Interview with Joel Colombo a Kickstarter Superbacker

Interview with Joel Colombo a Kickstarter Superbacker

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/board-game-authority/id852807322] A while back I had the opportunity to speak with Joel Colombo, who has backed 180 different Kickstarter campaigns (he has since broken the 200 mark).  I wanted to talk with Joel to gain insight from a backer perspective.  What makes him click the pledge button?  Or maybe more importantly, what scares him away?  As always, you can listen to the podcast on iTunes, or via the embeded player right here on our site, and the excerpt can be found below. RICHARD MILES: Hi! This is Richard Miles of Board Game authority and today I’m with… JOEL COLOMBO: Joel Colombo. RICHARD MILES: Hi, Joel. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. We are in quite a few Facebook groups together. Facebook groups about board-gaming in general, some on the design aspect but a lot of groups focusing on Kickstarter, and from those groups I have learned that you are, for lack of a better word, a ‘Power Backer’. I don’t know what to call it. JOEL COLOMBO: It sounds weird. But yeah… RICHARD MILES: Yeah. You back a lot of Kickstarter games. How many Kickstarter projects have you backed to date? JOEL COLOMBO: As I looked, preparing for this, I’m at a hundred and eighty (180), and what’s even crazier is I think my first one was backed around mid-2014, so, the last two (2) years. RICHARD MILES: Wow, wow, wow! That is a lot of projects backed. Today on the show, I would like to just go over what it is from a backer perspective of what you’re looking for in a campaign. What makes you click that pledge button? What is desirable? What campaigns do you pass over? Things of that nature. JOEL COLOMBO: Sure! I would love to. RICHARD MILES: Do you ever back any games or projects on other platforms other than Kickstarter? JOEL COLOMBO: Honestly, no.  I haven’t. I’ve maybe popped over and looked at a few that I’ve seen shared on the boards but I’ve never… There’s just something about Kickstarter being a hub that I’ve been drawn to.  It almost feels off going to some of the other networks that just don’t have that same board game community already built in. RICHARD MILES: Yeah. It’s the same for me, and I think you hit on a good point there and that’s community. I think that Kickstarter does have a very nice community surrounding it for board games. But why pledge it all? Why not wait until games hit the retail shelves? JOEL COLOMBO: So, there’s a couple things really with this.  This is a big question with it because a lot of times you’re not getting a super sweet discount deal so it’s not about the money. It’s really, I am a business owner myself. It’s a software industry thing. But when I put down my money I know that it’s going directly to the publishers, especially the indie publishers. When I look at it, it’s just one of those things where I know that I’m supporting them. There’s no middle man. There’s no distribution retail cuts, all of these other stuff. A hundred percent (100%) of what I’m giving them is going in to their business, and that they’ll apply that towards the game, towards building their business going to the convention so they can promote it and really start something. As an entrepreneur, I really am a big believer in trying to help people get off the ground. I moderate. I’m one of the couple moderators on the Card and Board Game Designers Guild. I’m seeing six thousand (6,000) designers on there all sharing their stuff. You start to build relationships. You start to see what they’re going through developing to get to that point. When they launch, sometimes, if it’s somebody I’ve seen that’s really been working hard at it, I don’t even dig in to it. I’m like, “You know what, I’m backing this one. I see what this guy’s got going.” Worst case, somewhere down the road it doesn’t work out, I can trade it out or something like that, on a BGG trade. RICHARD MILES: Right. JOEL COLOMBO: That type of thing. I look at it as saying, the games don’t all make it to retail. They don’t all get funded.  So, if I can help somebody realize their dream, the same way I would want somebody to help me with mine if I get there, it really is what drives me to make that pledge early. RICHARD MILES: I commend that. I applaud that. I really like that mentality, helping others. I think it really all comes back and even if it doesn’t, it feels good. Right? JOEL COLOMBO: Yeah. RICHARD MILES: So, I applaud that. JOEL COLOMBO: Well, you get something for it. You get a chance to… Maybe you were able to contribute early on in the design phase with them. But then it really is helping to see something come new that may not happen without something like Kickstarter. I mean, I know we always see the arguments about who is too big for Kickstarter. Who should not be using it. That type of thing. But the reality is a regular gamer that maybe isn’t as involved in the design community and stuff, may not feel it the same way. They definitely, a lot of the times when I see some of the negative comments about Kickstarter, they definitely don’t realize what a lot of these guys have gone through to get to the point where they can even get it up on Kickstarter. So they’re just bashing it around, component costs or different things. The reality is there’s a lot more that goes into these than what a lot of people realize. I guess being able to look under the covers a little, being so involved in the community, I have an appreciation for what it is I’m backing before I get there. Unfortunately, when people just look at it as a retail sale, they’re not seeing the whole picture. RICHARD MILES: Right. I agree a hundred percent (100%). Yeah. Let’s switch gears a little bit and get into the meat of a Kickstarter campaign page. JOEL COLOMBO: Yeah. RICHARD MILES: When you’re backing games that come from someone who’s not known to you. They’re not a friend. They’re not a forum member. What do you look for on that just standard, typical campaign page? JOEL COLOMBO: One of the things that I look for is if the creator, the campaign owner, really did their homework. There are enough resources out there to know if they read Jamey’s blog or gotten the book. There are so many things that are out there to, I guess, to find some best practices, that if they don’t even look like they’ve tried. I have seen so many that have come up after you see a huge success, like ‘Exploding Kittens’. You just see them get fired up there. That look like they maybe did over a couple hours on the weekend, and then said, “I got a game.”, and you put those up. Those ones are just right out the door. If you don’t look like you actually have been working on this for some time, and putting the effort in, I’m not going to give you that money upfront. That to me is an issue of effort, and saying most of what you could do to make this work is free. It doesn’t cost you anything extra.  Maybe you need some graphic design or something. But if you can’t even apply that element of stuff to things, I really have to worry about what’s going to come out of the back end, what the quality of the deliverable is going to be. That’s one of the first things I’ll notice. It’s just the general quick scan over quality. Obviously we can go into some more of the specifics, but that one’s the quick one. If you look like you fired it up over a weekend, and that’s what you’ve done with it, it’s probably not going to attract anybody. RICHARD MILES: Right. Because of my position at Board Game Authority, I get a lot of emails just saying, “Hey, I’ve launched my campaign. We’d like you to help spread the word.” This actually is really a dime a dozen . There’s a recent one that’s in my mind. It’s a text wall. There are no images, zero. No images whatsoever, just a wall of text of “I have an idea for a game and I would like you to give me money for my idea.” That’s it. I don’t know. I have a lot of feelings about this. For me, it’s not so cut and dry because on one hand, they seem to be a little confused and out of touch about what Kickstarter is, and why people would give you money. They seem a little misguided. But at the same time, like you’re saying, they haven’t done their homework. JOEL COLOMBO: The resources are free. They’re there. If you just go to a Facebook search for ‘Game Design Group’ or ‘Table Top or Board Game Design Group’. It’s right there, and it’s a really welcoming community. You have that. Then you have the Kickstarter advice group. They’re all right there to get into, and everybody in there is pretty helpful. It’s the ones that will come in afterwards to promote their campaign, like after they’ve launched they come in to the group and they’re like, “Hey, any advice?”, and everyone’s “Yeah, stop this campaign, ask us that again, and in a month launch it after you get the…” But to change your campaign after you’ve launched? You’re already too late. Your first seventy two (72) hours are really going to set up the tone. If you don’t have traction in the first three (3) days, or some other sort of higher end marketing plan for later, you’re dead in the water, honestly. That’s just out of essentially watching every table top campaign for the last two (2) years. Sure, there’s a few that can get past that, but… RICHARD MILES: Yeah, most are going to die in the water… JOEL COLOMBO: Yeah. RICHARD MILES: …die a slow painful death. JOEL COLOMBO: Like you said, I found myself sometimes where I’ll see somebody and I’ll put it up and I can honestly tell that they didn’t know what they were doing when they put the page up, and they were a little bit out of it. So, I will personally message them through the Kickstarter message and give them a few tips, usually link them over to some of the groups, and just say, “Hey, I think you’re on to something, but I think you’re still early. I highly recommend you check this stuff out.” Some show up and some don’t. RICHARD MILES: Correct. JOEL COLOMBO: Unfortunately people who are probably listening to the podcast here are not people that need to listen to this stuff. RICHARD MILES: Right. There’s certainly the calibre of person who decides, “I’m going to do this. That means I need to research it.” JOEL COLOMBO: Yeah. RICHARD MILES: Right. Then there are people who live in their bubble. JOEL COLOMBO: Yeah. RICHARD MILES: …and they for whatever reason, do not seek outside assistance. They’re in their bubble and they think they can do it just fine. The reality is if you have not looked at a Kickstarter campaign page and/or if you have, but you decide, “I’m going to ignore that because I know best.” JOEL COLOMBO: Right. RICHARD MILES: Hey, if you do know best and you can prove us all wrong, great. But from what I’ve seen, the best practices are best practices for a reason. Speaking of those, can you touch on some of the things that you specifically look for? JOEL COLOMBO: Sure. Yeah. One of the questions you had sent to me earlier about one of the first things I notice on a campaign page. Yes, overall, generally just “Does it look like you put the time into it?” We got that. But the second one is, and I don’t know how many people realize it or not, I as the level of backer I am, and I know not everybody is, I pretty much use Kickstarter exclusively through the native app on the Iphone. I maybe, once a month, pop it up in a browser. So you better be sure that you’ve checked your campaign page in a mobile browser or in the actual… I know you can’t check it in an app before its launch, but at least check it on a mobile browser to see when you have such tiny text or things along those lines. They might look great on a full-sized screen, but again, being in a web software company I know that over fifty five percent (55%) of web visits now to anything are on a mobile device.  So, you’re talking half your people seeing it in a possibly poor light. So, that’s one of the first things I’ll notice too is, “Am I able to navigate this thing? Was it a whole bunch of graphics that were just slapped on to the page so the font is not scaling to my device? It’s just a big image, and that image doesn’t change in size. It just becomes very hard to read. That’s one that being on the mobile is huge but second to that is, because I’m on the mobile, I’m not seeing much of your campaign aside from your title, your cover picture, and possibly your short description. That’s really all I have to go on for the three seconds if I decide that I’m going to click in and go. I don’t think you can do anything better than a great cover picture, and we’ll get to the video I’m sure later, but the cover picture is a huge piece to me. Am I your audience? I don’t back RPGs, the new Star Wars RPG stuff. I’m a fan but I am not an Indie RPG guy. So, if you’re in RPG, make sure it’s clear right there because honestly, I just would pass by it. But your RPG people would notice it and go into it. There are those elements that I give it three (3) seconds when I look at it because I’m looking at so many, and I think they propose for somebody who’s just browsing around casually too. Are you catching their eye with the short piece you have? RICHARD MILES: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I think most people because they do not come from a web-design world probably are not looking at it from a, “How does this page look on a mobile device?” What about the project video? Since you back so many games, do you even watch videos anymore? JOEL COLOMBO: I have out of the hundred and seventy five (175) games, I can honestly say, I’ve watched maybe eight (8), maybe ten (10). Here’s my perception on it. It’s your advertisement, and unfortunately like to me, I’m already at your page. It’s like I walked into your store and now what I see in most videos, it’s an advertisement to come to the store. I’m not saying all are. Some do a good play through. There is sometimes some good personality, whatever. The point of it is, I usually am not on video. Because of experience backing, I’m going to go the elements that I do look for right away to see things like components picture. It’s huge to me. I want to see what you’ve got in the box. I want to see if this is fifty (50) cue cards and a board. Does this thing have all kinds of bits? Things like the video, I don’t want to be having to walk through it.  Now, I’m not saying it doesn’t work, and I’m not saying don’t do a video. I just don’t use them. I don’t go to them. Your description below is what I’m really counting on to tell me if this is going to fit me or not, not like your sales pitch version of it up top. But on the other side is that having videos from previews or run throughs or walkthroughs or whatever you want to play throughs, that’s mandatory. If I can’t see how the game is played, then I’m extremely hesitant to put money down on it. I want to see it played but not necessarily up in the two (2) minute header video RICHARD MILES: Right. JOEL COLOMBO: where you can do a thirty (30) second overview.  I need to see if that gameplay style is going to work with me, my groups, things like that. RICHARD MILES: Yeah. I’m pretty much the same way. JOEL COLOMBO: Yeah, and like I said. I’m not trying to downplay the video as a value to attracting especially the more casual backers, like you said, the ‘Under 10 Projects’ or even first-timers because that’s definitely going to peak their interest. But, then again, think of it like your television ad. You’re getting them to hook and then, they come to your store so to speak they scroll down, and now they’re left wanting because, “Oh this seems cool.” Then down below there’s nothing that takes them to the next level. Maybe it’s just this short and summarized what was in the video. The video is your summary recap that pulls the whole thing together in two (2) minutes so that you can get the person who just wants to pop-in, check it out real quick. It doesn’t fit them in that initial sales pitch. They move on. But once they do, and again like you said, like yourself or even myself too, we don’t go through the pitch anymore. We just go on right down to the meat. It’s like, “Okay, I understand how this works so I can go right into the store. I don’t need to be sold on coming in the store.” So definitely don’t take that as, the video doesn’t matter. I think it totally does for attracting the masses to go to step two (2), but I go right to step two (2). RICHARD MILES: Right. JOEL COLOMBO: …and that is the page itself. RICHARD MILES: Right. Let’s talk about reward tiers, and where do you normally back? Do you look for the deluxe tiers? Are you adverse to them? Do they affect how much you pledge when you see a game that has this special deluxe Kickstarter version or some kind of special bits that you’re not going to get in stores? Shed some light on how you look at reward tiers. JOEL COLOMBO: Okay. Yeah, the reward tiers it’s such a difficult subject when it comes to how different people set them up because you’ll see some that set their tiers up for the international levels and all the different things. That can be extremely confusing if it’s not super clear. What’s where? When you start mixing in multiple zone pricing with a couple different tiers of actual pledge backing, you end up with nine (9), or twelve (12), or fifteen (15) different levels, and it’s really crazy. The campaigns that typically work best for me that really sell me on it are, you have to have your token dollar pledge or five (5) dollar pledge, or whatever it is so that you can get friends and family that don’t want your game…to give you some amount or something like that. But really I want to see the game. I want to see the game level. If you have a special edition, sure, put it in there. I am hesitant, usually, to go to that level if it’s a first time publisher, almost exclusively. If you’re a first time publisher, and you have two (2) different tiers to your game, I’m almost never going to take the deluxe tier because I have no idea if you’re actually going to deliver the thing at all. I have not been burned. I have gotten one (1) or two (2) cancelled and refunded which is good but the deluxe tier for a first time publisher is tough. What I would rather see and what really does it for me is half the game pledge level, at the tier that you need it to be.  