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What We’re Working On – The Simple View

Posted on by PJ Parent

Since we have no artwork this will be…….. less exciting. 

Four games we are working on right now:

 

Fight Card!

You’re a martial arts master and in your hand is a deck of cards with all your style’s moves. You draw five cards and carefully set up your combination of three. You reveal…. will your attacks be successful? Will your opponent block or counterattack? Find out in this two player, fast play, card game.

 

Date Night

As a young couple date nights are rare. You just got in the door from a great night out and you’re looking for a little action……. Can you survive all the distractions?….young children… the dog just barfed on the bedroom floor… what else can kill the mood?

Can you get past all of the mood killers to be the first to the end goal in this couples party game?

 

Prince/Princess Rescue

Do you want to rescue the princess or prince? Or will you spend your time shooting down your friends attempts at the rescue. This is a card collection game where cards can also be used to thwart your opponents in their quest to rescue the imprisoned princess or prince. Your quest must take you over the moat, through the spikes, over the wall, past the dragon and into the tower – who will be the first to save the day?

 

Scavenger Hunt

The poop has hit the fan! Zombies are loose and you aren’t exactly prepared. Grab your list of things you need and go looking for them in an abandoned house.  Others are here looking as well. Will you find what you’re looking for and get out the fastest?… or will others searching the house find what they need? Are you all looking for the same things? Have they moved the items you need? This competitive searching game is focused on gathering cards to complete your set.

 

This looks a little boring right now (OK so lots boring). We’ll have art for Fight Card! soon and we are starting to look for artists and graphic designers for the other projects (let us know if you can help with that). I should also mention that these titles are just working titles, 

I’m not happy with this format. I’d like a tracker for each game that shows where we are in the process for each one and how long before we release them. A countdown timer or a slider on a scale bar.  Any ideas on how to do this? Any links to others who have done this or have done a good or better job of communicating this information? Let us know.

Thanks

PJ

 

Books About Game Design

Posted on by PJ Parent

I’m sure practice and physical application (making stuff) is the best way to learn game design but reading about it can certainly help.  There are multiple learning styles and I think I benefit from using all of them but this post is just on books.  I’m starting out in game design so as I read more I’ll come back and update this.  Now obviously I’m only posting this because I really just want to know what you’re reading.  

Yes my focus when I started to think of this was books on game design but I will mention that I read Jamey Stegmaier’s book A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide: Build a Better Business by Building Community and thought it was a great resource for crowdfunding with a lot of information on the table top gaming industry. (go read his blog too – but this post is still about books!).

I read a lot – it takes an hour to get to my day job on the bus so I have time to read.  Adding game design books to my pile is easy to do.  Good or bad, well written or not I can at least start reading them.  If you have less time to read or are trying to get a degree (like HK) and have a huge list of stuff you have to read then you might want to be more selective.

I started my search with the following list – http://www.leagueofgamemakers.com/a-game-designers-library-14-books-you-should-read/  I would also look through all the comments.

So far I’ve read – Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success by Aaron Dignan – not specifically about game design but rather about bringing games behavior into your daily life.  It actually has tons of game ideas and we all really want more game in our lives.

I read The Game Inventor’s Guidebook by Brian Tinsman which gives great history and oversite of the industry but I did find it a bit dated.

The next book on game design I read will be The Kobold’s Guide to Board Game Design and I’ll let you know when I update this post…..

Books are expensive so to help with that I buy from www.abebooks.com where I can get many of these titles for less than $20 shipped to my door.  Fair warning – when you find a huge pile of really cheap books with free shipping – now you have to read them.

The next book I buy will be Reality is Broken but what other suggestions do you have?

So what are you reading?

Back to the grindstone

Posted on by Kruegs

Was a sparse time of posts.  My bad, I have been working on passing some exams.  Which I did.  Though what does it say if you only get an 80% total mark in your ethics class?  Either way passed it all with the lowest grade being a 79 %.

This weeks projects are to get some quotes for custom logo art as we are tired of using that snazzy but not really ours creative commons image.  Then we are going to be contacting some local artists for some art quotes for our Kickstarter project page.  PJ is also going to reach out to an editor we met at Gencon to see about costs for – well editing – the rules text and card text for our project.

