It seems like you're proud of the capacity for your game to be easily won just on luck of the draw?
It's not about luck at all. It's part how you build your deck, another part how well you prepare for your opponent's attack and lastly how you balance doing the same to your opponent.
The only "luck" factor is how your deck is built.
But this can be offset if you want a more "traditional" deck-building experience in which you can "progress" and cards get more powerful as you specialize in some of the piles. It's a choice because buying the whole deck, and having to "trash" cards is the name of the game in traditional deck-building.
I personally prefer the random deck - it adds more re-playability because the deck you build is always different. Traditional deck-building, while it does give a sense of progression, forces you to "play" the same way as you have done before...
The randomness of the piles, suggests players play with what they can get and obviously buying the entire table is a very lousy strategy.
You'd have to play it to understand.
People who have played the game - have liked it and have told me it's a good game. Even friends were surprise how much they liked the game. I doubt I make a "better" game given the constraints of this one: it's compact, has great artwork, fun combos and tactics.
The whole thing was "inspiration" - so I feel blessed to have put it all together - considering all the blind playtests, the role rehashing, etc. The game has come a long way from version 0.1 to 0.24...
Update: Since you think it's luck - how about I explain better what happened.
Player A waited until he destroyed all his opponent's starships and used his very last starship to attack Player B Homeworld. But instead of just doing 4 damage as usual (per his configuration), he had been saving not one, but TWO "Byer's Algorithm" which give a starship +2 Firepower (Attack) each until end of your turn.
In one blow he caused 8 damage reducing Player B Homeworld from 18 (max) to 10. Almost half of Player B Homeworld points! He of course won the game... because he was much more tactical than his opponent.
Tactic cards can be very powerful. And sometimes it's the element of surprise that wins...
Note: It's a DECK-BUILDER, not just a random assortment of cards. YOU decide what goes into your deck based on what you buy. Both players understood that you ultimately want to BALANCE your deck maybe making it top-heavy on Tactic cards.
Because having those when you need them can make a real difference.
On three distinct occasions where Player A configured a starship with "X" Firepower, when launching an attack, Player B would play "Hull Plating" which gives +1 Resistance until destroyed. And that fncked with Player A game because it took several more turns to destroy that starship because he kept reinforcing it.
Ultimately Player A did overcome the 5 Resistance of that starship by using a two (2) against one strategy. It finally paid off - but Player B enjoyed disrupting Player A plans on three occasions!
It gave him great satisfaction: "Oops +1 Resistance, you can no longer attack my starship. I'm so sorry..." He was not - he enjoyed it! :P
In the early versions of the game starships had shields, it would take too many turn to destroy them. So I removed the shield and simplified the game's core to only have a "Resistance".
Then came the roles, Joe's inspiration was to allow players to "re-configure" starships already on the table... Meeting Joe and connecting was sheer luck also! He just liked what I had been putting out there and wanted to know more ... saying he could playtest the game more.
Because of financial reasons, I did triples of each card taking the artwork from 75+ cards to 35... That was a cut - I wasn't sure it was going to work... But again *dumb* luck - it actually improved the game.
All little changes here and there that came from necessity.
The one area I would have liked to improve on was duration of a game. I have made some corrections - but still it turns out most duels become dog fights and players try to destroy their opponent rather than win by trade.
That shows what people (gamers) like...
Some players are "Timmys" and want to win big. Winning by trade is not enough ... the want to obliterate their opponent!
The game deserves some more attention - in that "Spikes" want to win ALL of their matches versus their opponents. They are "competitive" players and enjoy tournaments because they win "most of the time".
Creativity in a LCG format is limited. It's not like in Magic. So I don't believe we have "Johnnys" in "Tradewars - Homeworld". It's not like you can have your own play style and put together your own cards. This is a deck-builder similar to Dominion where you buy from your own card piles.
But the cards in all decks are identical. So no creativity or style...
Hopefully we can put out an expansion or two. Just to show how more complex the game can really be. More options and strategy too!
I don't want to stigmatise Magic players, but magic players who does not play board games in general, will generally only play magic the gathering and nothing else.
They rarely try other games, especially experienced players, because they knew that any CCG that gets released will never compete with Magic and Eventually Dissapear, because that is what has been happening for the last 20 years.
So they might take a look out of curiosity, but they wont buy and only focus on magic.
Still, I have no proof to back that. It's my own perception.
You might be right. Perhaps I should re-evaluate my target demographic!
I initially wanted a lower costing game, younger players could learn. My box says 13+ which is true, however advanced 8-9 year olds can learn deeper strategy by playing the game (As Father Geek has shown with his own children).
