Hello everyone!
Wow, how the time flies. It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since I relaunched my Kickstarter; the campaign that funded and made my game a reality. Things have been chugging along here, slowly but steadily. I'd like to say it's been uneventful, but really thinking it over there has been a lot happening behind the scenes.
GamesQuest
So, since my last diary post, a lot has been happening with the U.K.-based fulfillment company GamesQuest, and not all of it good.
After the smoke of the holiday shipping rush cleared, I starting having problems with GamesQuest. During 2017, they were responsive and helpful, if a little bit overloaded. But something must've happened to them over the New Year. (Rumors are that they took on more work than they could handle; taking shipping responsibilities for several huge games at once.) Emails to them would go a week before being responded to. I got complaints from three backers that they hadn't received their games, and queries sent to GQ would yield no useful information. I received an additional order on my store website, and even though I placed an order with GQ for that, it never seemed to arrive to my customer. I asked GQ about re-shipping the games that never made it, and it seems like those new shipments didn't happen either.
On top of that, I finally received the pallet shipment of games sent from their warehouse. That was an ordeal in itself, because the local shipping company that was supposed to handle the last mile ground shipping changed their delivery date to the IGA warehouse and tacked on some last-minute delivery fees. And looking over the games once they had gotten here, it appeared that someone had used the cartons as soccer balls. Some were smashed, had holes in them, or were waterlogged. Several of the games inside had minor scrapes or dents, and three games in particular were crushed and only good as donations or spare parts. Not good. I understand that accidents happen, but having to mark nearly 20% of the shipment as damaged is very bad.
However, around the bginning of March, I managed to make a minor breakthrough. One of my emails made it through to someone at the top of the food chain at GQ, and boy did things get straightened out quickly after that. I finally got tracking numbers for a couple of the re-shipments, proving that those had made it to their destination. I also learned that a couple of the orders were never shipped at all, due to some sort of communication lapse between their office and their warehouse. Those were sent out with haste.
On top of that, at the beginning of March GQ launched their online order management portal ShipQuest. While still slightly buggy and missing some features, it has been an excellent way to be able to track the status of my orders without having to bug some of the overworked people there. While people's opinion of them has degraded badly over the past few months (I've seen reports that Kickstarter backers won't touch a campaign that will be fulfilled by GQ), my respect for them is starting to recover a little. I probably won't use them again for my primary fulfillment company, due to the unexpected import taxes and such, but I might still use them as a secondary fulfillment for EU orders.
Fulfillment Status
Thinking of fulfillment, I'm almost completely done! Out of 358 backers and 370 games owed to them, I am down to 5 games left to hand out. Those backers haven't received their games yet because they specifically requested that I hand-deliver their copies. I am working to pin these last few backers down and make sure their orders are fulfilled. It will be so nice to be past that phase of my campaign, leaving me to focus on moving the rest of my copies.
Retail Copies
I'm currently investigating four avenues of getting my remaining game copies out there:
- Advertising. While I don't think most types of paid advertising are worth it, I had some small success with using Facebook ads during my Kickstarter campaign. I will probably pursue that angle again, directing the attention from that to my online store.
- Reviews. Now that I have the shipping supply chain more or less ironed out, I am finally able to ship promotional copies to game reviewers. I will be contacting some of the ones I know of in the coming days, see who's interested in trading a copy of my game for some attention. I've also started listening to several board game podcasts in the past few months, and I'd like to try contacting a few of those, see if I can get some attention that way. Here's hoping.
- Store demos. During my Kickstarter campaign, I ended up at several gaming stores around Florida, looking for support and retailer pledges. While I did get a few that way, it seemed like most of those places were more looking for a finished product. (I don't blame them... I'd probably be skeptical of a KS if I owned a store.) However, now that I have a finished product, I'm planning on going back to some of those stores and trying again. Additionally, since my game is 100% complete now, I'd feel better about holding game teaching sessions and demonstrations. Not only can I get more attention on my game that way, but depending on the level of interest I might be able to get the game stores themselves interested in buying a few copies for retail. I'm due to make trips to the Fort Myers, Saint Augustine, and Gainesville areas within the next few months. Anyone know of any stores that might be open to seeing a new product?
