is if he gets a pretty good bulk discount for retailers, and then is able to keep the game in stock for longer than the game is available via Kickstarter.  But that's tricky, and maybe not realistic; I bet most Kickstarter publishers produce more than they distribute via Kickstarter, and then he's competing with direct sales (and the much better margins) with the publisher, who's got more room to discount.

I don't think his doomsday scenario will happen (all games funded via preorders through Kickstarter, which would mean that game stores essentially die).  Kickstarter folks are generally not expert in distribution (although some are) and aren't in it to sustain a long-term business (Tasty Minstrel would be a counterexample, but they're not typical).

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Pitching advice

Some good-sounding advice from Corey Young here, guest writing at Hyperbole Games.  I've never tried to pitch a game to a publisher at a convention, but this seems like a sound set of guidelines for doing so, and if Corey can be believed, it may actually work.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Kickstarter dangers

Great post over at BGG by a Nathan McNair, an aspiring Kickstarter self-publisher at Pandasaurus Games, who points out that even with Kickstarter, the economics of publishing don't work until you're at a huge number of units.  He says he's $2000 in the hole from his publishing effort before even starting Kickstarter.  I'm probably around $1,200.

A big chunk of that is the filing fee plus two years of LLC fees ($450); not sure I'd recommend that for everybody starting out, but I think it was the right move for me to protect my other assets.

Another big chunk is web hosting (probably around $200); I saved by pre-paying for this site for several years, but I had to put up the cash at the start.

The rest is mostly printing up demo/test copies of my games; I've spent probably $300-$400 on that for many different items plus shipping.  Beyond that, some incidentals like toner and paper; I've also bought a bunch of glass stones, dice, and pawns and such for testing copies.

As income, I have very little.  I have a relatively low number of low-margin sales from TheGameCrafter.com for my games published there, and I have one larger multi-unit sale of Diggity to a friend who bought a number of copies as holiday gifts.  I probably netted $40 on that.

So, even if I did a Kickstarter campaign, unless I hit it out of the park, I'd never get back those sunk expenses. Kickstarter does two things well:

  1. allows you to raise capital if you don't have enough to self-fund a print run 
  2. allows you to eliminate the middle-man costs of distributors and stores
The first is extremely important if you don't have money to burn; your game doesn't happen without it.

The second is a big deal; you go from getting about 25% of the sales price through distribution to 90% of the sales price (after Kickstarter fees).  However, as I've commented on before, unless you're making more than 3000 copies, the math doesn't work anyway - your cost of production is going to be $5-10 even for a small game without moving parts; add shipping and art into that, and you're easily up to $15-20 per game just to get them made.  You're not going to run a Kickstarter campaign selling a simple game for more than $20 or $25 - you're just not competitive with commercial games then - and Kickstarter buyers usually expect shipping to be included in their price.  That's another $5 per game at least.

So, roughly speaking, you don't make money on Kickstarter until you hit a really high sales figure.  Even saying it's 2000 copies, at $25 a pop that means you've got to interest 2000 people and raise $50,000, in a game they've never seen.  A very tall order.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

New Projects On PlanktonGames.com

I have added two of my recent projects to the Plankton Games website - see:

Warped:
http://planktongames.com/warped.php
Horde:
http://planktongames.com/horde.php

Neither of these is published yet, but I wanted to get some info up on the site.






Tuesday, March 6, 2012

New Diggity Art

Got my new version of Diggity, with art from Joshua Bennett, up on TheGameCrafter.com.  The new art looks slick (see it here); my old art is here.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Even more Kickstarter analysis

A good, thoughtful article on Kickstarter funding (actually, the second half of a longer good thoughtful article - read Part I too) from Chris Norwood over at GamerChris.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Chicken Caesar

Image from the Game Salute site. SBBQR? 
Here's a game-production Kickstarter campaign for a game about recreating the Roman empire in a chicken community. I am really curious how the game got going - was it just a title first, or did they build the game and then theme it based on the title, or did it just arise organically?  The name is a terrifically funny fit to the theme of the game, and the fact that the theme is so improbable and unusual just makes it funnier.  The art and graphic design looks really good, too - simple, clear, and totally evoking a chicken-themed Roman milieu (whatever that is).

So, they've got a great name and theme, but what about the details?  They've used the Springboard service from Game Salute, a service about which I'm curious.  There is precious little detail amidst the pretty pictures and hype on the Game Salute site, but what it appears to be is a program where independent game designers can get assistance with publication, including playtesting, advice on game design, publication, and launching a Kickstarter campaign, in addition to a "Seal of Quality" thing.  Of course, these seals are only as useful as their reputation; I'm familiar with some of the games they list on their site, and the ones I know are good games with strong production values.