Call it the basic tier, whatever. Then add your stretches in to get to the deluxe level that everyone can afford. Whatever your number needs to be at for that, price it out. There’s just a lot of math that has to go into figuring out where your costing and everything is to get to that deluxe level. But I’d rather see your basic game with cardboard chips punched out and ready to go. The game’s there. You set your goal to be at the level needed, based on the quote for your cardboard pieces. Then if we get five thousand ($5,000) or ten thousand ($10,000), whatever your margin you need to get to the wood bits or whatever. Then you upgrade it to it because the reality is, okay, somebody pays an extra ten ($10.00) or twenty dollars ($20.00) for the deluxe tier, then you’re building this basic game. You’re getting it published. You’re ordering your fifteen hundred (1,500) minimum or whatever. Then you’re getting the extra components for the three hundred (300) or two hundred (200) people that need wood bits now. It just seems like there’s way more moving parts RICHARD MILES: Right. JOEL COLOMBO: So for a first time designer, I’m hesitant to do a deluxe. Once you’ve got some proof that you’ve delivered, that the quality came in the way you originally proposed on your first project or your second project, now I’m much more inclined to look at it and say, “Yeah. You know what, they know what they’re doing, and they put this together to do this right.” If the deluxe looks cool and the game is speaking to me, I’ll go with the deluxe.  But I’ll look at what’s the real difference between the two (2). I might get actual little gem bits and stuff like that. You look at it and you’re like, “Okay, I know that there’s a shipping cost attached to this extra weight. I know that it’s going to cost a buck ($1.00) for the gems but if there’s a twenty-five dollar ($25.00) difference between your basic and your deluxe, and it’s so that I have twenty five (25) plastic gem chips.  No, I can pick those up afterwards and throw them in the game if I need to. So really, you have to think of what your value of your deluxe does for the actual thing because now you’re really creating something that people can judge the value of your game on because your basic was forty bucks ($40.00), and now your deluxe is sixty-five ($65.00). Most people can look at that and say, “Is there a $25.00 actual value difference between A and B?”, where if you just had one (1) level that increased in value as you got more profit, you can price your game at what you should honestly price it at. If it’s a sixty dollar ($60.00) game, and I don’t care about the component cost, some people do. But I look at it, I’m like, “Yeah, there’s a lot more that goes into a game than just its wood bits inside.” I love splutter titles and they are for the components you get, and that type of stuff. It’s pricier, than what you would say if I would just add up the cardboard. So I think that if you want to command a better price and have people buy into it, when you start creating more disparity between your levels, you start to create more questions. More questions means more thought. More thought means more waiting. More waiting means something else comes up, and no backing happens. So simplify, simplify, simplify. Get down to three (3), four (4) levels. Maybe you have that high level where you’re giving them a caricature or something, whatever on the card. But for the most part, try and keep it to your friends and family pledge. Your base game may be a deluxe if you have that credibility and then your five hundred dollar ($500.00) super pledge, or whatever you want to call it. But don’t go twelve (12), fifteen (15) pledge levels. When I look at that, I’m confused. I’m like, “I’ll star this, and I’ll look at it later.” And sometimes later doesn’t come. There’s a lot to think about when it comes to it but take away confusion is a huge piece. Some of the ones that I’ve loved the best, they have one (1) pledge level.  It’s the game, fifty bucks  ($50.00), the US shipping included, go. RICHARD MILES: Yeah. Right. Click it. You’re done. You don’t have to think about it. Yup. Exactly.  You mentioned ‘starring’ a project. For those who are not familiar with Kickstarter, you can ‘star’ a project and that essentially sends out a reminder. It keeps it in your profile under your ‘starred projects’ so you can go back and see everyone that you’ve clicked that button. But it also sends you a reminder forty eight (48) hours before the end of that campaign. For me, I almost a hundred percent (100%), this is very rare if I deviate from this, but I almost wait until I get that reminder. That’s for me, it’s just because I want to see how the campaign is doing. Is It funding, is it not funding? How many stretched goals did they unlock? That sort of thing. If at that point, I feel like I’m getting a really good value, at that point I back. But it’s usually after I get that email. When do you typically back a campaign? JOEL COLOMBO: Well, I guess that starts with how I discover campaigns, and we can go there. So I installed a RSS news app on my phone just know you can find them for any device. Right? So an RSS news reader app. Then I went over to Kicktrack, and I grabbed their latest release RSS feed. I stick that into the news app, and it’s the only feed in that particular app. So I know when the notification alerts come up, every ten (10) minutes Kicktrack does their updates, I see when I get a push notice from that app that it’s a board game. I am literally getting board game notices usually within the hour of their launch, for every single game, every single day. RICHARD MILES: Nice. JOEL COLOMBO: So with that said, I am usually by the evening, finish up work, come home, whatever. I will look through the six (6), eight (8), ten (10), whatever launched that day, and I’m clicking on each one. I’m looking at the photo, the title. If it seems interesting I go in. So at that point, that’s where I make a decision usually on that. I look at it and the game speaks to me, it’s got a lot of the points I like. I look at it, price point is reasonable, all that other stuff, and I will usually back it. I’m usually a first twenty four (24) hour backer for most of almost all the campaigns I backed. The other thing would be that I would look at it and I would ‘star’ it. So I’ll click that star. “Hey, I’m not sure yet. I have to look more. I have to watch the play through.” Because I always look at them. I back it now and then later, it will be in my back list. I’m already in there. I can watch the video. If I don’t like it, I can back out. It’s the first day. So I have plenty of time to do this but I also want to help promote the momentum of it. By backing it early and keeping an eye on it every day, it’s just like ‘starring’ it but I am also helping create momentum for the campaign because campaigns typically feed off of itself. The better it’s doing, the better it does. When you can get momentum, I like to help that. “You know what, I’m thinking about it. I’ll put it on there. I’ll go.” RICHARD MILES: How important to you is a third party review on a Kickstarter page? JOEL COLOMBO: Well, two (2) different things. Kickstarter, I don’t think there’s really anything on Kickstarter that can be considered a review. You can call it a preview but they haven’t made the game yet. Is the cardboard going to be garbage? The reality is that they’re previewing what it should be. I’m of the school that it’s hard to be objective especially if somebody’s paid to do a preview. They might say some negative points or something, but you know it’s designed to be around promotion. So if they put it on their page, it’s probably positive, right? You’re not going to put a, “We hated this game.” on our Kickstarter page. The reviews, I rarely will look at one and say they’re a review. The ones that are previews, though, and even though he only plays certain types of games and certain things, the Rahdo Run Throughs to me are a huge thing. I bet you I back about eight (8) out of ten (10) that he does a run through on. Not because it’s him or anything like that but because the way he previews it, I can put myself in his seat, and I can actually visualize how that will play with my game group, with me, and I rarely ever listen to his final thoughts or things like that because I really just want to see him play the game with the real cards, with the real bits type of thing. He does a preview or a run through. If you get somebody to do that where they’re just playing the game and showing me how the mechanics and all that stuff goes, that’s really important to me. Afterwards, when I’m going to retail and stuff, when the game is available and people are spending their own money to buy the thing and don’t have any obligation or expectation, that’s when the reviews typically will be a little more important to me because I’m looking at it with a sense of, “Yeah, somebody probably spent forty bucks ($40.00) on this.”  You have to be careful.  Because in this space, there are a lot of times, you don’t want to pan a thing you never get another title from a publisher, those types of things. So previews.  Preview, preview, preview, play throughs super important but again, other people probably do like reviews. This debate goes on at forums all the time. I would say get some reviews. If they have some name recognition, that’s great. But for me, I just want to see how it plays, and I’m going to make my own opinion. RICHARD MILES: Right. No, that makes sense. Yeah. So before you back a project, you take any other information into account that might not be specifically game-related. I’m talking about things like the amount of the funding goal. If that to you, since you’ve backed so many games, you can see that, “This game has a $1,000 funding goal.” But it’s going to cost them closer to twenty ($20,000.00) or thirty ($30,000.00) to create it. Do you look at things like that? JOEL COLOMBO: Yeah. RICHARD MILES: Does that throw up red flags? JOEL COLOMBO: Well, yeah. Being as experienced now as I am, when I see something really falls out of the typical range for what they’re proposing, I really have to dig in to the campaign because maybe they are using gold plated maples. I don’t know. But something is off. When they’re doing a basic euro, and the funding goal is seventy five thousand dollars ($75,000.00), something’s wrong. I mean, I looked at the components. I looked at this. That is a high minimum goal you need to do. Why? That’s where inexperience could come in. Maybe they’re trying to publish it stateside, okay, that’s respectable but I have to know why. Because if it was just a number you picked, that worries me that you don’t know exactly what you’re getting in to. So as long as you can explain why your goal is what it is, and I don’t mean getting down to how much you’re spending on individual mailing envelopes. But the reality of it, look. You can see the history of every game ever run on Kickstarter. So look at ones that are comparable in scope, and say, “Oh, most euros go between twenty ($20,000) and thirty five thousand dollar ($35,000) goals. Am I way off? Am I at five thousand ($5,000)? Well, people aren’t going to believe that I know what I’m doing when I’m saying I need five thousand ($5,000) when it’s twenty thousand ($20,000). So yes, the goal is one. Another one that is somewhat controversial in discussion is your profile history. I am one that does it.  Whatever you want to say about it, I’m honest. I go almost immediately after I look at your very basic campaign overview, I look at your history. So I look at your ‘zero created’, ‘zero backed’. And yes, there is the possibility you just created this for your new game company but I need to know that. I need to know why because I want to know that they went through what I’ve gone through. I want to know they’ve gone through sitting through the updates, knowing what this whole process is like. If the only thing that’s in their entire profile was them backing ‘Exploding Kittens’, and they just came out with a game, that worries me a little. I’m not saying I haven’t backed ‘zero, zeroes’. I’m fine with first time creators if they’ve got their stuff together, but people who have never backed a table top of a similar quality or calibre of what they’re about to sell to me, it worries me unless you have some explanation. RICHARD MILES: For me, I look at it as well, and I’m a little bit the same way where I may back a project that has ‘zero, zero’ but I hesitate a little bit. JOEL COLOMBO: I’m not saying I expect them to have 180 games backed. But if you don’t have a handful , if you couldn’t over the last year that you’ve thought about your game, and if you haven’t even thought about your game for a year well that’s another problem. But you know that you couldn’t back a twenty dollar ($20.00) card game just to understand what it goes through, to me it’s just a red flag. It looks at it, and I’m saying, “You know, I really worry that I don’t know if they know what they’re getting themselves into.” RICHARD MILES: Understood, yeah, completely. When you’re backing games, is shipping a factor for you? JOEL COLOMBO: Yes, absolutely, shipping in general. I am not going to pretend that shipping doesn’t happen. I am not one of the people that, “Free shipping, free shipping.” I understand there’s a significant cost in delivery of these so I am not going to tell you you shouldn’t charge shipping. How you present it, shipping, is super important to me. There’s the old school way, right? Roll it in and make it a pledge level, and that’s your US shipping. I’m going to be selfish in the sense that I’m going to be typically talking about US-based shipping. When it gets to international stuff that’s a free for all, and I guess you have to decide how you want to handle that. But as a US backer, which I still think there’s a huge portion of backers that are US based, having it rolled in is always great because I don’t have to click through that second screen, and I know exactly what I’m in for. It makes it way easier to say, “Oh this is fifty bucks ($50.00) and it’s all in. Nothing else? Done. Go.” If you’re using the zone shipping so that you can handle the international levels and all that other stuff, then at least have that in so when I click the pledge level, I have the five bucks ($5.00) or the ten bucks ($10,00) or whatever next, and I can judge the whole thing. One of the problems though, whenever you add shipping on, and for me, I’m a more aggressive collector, I’ve reached the top tier of Cool Stuff Inc, whatever discount club they call it. RICHARD MILES: Right. JOEL COLOMBO: So, when I look at that I am like, “Well, I am used to getting those levels where I get the shipping for free so if the shipping does appear to change that value up to what would become significantly higher than if I do wait for retail, and I know that the game’s going to go to retail, you know it’s not a total independent first-timer (that) has no distribution channel, I may stop and say, “Okay. Well, I was willing to pay ten bucks ($10.00) more but now ten bucks ($10.00) more on top of that for shipping. Do I really want it now? I’m not even getting it now, I’m getting it two weeks before it shows up there anyway. But do I really need to be in on it now or not?” But when it’s rolled in to the initial pledge level, and it’s just forty five bucks ($45.00), I am just as easily tricked as a marketing tactic as the next guy. It makes me just say, “You know what, $45.00. Okay. Good. I’m done.” Or “Thirty five bucks ($35.00)? Good. I’m done.” So your game of twenty five ($25.00) I threw ten ($10.00) in there and it’s thirty five ($35.00), I’m able to justify that and go. That’s the easiest way. But at least have it as the add on, then they can justify the whole thing and say, “I’m willing to do that.” What I hate and I see it trending, and just not at all a fan and is definitely going to slow me down, is any offline need to do anything after Kickstarter because I absolutely don’t want to pull my credit card. I haven’t pulled my credit card out in whatever, year and a half. It’s all in Kickstarter. I just push done and then it’s on there.  