- Indie Game Alliance. The IGA warehouse has several copies of Manaforge, and I know a few of those have been going out to their minions. (If you don't already know, the IGA minions are basically the Alliance's representatives, holding game demos and teaching sessions for IGA games all over.) I need to look into IGA's premium services, seeing if I can get my game some more demo time at various conventions and game stores. It helps to have an army trying to promote you. :)
Expedition Prototype Con 2018
In case you hadn't heard of it, the latest Prototype Con just occurred at the end of February. (https://www.expeditionprototypecon.com) This is a three-day convention by game designers and for game designers. Designers, playtesters, and publishers came together to test and help refine a large number of unfinished games, and to help connect designers to the resources they need to be successful. I had a great time there, getting to meet up with a lot of friends that I don't see very often. I playtested a few other designers' creations, and I also got in a few playtests of my Sky Pirates game.
The feedback on my game was pretty consistent. Mechanically, it is a fun game. It accomplishes the goal of being a thinky euro-style game while still fitting into a 'filler' length, playable in about 20 minutes. However, many players had trouble with the physical aspects of the game, how cards needed to be stacked together in a specific way so that they could be individually flipped over and have their statistics read. I'm still kind of flummoxed as to how this is a difficult thing, as I made it a point in my demonstrations to show exactly how the cards should be placed and flipped, but since it was a common complaint, it falls to me to fix it. So, the game is still a work in progress.
Bit Bowls
I've recently been exposed to the concept of a folding bowl. I've heard these things called 'travel trays', 'valet trays', or 'jewelry trays', but those all equate to about the same thing. A flat piece of leather/cloth/felt/silicon, with pairs of snaps or clips near the corners, done in such a way that when you clip the corners together the whole thing becomes a bowl. These are useful for board games because they can be stored flat in a game box, and then snapped together to form bowls to hold game components such as tokens or cubes.
The BoardGameGeek sells these on its store site. However, they seemed sort of pricey, so I thought I'd try making my own. With some 6" felt squares and plastic snaps, I have a couple of prototype bowls made. However, I have enough materials to make many more. I'm wondering if this would make a good product. If I created a couple dozen of these and put them up on my store fora few dollars each, would anyone buy them? We'll see how this turns out.
And that's it for now! Fulfillment almost done, gearing up for the retail push, and chipping away at my game in development.
Oh, and of course there's the design Manaforge: Dark Magic, the expansion set for my first game. I have plenty of ideas here, and some of them are starting to congeal. Hopefully I'll have a viable prototype within the next couple of months.
Wow, how the time flies. It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since I relaunched my Kickstarter; the campaign that funded and made my game a reality. Things have been chugging along here, slowly but steadily. I'd like to say it's been uneventful, but really thinking it over there has been a lot happening behind the scenes.
GamesQuest
So, since my last diary post, a lot has been happening with the U.K.-based fulfillment company GamesQuest, and not all of it good.
After the smoke of the holiday shipping rush cleared, I starting having problems with GamesQuest. During 2017, they were responsive and helpful, if a little bit overloaded. But something must've happened to them over the New Year. (Rumors are that they took on more work than they could handle; taking shipping responsibilities for several huge games at once.) Emails to them would go a week before being responded to. I got complaints from three backers that they hadn't received their games, and queries sent to GQ would yield no useful information. I received an additional order on my store website, and even though I placed an order with GQ for that, it never seemed to arrive to my customer. I asked GQ about re-shipping the games that never made it, and it seems like those new shipments didn't happen either.
On top of that, I finally received the pallet shipment of games sent from their warehouse. That was an ordeal in itself, because the local shipping company that was supposed to handle the last mile ground shipping changed their delivery date to the IGA warehouse and tacked on some last-minute delivery fees. And looking over the games once they had gotten here, it appeared that someone had used the cartons as soccer balls. Some were smashed, had holes in them, or were waterlogged. Several of the games inside had minor scrapes or dents, and three games in particular were crushed and only good as donations or spare parts. Not good. I understand that accidents happen, but having to mark nearly 20% of the shipment as damaged is very bad.
However, around the bginning of March, I managed to make a minor breakthrough. One of my emails made it through to someone at the top of the food chain at GQ, and boy did things get straightened out quickly after that. I finally got tracking numbers for a couple of the re-shipments, proving that those had made it to their destination. I also learned that a couple of the orders were never shipped at all, due to some sort of communication lapse between their office and their warehouse. Those were sent out with haste.
On top of that, at the beginning of March GQ launched their online order management portal ShipQuest. While still slightly buggy and missing some features, it has been an excellent way to be able to track the status of my orders without having to bug some of the overworked people there. While people's opinion of them has degraded badly over the past few months (I've seen reports that Kickstarter backers won't touch a campaign that will be fulfilled by GQ), my respect for them is starting to recover a little. I probably won't use them again for my primary fulfillment company, due to the unexpected import taxes and such, but I might still use them as a secondary fulfillment for EU orders.
