Viral Marketing Board Games

It's Alive

I've been thinking of ways to viral market my game It's Alive. It's being produced by Reiver Games in the UK, but only in a limited edition of 300. Jack cuts and assembles all the games himself to assure the high-quality of the finished product.

So, OK, 300 copies of the games will sell and they'll be great. But how can I get 3,000 copies of the games printed and sold? Or 300,000 copies?

Right now, it would technically do no good to get more than 300 pre-orders for the game, or even 300 pre-orders for the game, because Jack needs time to print and cut them all. So I have to consider the timing of the marketing.

But, imagine that Jack did get 300 pre-orders in a few weeks. Or 3,000.

I'm not entirely happy that only 300 games will be produced, and at this speed. I want to sell lots and lots of copies. I want the game to sit in toy stores around the world and have licensed Star Wars and Pokemon versions. I want them produced with poor-quality components and available on sale for $7. Like every other chump game-designer with a dream, I want the proverbial "next Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit".

I'm totally thrilled that the game is going to print, of course. And I should be happy that it's going to be made so nicely, even though it will be targeted at a smaller audience. But I have so many ideas for marketing that I don't get to use, now.

What's a designer to do?

If you're going to be in York this Wednesday evening, you can do a fresh playtest of the game. Playtesters get free beer (I think this was implied, but do confirm) and 20% off the purchase price of the game.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is selling a story attached to a product. In other words, you don't show your product with a lot of happy people playing it. You show a great story that happens to include your product. People with no particular interest in the product will share the story.

The story spreads, and as a side result, you get advertisement beyond what money can buy. Think Coke and Mentos.

I was thinking of making a funny video with my game, or some funny advertisements.

I was thinking of a treasure hunt, where each copy of my game would include a clue on a piece of paper. In this case, the people who own copies of the game would have to communicate to solve the puzzle, thereby forming a community.

Or, similar to the above, each game included a rule to a global game of Haggle, where even people who didn't buy the game could play.

So many ideas, and no products to implement them for. Sigh.

Apples to Apples Jewish Edition

I went to my cousins for dinner and my brother David and co for lunch and the afternoon. Tal and Saarya were with me.

In the evening, we playtested Apples to Apples - Jewish Edition with my cousins. Naturally, the only issue is how it compares to the Regular Version.

Well, not so great. As I mentioned earlier, a friend of mine playtested it and liked it slightly more than the regular edition because of the Jewishy expressions. I actually missed the more universal and therefore flexible cards. Specific cards, like people, are harder to play.

And the people in the general edition are universally known, and therefore have well-known personalities that you can match against types of cards. The Jewish cards are less well-known, and therefore less useful to play, because people don't know who they are.

I guess they are supposed to be educational. E.g. you get to explain to your children who Sandy Koufax is. But educational cards do not make for good Apple cards.

There are also a few editing problems, in words mis-spelled and poorly chosen descriptive text. They probably should also have made a new Jewishy picture for the apples. It's not bad, and we had fun playing it just like the original, but if I had my choice I would stick to the original, I think.

By the way, I received this copy free-of-charge as a review copy directly from the publisher.

Day of Games

With my brother and family the next day we played a whole bunch of games. I taught my brother and his eldest how to play Power Grid. It looked like either Saarya or I was winning, but David squeaked out a surprise victory at the end after both Saarya and I made some careless mistakes near the end. They both enjoyed the game.

Meanwhile, Tal played Havoc with the younger kids and managed to do her usual win by winning the final three rounds with straight-flushes. They then played Settlers of Catan. My nephew won that one. Both games were well-received.

After that, we seemed to have trouble dividing people into two groups, as everyone wanted to play the same game that everyone else was playing. I have this problem with my game group, too.

Anticipating a larger game group I had brought Saboteur, which we played with eight people. This one also went over well, and my sister-in-law even joined us. I changed the cave in card to only affect the last card of a tunnel, and not somewhere in the middle, which gives the dwarves a slightly better chance.

However, there was unanimous agreement that nobody liked the scoring mechanism.

After that was done, there was some more milling around trying to figure out what to play, until a deck of cards was brought out and I finally learned how to play Spades.

Spade is a cross between Oh Hell and Tichu; my daughter knows both of these games, and had no problem picking up Spades on her first play. Like almost all partnership card games, it's a lot of fun. We couldn't finish an entire set, but we were pretty close to tied by the end of the game.

Game News

Stephanie Joyce sent me this link to folk art game of Snakes and Ladders which just sold for $64,000.

Matthew Marquand describes his son's experience with his class over a board game design project.

Plenty of people have reviewed the new Settlers on XBox, including Team XBox.

Lucky You, the latest movie revolving around poker, isn't getting hot reviews.

The Eye Judgment is to be a trading card game that comes with a special webcam. In order to play, you hold your card up to the camera, and the corresponding mechmonster appears as if it's standing on your hand on your monitor. (source)

Yehuda

eBay Auctions Ending May 06

These are way too time consuming to do on a regular basis while I have a day-time job, but they're educational and a lot of fun.