I don’t have to enter it. But now I’m going to have to go in to a Pledge Manager. Then I’m going to have to hope that you’ve calculated this right and the shipping isn’t turn out to be fifteen bucks ($15.00) when you said it was going to be five ($5.00) on your page but, oh, something changed. Now, I’m at risk to have a variable amount that I didn’t account for. It’s super distracting from what it was, and I get that from a business perspective. I’m a business person too. It makes the most logical sense but it’s the most inconvenient and it’s extremely distracting from what we’re trying to do. I hate Pledge Managers. I’ll say that now. I hate, hate, hate Pledge Managers. I get a few who have super complex minis game, all kinds of addons and things that you really sort out. Fine. But man, these Pledge Managers are the worst. Their emails constantly get sent in to spam folders. I only find out I missed one. Now remember, at any given time, I’m backing five (5) to seven (7) active projects.  So with the ones that are still outstanding, plus the backing ones, plus the old ones announcing more, I get up to twenty (20), twenty-five (25) updates a day. I have to know. I have to be glancing through these to say, “Oh, shoot. I missed a shipping pledge thing and I might be late on my delivery because they announced it. The Pledge Manager went live today but it got stuck in spam.” So, anything that creates that confusion afterwards is just a major turn-off as far as getting me to just go with it. But that’s one, just use the Kickstarter survey. It’s built in to the app so when I log in to the app, it pops up and gives me a nice, “Hey, respond now.” If you want, collect it there, and if you want you actually have other people jump in to your Pledge Manager doing more than what the basic pledge is for, fine. Then do that. But I don’t want to be forced to go in there just to confirm what’s my already saved Kickstarter address. RICHARD MILES: Right. Yeah. I’m largely the same way except where like you said, for miniatures game square, it makes sense and there are just gobs of things that I can add on later. We haven’t talked about updates really but you mentioned them a few times in that because of the number of games that you back you get quite a few updates a day.  Do you read the updates that you’re getting? JOEL COLOMBO: Okay. That’s a good question. The games that I’m super excited for, I will usually read them. Most though, I just read the titles. So when you do an update make your title super clear. Sometimes they’re funny or whatever, but if they’re just casual updates and they’re funny, that’s fine. Make it a comical title, that’s fine. If it’s just a “Hey we just want to check in to tell you how we’re doing.” But if there’s anything of importance in the update that I need to know, or should know, make it very clear in the title. Pledge Manager is open, get your submissions in. That should be your title of your update. Then if it’s a long update, do a ‘TLDR’ at the top (Too Long Didn’t Read), bullet point what’s in this thing because I just want to look at the top three bullet points, and say, “Okay.  This is shipping info for Australia and blah, blah, blah.” It doesn’t matter to me. I can move on to the next thing. So it’s great to just get the index at the top. Yeah, titles, summary or short thing up top, and then you can go in to your full thing; pictures of your miniatures and eighteen (18) various stages of moulding RICHARD MILES: Alright. JOEL COLOMBO: And that’s fine. Sometimes I look at them, like I said, when I’m really excited and other people are super, super crazy about reading every word in an update, and commenting on every update, and all that stuff. That’s fine.  They could do that. But for the most part where we’re just getting through it, “What’s the meat of this thing? What’s the point?” Just like the video does for your thing is if I feel that compelled, I should go further, and I want to know that you have the details below. Then another one with updates is frequency. That’s always a topic. Frequency of when you should, and how often, and all that other stuff. During the campaign, whenever a milestone is hit like a stretched goal or a backer level, there’s something like that. Sure share something out on that. During the campaign, all bets are off. Some people will post all of the time. You definitely want to be in communication. You definitely want to be responding to comments on the comment thread real time. That’s the first sign of a dead project is if two (2) days go by and the creator hasn’t responded to the comment thread. But updates, anything goes during the campaign, as long as people feel you’re communicating with them. RICHARD MILES: Well, Joel, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. I think all of our listeners have learned a lot. They have been able to glimpse a little bit of what goes in to the buyer’s mind, the backer’s mind when they are staring at a campaign page. I think it’s important to distinguish that from a fellow designer’s perspective. The reason I wanted you on the show is just to have that, the backer perspective. JOEL COLOMBO: Yeah thanks. Someday maybe I’ll be back on with the game that I finally push out of play testing. RICHARD MILES: Yeah. That would be awesome. JOEL COLOMBO: I appreciate it. The post Interview with Joel Colombo a Kickstarter Superbacker [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/interview-with-joel-colombo-a-kickstarter-superbacker/] first appeared on Board Game Authority [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/].

Chern Ann Ng, Co-Founder of CoolMiniOrNot Talks Shop

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/board-game-authority/id852807322] In today’s podcast, I get to talk with Chern Ann, co-founder of CoolMiniOrNot.  We discuss all things Kickstarter, and what it takes to manufacture a game with plastic miniatures.  We also discuss the humble origins of the CoolMiniOrNot website, how long CMON takes to plan one of their mega Kickstarters, why Chern Ann is active on Facebook board game publishing groups, why zombies was an easy sell, and more. Richard:                                Hi, this is Richard Miles with Board Game Authority, and today I am talking with… Chern Ann:                           Chern Ann from CoolMiniOrNot Richard:                                Thank you for taking the time out to speak with me today.  Most people are familiar with CoolMiniOrNot, at least in the board game industry. Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with the company? Chern Ann:                           I am one of the founders of the company. We started it out in 2001 as a community site, for people to upload the pictures of painted miniatures, to rate it, kind of like “Hot or Not” but for miniatures.  Super geeky thing. We did it for quite a while, until 2009 when we decided to see whether we could take this further, and that’s how we started getting into making miniature games, and finally board games. Richard:                                And so, whose decision was it to get into board game publishing? That’s kind of a big stretch from a “rate your painted miniature” website to full on board game publisher.  How did that process happen? Chern Ann:                           We were publishing or making miniatures for the hobbyist market for quite a while, I think since 2006, special edition figures, stuff that would be compatible with Warhammer, publishing games like Dark Age, skirmish miniature games, a lot like Warhammer 40k or Wyrd miniatures… Malifaux. During that time I had less time for  miniatures, miniature painting and the miniature hobby, and I was thinking that I’d love to combine miniatures with some way of making it easy to set up and play, and easy to store, and the board game format seemed to be a good idea.  So coincidentally, I mean this is a shout-out to those Soda Pop boys. They had pitched us a game called Super Dungeon Explore in 2010.  And they said okay, “This is our game, it’s full of these cute figurines, we’d like to make as a metal miniature line and sell little smaller expansions, maybe you could get one figure for like seven dollars or eight dollars, and could you guys publish us?”  So I took a look at the game and thought “Well this is ideal, why don’t we try a different format? Let’s make it a miniature board game instead.”  So that you could get all 50 figures at once with a reasonable price, or relatively reasonable compared to what miniature gamers are used to. And that is how we started publishing board games. Richard:                                Wow, I’m always interested in how things come together. After that initial run with Super Dungeon Explore,  CoolMiniOrNot really took to Kickstarter and your company has done really well on that platform. How many Kickstarters has CoolMiniOrNot been involved with? Chern Ann:                           We’ve run twenty (20) Kickstarter campaigns so far. Not all of them were for games, some were for base inserts and things like that, hobby products, but most of them were games. Richard:                                Twenty Kickstarters is quite a track record and every single one of those has successfully funded. Correct? Chern Ann:                           Well, successfully funded? Yes. And most of them have been successfully delivered. We are still delivering… I think we’re delivering Zombicide Black Plague right now.  We still have B-Sieged and The Others left to deliver and of course Arcadia Quest: Inferno that just completed a couple of days ago. Richard:                                And so, how active or involved are you with the Kickstarter projects? Chern Ann:                           In the beginning it was all me, for the first couple of campaigns. Then, we started training more people to handle how to deal with Kickstarter campaigns, how to structure it, how to plan it.  So we have a way of handling our Kickstarter planning, that is the CMON way of doing things.  So now, because of the volume of campaigns, we got a couple of different teams that look at the project, manage the project, because it’s a Kickstarter campaign usually of our scope, let’s say like  Zombicide: Black Plague or Arcadia Quest: Inferno, these things take a year, a year and a half of planning, to make sure we got everything in place, all the sculpts in place, that production is lined up, that we know what the schedules are going to be, that we know what the pricing is going to be, we know what we can offer and what we can’t.  The first couple of campaigns we made mistakes. We got caught up in the excitement. The typical mistakes of a Kickstarter newbie creator would be, “People are asking for Stretch Goals, what can we do, what can we give?” And this kind of thing kind of stretches the budget, and of course, it delays everything. So now we are more disciplined and we tend to focus much more on the planning and making sure that we can absolutely deliver on time. Richard:                                Right. And when you say it takes a year of planning. Does that mean that before the Kickstarter campaign is live, that the CoolMiniOrNot Team has discussed the campaign and it has at least been an idea in some form an entire year prior to the campaign going live? Chern Ann:                           Yes, absolutely. I mean, some games we look at and say, “Look, this is something that we don’t need to Kickstart. I mean, no one’s going to find it valuable if we Kickstart it.” So it just goes straight to distribution like The Grizzled. There was no point. It was a completely self-contained game. Stretch goals, or anything beyond that, wouldn’t really add value to experience for anyone.  Of course miniature games tend to lend themselves to expansions easily. We know from the Games Workshop experience, it is quite easy to say “Oh, let’s try the game again, but this time I want a different commander or a different villain.” So it’s easier to substitute things like that without affecting the whole balance of the game. Richard:                                Yeah, exactly. You mentioned The Grizzled. Let’s talk about that for a minute. This isn’t the first game that CoolMiniOrNot has published without miniatures, but I’d like to know why CoolMiniOrNot decided to publish that game, as well as others, that kind of deviate from the usual CoolMiniOrNot bread and butter miniatures game. Chern Ann:                           We like games; that’s the thing. So, if the game is cool, it doesn’t need to have miniatures, we will publish it anyway. In fact, we have a couple of games coming up, like… er, well I can’t say what they are at the moment. I think I am not allowed to. But we have a couple of games coming out that don’t have many miniatures in them.  I mean XenoShyft also doesn’t have miniatures and was very well received. [XenoShyft] the card drafting game about aliens overrunning your mining camp.  Basically we are an omnivores, right. We will publishing anything. We make any game, any board game, that we feel is fun and that people will enjoy. Ricard:                                   Okay, fair enough. Now, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show today is that I’m a member of quite a few Facebook groups that all focus on board game design. You are a member of these Facebook groups as well and I’ve noticed quite a few posts from you on the topic of game design, Kickstarter best practices, I see you answering other people’s questions, providing feedback on their Kickstarter preview pages. Now, my question to you is: Why do you do this? Why do you think it’s important to do it? To kind of give back to the community that you are part of? Churn Ann:                           Well, like you said, it is something that you want to give back. You see a lot of great… you know,   I used to see a lot of great campaigns of great games, and many campaigns kind of floundered, or they are not successful in completely delivering the product because of inexperience. And the gaming community is extremely small.  I mean, it’s not small small like a couple of guys, but still, it’ not like a video game community. So there are not a lot of publishers out there. I like cool games, I think you can see from the CoolMiniOrNot account, it is a shared account that we use to back other people’s projects as well.  You can see quite a number of games projects that we’ve backed too. We like to see games get to the finish line. Even though they are theoretically our competitors, at the end of the day, I think the market is still growing and we need more enthusiasts, we need more seasoned and experienced publishers because it helps everybody.  Let me give you an example.  Let’s say you have a Kickstarter project for board game based on a super hot property, and then it comes out or doesn’t come out and it is super delayed. That affects all of us because the crowd funding reputation drops, right. People get burned and you say, “Oh my goodness, this is terrible, I’ll never back another campaign again.” And it is a loss to all of us, in terms of publishers. So where we can avoid that happening,  we like to, I mean, of course you can’t go to someone else and say “Don’t compete with me”, but you can say, “If you’re going to compete with me, please at least do it properly”, so it doesn’t destroy the comments that we all share. Richard:                                I like that stance.  I have friends that either don’t know what a Kickstarter is; they never heard of it at all. I have another group of friends that simply don’t trust Kickstarter. They haven’t backed a single project, they are uncomfortable with the time-delay aspect, the whole waiting six months or even a year to get something they paid for.  Now I know some others that have backed one or two projects and they had a bad experience, and since then they’ve sworn never to back another project. And then there are people like me: I love Kickstarter. Being a part of the community, helping bring something to life, push it across the finish line. That feels good. Although I can’t deny getting all of the extras, or the exclusives, that come with some Kickstarter games is another reason that I back Kickstarter games very regularly. Chern Ann:                           Yes, I mean you raised a good point which is exclusives. Some people don’t like the idea of exclusives because, I mean for all kinds of reasons, like it is elitist, or it’s unfair. But this is my personally philosophy which I put into the company. There is a lot of risk actually. Even with us, like when you give us money, seven, eight months, sometimes a year in advance, that is money you are not going to be seeing for quite a long time. And you could have been using it to do a lot of other stuff. You could have like taken your kids to the movies, or you could buy another game.  You know you’ve got to give some kind of value, something that has got to be in it for the customer. Right? So you say, “Thank you very much for trusting us with your hard earned money so early and here is what we can do for you in return.” Of course we can’t do that to the expense of core game experience, because obviously we want to be able to provide that to people who are unprepared to take the risk or do not know about the product.  