Against the grain...

No one can deny that board and card games have been blowing up in the last decade. Consequently, an slew of people have come out of the woodwork to try and prove to the world that they can be game designers. As such, some have been fairly successful, many have not. With the advent of Kickstarter, crowdfunding has become the trend. The #1 question I get when showing off my game is, "Are you going to have this on Kickstarter?" In addition, budding game designers are everywhere at conventions. Companies like The Game Crafter have sprouted to solely cater to the game designer's needs. Board and card games are here, and they're here to stay.

But as much as I'm one of the many people designing games nowadays, I felt I needed to try some things that very few people have done. Will it be successful? I'm not sure. There are definite reasons why I've done the things I've done and I'll explain them here.

1. I broke traditional card game norms. Many card games allow players to customize their own deck. Traditionally, players would have their cards in custom sleeves to give some protection and some character in their deck. When I was designing my game, I used a mechanic that puts cards from both players into one stack and a random pull determined the outcome of battle. For this to work, I'd have to break the tradition that people might have custom sleeves for their deck. In my case, BOTH players need to have the SAME sleeve, if it has sleeves.

I know there are card games where all the cards require the same sleeve. Deck building games are particularly popular with this, but both players draw from the same, central deck or acquire cards from a shared "storefront" so cards are inclusive.

Why did I do this? To me, custom sleeves contribute nothing to the game. It's candy, no substance. Does it really matter that a player come into a game with sleeves that glow in the dark? Is it really going to change the way the game is played? I say no.

2. I didn't use Kickstarter. If you've read my blog, you can surmise that I'm not a big fan of Kickstarter. Maybe it's just me, but it just seems way too good to be true. There's something..."catch-y" to this. Still, it's not like I rejected the option outright. I truly looked into it. I asked people that had successful Kickstarters for advice, I've talked to people that have failed. I've read articles, I know the good and the bad about it. I've backed a few to experience the process. It may still be an option for the future, but as for me right now, I'm not doing it.

The reason is really a lot simpler than it appears. I just want to devote as much time to my game as I can. Some may argue that I'm just not ready to launch, but I say that even when I've "completed" the game, I would love to work on expansions immediately. When you're Kickstarting, you're doing EVERYTHING from material selection to printing proofs to advertising to shipping and quality control.

To me, a successful Kickstarter means you need to be extremely prepared. A good pitch, a great video, a unique hook, manufacturers ready to go, a solid reputation...some of which I can do fairly well. But as a designer, I've got no reputation in the industry. If I do Kickstarter, is the risk big enough to stake my reputation on? Not to me. I decided to build a reputation in the board game industry by making a small game, publishing it, and building from there. It's backwards thinking, I know, but being able to get money quickly doesn't mean I'm going to be able to manage all of it. I'm a game designer, not a businessman.

3. I went a very different direction in art. Art is a valuable commodity. To marry a game design with an art style is not an easy thing to do. In addition...finding those people that are willing to do all that work is a job in and of itself. It's a lot of work; how are you going to pay them when you are doing this to make money? It can put some people in some precarious situations.

Luckily for me, I'm an instructor at an art college. Finding the students willing to do art for my game was easy...finding one that's style is perfect for my game was a tad harder. I finally found a student that was already a professional graphic designer (going to school for game design). Instead of going s highly detailed matte painting style art which you see in so many games, I went backwards and decided to go simple. Not simple as in stick figure, but simple as in "Glory to Rome: Black Box Edition" style. Very...graphic design-y, very minimalistic.

I did this for several reasons. One, the game would stick out. Two, the art style would emulate the simplicity of the game design. Three, it just looks clean. Four, it was easy to communicate the ideas...and Five, making changes to art was super simple and fast.

4. When I went to GenCon this year, I only wanted to show my game off to 2 people. I wanted to enjoy GenCon 2015. It was my first year there and I wanted to experience as much as I could in the little time I had in Indiana. I've never been to Indiana and this would be a nice treat. But my game is literally just around the corner from being released and this would be an exceptional time for me to show off my game.

So I planned. I met a Board Game Manager from Fantasy Flight at Star Wars Celebration a few months back and we started emailing each other back and forth, talking about games and what not. I scheduled to meet with him and have him finally play my game...apparently the short time I was able to pitch my game with him at SWC was enough for him to want to play it. So on one night at GenCon, we played. I got the best feedback on my game in the last 6 months I developed it. In addition, he really liked the game. Score!

The second person was my veritable hail mary pass person to play my game. I wanted one of the Dice Tower guys. A few in particular but Dice Tower people nonetheless. But how do I do it? Where can I find them among 60,000 people? Luckily I was Press...and Press got me into the front row of the Fantasy Flight panel, which, coincidentally had some DT people there. After the panel, I rushed to just meet those people...yes, I fanboy'd out. But I had a plan. I talked with Sam Healey and he was interested in playing my game! Whoa! We did eventually meet up and he loved it!

But why 2 people? Because they matter. The playthrough with the FF employee solidified that my game was good and that it was good by a professional. The playthrough with Sam Healey showed me that it was viable from a reviewer's standpoint.

But it wasn't only those reasons. The hope was that if it was good, they would tell people and since they have positions of influence, they could reach people that I could never touch initially. I visited the Dice Tower booth the next day and not only did Sam call me by name, he told Zee Garcia and said it was "right up his alley" and that it was "similar to Star Realms" in that it was "fast, easy to learn and a lot of strategy". These things made my GenCon.

5. I went through a dark horse publisher. People fund their game in different ways. Some go the crowd funding route, some pay their own way, some find an investor, and others go through a publisher. I went through a publisher. Yes, you surrender some rights to the game, but at the exchange of manufacturing, shipping, design help, convention booth space which leaves me plenty of time to develop...all as part of the benefits of signing...yes, sign me up. But it wasn't just any publisher, it was a publisher that wasn't huge as I was still a nobody. I went through a publisher that was known by some, but not a huge impact company. That way if I failed, I would have failed on the small scale and would have definitely learned lessons. If I succeeded, then I bring up myself AND my publisher. Again, I should be thinking as high as I could, but to be fair the owner of that company was my game design professor when I was in college. Still, I didn't use that as a way to slip in. I went legit through the process...pitched my game, went up the ranks, did everything a traditional developer would do without invoking any "special privilege" I had before.

And now my game is going to be released in 2 weeks. It's going the regular distributors route (Alliance) and through Amazon. I'm excited and nervous. I've reached out to the right people and now I have to wait. I'm going over final revisions with my publisher and review copes should be out by this weekend.

The Japanese word "Nintendo" means "leave luck to heaven". That means that they were dedicated to the job, not throwing caution to the wind, but rather making their own luck through perseverance and hard work. In my eyes, I believe you can force luck. Yes, there are outliers and there are exceptions, but working hard has its own reward.

Let's just hops this goes as well as I planned...