I'm going to investigate further; if the Game Salute service is relatively inexpensive, it could be great; if they want a huge chunk of the game's budget, then it would be hard to see how it can work with  the already tenuous profit margins on games unless they also can give a big marketing boost.

The only data I've got on that is indirect - the minimum level to buy a game of Chicken Caesar is $40, which seems to include postage.  That's pretty expensive for a game you can't look at a real copy of before buying, but it's consistent with what I know of printing costs for small print runs (at their $20,000 funding goal, $40 means 500 games).

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Mini-cards!

Mini cards (2.5"x1.75") now available at TheGameCrafter.com - this is a big deal; those could be super-useful for not only cards, but also currency, markers, tokens, abilities, etc.  They're far cheaper per card than the regular size at about nine cents a card (if you can get your game into sets of 32).  Very cool - this is one I've been waiting for.

UPDATE: The pricing for these cards isn't actually cheaper than the bigger cards, which is weird.  I was wrong.  I suppose that the cutting and handling are more difficult for these, but they're definitely saving on printing and ink, so I'm not sure what the economics are.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Kickstarter and publishing

The folks at the Opinionated Gamer visit several past themes on the value of Kickstarter to designers, publishers, and players.  It was interesting to me that most of these folks, who are designers, enthusiasts, and players themselves, were lukewarm on the idea of Kickstarter, and several said the equivalent of 'I'd never fund something there, of course.'  It makes me wonder who does.

One of the authors who did buy, Ted Alspach, said he'd been unimpressed with most of the games he'd gotten and specifically called out a couple of them, Carnival and Creatures, as disappointing. I explored on BoardgameGeek.com.  Creatures looked kind of like a card-only version of one of my designs, Galapagos, but with fewer body parts, and it only got a 5.8 on BGG's scale, which is a pretty low score for BGG.  Carnival, at a slightly-higher 6.3, looked interesting, but some reviewers (like Ted) said the gameplay was rough and sometimes boring.

Most of these guys agreed with the gist of what I and others have said here before, which is that Kickstarter is:

  1. all good for publishers - their risk and investment is reduced
  2. mostly all good for designers - there are more possible routes to publication, risk is reduced, and self-publishing is far easier, but there may be a temptation to rush to publish an inadequately-tested project.  N.B. I see this in myself, totally, in spades.
  3. a mixed bag for customers/players - they get access to more variety of games, and may see designs that wouldn't get made any other way, but they have to invest before seeing the game and seeing it reviewed, so their money is at risk
The opinionated gamers wanted to add another perspective to this, which is "good for the industry" - I'm not sure anybody can really figure that one out, because you'd have to define what "good" meant.  Lots of little incompletely designed or tested games clamoring for attention and money sounds bad, but lots more people engaged in design, publishing, and investing in the industry sounds really good.

What are some takeaways?  Here are mine, from a various parts of the post:

  • Graphic design sells Kickstarter projects
  • Post your rules with your Kickstarter project so that people can see how the game plays
  • There's significant fear on the part of Kickstarter funders that the game projects won't get made and their money will be lost, although that is rare to unheard-of so far.  Sounds like this might be worth addressing in the video or promotional materials for a Kickstarter project.
  • These guys (admittedly a small sample of game enthusiasts) often buy based on a designer's reputation or past products, and are suspicious of unknown or unpublished designers.  This kind of attitude (while probably helpful to them) is a barrier I'll have to overcome, although it's the same old Catch-22 that exists in all kinds of endeavors - we only publish published authors, or we only hire people with experience. 
  • Kickstarter has reduced the number of design submissions to traditional publishers
  • As I suspected, self-publishers with basements full of unsold games are a real (and sad) thing, and there's apparently a lonely Hall of Failure somewhere at Essen populated by them.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Reviewers willing to take on independent games

The Gamer's Table, a boardgame review site, has started what is to become a series on independent games.  For their first episode, they took a look at Xavier Lardy's Haunted.  From the review, I found it a little tricky to figure out how the game worked, but they seemed to like it after some initial confusion about the rules.

More importantly to me, though, this might be a way to get some exposure for independent games - they seem to have pretty good production values on the videos, and the hosts seem to have played the game and taken the time to think about it.  I've seen more detail in other video reviews (e.g. Tom Vasel's videos through the Dice Tower), but these might be a good way to get some exposure for a new release, even if it's a self-published or print-on-demand one like mine at TheGameCrafter.com

The first episode of The Gamer's Table seems to have about 7,400 views at the time I'm writing this; some from the more recent season have more like 400-500, so it's not a huge audience, but presumably it's a dedicated one seeking out this kind of content.  Tom Vasel's seem to have more like 2,000-3,000, but these are games that probably start with a wider audience already by being published.  Might be worth submitting my stuff.