So you’ll see that our games are designed first with the retail product in mind, and then our exclusives are all kinds of fun stuff that we throw in just to sweeten the deal. It’s like those pre-orders at Game Stop where you get like a special colored light saber or some additional companion character if you purchase by a certain time, you know, that kind of thing. Richard:                                Yeah, I’m familiar with pre-ordering video games. You can get a mount or a companion pet that often isn’t available outside of that pre-order process. Chern Ann:                           That is exactly the same philosophy, yes. Richard:                                You briefly touched on your personal philosophy toward Kickstarter. I would like to expand on that. What does it take to have a successful Kickstarter campaign? Can you list some things that are important, that you think every Kickstarter needs, or at least needs to take into account? Chern Ann:                           My first rule is that the campaign is not successful until you ship. So the actual Kickstarter part of it, when the campaign is running and you are trying to fund and things like that, you need to keep in mind the final goal which is to get the product to the customer, or to the backer, without bankrupting yourself. And it is very easy to get caught up in the excitement of the campaign and to over promise or kind of like hand wave a bit and say “Oh, I think shipping will cost me like $15 and that should be fine. Let’s just put that down.” So planning is extremely important.  If you are a first time creator, my advice is to go for a smaller project, especially if you have never done mail order or logistics before, because a lot of things will surprise you. There is a lot of stuff that are gotchas. For example let’s say, “Shipping within the United States will cost me $8.00, so I’ll charge my customers $8.00” but then a lot of people forget that there is a credit card fee of X% and there is a Kickstarter fee as well, so when you charge $8.00 you are only getting about $6.80 and after that, Fedex/USPS is going to say, “Look, I’m not going to give you a discount because you charged less, that’s on you.” So a lot of these things can add up, especially if the project becomes extremely successful and if this is not managed properly. If you take a loss on one thousand units and you are out of pocket for like $2.00 each, that’s the kind of stuff that personal credit card can take care of, but if you have 20,000 units and you get a loss of  $5.00 or $6.00 each, that is something you can’t recover from.  Ironically, mistakes get magnified the more successful you are during the campaign. Richard:                                I don’t think that most people take into account the whole scale of growth factor and what happens if you are off by only a few dollars which quickly becomes thousands of dollars when multiplied by thousands of backers. I think most people think that blowing up on Kickstarter is a good problem to have, but as you pointed out it can be a very expensive problem and one that you can’t really get out from under. Chern Ann:                           Yes precisely. In some situations, without naming names, you know projects where it makes more sense to refund the backer than to ship the product to them. Richard:                                Sad but true, yeah. Let’s talk about economies of scale and how expensive it is to make plastic miniatures.  Is there a threshold or a tipping point where you think it is not feasible to include minis in a game? Chern Ann:                           If you’re going for metal or resin miniatures, stuff that is okay for very low production runs, I don’t think there is really a tipping point. You can make ten as cheaply as one hundred, for instance. It’s when you make plastic figurines that it becomes an issue. For plastic, the advantages of plastic of course, it’s a lighter material, some people prefer to use it for modelling, and it is cheaper per unit to inject than it is to cast the same miniature in metal because metal has material cost. Tin is quite expensive. So for plastic, the costs are not so obvious. I mean the obvious cost is the mould cost, the moulds might cost you like $7,000 to $8,000 for a mould that will only fit five or six figures. So that’s quite expensive when you consider if you are only going to sell 200 of these figures. It is not really feasible. And on top of that, when you’re injecting in plastic you have to sculpt for plastic. The material has very different properties from metal and resin, so a lot of first time Kickstarter creators that are, “I’m trying to get into miniatures” but they have no expense in miniatures, this always worries me because it is very easy to make mistakes. And we have made these mistakes in the past, which is why we know. It is very easy to make mistakes with plastic figurines because if you want it to look a certain way, PVC has different properties than metal, it will shrink more, so for example, if you want a muscular barbarian you need to sculpt him a little bit more muscular than what you want the final result to be simply because everything shrinks. And this is not something that, especially for those game creators or project owners that come from a video game background, that are used to doing something in CAD and then after that expecting to see the exact final result. That doesn’t happen with plastic; it is quite difficult. Richard:                                That sounds like something that is isn’t easily discovered or thought about until it actually happens to you? Chern Ann:                           Yes, well, there are actually are a lot of resources online that will tell you “Okay, plastic manufacturing process, keep this in mind, keep this in mind”, but when you are too focused on the Kickstarter campaign itself rather than thinking about the manufacturing processes, etc, or the stuff that comes after, it can be lost in the shuffle. And of course you are asking me about a tipping point, so for plastic it really depends. If you want to take full advantage of the low cost of producing miniatures in plastic then you want to include more figurines inside the game box. But of course with more figurines it would mean that you have more moulds. And more cost alone, for example, for something like The Others was in the six figures already. If the campaign did anything less than $100,000.00 it would be a wash. You couldn’t pay for the moulds. When I see campaigns that are doing far less than that and promising plastic figurines, I am not sure what’s happening. Most likely there are some external funds that are coming from outside to try to get the company off the ground but it is not, in and of itself, the project is not really viable in my opinion. And this is not to discourage first time creators that want to publish miniature games. But it’s very, very helpful if you don’t have direct experience with this yourself that you work with someone who has. Like a very experienced caster or a very experienced factory, who will tell exactly what can and cannot be done, and you need to listen to them. It is very important when you hire an expert you listen to the expert and don’t say, “You are wrong, I think we can do this on the cheap.” That almost never works out. Richard:                                Let’s talk about the very first Kickstarter campaign for CoolMiniOrNot. Was the plan at that early stage to be a legitimate board game publisher? Or was the thought more along the lines of, it’s kind of a one off deal and we’ll just see how it goes? Chern Ann:                           Well, back to Super Dungeon Explore, once we released that game it took a while to get some traction because the miniature board game experience wasn’t very well known at that time. I think the only other company that was doing it in a major way was Games Workshop and that was very strongly tied to their IP, so you’ll recall their games like Space Hulk, which would be a self-contained board game with miniatures in it. No one else was really doing something like that, at least on the scale that we’re contemplating. But when the game came out we ordered, let’s see, I think we had the minimum run that was in the five figures, so it was a decent size run. Originally there was some resistance from distribution, they were like “Well, you know, I don’t think this will sell; the game is expensive” etc, etc. And eventually people kind of started coming around and said, “Oh, you know, actually this is the kind of experience that I want to play with my kids.” Gamers my age, I don’t have time to paint a 2,000 point Warhammer army anymore, right.  I love miniatures so I want something that is a self-contained experience. And that worked out quite well for us. So, we thought, “Okay this is interesting. As a market segment I think that miniature board games actually exist.  Let’s focus on that.”  At the time… so immediately after that, we decided, “Let’s see what else can we do that we don’t need to have a huge amount of marketing to do to communicate our game idea across.” So let’s do something like zombies, the zombie apocalypse, that kind of thing has been done, I wouldn’t say “done to death”, but it has been done a lot. So when you say zombies everybody has an idea of what a zombie is. A shambling guy who is dead, not very smart, he’s rotting. When I say zombie, I don’t need to explain, in all kinds of detail, what a zombie is.  Whereas, if I said, “This new monster is called Gigo, and he has these superpowers where he can penetrate you with his eyebeams from a hundred yards away.” That is the kind of thing that is a tough sell.  Zombies are easy sell because all the, Night of the Dead, all those movies, Army of Darkness, etc, or Evil Dead, have all permeated our cultural consciousness, so that made it easier for a small company to not  have to fight upstream. We kind of relied on marketing that was done by all the great movies that came before. So that is why we decided to do zombies. And, coincidentally, at that time, Guillotine Games, you know we mentioned this to the Guillotine Games boys, because we met them at Gen Con, and we said, “You know, we are looking to do a zombie game because it looks like Super Dungeon Explore is fairly successful.” And then they said, “Oh yeah, actually we were developing something like that and we were looking for a traditional publisher, like FFG or someone like that”  I said, “Oh, in that case why don’t you  work with us and let’s put this together and then we will publish it.” Because the comment at that time was, most of the existing publishers would say, “Wow, to make it, to realize your vision, the game is going to be super expensive. The game is going to have to retail for $90.00.” Completely unheard of in the board game industry at that time. We were prepared to take the chance because we were new, what we have to lose. So we started working with Guillotine Games. When it came time to commit to ordering the quantity, manufacturing and everything, paying for tools, etc. I told them, “Hey, you know, why don’t we consider Kickstarter?” Because I’d been following Kickstarter quite closely since it started in 2009. And the landscape was changing. You had these games that were funding for, I think at the time the most funded game was for $110,000.00 or $115,000.00, something like that, and I said, “You know, this is interesting;  at least we will get some marketing out of it, we’ll get some initial cash flow. Why don’t we try that?” And of course everybody was saying, “Oh, you know, it’s going to make us look weak.” “What if it doesn’t work?” I said, “Look, what do we have to lose? It’s just the market campaign.” I ran the first campaign, and a few of the subsequent ones, and that’s all she wrote really. Richard:                                Wow, yeah. I show that Zombicide did about $780,000. Not too shabby. Chern Ann:                           We were extremely lucky. You need to be good and you need to be lucky. And we were. I think the game was good, it is not our game, it was Guillotine’s game at the time. That’s a good game, or rather it fit the team very well; it communicated itself very well to people. And coincidentally, Ogre was funding at the same time, by Steve Jackson Games, and that got a lot of attention. And we got attention by proxie right? Penny Arcade actually did a blog post about what’s happening on Kickstarter. These games were funding like $300,000-$400,000, that’s incredible. Who would have thought that three years ago, even a year ago, that this would be possible. And we were mentioned in the same breath as Ogre, and I can’t remember but there was another title at the time.  That gave us a huge boost which allowed us to finish the campaign extremely strong with 5,000 backers. Ricard:                                   We talked about the Zombicide for a little bit and that is one game that is very polarizing in the board game community. Some people absolutely love it, they have all three sets and are waiting for the fourth. Others downright loathe it. What do you say to the detractors of Zombicide? Chern Ann:                           Try all the games.  It doesn’t have to be, I mean a game doesn’t have to be all things to all people. I think that’s a mistake. That’s Design 101, right? You literally cannot be all things to all people. But you can make lots of different things, and then maybe one thing will be something that is your cup of tea. We have stuff that’s very gentle; we have stuff that’s very competitive. We have actually, as you said in the beginning, we have quite a large library of games. Richard:                                Yeah, one of my favorite games CoolMiniOrNot games is Dogs of War and I think that is actually the least funded Kickstarter campaign by CoolMiniOrNot. Chern Ann:                           Oh yeah, that’s because it’s something that we are not known for, which is producing euro titles. It’s just what happened to the first Arcadia Quest, it is because people do not know. It’s like, “Oh, they are using the same cutesy style figurines as Super Dungeon Explore so it must be the same type of game.” And we tell people “No, it’s not.” It is not something that you can, how shall we say, people need to touch it, try it, and feel it to understand, “Oh, this is what the difference is.” So which is why the second Kickstarter to follow on, Arcadia Quest: Inferno, did a lot better than the first one. So we expect that as we publish more euro titles, people understand, “Oh, you know, we’re kind of trusted in euro titles, you should enjoy yourself.” It’s like we understand euro sensibility, even though we make miniature games, we are gamers at our heart, at our core. We can enjoy Ameritrash, we can enjoy euro, and it doesn’t really mean we are exclusively one or the other. Richard:                                Have you yourself played all the CoolMiniOrNot games? Chern Ann:                           I’ve played them in some form, maybe not the final form but in the playtest form, or the preview form. But, yes. I think the only one I haven’t played in detail I think would be Inferno, because I haven’t had the chance to try out everything in the expansions yet. Richard:                                And now we’re going to go inside the board designer’s game studio. Question No. 1: What is your preferred method of dealing with a zombie infestation? Chern Ann:                           That’s a good question. If it was me personally, I would get up my entire family, and head for the hills, as far away from other people as possible. Richard:                                Okay. Just hightail it? Chern Ann:                           Yes. Because the problem with the zombies is other people are potential zombies, right? So we just need to not be near potential zombies. Richard:                                Yeah. I’ve had basically the same conversation with my wife and that is we are going to go someplace remote, Wyoming, South Dakota, somewhere that has around twenty people in the whole state. That’s exaggeration, but you know, but these very sparsely populated, no high densities zones. Chern Ann:                           Yeah, because if you going to run to a fortress with other survivors, it’s basically a packed lunch, really. Richard:                                Question no. 2. At a movie theatre, which armrest is yours? The right or the left? Or do you go all in and command both armrests for yourself? Chern Ann:                           Let me see… The left armrest would be mine. Well actually no, let me change my answer: Both armrests would be mine. Richard:                                Okay, nice. Would you rather be able to speak and understand all human languages? Or would you rather be able to communicate with animals? Chern Ann:                           I’d rather be able to communicate with animals because I think they would be quite interesting.  I mean I am biased because I work with a guy that speaks seven or eight languages, so that’s a superpower that people already have. Speaking with animals? That’s going to be kind of new. Richard:                                Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.  We’ve certainly gained insight into CoolMiniOrNot, some of its Kickstarter processes, and I know and I certainly appreciate everything that CoolMiniOrNot pours into their games. So thank you for taking the time to speak with Board Game Authority. Chern Ann:                           Thank you very much for having me. The post Chern Ann Ng, Co-Founder of CoolMiniOrNot Talks Shop [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/chern-ann-coolminiornot-kickstarter-podcast/] first appeared on Board Game Authority [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/].