Have an idea for the 5th deck we want to try out for the current !Fight Card project.  Stand up Street Fighting.  I was thinking untrained brawler style so risky moves with some make shift weapons and penalties littered throughout to balance the damage increase from the weapons.  We will have to play, replay and then play some more with all the decks once that is done to make sure it stays balanced.  Though I believe all you other game developers out there already know all this.

Thats all for today.  Look forward to your comments or feedback now or whenever!

Delicious discoveries

Posted on by Kruegs

Did another session this weekend where I worked on project !Fight card while smoking some wings. It is such a fantastic pairing creative juices and fall off the bone meat ingestion.

So very excited for this weekend. We will playtest the project for my regular game group for the first time. Apprehensive on their opinions but hopeful that playing will bring them some fun as thats why we are developing games to begin with.

My current ability to consume literature is limited because of my ongoing classes (trying to get my bachelors in business administration through distance education). My business partner PJ however is quite the academic and has been devouring game development books and blogs. He sent a book my way called “A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide” by Jamey Stegmaier. I started on Monday and since it is such an easy and Interesting read I am already half way through it.

I sent out for a quote on some art today so we can price out the cost for card and box graphics and possibly some pizzaz for the project page when we Kickstarter.

Take care readers and ill message you all again next week.

P.s. it was to dark last night to photo the wings but if your wondering they looked exactly like this last batch…

Thought I would leave you with a bit of what my day job boss calls grill porn – ha ha.

Rules Documentation…And Smoked Meat

Posted on by Kruegs

What better way to spend my Sunday then creating a spread sheet to document all our current rules.  The deck I am working on creating for Karate all within the glory of spreadsheets!  Hooray just like my office job….oh when will the hurting stop!

On the plus side I am simultaneously smoking some drumsticks on my Big Green Egg and look forward to supper when I can consume that delicious labor of love.  Cant eat the cards unless I am really hurting for fiber I suppose (ha-ha a dad joke!).

Hope you all have had a great weekend.

Kruegs out!

Gencon Seminar – Crowdfunding Your Game

Posted on by PJ Parent

Put on by team BackerKit and was composed of – Brian of Harebrained Schemes, Mark of Campaign Coins, Adam of Kingdom Death, Chris of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, & Rich from The Onyx Path

Kickstarter is a community (a nice one at that)

Recommendations:

  1.      Post in comments all the time
  2.      Post an update when there is actionable news
  3.      Manage your expectations – and those of your backers – you are dealing with companies in China – they have way bigger clients than your game and a different culture
  4.      Stat with an audience – put your stuff out there (they used another term instead of stuff) but get it out there for people to see – example a limited run or resin miniatures before you try to release the game
  5.      Get followers on social media – know who your first 100-200 backers will be
  6.      Use less stretch goals and more live stream video – use twitch for the video
  7.      Don’t sell the kickstarter special thing – or tell people that it will be a kickstarter and convention special thing
  8.      T-shirts are good kickstarter exclusives
  9.      Less tiers on the kickstarter and the panel all agreed no early bird tiers

The seminar reminded me of the article 1000 True Fans – kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

What would you add to the list?  What are you doing to build your audience?

Thanks

PJ

Kickstarter – Communication in the Mid Campaign Period

Posted on by PJ Parent

You launched the campaign and the crowd went wild and jumped on board!  Great! In those early days there was lots to talk about and tons of questions.  You answered them all and posted all you could think people might want to know.

 

Now it’s week two drifting into week three and you haven’t posted in a few days.  Your evangelists in the group answer most questions before you even see them and the new investors have slowed to a crawl.  And then the complaining starts – you haven’t posted or communicated – you must have forgotten the campaign and worse – you no longer care!

