We were at the UK Games Expo at the Birmingham NEC last weekend for some seminars and some play testing. I’d applied to get a slot on the Publisher-Designer Speed-dating, but we weren’t accepted, c’est la vie! I still had seminars and play testing to do.
Jobs in the Games Industry Seminar – not what I expected at all, thought there might have been some nuggets that would help me. I left after 20 mins and I wasn’t the first.
Kickstarter and Fulfilment Seminar
This was a seminar given by Nigel at https://www.shipquest.co.uk and he was straight talking, didn’t mince his words and clearly knows what he’s talking about.
This was VERY useful! lots of good advice and food for thought. The absolute core part was that the days of launching a campaign on Kickstarter and expecting its users to back you is gone, long gone! You have to bring your followers with you, then the Kickstarter crowd will take notice and you’re off. In other words market yourself. I’m not good at that but I’m doing it.
Marketing means social media and targetted ads if you have the money and know your demographic. I don’t do social media at all, but today I created the accounts(another post later, nightmare!! 😤) as well as created this blog to keep the people interested. Nigel said ‘content is key’, any content, keep people entertained, informed and updated. So here I am. Expect content!
I’ll be going through my archives and bringing the blog some content as the game has developed since it’s inception, so I’ll be backfilling.
He also spoke about ocean freight being 4x more expensive that it was pre-covid, it can be cheaper to manufacture in Europe and pay slightly more than go the China route. He spoke about VAT, IOSS and selling in Germany and France. Very interesting point, he said that you could probably sell 10x the number of units in Germany, 6-7x in France than you could in the UK!!
Just as well he mentioned about factoring in translation services! I’d obviously have to remake the entire deck for foreign languages but other than having a dictionary of all words in the language it’s not a big deal. At least I don’t think it’ll be that bad for Latin languages at least. I have some scripts and programs I have written that help me get the digrams that are used on each card.
🎯 Playtesting
I arranged a 90 min slot with the folks at http://www.playtest.co.uk/ My slot was 3pm due to finish at 4:30. We turned up, setup and had our first playtesters in minutes. The first 3 people and I played 3 games, 2 regular and 1 with a wildcard pack, and they loved it! ❤️
“So simple to play and quick to learn!”
We played for about an hour I was told, I’d lost track of time, it was Rebecca who told me later.
“Where can I buy it?”
When I was asked “where can I buy it“, I was gobsmacked!! This was a prototype with labels printed on my printer at home!! I was so happy!! I was silly with excitement inside 🤪
“We love the presentation and packaging!”
Again the packaging was made from breakfast cereal boxes and used Amazon cardboard envelopes!! And they loved it!! ❤️
“…and other games and variations to play!”
Next I played with a group of 4, making 5, the biggest group I’d ever tested with, since I realised I need 2 packs at least! Both packs shuffled together, 104 cards and we were off. 2nd hand played was a 7 letter word, making a clear front runner.
“I think you’ve got a hit there!”
Again all good comments and some questions about whether they could change words after being played, etc. Nothing negative. This is going really well!!
The game ended and it was the 90 mins finished, or so I thought!
2 guys had hung around to play that I hadn’t noticed until we’d finished the game, so we all went over to the Open Gaming tables.
I was so buzzing that I forgot to ask them what made them hang around for a while to play the game!! That would have been a gem of info. Hopefully they’ll read this and comment below, they were keen to subscribe to the site for info but I hadn’t finished testing and the link was disabled, I hope they come back.
“When can I buy it?”
Again, they were both happy with the game and wanted to know if they could buy it, if not, when could they buy it and what my next steps were, I was again completely shocked! I told them I was aiming for Kickstarter and that I had to do some social media marketing(thanks for the Instagram tip!) to gain a following and get some prototypes printed and would hopefully do some more expos. One suggested checking out some comic cons! Good idea thanks 👍
I gave them both a Sell Sheet, thanked them for their time and wished them a good rest of their weekend.
As they walked away I turned to Rebecca, choked a bit, got glassy eyed and could barely say… “they all liked it”.