Randy Hoyt – World’s Fair & the Cost of Running a Kickstarter

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/board-game-authority/id852807322] In today’s podcast Randy Hoyt, of Foxtrot Games, goes into a lot of detail regarding all of the costs associated with running a Kickstarter campaign. We also talk about what it was like when Lanterns won the Mensa Select award, and we learn that Randy doesn’t like getting wet. RICHARD:        Hello, this is Richard Miles with boardgameauthority.com and today my guest is RANDY:            Randy Hoyt, owner of Foxtrot Games. RICHARD:        Hi Randy, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. You have a Kickstarter coming up for World’s Fair, tell us when we can expect to see that? RANDY:            Yeah, we’re targeting September 29th, which is about two weeks from when we’re recording. RICHARD:        Now, we’ll certainly get into World’s Fair [undefined] but, first let’s talk about the other games that Foxtrot has. You have two games on store shelves right now, is that correct? RANDY:            That’s correct, we have Relic Expedition, our first game. It’s a jungle exploration game, think, like Indiana Jones. The board starts small and as you explore out a bunch of new tiles are revealed and the jungle grows in unpredictable ways each time. The second game is Lanterns the Harvest Festival, that’s another tile laying game, you’re playing an artisan in imperial China decorating the palace lake with floating lanterns to gain favor with the emperor. RICHARD:        Now, I must confess, I haven’t played Relic Expeditions but I have played Lanterns and that’s a family favorite. It’s actually a big hit anywhere I take it: board game night, a relative’s house, everybody seems to really enjoy this game and, as I understand it, Lanterns the Harvest Festival won a Mensa Select Award. Is that correct? RANDY:            It did, yeah, it was in, I guess, the beginning of May. RICHARD:        And what was winning the Mensa Select Award like for Foxtrot Games? RANDY:            Oh, man, it was so great to, hear the news. It was on Twitter, we’d been told that it would be about two weeks after the judging that we would hear but that afternoon it started coming up on Twitter and, you know, we saw the first tweets I’m like, “Is this for real? This person seems to be, like they’re part of the Mensa Select, like, is this, is this, really happening?” And so, just sort of over the course of an hour seeing a bunch of different tweets that it finally seemed real and it was, just great to, when you put so much effort and energy into a product that you love and to just have, you know, just hundreds of people that participated in the judging love it also, it’s just so rewarding and so wonderful, yeah, it was, I was grinning like the whole next week. RICHARD:        Congratulation, it is well-deserved, that game is deceptively simple, with some underlying complexity, due to the fact that on your turn you not only select the colors that you’re going to receive but also what colors you’re going to give your opponents. I haven’t really seen that mechanic in a lot of games and I really enjoy it. RANDY:            And when I first saw, when I first read the rulebook for it, I mean, this was a game designed by Christopher Chung, and he submitted it to us, and when I read the rulebook and saw that mechanic where when I place a tile I give everyone else, including myself, a resource I just thought, “Wow, that’s really cool. That’s a really easy sale when I explain it to people and if the game is really fun, I’m going to want to make this.” And, still, to this day when I explain the game to people, I get 30 seconds, and their eyes just light up when I tell them, “You get a resource but so do all your opponents.” And, that’s the hook in that game and it plays out so nicely. RICHARD:        Yeah, it really does. I read a few days ago where Lanterns is about to sell 10,000 copies. RANDY:            That’s right, we just sold out of our second print run and when we sell out, as a publisher, that means we’ve sold the games to distributors and retailers. RICHARD:        Right, yeah. RANDY:            So there’s plenty of copies you can go out and buy.  Just this last week, it is now in Barnes and Noble. So swing by your local Barnes and Noble retailer and pick up a copy there, if you haven’t. It’s also on Amazon and in a number of friendly local game stores. RICHARD:        Getting into Barnes and Nobles is a pretty big deal. I know that Lanterns was co-published by Renegade. Did their involvement facilitate getting into Barnes and Noble? RANDY:            Yeah, I mean, partnering with Renegade was a big boost. Scott, over at Renegade, has been in the industry for a very long time.  He was at Cryptozoic, most recently, and a number of other places. So he’s been on the business side of gaming for quite a while; he knows a lot about how the industry works. He’s met a lot of the people on the distribution side, with retailers and, I believe, I think Barnes and Noble saw it on a GAMA trade show. I might be mistaken about that but Scott had regular meetings with the buyers from, you know, all the major distributors and retailers, and those were, it’s not just that he had connections that I didn’t have, it was the knowledge too, to even know which events were important to go to. You know, with Kickstarting you can easily just put a game up on Kickstarter and not have any real plan for what to do after you’ve got extra copies, and how distribution works, and how to get into stores. I mean our original plan, when we launched our first game, was, “Oh, we’re going to mail a postcard to every retailer after the campaign”, not knowing exactly how retailers buy games and who they want to buy from and all that. So, there was a lot of knowledge that I didn’t have and Scott knew a lot about how you could get a game, like Lanterns, in front of people and give them a shot to look at it, evaluate it, and see if they wanted to carry it, and Barnes and Noble did want to carry it. RICHARD:        With about 10,000 copies going through distribution and now Lanterns is in Barnes and Noble, that’s got to feel good. RANDY:            I’m very pleased and, I mean, the way that this industry works is that the hit games are the ones that really make any money. It’s really hard off a very small print run to even recoup your art costs and marketing costs. You know, if you’re getting a booth and paying a bunch of money for artwork, and all the set up fees, and the high, you know, the higher cost per unit on a small print run. It’s just really hard to make any money and what you’re really trying to do is make a game that becomes a hit that you can reprint, and reprint, and reprint. And they’re cheaper per unit when you reprint them and, then, try to get, you know, just sort of get that word of mouth. The more people that are playing it, the more people are telling their friends about it, the more people are, then, buying it, and playing it, and telling their friends about it, and it can, sort of, get into orbit, if you will. RICHARD:        Since you mentioned it a little, let’s talk about the cost involved and the potential profit that can be expected from a board game Kickstarter campaign. I think it was shortly after the Lanterns campaign or, maybe, during it, that I read in a forum post from you saying that “Foxtrot Games had yet to break even on its initial investment that was required to publish your games.” A lot of people want to look at Kickstarter as some kind of magical cash cow, but the reality is, and especially for first time project creators, is that you’re not going to make enough money to quit your day job. RANDY:            That’s understating it. *laughs* RICHARD:        Well, you know, some people coming into the industry though, they see those mega-hits, right? They’re breaking a million dollars, right? And that doesn’t happen for most everyone. Those are anomalies; those are not the regular Kickstarters that you and everyone else are running. You know, most people are hitting $20k-60k, maybe $70k, a $90k Kickstarter is really good. If you can raise $90k that’s great, but there are a few of the outliners where they’re making one million, three million, you know, if you’re looking at some of the really big ones, they’re making eight million dollars. That looks nice, that looks enticing, but, the reality is on you’re first Kickstarter when you’re making $10,000 or when you’re making $30,000, that’s not take home money. RANDY:            Right. RICHARD:        So can you go into, just explain a little bit about what you did, you don’t have to go into specifics or whatever, but where the costs goes, where the potential profit comes from, that sort of thing. RANDY:            Absolutely, yeah. With Relic Expedition, my business partner, he’s my step-brother also, Tyler Seigal, he did a lot of the artwork for the game and I did the game design. All that was, I guess, free in a sense. We did it with sweat equity so we didn’t have to pay a license to a game designer and we didn’t have to pay for quite a lot of artwork; we did that ourselves, but we still had quite a bit of costs. With our first campaign, you know, we payed money for advertising, we paid money for prototypes that we could send out for play testing, and on some reviews. We didn’t get any reviews, I don’t think, before we launched but we did have a couple that came out during the campaign. We did hire someone to do video. We actually worked with two different people there. We overproduced, I think, our first video. We spent more money than we probably should have. And when you look at a Kickstarter video, a lot of that is what I would call ‘throw away money’ because it’s not going towards the game; you could make the game without the video. So, you know, the artwork that you show off on your campaign is not throw away money because that’s artwork you’re going to put into the game. So it’s like using, if you use the artwork from the game on your campaign page or on your video that’s using assets that you have, whereas, a video is, you know, throwing that, you know, it’s just purely marketing money. RICHARD:        Right. RANDY:            We also paid for advertising and we did hire an artist to work with us on the box cover and we hired a graphic designer to work with us on the rulebook layout. So all of that money, you know, we spent before the campaign had started, or in the case of the video guys, they were friends who wouldn’t charge us unless our Kickstarter funded, which was very generous but we treated that like we had already spent that. So we came into it about, I would say $5,000, you could say in the hole. I mean, we had saved up money from some projects that we had. We both work in digital space, my brother’s a graphic designer in Portland and I’m a web-developer.  And we’d done some side projects, so we had $10,000 in the bank that was set aside for Foxtrot Game stuff. And we also spent money on forming an LLC and a number of buisinessy things that weren’t exactly related to the campaign, but they were related to building the company. So, those were one-time costs. And so then we went to Kickstarter, and I think what’s interesting to keep in mind is that the money that we raise on Kickstarter was going to just go to manufacturing and fulfillment. RICHARD:        Right. RANDY:            Our goal was not set to recoup the art costs. You know, in business terms they call that a sunk cost. And if you set your goal, you know, $5,000 higher to recoup marketing and art cost, it’s like if you get to… so our goal was $24,000. If we’d set our goal at $29k and we got $27k, let’s say, and we then didn’t fund, it’d be like, “Well, we didn’t really need to recoup the art cost, those were already spent, those are sunk cost, let’s just raise the money we need from here forward.” So, we set our goal just at manufacturing and fulfillment. And so we hit our goal but that didn’t mean we recouped our art cost. So part of when I talk about losing money on that first campaign because even after we had fulfilled rewards we were still in the hole, and I’ll get into some of those reasons next, but, I mean the plan, I guess, was to be $5k in the hole if we funded and that was the plan, I guess. RICHARD:        Right. RANDY:            And that’s just part of investing, you’ve got to spend money to make money and all this sort of businessey terms. We thought if we could raise enough money to print the copies and have enough money for manufacturing and fulfillment, then we would have extra inventory that we could sell, and we could sell that, and then recoup our other costs in that. And, of course, if we had a huge campaign and raised four, five, six times our goal then we would’ve recouped all those costs and gone on and beyond and made more money, and you won’t get that profit if you don’t try. So in a sense, in was, you know, investing some of our savings into this product hoping that we would get more out of it. When we actually got into the campaign there’s just a number of things that didn’t go as planned. A lot of it is, you know, naive first time creators. One of the things that’s really tricky is weighing your game. I always ask people now, “How much is your game going to weigh?” And it’s really, it’s actually hard to know that because you don’t have one, yet. The very last thing you know about your game is the weight because you get it, sort of at the very end, when it’s all done and weight plays a big factor in shipping. So, our fulfillment cost for each copy of the game were about, I think, like $2.00 more than we were expecting because the game was just heavier than we thought it was going to be. You know, we had tried to get some estimates off of similar size games but our game has a lot more wood components, a lot more cardboard than we sort of factored in. And, by the time we unlocked some stretch goals, that was some extra bits, extra deck of cards, and that pushed the game weight even higher. So, for every copy of the game that we shipped domestically was a couple bucks more than we expected, that was one of the issues, because of the weight. During the printing of the first game we had nine punchboards in the box with three different dies and people tell you to try to minimize number of dies that you have so that they’re all the same, you can get the same punch, and we had got that down as small as we could. We, you know, we made a mistake that we didn’t catch in the proofs and we ended up having to make two more dies and reprint two of those nine punchboards. RICHARD:        Oh wow. RANDY:            So, that added an extra dollar cost to the game, for every copy, and it delayed us about seven weeks in the process. Just a simple little thing that could’ve gotten caught, and we proofed, and proofed, and proofed, until our eyes fell out and just missed one thing. Turned out to be a big thing unfortunately. So, there was that. And then one of our stretch goals was for engraved dice and our manufacturer had sent us samples of printed dice. They’d printed them for us, and we’d been playing with them, and they seemed to be doing really well, but you know, they were silk-screened printed and we knew that silk-screen printing dice could wear off but a number of games have used them successfully and, you know, we talked to our manufacturer about that and it seemed like that would work out well. And we had a stretch goal for engraved dice, which are pretty expensive. And we were playing with, we were play-testing with the new dice for about a month or two, and during the campaign we just realized that they just weren’t going to cut it. The numbers were wearing off and when weren’t happy with them, so we unlocked, we just said, “We’re going to unlock the engraved dice stretch goal. We want those in there; we’ll just pay for those ourselves,” and we didn’t raise enough money to cover that cost. So we just went ahead and paid for that so that was another part of our loss. And then shipping to Europe really caught us off-guard. So we did EU friendly shipping. We had, you know, a partner over there that we were going to ship the games to and we’ve gotten really good estimates on how much it was going to cost the mail the games from the fulfillment center in the EU to backers. The game was a little heavier but we didn’t have a ton of backers so it wasn’t quite as bad. The issue is: we really did not understand how much it was going to cost to ship the games from China to Europe. You know, we had been told to estimate about $3 to $4 a game for freight, which we did, and that turned out to be about right for the big, thousand plus games from China to the U.S. But when we only had, I think, 80 copies of the game we needed to send to Europe the cost were more like $20 dollars a game. And we just, I just couldn’t have even fathomed that it would cost that much to ship that small a quantity; we basically airmailed them. You know I’ve since learned there are better options for smaller shipments, but this wasn’t something that had really hit our radar about how much, you know, how all the international shipping worked. We were pretty good about getting the games from China to