 

Both the investors (me) and you the creator want to stop that before it happens.  Some of the information that people may want or find interesting can be kept for this time period.  An entire update that talks about paper stock and finishes on cards and boards and playing pieces is great filler for this period.   OK so maybe not a full update – some people say use the updates for news that’s actionable by investors and put everything else in the comments sections.  This would be great to see in the comments.  There are some other items that a few investors will be interested in and keep the communication open –

  •         Introduce and talk about how you found your artist(s).
  •         Where did you playtest your game – any big conventions? (You did playtest it right?)
  •         Introduce the company – is this the first kickstarter, the first game, how many employees are there?  Yes – this can all be found on a website, or the information kickstarter sets up on the front page but investors want to build that relationship and hear about this in your own words.
  •         Go over all the locations to find you.  Where are you in BGG?  Twitter? Facebook? Webpage(s).  Also show and talk about checking the campaign on Kicktraq.
  •         Ask questions and encourage people to post in the comments – the dialog should be two way.
  •         There was a great comment by Christopher on the Spy Fight kickstarter  –

 

Originally posted by Christopher (Superbacker) on the https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/645394152/spy-fighttm/description

Slightly edited –

@everyone – here are some QUICK and EASY things YOU can do to support this campaign!

1) send a short email or add a comment to a video of your favourite youtube boardgamer (Dice Tower, Bearded Meeple, etc.) asking them to cover the Kickstarter before it ends.

2) go to the Kicktraq page for the campaign and click on the “visit project” button. Feels redundant, I know but it’ll bump up higher in the ranking on Kickstarter. You can do this up to 3 times a day. Here’s the link:

http://www.kicktraq.com/

3) Post a comment here! It will also bump this campaign on Kickstarter!

4) Ask your friends to back by $1, it will bump us up on Kickstarter by adding backers. (ask those friends who have pledged $1 to share on their social media as well to spread the word)

5) Increase your pledge by $1 (or more if you want) to help reach the stretch goals.

6) Share the campaign on social media to get more backers AND help hit those social media stretch goals!

(Insert the link to the Facebook page for the game)

I warned him I would steal it and if anyone knows how to attribute this to him better than what I’ve done here please let me know.  This should be posted often to the comments section of your campaign – I originally suggested every week to remind people.

 

Let me know what you think people should do to communicate in this period?  Also can I steal the post from Christopher or is that too evil?   Let me know in the comments.

Thanks

PJ

Gencon Seminar – Crowdfunding: Do You Know Who Your Crowd Is?

Posted on by PJ Parent

Presenters – Jaym Gates, Carol Monahan, Marie Poole, James Wallis

Notes –

One of the biggest crowdfunding challenges is to launch without having an existing audience.  (other articles want you to have 200-300 backers before you launch – other industries talk about having 1000 followers)  

 

Getting the followers –

Start a mailing list on your website – so you’ll need a website!

Share images of your game on social media – you’ll need social media too!

Playtesting – this is a two way conversation – communicate back to your playtesters that you incorporated their feedback (or didn’t) and show them the improved version.

 

Be happy with the product before you go to kickstarter (but you might get some ideas during the campaign that change the final product)

 

During the campaign –

Find your evangelists – cultivate and nurture these people

30% of funding is people just trolling through kickstarter (your results may vary)

Audience communication – these people want to get to know you (these people are helping you make/release the thing)

Be able to spend money  – have the mindset that you can and will need to spend money

Have canned updates and/or news to put out if there is no real news or updates

The panel found facebook ads to be be very successful (over $45K business in one campaign) – pick 10-12 parameters including English speaking – test for 48 hours and modify (again your results may vary)

Look into successful campaigns and see what these people did to build a following and communicate throughout the campaign.

An additional article with some sobering statistics – https://crowdfunding.cmf-fmc.ca/facts_and_stats/how-likely-is-your-crowdfunding-campaign-to-succeed

How much research have you done?  Have you read – Jamey Stegmaier’s book – A Crowdfunders Strategy Guide: Build a Better Business by Building Community?  

What other books or blogs or podcasts have you found?  Let us know in the comments.

Thanks

PJ

What I learned at Gencon

Posted on by Kruegs

Before the memories fade here is my recollection of what you need to be a game designer from the events I attended at Gencon.

Business cards!!! Big in this industry.
Get on twitter!
My game does one thing A+, then 3-4 at a grade b

level

Metatopia go to it, will benefit the game
Finish

something!

Pay your freelancers
There will be

huge crisis or errors, get a helmut.

No NDAs
Get it playtested.
Accept revisions, expect revisions
Doesn’t have to be done to be edited.
Write
Develop pitch
Edit
Playtest
Avoid cognitive dissonance
Game needs to be accessible to level 0 players