UPDATE: They're actually up to five episodes on independent games. I watched the fifth episode just now, and the explanation of the game was more detailed and easier to follow.  Neat stuff.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Helpful post on the bidding and manufacturing process

There's a post from Mike Lee at Panda Game Manufacturing over at the Tasty Minstrel Games blog which goes through the steps of getting a game manufactured in China (or elsewhere overseas, I suppose).  A very helpful post covering the whole process, a process I've only taken a couple steps into.

One of the quotes I got for manufacturing Diggity was from Panda, and they were competitive; their products are high quality, at least the couple of them I've seen (e.g. Pandemic, Train of Thought).  I'd definitely recommend them.

Friday, December 9, 2011

TheGameCrafter offers hexes and square cards

TGC Hex card template
TheGameCrafter.com is now offering hex cards and square cards. The hexes are 3.5" the short way, 3.75" diagonal, and the squares are 3.5" on a side.  They're printed 12 to a page (regular poker cards are 18 to a page), and a page of printed cardstock in whatever form you choose is $2.29 at TGC, so if you make your deck divisible by 12, that's 19 cents a card - pretty great.

This is a really cool new feature - I love it when they add new printed options.  This one is especially good because it allows for map-building games (although the tiles are the standard thick glossy cardstock, so not too thick).  I don't think either of these will fit too well in the new tuckbox or printed small box options TGC offers, but they'd go in the big all-purpose 10"x10" boxes they use.

Here are links to the particular description pages with templates for designers:
Hexes here
Squares here

Thursday, December 1, 2011

More printed boxes at TGC.

TheGameCrafter.com medium box (from TGC site)
TheGameCrafter.com adds another box size.  This is a bit bigger (and heftier) than their tuckboxes, and is apparently fully customizable like the tuckboxes.  The foam insert is an interesting touch.  At first sight, it seemed a little cheesy to me, but I haven't seen one in real life, and the more I think about it, the more I think it might work well.  I'm just used to cardboard or plastic inserts rather than foam.  The design seems pretty flexible, but it also doesn't allow a ton of stuff to fit in the box - each of the four bays can hold 68 cards or a small stash of plastic bits.  The box can't hold any of their printed boards other than the 4x4 mini-board size, but it does allow the custom 1.25" token chips with stickers, which are a super-flexible option for many games.

This is maybe more attractive than their full-size box for small games with only cards and bits (no boards).  At $4, it would be a significant fraction of the cost of a game, I'd bet, but it could also look pretty sharp if you print all over the box.  The closure might not stand up to repeated use, but games don't get opened all that much, and I shouldn't judge it before I see it in person.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

More on SuperiorPOD's new service

In an earlier post today, I mentioned SuperiorPOD's new distribution service, and I said I couldn't find much detail on what extra parts they offer.  Well, further research has revealed this page which has a good summary of the other stuff they offer.

The bottom line: more printed products and components and generally cheaper than TheGameCrafter.com's current offerings, especially for game boxes, but still a fairly maddeningly opaque site with hard-to-find templates, details, and pricing.  If you're willing to write and ask, it looks like you can eventually work out what you need, but some folks in the forum above indicate a pretty slow set-up process (extending to months). I'd rather have it readily available and clear, like TGC does.  As of now, it looks like you can't have both things (good prices, more extensive printed component offerings, and possible game store distribution of SuperiorPOD vs. straightforward, easy-to-use interface, easy storefront site, and numerous plastic parts of TGC).

Distribution service

From a new e-mail I got this morning - SuperiorPOD is trying to bridge the gap between print-on-demand, direct sales (which TheGameCrafter and SuperiorPOD itself provide) and getting games into actual retail stores.  The service they've set up is here - Adventure Game Source.  It looks like what they're doing is creating a wholesale style distribution service, similar to what traditionally published games use, that retail stores can order from.  They also claim to have printing capabilities for lots of different parts and packaging.

Key things I don't know yet:

  • How does the MSRP for a game get set?  Given that they're offering a 45% discount off this price for distributors, and that print-on-demand costs are generally far higher than printing a whole bunch of a game at once, this could be tricky.
  • How hard is it to get listed through the service?  They only have an e-mail address to send your stuff too, and that makes it look like they need to look over your game and approve it for their model.  I'm not sure how hard it is to be accepted to the program. 
One thing that has always frustrated me with SuperiorPOD's site is that, even though they seem to have some pretty neat publication options and a lot of flexibility, their site is difficult to navigate, and key pricing or design information is hard or impossible to find.

So, I don't really know what to make of this. I got some copies of my games from them a while ago, and the quality was excellent, although the timing and communication left a lot to be desired.  The merge and then un-merge with TheGameCrafter has left these two companies as rivals.  From my point of view TGC has some advantages - clear, relatively easy-to-use website, consistent service, clear lines of communication, and lots and lots of standard game parts - but cedes ground to SuperiorPOD in other areas, like cost, variety of printed parts and packaging, and now this distribution option.