here but some of the other issues we just didn’t quite realize. Oh, and some of the other stretch goals we had made in the U.S. and I shipped those to the EU, and again, that was another expense that I did not foresee how much a small box of 80 promo items was going to cost me to ship to Europe. RICHARD:        Right, right. RANDY:            So, we had quite a lot of expense there. So by the time we got done with all of this not only had we not recouped our marketing costs, you know, we were pretty significantly in the hole. We’d spent, you know, we had $5,000, and these are all very rough numbers, I’d have to go dig back through all the spreadsheets and stuff, but, you know, we spent over the $5,000 that we had left over just to get the game fulfilled. And we did end up with, I think we needed 600 copies for backers, and our manufacturer’s minimum print run was 1,500 so we had 900 copies left over. Now, we have sold, you know, almost all of them. We’re down to about 100, I think, so we have sold more after Kickstarter than we sold during Kickstarter, which is a great milestone. I was very pleased with that, and we did get, you know, we broke even, in a sense, we got back to zero. But we did not recoup, we won’t recoup all of our art and marketing costs, I don’t think, for, you know, all that stuff we had spent on Relic Expedition. So, that campaign, even when we sell out of our print run, will end up having cost us money. If we’re very lucky we’ll have just got to back to break even with that campaign. RICHARD:        Well, I applaud your decision to take some out of pocket money and make the best game that you possibly could, make something that you’re actually proud of to have on store shelves and in the homes of the people who bought it. I applaud you for going that extra mile. RANDY:            Yeah, and you asked me very specifically about costs and at no point in there did I say, “I wish I hadn’t done it,” or anything like that. It was such a, I mean, it was a rewarding experience to just go through that whole process and there are some things that you just can’t learn as well studying, reading up. I mean, I had done a lot of reading and research leading into the campaign; I was pretty thorough with all the things we needed to do. The game was pretty complicated with all the different pieces, custom meeples, custom dice, it was a pretty big project to bite off as the very first project. I had the money to lose, I think that was the thing, as I look back, not everyone has that kind of money to lose. RICHARD:        Right. RANDY:            We had been very, before we jumped in, we had been very sure, you know, if this doesn’t work out and we end up somehow losing this money, this is okay. And I’m very, very proud of the product, and how it all went, and, you know, where we ended up. Of course, I would’ve loved to have made more money, I would’ve loved to have had a million dollar campaign, and quit my day job, and started making board games for a living, and been in magazines, and all kinds of things like, all that would’ve been great. Who knows how much I thought it could do, you know, looking back it’s always hard to remember, before I launched, what I thought was realistic and what was my sort of dream goal back then. But yeah, I mean, and I met a lot of people. I will tell you, it was so much easier to get things moving with the second game so I could much more easily get reviewers to take my next Kickstarter campaign seriously. Bloggers, Podcasters, reviewers, other industry people were much more willing to work with me, to get a review up, to, you know, tell people about the game. And all that made the second game infinitely easier. So, in a sense, you know, the game technically lost money but a lot of that money was spent building up credibility in the industry, some clout, connections, experience. And all of that I would say is money well spent and I would do it again. I mean, I wouldn’t do it again for a second time but I would do it again for the first time if I had to do it again. RICHARD:        Right, yeah. I think the street credibility, if you will, I think in this industry it goes a long way. And there are basically two groups in this industry: you’re either published or you’re not. And you can be very vocal in this industry, but until you’ve actually published a game you’re not really on the inside. You can gain momentum before your Kickstart, or you can gain contacts, you can start rubbing elbows at conventions and stuff, but until you actually get a game on store shelves you’re not really part of the club. But once you cross that bridge into publisherhood, or whatever you want to call it, once you cross that bridge, then you get your welcome badge. RANDY:            Yeah. And I think some of it is unfair and harsh to people who haven’t done it yet. And I think there are a lot of people designing games, looking to Kickstart their own projects, and it’s getting harder and harder for first time creators because they’re so many more of them trying. I mean, a lot of the games that you see now are way more professional looking, polished looking campaigns then you had two years ago. But there are so many more of them that it’s still hard; the bar just keeps getting higher and higher. And, you know, there are so many people now who won’t do Kickstarter previews as video reviewers, or they charge for them. I was really fortunate during the Relic Expedition campaign. We had three reviewers. They saw our animal meeples in the game; we have monkeys, and boars, and snakes, and panthers, custom wood cut meeples. And they thought that those pieces were so cool that they were willing, they wanted to cover the game, and I didn’t have review copies when it first launched, and they were willing to do a print and play, which was crazy to me that they would cut out all those hexagons and circles in order to play the game. Gave us really good reviews and really helped the campaign go forward. And two of those sites were just starting out and they’re still going strong today. Now, today, you know, there’s so many campaigns, those same people today can’t print and play a review copy of a game. And I still feel bad about making them cut out 100 circles, circles are really hard to cut out. That is my, I’ll give that as a bonus tip here: If you are making a print and play, no circles. Make the lines straight to cut; it saves people a lot of heartache. But yeah, today, just finding people who will do a print and play of your game, today, is so much harder because there are so many. You know, all the campaigns are more professional, all the games, you know, are in a much better state and there’s just so many things to cover for reviewers. RICHARD:        Right, right. So we’re talking about Kickstarter, let’s switch gears. Foxtrot Games has a new game called ‘World’s Fair’ that’s about to be on Kickstarter, tell us a little bit about that game. RANDY:            Yeah, the game is called ‘World’s Fair 1893 [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/foxtrotgames/worlds-fair-1893-board-game?ref=boardgameauthority]’, it was designed by J. Alex Kevern, he’s the designer of a few other games including Gold West, which just came out from TMG. He and I met at Gen Con, last year, 2014, a year ago, and played Lanterns there and talked about World’s Fair. He ended up submitting that to me then shortly after Gen Con. It plays in about 40 minutes; it’s for two to four players. The idea is you’re an organizer in the World’s Fair of 1893, in Chicago, this is the World’s Fair where the Ferris wheel debuted and they had the beautiful, white city buildings. Cracker Jacks and Juicy Fruit debuted, and just a bunch of things, a bunch of firsts, it was a really big time for America innovation. Telsa and Edison were both at the fair and AC current won out in the bid to light the fair. RICHARD:        Right. RANDY:            Real big turning point in American technology and industry. In the game you’re playing an organizer and there are five areas in the fair and you are trying to use your supporters to gain majorities, to be a leader, with most supporters in an area. And you’re also collecting exhibit cards. You’re collecting the prestigious exhibits that go in those white city buildings and you’re also collecting tickets for the midway attractions, the more fun things, like the hot air balloon, the camel rides, the Ferris wheel itself, those things. So, it’s a bit of a lighter euro game, you’re trying to win more majorities and collect cards that match the areas you can win. You know, the turns are relatively short but there’s a few different ways to score that sort of, every decision you make effects a couple of those different ways and you’re trying to weave together a coherent set of exhibits that you’ve collected in areas that you’ve won, so the most supporters in. RICHARD:        Oh, wow that sounds interesting. That’s certainly a neat time from America’s history. Let’s talk about the rewards here for a moment. RANDY:            The reward level I’m most excited about is the one dollar level. So if you followed our Lanterns campaign, I say I’m most excited about, I’m actually most excited about the game, let’s just be completely honest, but the one dollar level I do want to talk about a little bit. We, with Lanterns, if you pledged a dollar we would place a real floating lantern in water and dedicate it to you and we had a nice, little shot. I shot it by my waterfall down by my house, we had about 40 lanterns floating in the water. With this one, the one dollar campaign will get you a souvenir postcard because souvenir postcards were first introduced at the World’s Fair. You could get postcards before but the first time they were sold as souvenirs was at this World’s Fair. We really like to draw the full fematic experience into the campaign as best we can. We’ll be talking a lot about the history of the fair throughout this campaign so that, you know, the game isn’t educational exactly but throughout this campaign people should be able to learn some information about the fair, maybe get excited about it. If a few people go off and do some Wikipedia research or pick up a book or two about the fair that would be really great. RICHARD:        Wow, yeah, that sounds really awesome. I, for one, am certainly interested in everything that debuted at this World’s Fair. Some things I can’t really imagine my life without and other things, I think it would just be amazing to have been there and kind of experienced the unveiling of it. To get like, “What is this new, weird contraption?” You know, like the Ferris wheel, if I could see that for the first time would be, like the first time in history, would be really neat. RANDY:            Well, on the Ferris wheel, people were afraid the Ferris wheel was going to fall over, like they were really concerned that on a windy day it would topple over. It looked very precarious, there were reports of people going crazy on the Ferris wheel because of the, you know, that new experience of being up that high in the air, out in the open, the vertigo you would get from going around. It’s just not something we can really appreciate today how novel that was… RICHARD:        Yeah, yeah. RANDY:            When George Ferris submitted the idea to the fair it was rejected at first as a complete monstrosity that would never work, and he spent time going back and doing better calculations, and working with someone to come up with better drawings to resubmit it, and it was approved and then they rejected it again. They thought there was no way it would work so when they finally did accept it into the fair he was behind schedule and it was not ready when the fair opened. I think it made its first revolution about a month into the fair and its first passenger a good seven weeks into the fair. RICHARD:        Yeah, wow, really interesting stuff. I do agree it’s kind of hard to appreciate the, kind of the majesty and grander of it all because we just take a lot of things for granted today. It’s, you know, the things from back there are so commonplace, now, or we’ve advanced, you know, past those initial inventions, we’ve improved upon them. So yeah it’s certainly a neat time; very interesting to kind of take a look back at it and I’m glad there are a few board games out there that are kind of taking a real world, it is fun, but real world history. There’s all the fantasy games you can want out there but real world history, there’s not, you know, by percentage wise, there’s not that many that make it to my table. So, I’m glad that there are publishers out there who are saying, “You know what? We can make history fun.” I applaud that. And now it’s time to get into a little Q&A, a segment I like to call, ‘Inside the Board Game Designer’s Studio’. First question, “Would you rather travel to the bottom of the ocean or the surface of the moon?” RANDY:            I think I would pick the moon. Both would be amazing, both are places and experience, I think, that would be great to have and you would, if you came back to normal Earth, surface of the Earth, you, your life, would be forever changed. But I think going out to the moon feels much further out. I mean you’re still on Earth if you go under water. RICHARD:        True, but at this point in time we have mapped out more of the surface of the moon, and like actually spent more like human feet on that surface than we have at the bottom, at the absolute depths of the ocean. RANDY:            So that is true. I think we take it for granted that we’ve explored the whole Earth in a way that we really haven’t and, I think, that’s why the moon seems like the most obvious choice to me but, I mean, you’re definitely right. There’s a lot of this planet that we have not seen or experienced fully. RICHARD:        Keeping with our water theme, “Do you prefer snow-skiing or water-skiing?” RANDY:            I prefer sitting in a cabin in the mountains drinking hot chocolate, probably, is what I’d prefer. I have been water skiing, or wake-boarding, or, I’ve done some stuff in the boats, I don’t like getting wet though, so I would probably have to pick snow-skiing. I have not snow-skied before, but I think I would enjoy that more. RICHARD:        Well, I’m going to take snow-skiing as your answer and after a 6-4 vote that is the correct answer. Job well done. Okay, next question, “If you could live anywhere in the world, excluding the good ‘ole U.S. of A, where would that be?” RANDY:            Well, I was going to say, “Seattle”. I was born outside of Seattle and Tacoma and I love visiting there, but you threw me off with the outside of the U.S.A. part. I’ve been to England, multiple times, and have enjoyed it there. I think I would probably pick that on the short notice, out somewhere… I went to London, but somewhere outside of there like we went out to Oxford and Cambridge, so maybe a small University town outside of, you know, outside of London. Let’s say that I would live in Oxford. RICHARD:        Not a bad choice and with England you don’t have to learn a new language so bonus. RANDY:            It’s kind of a copout answer. I am sure there’s lots of other exciting places to live. I will say the most, the place I’m most excited about visiting, is my wife and I are going to go to the Olympics, the Winter Olympics, in 2026 to celebrate our 25th anniversary. RICHARD:        Oh wow, congratulations. RANDY:            We love the winter Olympics and we don’t yet know where that will be so we’ll see where that is. We’re watching closely now that the bids are coming in for the 2026 games and one of the places that was going to make a bid was Bozeman, Montana. Their bid luckily has been withdrawn so… RICHARD:        Yeah. RANDY:            We’re hoping to go somewhere outside of the United States for that trip. RICHARD:        Wow, that’s kind of interesting cool that you guys would kind of agree that we’re going, no matter where it is. We’re going to go see that Winter Olympics. That’s pretty neat, I like that, that’s an awesome idea. Randy, I appreciate you coming on the show today, it’s very insightful, and I enjoyed the look inside your company Foxtrot Games. Everyone, be sure to check out the Kickstarter campaign for World’s Fair, which launches on September 29th. RANDY:            Well, thanks for having me, I just love what you do and talking with designers and publishers. Depending on when this goes out if you want to see the campaign page, or take a look at the preview, or sign up to get notified when it does launch, you can go to worldsfairgame.com and that will re-direct you to the appropriate place. RICHARD:        Well again, thank you, it was certainly a pleasure. RANDY:            You’re show is great, being able to, you know, this series, talking to other designers and publishers and hearing from them their experience is great. So I appreciate you doing that and thank you for giving me the time to share mine. The post Randy Hoyt - World's Fair & the Cost of Running a Kickstarter [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/randy-hoyt-worlds-fair-cost-kickstarter/] first appeared on Board Game Authority [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/].