Why? It's a kid-friendly game that allows kids to play a lunch-time or after-school, etc. The idea is to have FUN playing. And bringing a small box to school once and a while is not too hard.
That's Target Audience A.
Next I wanted to hold a game session in which each player at the session buys their own copy of the game. So that local stores can profit from the sales of the game. How and why people would play the game is questionable.
That's Target Audience B and they "may not exist".
Another group would be people that enjoy casual card games. Although the game strictly speaking is a Deck-Builder, the game is not that difficult to play once you've absorbed the rules and/or have been coached how to play.
That's Target Audience C
(That's enough for now - I need to think about it some more...)
It's not about luck at all. It's part how you build your deck, another part how well you prepare for your opponent's attack and lastly how you balance doing the same to your opponent.
Ok then the way you described it was misleading, when you say someone was "landed" with a good combo you're saying it was an unplanned/unexpected thing and they weren't in control, ie they were lucky.
(it's important to be more clear how you describe your gameplay, prospective players aren't often going to ask you clarifying questions like this, they could reasonably think you're describing it as a luck-based game)
This is only true if you're bad at explaining it. Any game can be understood without playing it if explained well. Though explaining a game well is *hard*. You explained yourself badly before and you should try to improve.
You seem to be marketing Tradewars - Homeworld to two very specific audiences that aren't worth marketing towards. Kids are tough to market to, and chances are they won't ever find that Tradewars even exists - so you then have to market to parents. So you really should just be marketing towards regular gamers, and if they have kids, that's a bonus I guess.
Regular gamers are accustomed to having a complete game in one box. Complete in this situation is a minimum of two players. When I read that one box of Tradewars was for only one player, that was an immediate red flag, and will be to most people reading about it. Don't arbitrarily betray general expectations.
What if you sold a 'starter' set containing 2 decks in one box & then sold 'expansions' of individual decks? The starter set could be at a lower mark-up so it appears that people are getting a deal when they buy 2 decks & then they or their friends can buy an additional deck, cheaper than buying another starter deck, when they want. Some people may then decide to buy another starter pack & just keep a deck each.
I know it would lower your total profit but it may get more sets out there.
@Ted: That's the point I think I will discuss with my publisher (if they accept).
My online play at TGC is merely to "test the waters". And I got my response... The next logical step is to see IF I can interest a publisher in the game. And then discuss with them how they see best selling this game.
For example, right now one publisher I am looking into is also a game distributor and they own operations in other locations (USA & Canada).
This is great because that means they get 50% retail markup and make more money selling their games. If they are interested in "Tradewars - Homeworld", we'll see how they feel about 1 Player Game Sets, do they want to launch a 2 Player Game, etc. I'm pretty open about what happens to the game in those terms.
Having the funds to manufacture 500 game sets (as they see fit) might be a small step for them and they can sell across Canada and the USA to game stores.
IDK yet... We'll have to see what happens. Talks open up later this month or early next month (September). It's a good time to open up negotiations, every one is back to school and work holidays during the summer are usually over, so the decision makers are back to their desks!
I really appreciate the input. Honestly I'm surprised at how many response I got to this thread... I'll keep you posted as to what happens in September when I take the time to approach a publisher - this is pending what happens after my "CON" (In late August).
Thank you for all you insight!
Do you mean this one that earned nearly ten times that amount on Kickstarter?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thegamecrafter/the-captain-is-dead/...
I still feel like KS worked out better.
Also, you see doing the Game Crafter sale as testing the waters, but have you ever considered that publishers are far less likely to do business with somebody who has muddied the waters? You are preemptively creating consumer confusion. If someone publishes it, they'll want to do it their own way, and then there's your version kicking around the web, making it look like there are multiple publishers and editions. I don't know if it is this way with games, but bundling art and layout with your product is generally a negative thing with writing in general. By defining the product, you establish yourself as potentially difficult to work with. By trying to market it, you are either going to underwhelm potential publishers by making it look like there isn't a market, or achieve enough saturation that it isn't worth them competing with you, as you've already sold to their customer base. I really don't see a strategy in this.
You can only "test the water" if you intend to self publish from start to the end, which I think is your case. Yur game "works", you could say OK, let go further with real publishing or Kick Starter for example.
But if you want to approach publisher, it's much more difficult this way. I think some publisher could accept P&P games because they know few people print games, but I think some publishers even refuse P&P game because the "Surprise" has already been released.
The pure and simple fact is that I met and know a designer who "Self-Published" his game on "The Game Crafter" and who later got picked-up by a Publisher in Montreal... On his BGG page for his game, it lists BOTH companies as the Publisher for his game.
So I'm sorry all you neigh Sayers about "muddied waters" and "self-publishing is the end...", etc.
It's not. I personally know of a designer who has done BOTH.