I see that Andreas Propst has moved Elemental Clash to this service, so he must have found an advantage there.  Maybe I'll see what they can do with Diggity.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

More navel-gazing about Kickstarter

In response to this post, reader Wordman says the following:

Grant's critique rings hollow to me. Not because his analysis is wrong, but because... well... consider this...

You live in a world that has games, but Kickstarter doesn't exist. A magic man appears and says "if you open this magic box, the world will transformed into a place that has many, many more games for you to choose from. Many of them might be worse than games you have now. A few of them, though, will probably be awesome." Do you open the box?

I would. I don't see the downside. I guess Grant's concern is that some people somewhere might be duped into buying a bad game. Or, perhaps that I, with my powers to choose for myself, might spend my money un-optimally on a game that wouldn't have had the opportunity to take my money if I hadn't opened the box. Why is that Grant's problem? I'd rather have the choice.
A good hypothetical.  I didn't mean to indicate that I thought Kickstarter shouldn't exist, or that it was bad for boardgame designers - on the contrary, I think it's terrific that it exists, and it's great that people are having success using it to produce games.  One of the biggest barriers to entry to the board game market is the huge up-front investment required for game production, as I've discussed frequently (e.g. here).  Kickstarter and similar crowd-funding places smooth out that barrier.

My problem with it, and I don't really have much of one, is that it nearly completely shifts the burden of the process from the designer to the consumer.  The model for traditional publishing normally like either of these:

Design a game --> Invest a bunch of money --> Produce and sell game --> Recoup money

Design a game --> Invest a bunch of money --> Produce game, sell hardly any --> Become poor and bitter

Obviously, the second part of that chain is the barrier, and the potential costs are borne by the designer or publisher.  With Kickstarter, the designer benefits by not having to risk lots of money, shifting that burden directly to the customer.  However, if the game isn't good, the bitterness is still present, but shifted to his/her funders.  So, it's win-win for the designer/publisher, but a mixed bag for the funder.  But for both parties, there is a dilution of both risk and of bitterness there, which is good - I'm less bummed having dropped $20 on a bad Kickstarter game than I am having blown $10,000 to get a game printed that nobody buys.

I think Grant's major complaint is not that Kickstarter is bad, but that because it's win-win for the designer, there's a much weaker filter for the projects in question.  That means the average quality of published games will have to go down (perhaps precipitously so on Kickstarter) while the number of published games will go way up.  A little of this is a great thing - Wordman rightly points out that with a bigger pool of games to choose from, more awesome games will be produced rather than sitting in desk drawers and hard drives, and we may see great games that would never have come out.  There's a downside here too, especially if the barrier gets too low - it's like the Internet in general.  Many more people have a chance to speak, but they don't necessarily have something to say.

So, I like Kickstarter, and I think on balance it's great for independent (a fancy word for unpublished) game designers.  There's a downside, too, though, and there's a chance that if a bunch of crappy games all go to the well at the same time or over and over again, it'll dry up.  But so far, it's been better and grown faster than I thought possible, so what do I know?

I do worry that, as sometimes happens at TheGameCrafter.com, if most of the projects aren't of very high quality, it will become difficult to find the good ones among the sea of crap.  TGC actually created a very small barrier in a recent update - they require at least one copy of a game to be purchased before it can be published to the shop - and I think it has helped raise the bar a little bit.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

TGC offering actual gameboards

Example new TGC board.
Image from their post (linked above)
See here.  These look as good as regular gameboards, and I assume the printing and development interface will meet TGC's high standards.  At $10 a pop, they add significantly to the cost of your game, but this is still a killer feature, allowing you to produce nearly any component via TGC.

They're originally 18"x18" and fold twice to 9"x9", which means they'll fit in TheGameCrafter's new standard black boxes.  Pretty cool.  I'm going to see if I can stretch/pad the Yoggity artwork to fit and then get one printed up.  Hopefully it will also work for my product-in-development, Zombie Ball.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Boxes and real game boards, printed on demand.

Wow.  SuperiorPOD is now doing full gameboards and printed set-up boxes, they announced on BGDF.  There's a bit of an arms race going on between SuperiorPOD and TheGameCrafter at the moment, but this is a big step forward for SuperiorPOD.  TGC has promised chipboard boards for a while (although I don't know if they're going to be wrapped like SuperiorPOD), but not a fully printed box (TGC currently has a nice black box with the option for a printed sticker on top).
Pictures from here:  http://superiorpod.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=announcements&action=display&thread=95

This looks like the real deal.  About $4-5 per box, $4-5 per board if they're part of a whole game printed there.