Gil Hova on Game Design Theory, Self Publishing, & Star Wars

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/board-game-authority/id852807322] RICHARD:        Hello, Richard Miles here for BoardGameAuthority.com. We have a pretty good show for you today. Our guest for this episode is Gil Hova and I’d like to start introducing our guests a little bit like this: [awesome Gil Hova intro] but we’ll see if that sticks. For now, I’ll probably just stick to letting the guests introduce themselves. Today, we’re going to cover Gil’s philosophy of board game theory, what led to his decision to self-publish, why he’s not looking forward to the new Star Wars movie, and of course, we’ll talk a little bit about his upcoming Kickstarter campaign ‘The Networks.’ So today, I’m talking with… GIL:                  Gil Hova of Formal Ferret Games. RICHARD:        Gil, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with me today. I know that you are in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign that has 28 days left to go. It’s called ‘The Networks [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gilhova/the-networks-a-tabletop-strategy-game-for-1-5-tv-e?ref=boardgameauthority]‘ and before we get into all that, and we certainly will talk a lot about that, I would like to, if you don’t mind, to begin our discussion talking about game design theory. Some people might not even know what game design theory is or that it even exists, but I would like to talk about game design theory and possibly your philosophy that goes into game design. GIL:                  Sure, I think, for me, I can summarize it in three words and that is: Incentivize Interesting Behavior. I think that those three words sum up what good game design is. I think a good game designer it’s not just a matter of choices, it’s not just a matter of fun. A game designer wants to figure out what the interesting behavior is in their game and then arrange the game so that it incentivizes players to keep doing that interesting behavior. RICHARD:        I think a lot of game designers, at least today with the rise of Kickstarter, a lot of game designers get into designing board games because they’ve played a lot of games. That’s their credentials, they’re: “I play a lot games, I love games, I want to make a game, I think I can do it”, but your take on it, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but is that there’s a little bit more to it than “you’ve played a lot of games”. GIL:                  Yeah, I mean, playing a lot of games is very good. I think a good designer really should be playing a lot of games just like a good musician will generally listen to a lot of music and, of course, you always have your outsiders. You have your people who came in from nowhere and haven’t had a lot of experience, you know, someone they stumbled across something but that’s a really hard road to lead to. You know, I would recommend that if you have the choice you’ll have a much easier time of it if you play a lot of games but that said, you know, perceiving a game as a player is not quite the same as perceiving it as a designer and there’s going to be a real difference in how the game plays when you’re just looking at it having never really been on that side of things before and it’s really, I mean, the incentivization is really an important part of that. Now, I’ll give you an example: I was play testing a game this past weekend and that was actually a really nifty game but, you know, there were characters on a map and you had the option of either moving your characters or drawing tiles from a bag and nobody ever really moved the characters. On their turns everybody moved the bag and the designer said afterwards, you know, I asked the designer, “So do players usually move because it seems like we are pretty static?” And the designer answered, “Well, usually players move but I had one game where nobody moved and everybody lost the game because they kept on drawing tiles out of the bag. And I pointed out, ‘Well, you know, you’ve got sort of an incentive of, “if you don’t move then you’re going to lose the game”, but if that’s not clear and the game doesn’t give that sort of feedback the fact is drawing the tiles out of the bag is more fun. The way the game is set up there’s a lot of drama that comes out of drawing tiles from out of the bag. So, there are a lot of incentives to draw from the bag and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of immediate incentives to move your characters’. So, my suggestion involved creating some incentives to move your characters that go against, because the game was pretty, it was pretty one dimensional, because you were just reaching into the bag and, you know, while it was fun to pull out the right tiles, it wasn’t always, like it wasn’t particularly deep, like it wouldn’t be a game that would continue to last and continue hitting the table. Whereas, now, if you’ve got one incentive, that’s the draw into the bag, you’ve got another incentive that happens if you move and, now, you’re weighing which incentive you want to take. Now, you’re talking about an interesting game and I really think that’s when you’ve started to look at games as a designer. RICHARD:        Right, so, I actually am trying to come to terms with the whole ‘how do I incentivize players to take an action as well’. I believe you know but, I don’t know that everybody knows but, I am designing a game called “Armor and Ash”. One of the issues that I have ran into is that I want players to, without getting into the meat of the game, I want players to use their hero and one of the feedback that I’ve gotten time and again is ‘we don’t feel the incentive to play our heroes’. They’re not incentivized to play the hero, they’re actually incentivized to kind of turtle up and not play the hero and that’s the opposite of what I want. So I’ve been trying to come up with ways to incentivize players to get that hero out. I think I’ve cracked the code but the incentivization part, that is important, and I don’t think as you’re mentioning, I don’t think you actually reach that point from just playing a lot of games. Like that, you have to put on the designer goggles or look through a designer lens, if you will, to kind of reach that point of ‘What am I actually trying to get the players to do and am I incentivizing them enough to get them to do that?’ GIL:                  That’s right, yeah. RICHARD:        And so the flip side of that, game design, which you’re now wearing kind of two hats, so you are the designer and you’ve decided to self-publish, go the Kickstarter route. And so the other side of that coin is looking through a publisher lens and so that has other choices, other items you have to look at, components, things of that nature to, to kind of weigh out the cost of that. So, can you go into how that might fit in to how you tackle designing a game from the publisher perspective? GIL:                  Yeah, it’s interesting because when you’re looking at a game as a designer, you’re not really looking at it as a game. You’re looking at it as a product, you know, and that sounds kind of cold, and calculating, and cynical, but it really is how you have to approach it because people play games but people buy products and that, as a publisher you’re life blood depends on whether or not people will buy your products. Whereas, as a designer you’re really more concerned whether people will play your game. So, as a publisher, you know, I’m really more concerned about a game that is appealing, you know. That when people look at it on a table, they stop and they take a look, and they start, and that the theme of the game is something that not only draws them in but when they start playing there’s very little friction. Like the theme of the game informs them of what the experience is going to be. Like, for example, if I have a game with a pirate theme and it turns out to be like a low interaction Euro drafting game that’s going to feel a little weird, you know. If I’ve got a game with a stock market theme and it turns out to be a two player abstract that’s, also, going to be a little bit weird, you know. It’s, there’s all these things that you really have to be careful of as a publisher and that’s not even getting into like what kind of art you want for the game, what kind of components you want to make for the game, where to source the components, how to ship it, whether you’re going to go with Kickstarter or not, you know. Those are all different kinds of considerations that you make as a publisher that as a designer, I think, as a designer, there’s a little bit of a blur, like as a designer, you need to be a little bit aware of this stuff. Like, for example, if you are working on a game and you have a choice between saying, between say, going with a deck of cards or going with a hundred custom dice and each die is completely different, like has totally different faces from the next die. As a designer you need to know that very, very, very, very, few publishers would even think about option two because it’s prohibitively expensive. Whereas, a deck of cards is a lot more realistic for a publisher, it’s a lot more affordable. RICHARD:        Right. GIL:                  So, as a designer you really have to know, at least, a little bit of a lay of the land to know how realistic your game is to pitch because really you’re selling the game as the designer also, except you will only have one sell and that sell will be to the publisher, you know. So, you’re trying to make the game as attractive as possible to the publisher, then the publisher’s trying to make the game as attractive as possible to the audience, and, you know, that system works, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t work so well and, for me, I find that I’m a lot happier making the calls that a publisher makes because I feel like there’s a lot more control than I wanted since I was just a designer pitching to publishers. RICHARD:        Let’s talk about switching over to wearing the publisher hat. So, ‘The Networks’, which is currently on Kickstarter, this is your, is this your second self-published game? GIL:                  That’s correct, it’s my second self-published game. RICHARD:        And let’s talk about your decision to go down that road to self-publish. GIL:                  I mean, for years, I said I wouldn’t do it, for years I said, “I’m never going to self-publish.” Why would I, why would I take on all this abuse and go down this really, really, hard road, you know? There are a few things that pushed me down, five years ago the business was completely different. Five years ago if you wanted to self-publish, you know, look at all the things you had to do. First off, you had to reach out to a printer yourself, that meant you had to go to the plant yourself, and you had to request like 3,000 copies of the game and they wouldn’t really talk to you if you wanted fewer. There are creative ways around printing fewer than 3,000 copies of the game but they required a lot of creativity and, generally, a very, very high MSRP, which will turn off a lot of gamers unless you’ve established some sort of credibility already. RICHARD:        Oh, yeah. GIL:                  So, let’s start with that, then go to the fact that, alright, let’s say you had $30,000 dollars just lying around. I know somebody who did go down this route. Like well before the Kickstarter revolution and asked, I asked him, “Why did you do this?” And he answered, “Well, I was going through a mid-life crisis and it was this or a sports car.” RICHARD:        Right. GIL:                  I don’t think it was never a good decision back then but you have to know what you’re going in for. Let’s continue down that road. Let’s say that it was still five years ago and you actually were crazy enough, you had the money laying around, and you’re crazy enough to spend it all, and then the plant delivers it. Now a lot of people think, ‘Okay, well, my games are going to come and there just going to be a bunch of boxes and I’ll put them all in my garage and that’ll be it.’ Well, it’s not like they’re going to come in loose boxes, they come on pallets, and you need equipment to move a pallet, you know. You need a pallet jack at the very least to move those things around, and I know someone who got games delivered to his house and he didn’t know what he was in for. And he saw those pallets, and he realized, ‘I’m not going to be able to move that,’ and thank goodness the driver of the truck, the truck driver had a pallet jack that he was able to move it in, otherwise, it would’ve been a very short load out. RICHARD:        Right. GIL:                  That’s another part of it you know. So, then there’s the question of where you going to warehouse it and then there’s the question of how you’re going to ship it, you know. And, back then, you know, you were going to ship it to a distributer, which means you have to get a distributers attention, because selling it direct, you know, that just wasn’t something that happened back then. So, all these obstacles and some people did it, you know, they, actually, did self-publish a game. They went through all of these obstacles and, then, they found out the biggest part of it, which is that they did all this and then they had to markup the game. You know, then they had to make people aware of the game and, you know, I would see people at conventions year after year and every year their game was five dollars cheaper and it was really sad and depressing to see. You know, to a point like a $40 dollar game eventually became a $15 dollar game and a $10 dollar game and I just shudder to think how many extra copies were lying around. So, that was self-publishing, five years ago, and it’s why that a lot of people just gave you advice, ‘Don’t even try” because it’s not, it’s not like being in a band and making like 1,000 CD’s or even being like a roll playing game designer and making like 500 copies of like your ashcan and just having that in a box somewhere because that’s low risk you know. Worst case scenario you’ve got a box or two of the stuff lying around. You know, people kind of laugh at you at it but it’s not really, worst case scenario you’re down a couple of thousand dollars. You know, it’s not a small chuck of money but it’s not, it’s not life changing. RICHARD:        Right. GIL:                  Whereas, with a board game you’re looking at $30,000 dollars or so of money that you have to pay. I’m assuming, I’m saying this is for like a game with fairly regularly sized box, a board, deck of cards, pawns, you know, those kinds of things. That’s about $30,000 dollars that you’re looking at in terms of both manufacturing and shipping. So, what changed? Well, a few things changed and, obviously, the biggest thing was Kickstarter because all those folks who made those 3,000 copies of the game because they did it, that they think that was the minimum quantity, part of the problem is they didn’t know how many copies they had to make. So Kickstarter will tell you how much interest there is in their game and the worst case scenario with Kickstarter, this is something that I think is a really important thing about Kickstarter, if you fail to fund that is not the worst case scenario. That is avoiding a very bad worse case scenario, well, a worst case scenario by definition is very bad, but you get the point you know. Not funding on Kickstarter is way better than not going with Kickstarter, investing a bunch of your personal money, and then the game not selling. RICHARD:        Right. GIL:                  So, Kickstarters and, then, of course, if you do fund and barely scrape over the funded goal versus if you do fund and ridiculously over-fund those are going to be two totally different plans that you make for manufacturing the game. So, knowing, getting a preview of what the demand for your game is, is huge so that is the first big thing that’s changed. Another big thing that’s changed are companies like Panda and Ad Magic. So instead of going directly to a printer you go to an intermediary who finds a printer for you and they take a lot of that guess work out and a lot of them like Panda and Ad Magic can even handle shipping for you, which is really great especially if you’re a first time publisher like I’d even mentioned that back in my, in my last thing. You, you as the publisher, before had to figure out how to get your games from the plant back to your warehouse, or your garage, or wherever you were storing them and that is not small. I mean, when you go with a shipping company or if you let your printer intermediary handle all your shipping that’s going to be much, much, easier so that’s a second thing that’s