I don't base myself on "feelings" or "assumptions", I am dealing with a REAL case whereby the designer got published even AFTER releasing his game on TGC.
And that's how I will present my game to the potential publishers as well...
It's not. I personally know of a designer who has done BOTH.
I don't base myself on "feelings" or "assumptions", I am dealing with a REAL case whereby the designer got published even AFTER releasing his game on TGC.
And that's how I will present my game to the potential publishers as well...
You are basing your entire business plan on one instance of this. Okay. You must buy a lot of lottery tickets. In either case, you pin your hopes on that 1-in-X chance of winning instead of working the odds in your favor.
Vanity presses love guys like you. Back when I used to work for one, the sales reps always let customers know about the one or two titles that sold hundreds of thousands of copies. They never mentioned the hundreds upon hundreds of authors who never sold a single copy or that direct sales were a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue we made charging authors to publish their books. Our customers always loved to feel like they were the exception to the rule. Once they were sold on the dream, logic and common sense stopped factoring into their decisions, which was great for up-selling them on bogus services. I think you are basing your decisions on "feelings," because I think someone sold you on TGC the same way with this success story. You bought a lottery ticket, and you have the empirical evidence of there being lots of other people who've won the lottery. There's no arguing with that.
The fact that *one* person does it does not mean *you* will do it. Soulfinger is spot on re: the lottery ticket metaphor, you seem to have the same mentality as people who piss money away on lottery tickets.
There are a huge myriad of variables involved in any publishing.
Now, even without looking into that specific case in detail, here are some questions you need to ask yourself before assuming just because they did it you will succeed:
Why did the publisher back them *despite* them having printed through TGC, knowing the problems that brings?
How many years were between the TGC sales and publisher sales?
How successful was it at TGC?
Was the publisher who picked it up any good?
Then compare your answers to the answers if you applied the questions to your game. Find the differences.
I'm sure there are more relevant questions to ask too. If you want to follow the path of an anomaly, you *need* to understand the anomaly.
This isn't naysaying, it's not empty disagreement, it's reasoned criticism. You're making excuses to dismiss criticism rather than honestly considering it and making an effort to refute it.
Give them this lottery-winner mentality and they'll shoot you down too, and frankly they'd be *incompetent* not to. You don't want to get published by an incompetent publisher...
And how many games have you and Soulfinger "published"???
You seem to talk like you are both experts and yet you have never published any games... Have you even spoken to publishers??? I have spoken with several early on - when the game was still a prototype too. I was in talks with one publisher for over 1 year.
This is my second game (2nd) that I have fully developed past prototype - into a final production quality game.
And quite frankly, you are not registering what I am writing: I said I know one (1) person "personally". But through the grapevine, I have heard that there have been several others.
It's not a *lottery* ticket attitude, it's that some publishers prefer working with a finished product - rather than just an idea and/or a prototype. I'm not saying all publishers - there are some. Some want to partner for a joint-KS others want to simply go to manufacturing/distribution.
I have a couple options - and we'll see what they think.
I don't want to argue with you or anyone else on this Forum.
It's not based on "feelings", it based on the fact that more than one has been able to have their game published after TGC.
Nobody sold me on anything. I told you exactly why I did sell the game on TGC: I wanted to know what the FB following and the months of marketing would result in. I had my survey so I was pretty aware of the results. The survey had a very poor results. I expected TGC to be not any better. But better trying and doing something than just talking about second hand experiences from the past. I did something...
Again the results were what I had anticipated: anything above the initial pre-sales I had done, resulted in very few "ad-hoc" sales considering that FB followers did not buy any game sets.
And since "The Captain is Dead" earned over 600+ backers, I thought it would be possible to get more backers too. Hopeful optimism. Didn't happen. We have a very good game, which can be mass produced at a fairly low cost, that was designed with expansion in mind, having really nice and professional artwork, perfect for a variety of gamers (kids, Parents & Gamers), etc. So might as well shop around the game and see who is interested!
That's all...
Good on you. You know what you want to do, have sold copies of your game, and far be it from me to disabuse you. I expect that iamseph and I were throwing in our ten cents (13 cents Canadian) mostly because your post topics tend to be "Why is this so difficult?" Not all of it should be that difficult.
Again, from the consumer's standpoint, what you have there is a $50-$60 for a two player card game. While the expected price for such type of game is ~$15-30.
But what do I know, right? :)
And how many games have you and Soulfinger "published"???
For me: None.
If our ideas are false, you can refute them. Whether we have published or not is not a criticism of our ideas. What you're doing now amounts to ad-hominem. You're saying the issue of whether we have the *status* of being a published designer relevant to whether what we are saying in this discussion is true, rather than focusing on *what* we are saying.
