Your thoughts on PDFs and distribution

Here's an option to consider.

Post it somewhere for free. Here is good, but there are likely other places that would get more player traffic.

Also post that it is "FREE for 2 months ONLY!" Meaning, if you want to try out a free game, do it now. Hopefully this gives wishy-washies motivation.

In two months, you then start charging for it. If it was good, all those people who tried it free will spread the word that it is indeed worth $2.50. That way you can get your name out there, and then make some money if it is a good game.

Anyway, this thought just came to me, and may be completely off, but I thought I would share it.

There are a handful of places that sell PDF games. The ones I know are mainly for role playing games, but they have sections for board games. Off the top of my head I can think of:

www.rpgnow.com
www.drivethrurpg.com
www.e23.com (Steve Jackson Games)
www.wargamedownloads.com
www.dbookbooth.com

War Game Downloads is very new (say, a few weeks) and could probably use the content. RPGnow gets an insane amount of traffic, but 80% of what they sell is d20 related RPG material.

Generally these places take a cut of your cover price (RPGnow is 25%, War Game Downloads is 15% or 20%) and I don't think any of them are exclusive, so you can put your game on all of them!

Hope this helps.

Just keep in mind, of course, that development of a game is an open-ended process, and can take a rather long time depending on how frequently you playtest, how many changes you make each time, etc. Be patient!

You can put it up here, but you probably won't get many plays from just the folks on this site. Make sure that you get it in the BoardGameGeek database, that may generate more traffic. I wouldn't charge anything for it. The goal with a web-published game should be, I think, to generate enough "buzz" about your excellent game (and that's key, the game must be excellent) that a company takes notice and picks it up. (This happened recently, with a game called "Merchants of Empire" being published as "Himalaya").

If you really want to charge a few bucks for the game, I'm sure you can succeed in doing so, but I think you'll get relatively few downloads that way. In contrast, I've downloaded quite a few free games, and while I haven't ever gone to the effort of printing any out yet, there have been a few that have seemed pretty well done and that I would consider purchasing in published form. If it's "buzz" you're looking for, you have to make the game available for free. And I think that taking the long view is probably best.

One other "suggestion" for any who seek to make web-published games, it might be cool to make your card files compatible with the pre-perforarted card sheets from the Protoparts store. People who are just going to cut them from cardstock could still do so, but it might encourage a few people to buy some of the protoparts cards, which is good for all of us.

Good luck!

-Jeff

BTW - I'm pretty much agreeing with Jeff here and elaborating on what he said. I'm just a long winded guy...

As novice game designers (at least I am), our focus shouldn’t be on profits or making money. If that is our goal, we are setting ourselves up for failure (from all the stories I’ve heard). In my opinion, we should focus on developing our name in the business. This means getting polished versions of game we design into the hands of players and have them play them and enjoy them. If you create several free downloadable games and at least one becomes a big success, your name will be out there. This will make dealing with Publishers easier, it will make selling games easier, etc. As far as losing money on a potentially marketable game, I think that is pretty nearsighted. First off, you might not make any money anyhow. Secondly, I personally have an almost limitless well of ideas to work with so I never feel like 1 game would ever break me if I failed to profit from it. Thirdly, and most importantly, a downloadable version of a game does not compare in value to a boxed game with wood (or whatever) components, colorful game materials, and solid cardboard tokens (or whatever). They could easily make a downloadable version of Power Grid or Puerto Rico, and the game wouldn’t really change, but it would never compare to a wooden bit, cardboard, beautifully boxed version for $40. So I say make it downloadable. See what people think. Maybe include your email and have people report back with feedback. If it’s a runaway success, say a year or 2 later, I say you get the emails to Rio Grande, Fantasy Flight, etc and send them an email that starts…”Hello, My name is X, I am the designer of Game X. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. By my estimates, we currently have almost 10,000 downloads and I personally have received over 500 inquiries/comments/”love letters” from fans of the game. I want to make a Boxed version of it. Can we meet and discuss this? Etc…

If you are able to get even minor royalties from a game you design and it succeeds, you will then probably have more opportunities to make more money and get better and better deals.

This is, in my opinion a much safer route as you really mitigate risk. The only danger in doing this is if you have the next Trivial Pursuit, Settlers, or whatnot on your hands and you didn’t capitalize on it right away. Unfortunately, most of us will probably never really have a game of this caliber, so this isn’t such a big risk at all.

As I have browsed the website in the list above, most downloadable games prices range from 1$ to 10$ US. And some of them contains a demo version to test before buying.

I think the demo version is important. If you wish, you can make a free demo and sell your first game at a low cost like 5$. If it works and you become somewhat popular, in your next game, you still make a demo but you could now sell it 8$ or 10$ US.

The price should also varies according to the amount of work and material supplied with the download. If you are making a "chute and ladder" game, there will be much less rules and components to print than if you are making a war game with many complex rules and many unit tokens.