Fulfillment Status
Thinking of fulfillment, I'm almost completely done! Out of 358 backers and 370 games owed to them, I am down to 5 games left to hand out. Those backers haven't received their games yet because they specifically requested that I hand-deliver their copies. I am working to pin these last few backers down and make sure their orders are fulfilled. It will be so nice to be past that phase of my campaign, leaving me to focus on moving the rest of my copies.
Retail Copies
I'm currently investigating four avenues of getting my remaining game copies out there:
- Advertising. While I don't think most types of paid advertising are worth it, I had some small success with using Facebook ads during my Kickstarter campaign. I will probably pursue that angle again, directing the attention from that to my online store.
- Reviews. Now that I have the shipping supply chain more or less ironed out, I am finally able to ship promotional copies to game reviewers. I will be contacting some of the ones I know of in the coming days, see who's interested in trading a copy of my game for some attention. I've also started listening to several board game podcasts in the past few months, and I'd like to try contacting a few of those, see if I can get some attention that way. Here's hoping.
- Store demos. During my Kickstarter campaign, I ended up at several gaming stores around Florida, looking for support and retailer pledges. While I did get a few that way, it seemed like most of those places were more looking for a finished product. (I don't blame them... I'd probably be skeptical of a KS if I owned a store.) However, now that I have a finished product, I'm planning on going back to some of those stores and trying again. Additionally, since my game is 100% complete now, I'd feel better about holding game teaching sessions and demonstrations. Not only can I get more attention on my game that way, but depending on the level of interest I might be able to get the game stores themselves interested in buying a few copies for retail. I'm due to make trips to the Fort Myers, Saint Augustine, and Gainesville areas within the next few months. Anyone know of any stores that might be open to seeing a new product?
- Indie Game Alliance. The IGA warehouse has several copies of Manaforge, and I know a few of those have been going out to their minions. (If you don't already know, the IGA minions are basically the Alliance's representatives, holding game demos and teaching sessions for IGA games all over.) I need to look into IGA's premium services, seeing if I can get my game some more demo time at various conventions and game stores. It helps to have an army trying to promote you. :)
Expedition Prototype Con 2018
In case you hadn't heard of it, the latest Prototype Con just occurred at the end of February. (https://www.expeditionprototypecon.com) This is a three-day convention by game designers and for game designers. Designers, playtesters, and publishers came together to test and help refine a large number of unfinished games, and to help connect designers to the resources they need to be successful. I had a great time there, getting to meet up with a lot of friends that I don't see very often. I playtested a few other designers' creations, and I also got in a few playtests of my Sky Pirates game.
The feedback on my game was pretty consistent. Mechanically, it is a fun game. It accomplishes the goal of being a thinky euro-style game while still fitting into a 'filler' length, playable in about 20 minutes. However, many players had trouble with the physical aspects of the game, how cards needed to be stacked together in a specific way so that they could be individually flipped over and have their statistics read. I'm still kind of flummoxed as to how this is a difficult thing, as I made it a point in my demonstrations to show exactly how the cards should be placed and flipped, but since it was a common complaint, it falls to me to fix it. So, the game is still a work in progress.
Bit Bowls
I've recently been exposed to the concept of a folding bowl. I've heard these things called 'travel trays', 'valet trays', or 'jewelry trays', but those all equate to about the same thing. A flat piece of leather/cloth/felt/silicon, with pairs of snaps or clips near the corners, done in such a way that when you clip the corners together the whole thing becomes a bowl. These are useful for board games because they can be stored flat in a game box, and then snapped together to form bowls to hold game components such as tokens or cubes.
The BoardGameGeek sells these on its store site. However, they seemed sort of pricey, so I thought I'd try making my own. With some 6" felt squares and plastic snaps, I have a couple of prototype bowls made. However, I have enough materials to make many more. I'm wondering if this would make a good product. If I created a couple dozen of these and put them up on my store fora few dollars each, would anyone buy them? We'll see how this turns out.
And that's it for now! Fulfillment almost done, gearing up for the retail push, and chipping away at my game in development.
Oh, and of course there's the design Manaforge: Dark Magic, the expansion set for my first game. I have plenty of ideas here, and some of them are starting to congeal. Hopefully I'll have a viable prototype within the next couple of months.
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