So surely the four questions I posed before are easy for you to answer. If so, why are you being defensive rather than taking this seriously?
For my "experience" it's basically what I read in a book, that was written before kickstarter and The Game Crafter existed.
Still, From what I have read, publishers are very picky as they can get from 100 to 10000 submission per year. Any details that could cause trouble publishing a game will almost kill it. Considering how market evolved I think publishers are even more pickier than before.
Again, from the consumer's standpoint, what you have there is a $50-$60 for a two player card game. While the expected price for such type of game is ~$15-30.
But what do I know, right? :)
If it costs $5.00 to make it (in China) and the normal markup is 5-6 times... The price is between $25-30 for one Game Set. As I said you could save maybe $10 if two (2) Game Sets were combined. So as you state $50.
But the real issue is that through TGC the COST to produce is just over $20. Meaning that I cannot sell from TGC to a FLGS because then the retail would be double, so $40. $40 is way too expensive. $25-30 is reasonable.
Also if you compare on TGC the price of the game versus others, the price is rather inexpensive - for the platform. Many TGC games are over the $35 mark, again only card games (100+ cards).
But the real issue is that through TGC the COST to produce is just over $20. Meaning that I cannot sell from TGC to a FLGS because then the retail would be double, so $40. $40 is way too expensive. $25-30 is reasonable.
Once again: change your game then. So that it can be played with 2+ players, using the same set. It's totally doable.
Keeping the components in check is inherent part of game design.
I've heard publisher panels where some say they checkout Kickstarter & the game crafter for games that are successful & then offer to publish the game as a going concern. Some said they also look at failed kickstarters where they think the game has promise & got a reasonable response even though it didn't reach its target & then offer to work with the designer to develop the game further for publication. Some also said that once a game has been out there in the world they don't want anything to do with it because anything they do will still be linked back to the original run by players.
Based in that I don't think there is any definitive answer.
You can take your prototypes around to conventions to get players interested but if you don't have anything for them to buy within a reasonable time the chances are they will eventually forget about it, especially with so many games coming out so often. What we are trying is a small run of official prototypes that we sell at cost to people interested in the game. We ask them to post pics, share it around, & keep in touch with feedback, questions etc. The idea is to keep the game alive, spread our blind play testing around, & get a sense of how willing people are to pay the price for the game (which whilst it is at cost is close to what we hope the retail price to be with a much larger production run). So far it is working, we have sold about 40 from 2 conventions so far & have pics of kids & adults playing the game.
Interesting, because what is expensive in retail game is the store that gets a 40% cut and the storage that can take around 12% of the final cost.
But if you can get those game printed and store them at home, and have the necessary PR to sell those game in conventions or other events your self, you are in theory selling your game half the price.
The drawback is that you need the storage Space, or a small game, and you need to spend time like doing that promotional social stuff which is really not my case. But some people do enjoy this.
For game crafter, I imagine what raise the price is the Print on Demand which can be mitigated with crowd sale (which apparently reduce cost by around 30%), else it's the shipping that can be expensive.
In the case of QuestCCG's game, I imagine he could buy the remaining unsold 70 copies of the game, ship and store them in his house, then sell the game manually at convention and other stuff or simply online. Not sure if the numbers would be better this way or equivalent to going to a board game printer directly.
I think that a good way to go doing physical games is something like this:
http://nestorgames.com/#shopextd
Nestor is essentially a designer but he found a cheap and good way to produce their own games and sell it.
He just sell by order, his own games or some other classical games or some other games with the permission of the designers.
It seems very fine to me. Of course you cant sell a lot of games and the complexity of the games, about the art by example, cannot be so much. This is focused in abstract tabletop games that in general are not too complex of produce.
In general the more rentable something is the less intermediaries are required.
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This is one of the many problems of collectible card games (the unpopular ones). You buy cards, but cannot play with it.
My main motivation was to "interest" Magic: The Gathering (Magic) players. Ok so our game doesn't have exactly the same depth of variation that Magic has. Still the Magic players that played the game at our last demo - said the game was good! Both games played proved to have amazing combos and counters to them... Why even in the second game one player landed up with a starship reinforced with hull plating x3! It went from a 2 to a 5 and proved to be very difficult to destroy.
True - and I knew from the gecko this would be the main difference from Magic. Magic used to sell starter decks for about $30.00. They would combine I believe a set of 60 cards into one set. You could buy a starter deck and you would be ready to play the game - straight out of the box. BUT you would need to find someone to play against.
And I expect to fully embrace single player by adding another couple solo scenarios in expansions. Joe likes playing the current solo scenario - and has clocked more than mileage on the solo scenario than I have! :)