changed. A third thing that’s changed is printing in China has changed a lot especially because those printers are a lot more open to smaller print runs, still, you’re going to want to do, at least, 1,000 copies. Like a printer will, now, no longer just say, “No,” when you say, “A thousand.” They’ll say, “Okay, we’ll do a thousand”, then, they’ll give you a unit cost that, you know, is not great. You know, it’s not horrible in terms of like well, at least, you can get it made and, maybe you cannot lose too much money, you know, with that high minimum, with that high, like with 1,000 copies. You’re looking at a pretty big unit cost and you’re probably not going to make, you’re probably going to lose quite a bit of money on it, to be honest, but some people, they say, “You know what? I’m going to make this game. If I lose like $5,000 dollars on it, well, in the end, after the Kickstarter, I’m still down $5,000, well, that game’s out and that’s what’s important,” and some people are fine with that. But even like going to 1,500 is like, ‘Okay, now, you’re looking at something where you might be able to break even, you know. So, that’s another thing that’s changed and, then, the fourth thing that changed is fulfillment services and this, to me, is really what changed everything because I have a small one bedroom apartment in the New York City area. There is no way I’m getting a huge shipment of games. I can’t hold them anywhere, my apartments just too small and, you know, warehousing space around, near me, you know, that was such a logistical burden especially because I had to figure out how to package everything and, you know, and ship everything. That takes time, and money, and is not easy to get right and, you know, you can easily make a mistake, and suddenly, you know, Amazon steps in and says, “Well, we ship all the time anyway, we’ll handle shipping for you.” So, they have a service called ‘Multi-Channel Fulfillment’ that Jamey Stegmaier, actually, as far as I know, I think he was the first game publisher to really embrace ‘Multi-Channel Fulfillment’. So, now, there’s the real big game changer because, now, you’ve got all these people working for you, you know. You’ve got someone who is handling the printer and, sometimes, handling the shipping as well, and they ship to a warehouse, that’s not your warehouse, but a place that acts a warehouse, and that also handles all shipping for you. So, now, as the publisher, while you’re still doing a ton of work, but it’s no longer an insane amount of work, it’s no longer a ludicrous amount of work, it’s just a lot of work. RICHARD:        Right. GIL:                  So, now, it becomes much more realistic. RICHARD:        One question, if I may, and I know there are quite a few board games that have been digitized, and there’s quite a number of them, of board games that I can now play on my phone. So, how do you feel about that, I guess, digitization of the physical board game? GIL:                  In terms of ports of board games onto video games, I think, generally, they feel different enough that they don’t cannibalize. Like you look at games like ‘Ticket To Ride’ and Days of Wonder have said over and over again that there iOS app is one big reason their physical sales remain strong because people play the video game and then they buy the board game. So, generally, I don’t believe they cannibalize. I think there are exceptions, I think a good exception is ‘Ascension’. I know, personally, I am not going to buy any more Ascension products, physical Ascension products, just because I never really get to play them, but I play it all the time on my phone, and I love Ascension on the phone. But, I think, a lot of that is based on the individual design of Ascension, you know, Ascension, at this point, to play physically is a whole lot more fiddly in terms of set-up and actual game play than a game like Ticket To Ride and, I think, they’re, actually, starting to design with an eye towards digital. You know, I think, the transformation mechanism they put in where you have one card that if you reach a certain threshold with a currency you actually remove that card and replace it with a different card and they suggest that there’s a few ways to do it. One way you could do it is have both cards on the same sleeve and you just change the order in the sleeve when you transform it but, you know, that’s something that takes a little bit of fiddling in person but on a mobile device it’s instantaneous. RICHARD:        Right GIL:                  Yeah, yeah, also, the fact that I like to play with as many expansions as possible and doing it on the phone that means I can have a portal deck with literally 1,000 cards and it’s not really a big deal. Whereas, you try to play with a deck of that size, I mean, what I was doing, when I was still playing with the physical game and I had only quote, unquote, “five expansions”. And, so, I left most of it in the deck and I just would take a small part of the deck out and shuffling that is, it’s really tricky to randomize a deck of that size, whereas, again, on a mobile device it’s very quick. So, I think, that’s one of the edge cases where the digital sales do cannibalize off the physical sales but, I think for the most part you’ll see that digital sales do not cannibalize physical sales because they’re such different player experiences that people will, generally, go from one to the other. RICHARD:        Let’s switch gears since we’re running out of time here and talk about ‘The Networks’. Tell us a little bit about that game and how you came up with the idea. GIL:                  Okay, well, ‘The Networks [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gilhova/the-networks-a-tabletop-strategy-game-for-1-5-tv-e?ref=boardgameauthority]‘ is a strategy game, a strategy tabletop game, for one to five players and it plays really well with all those counts. So it plays well with five players, but there, also, has a really, really, good solo mode. So, I’m really, actually, proud of how it plays at all player counts and the object of the game is you are a television network executive and you start the game with a little bit of money and three horrible public access T.V. shows and you are trying to get the most viewers over the course of five seasons. So you’re going to be developing T.V. shows, so there’s going to be some shows that are on cards, so you pick up a card that way you’re developing a show and you spend a certain amount of money to develop the show, and the shows are going to need stars and/or ads, and a lot of them have requirements. Like, maybe, one show requires a star, maybe, another show requires an ad, maybe, another show requires a star and you may add an ad, if you want, and so on, and so forth. So you have to have those, those things in place, you have to have the star if you want to pick up a show that requires a star. Now, the stars have their own little sets of conditions, they’re going to score you more viewers like, for example, one star wants to be on a drama. So if you put the star in a drama you’re going to get more viewers than if you put them on a sitcom and I should mention that the shows will score more if you put them on the proper time slot and there’s other kinds of conditions. Like some stars want to be on a show with an ad, some stars want to be on a show without an ad, some stars want to be on a show in, well, some stars want to be picked up by the player who’s not in the lead, that sort of thing. There’s all sorts of little, cute thematic things I was able to put in based on what the condition is like whether the star will score you more viewers or fewer viewers and, then, you have ads. Now, ads are different like stars, develop, assigning a star will cost you money and some stars will cost you money every season because they’re especially expensive but ads will give you money because they’re ads. So you, you land an ad and you get a certain amount of money and that’s an ad that you can put on a show and once again ads want to be on certain timeslots, they want to be on shows at certain genres, and so on, you know. So, you put these ads on and so it’s a question of juggling, you know, and saying, “Alright, I want this show but this show requires this kind of star,” and you only get one action per turn so, you know, which do you want? Do you go for the show and put on a star that’s sub-optimal or do you sign the star now and hope that the show will be around next season? And, of course, there’s power cards, there’s these network cards that give you special powers in the game so you might be able to do something that’s really cool if you happen to save up with a network card earlier on. So, you know, it takes about 60 to 90 minutes to play, depending on the player count, it’s got a great flow to it, you know, it just, it, the rules are all very thematic. So, and, it just flows, your turns go very quickly, and you’re always engaged, and involved in the game, and people are really, really, enjoying it. I think, it’s, it’s got a nice weight, it’s a middle weight game, I’d say it’s about the same weight as something like Stone Age or St. Petersburgh. I think our games are equivalent to weight, not necessarily games equivalent mechanisms but equivalent weight. RICHARD:        Okay. GIL:                  Yeah, and, so, and, the response on Kickstarter has been incredible, we are at $15,520 dollars, that’s 26 hours into the campaign so that’s way better than I expected. I’m really happy with the response, we’ve gotten over 400 backers and they all seem really enthusiastic to try the game. There is a print and play that I just uploaded this morning so people can try the game even without buying it, which, I think, is always a sign that the publisher and designer are really confident in the product and, in my case, I’m really confident in this game. You know, I think, it’s going to be really great and if you go over the page you can see, I think, the artwork and graphic design is top notch. The art is, it’s light-hearted but it’s not childish and it’s a nice balance that it strikes, which, I think, plays really well because the shows, I wanted to make sure the shows had funny titles in them and so you start with some public access shows and the public access shows are all horrible, you know. There’s like ‘Name That Stain’ and ‘Get To Know Your Lower Colon’, and ‘Let’s Pickle’, and shows like that. ‘Unlocking Your Cat’s Psychic Potential’ but, then, you get to the better shows and the better shows are all plays off of existing shows like ‘Criminal Mindfulness’ and, ‘Paisley Is The New Burnt Umber.’ RICHARD:        Right. GIL:                  And shows like that so you can see what, ‘Flee’, I think, is another show “Found”, you know, those are all shows that, that you can pick up so you can sort of see what show I’m kind of mocking there. And the stars, you know, have passing similarities though not really strong enough similarities to resemble, actual people but, you know, you might recognize an aspect of a few different stars in like one of the stars in the game. So, you know, there’s a really nice reflection of it and, I think, it’s a really refreshing theme. RICHARD:        So, you touched on the, the slight humor aspect of it, that’s what’s drawing me in. I like the games that I can play and I don’t have to be super, I like the super serious games, also, but I’m finding, more frequently, I like games that are a little bit lighter. I can laugh and cut up with my friends and we don’t have to take it serious. We may be in competition to win but it’s a fun competition and we’re, we’re, laughing the entire time. Those types of games are starting to appeal to me more than the meaty, we’re going to take two hours and, I’m looking toward those more light, fun, games that I can laugh with. So, I’m going to ask you a few questions, this is kind of a “In the Designer Studio”. On a scale of 1 to 10 how excited are you for the new Star Wars movie? GIL:                  Negative five. RICHARD:        Wow! Not the answer I was expecting. GIL:                  I, I mean, I grew up on Star Wars, I have to say Clerks was exactly right, you know, Clerks was 100% on the nose when they had that exchange about what was bugging that character about Jedi and, then, he realized what it was. You know, with the first movie when the Death Star got blown up, you know, you knew there was just bad guys on there, but the second movie, when the second Death Star got blown up, sorry, that’s a bunch of spoilers, but I hope I’m not spoiling it for anyone. RICHARD:        Right. GIL:                  When the second Death Star got blown up, you know, it wasn’t completed so they’re all these contractors and, you know, all these builders, and all these chefs, and, you know, people who aren’t really involved in it who got blown up, also, and that was just something that didn’t really sit right and, yeah, I could sort of see that. Overall, you know, it just wasn’t something that compelled me so when the fourth movie came out, I think, and, yes, it is the fourth movie, it’s not episode one, it is the fourth movie, it had already started falling into that crater. You know, at this point, I’m just, I know that J.J. Abrams is probably going to add a whole bunch of life to it. He’s going to make it, he’s hopefully going to make it interesting again. I really hope he does but it’s not something I’m any real desire to see. RICHARD:        Alright, alright, if you had to take possession of the ‘One Ring’ or ‘Harry Potter’s Cloak Of Invisibility’ which would you choose and why? GIL:                  Functionally, they’re very similar but as I understand it, the Cloak of Invisibility doesn’t really have a downside so, you know, it seems, to me, that the Cloak is a much safer investment. RICHARD:        Agreed, agreed, I think, the Cloak would be a safe bet. Monks take a vow, some monks, take a vow of silence as part of devotion to their creator. What would you give up in order to create a bestselling game? We’re talking ‘Catan’ or ‘Ticket To Ride’ in terms of sales. GIL:                  A high paying job. RICHARD:        You would give up a high paying job for that? GIL:                  Because I already have. You know, in a way, I feel like I’ve already made, at least, that sacrifice and who knows, there might be other sacrifices I might need to make in the future. Give me one more question, one more question. RICHARD:        One more question, alright. GIL:                  Yep. RICHARD:        Which accent do you find the most sexy? GIL:                  Oh, my, God, where do I even begin? I’m going to have to say Irish. RICHARD:        Irish, not a bad answer. I can get behind that. GIL:                  That’s one possibility. Liverpool Scouse, I think is really hot, Australian, also, and, I think those are my top three. I don’t know how to rank them. RICHARD:        No, all good, all good answers. Alright Gil, that’s going to wrap up our time. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day and your Kickstarter campaign for The Networks to talk with me, again, thank you so much. GIL:                  Thank you, Richard The post Gil Hova on Game Design Theory, Self Publishing, & Star Wars [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/gil-hova-game-design-theory-self-publishing-star-wars/] first appeared on Board Game Authority [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/].

Emerson Matsuuchi Talks Board Games and Apps at Origins

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/board-game-authority/id852807322] specter ops board game [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/specter-ops-board-game.jpg] [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/specter-ops-board-game.jpg]Recently, I got to talk with Emerson Matsuuchi of Nazca Games.  I’ve met Emerson twice now, once at Origins and once at Gen Con.  For those that haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Emerson, let me attest that he is the nicest person in the board game industry.  And he makes great games.  In the podcast, we talk about what it is like having Plaid Hat Games publish your design.  We also talk about the companion app for Dead of Winter that Emerson is working on.  The Crossroad Cards are voiced acted, which is so cool. specter ops miniatures [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/specter-ops-miniatures.jpg] [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/specter-ops-miniatures.jpg] The post Emerson Matsuuchi Talks Board Games and Apps at Origins [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/emerson-matsuuchi-board-games-apps-origins/] first appeared on Board Game Authority [http://www.boardgameauthority.com/].