It's clear that the world is moving to online commerce. I'm not suggesting we should abandon the Friendly Local Game stores (FLGS) because after all you can't play the games on Amazon but you may be planning to sell on Amazon. That being said, it can be hard to get your games into the FLGS. They buy from distributors. They…
One of the things that people often take for granted when it comes to games and toys is the fact that it was tested to be safe for children before they bought it. Board games are no exception. In fact for anything to have an age rating of 3+ or 8+ or anything less than 14 years old, it has…
I've just returned home from GenCon 50. It was amazing. The first time GenCon has sold out. Yes there were a lot of people there but to be honest it didn't feel as crowded as I expected. The previous times I've done it always seemed like you were shoulder to shoulder in the dealer hall. This time there was some…
The Search So we've been getting ready to go to print with our card games. In choosing card manufacturers we've had to make some hard choices. This is our first run at making card games so we don't have an established relationship with a particular manufacturer yet. I wanted to see what each one of the list we had would make…
One of the interesting things we face with game publishing in Australia is lack of local market and local support. It's not like we don’t have a great board game community, we definitely do, but even if everyone in Australia were avid board gamers, that still amounts to a fraction of the market of France, Germany and the USA. This…
One of the things that every game needs, at least to attract the eye is good game art. Good game art doesn't just pop into existence, there is an art progression. When you are starting on a concept and you want to see if the theme and mechanics work, or if the game has legs, this can be words on…
Well one of the parts of becoming a publisher is having your systems in place. Sometimes this means systems and delays. For example, you may have noticed the site changed appearance, and it slowly changed on all the pages. We had to transfer to a new hoster because our previous one had absolutely terrible support and were blocking search engines…
A few of the podcasts I listen to and some of the forums I frequent have been discussing board game design tools recently. It made me realize that there are a lot of different methods people use, and tools as well. The Board Game Business podcast demonstrated this very well. One end of the spectrum had mostly pencils and post-it…
Well, you can't create a game without play-testing. Lots, and lots of play-testing. We do it in a few stages like most designers. First, there is the play test that happens in the designers head. Those aren't all that reliable. But then you get practical and you grab some old pawns, poker cards, and spare chits and make a papertype…
One of the things that I know every new designer and publisher is going to have issues with is becoming visible to the masses. You can really run in to a chicken and the egg scenario. What I mean by that is that in order to get attention in the market, you need to have a title that people recognize…