	A whole lot of TV shows and celebrities seem to end up as board games, and not only as licenses to the popular board games. The majority of these games are pretty lame, but make nice collectibles.
As usual, lots of Chess sets, some more unusual than others. This one is made from recycled auto parts.
	A stocking stuffer for any impressionable child: Texas Chainsaw Massacre playing cards.
WHOT is a precursor to UNO, and a national pastime in Nigeria.
	The rules to some vintage games, like this game of "Down and Up the Mine", appear to be lost to antiquity.
Some games that are meant as art sadly fail as games. This game, designed by a Vietnam vet, is supposed to recreate "the emotions" of a year-long tour-of-duty. That's a hard goal to achieve in a board game, I would think. Unlike other war games, the object of this game isn't to win, but simply to survive with the least amount of your platoon dead by the end of the year. The mechanics are basically roll-and-move. Each space contains information or terminology about the war.
	Heh. An imaginatively re-themed version of the game Operation. "Robot's feeling very ill! Ooh! Ooh!"
Apparently, this is where pawns go to die. Other auctions with lots of pieces include heaps of Scrabble tiles. Apparently there is a sub-culture of people who use Scrabble tiles for artwork projects.
	One day I must do a series on the most interesting antique playing cards.
Please keep this game away from me. "Snapping Hole"? Ew.
	And another creepy game. Ew. Ew. Ew.
And we have this week's winner for most ridiculous idea: a cribbage board built into a toilet seat. WTF?
	More from the department of beautifully illustrated games from yesteryear.
Scoresheets for Bridge on cartoon-shaped and illustrated paper from the 1930s.
	Hat shaped playing cards.

Yehuda

Pandora vs Ouborous: Killing a Good Thing

Pandora, Releasing Music Unto The World

Pandora.com is a great music site that lets you listen to music for free, like millions of radio stations around the world. What's great about Pandora, however, is that the music it plays is unique for each person, based on the artists and songs that you tell it you like.

Owing to the laser focus of the music you can enjoy, you are far more likely to find new music that you want to own listening to Pandora than listening to anything far more generic (although see my original counter-assumptions). You can click on any song to find out more information about the artist or to buy the music.

Pandora pays licensing fees to the various music consortia for this privilege, making up the fees in advertising and cuts of fees when you click through the song to buy the album.

Good for you, good for Pandora, good for the music industries.

Ouborous, The Snake That Swallowed Its Own Tail

Well, the consortia have decided that, owing to declining CD sales (even though music sales are going up, physical CD sales are declining), that they need to make more money from every single play of every song in every format in every possible configuration. They therefore decided to charge Pandora not a flat licensing fee for the music, but to charge for every country that has access to it. Essentially multiplying the licensing fees by 200 times.

Which explains the letter I got from Pandora yesterday:

Today we have some extremely disappointing news to share with you. Due to international licensing constraints, we are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora's streaming service for most countries outside of the U.S.

... Consequently, on May 3rd, we will begin blocking access to Pandora to listeners from your country. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

And so on.

I don't buy very much music, but the music I buy is music that I've heard. I don't buy music that I haven't heard. This is a Catch-22 for the music industry, isn't it? Because they want me to pay for it before I hear it.

Through Pandora, I have bought more music than any other service in my life, and a lot more is still on my wishlist on Amazon awaiting future purchase.

I want to know how much money the music industry will now lose from people like me no longer buying all this music versus how much they expected to make from Pandora. Who won't pay, of course. I have plenty of other forms of entertainment, you know.

Think about it. The music industry would not exist today without radio. Now the music industry wants to kill radio by pretending that the people playing songs on the radio are music consumers, rather than music advertisers. Kill all your advertising. Wow.

Way to go.

Pandora.com is still working for me as I write this, but I assume that the sounds coming through my earphones are the last sounds of a dying industry. A final requiem to Ouborous, the snake that got so big and hungry that it swallowed its own tail until it disappeared.

Yehuda

Session Report, in which we try Railroad Tycoon and are appalled

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up here. Games played: Railroad Tycoon, Puerto Rico, Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation, Bridge.

We try Railroad Tycoon and complain a lot.

Some guys upset at the moderation on BGG started a board game wiki. And the first thing that happened is that they received some annoying posts and had to moderate them.

I suggested that it is the (alleged) arbitrary nature of the moderation on BGG that got them so upset, and to overcome this they should post a list of guidelines and stick by them. Then they can argue about whether or not the guidelines were really violated for each post.

Reiner Knizia is throwing some game design into the standard PSP games, hoping to turn some of them into something more than "roll the die and see if you won". Could be interesting.

For God's sake, if you're a UK newspaper, stop writing articles about the new Monopoly version, stop urging your citizens to vote for their cities, and stop making puns about games. Or I may have to kill you.

Yehuda

It's All in the Points

You can take just about any set of tasks you want and slap them into a game if you just figure out how many points to give as a reward.

Figuring out the points is the hard part. In fact, it's the only part.

You got a few cards going. You can roll the dice and pick the flooie. Play a green card on the flooie for a few points, or save up three green cards to trade for a hoozits for more points.

All that really matters is: how many points for playing on the flooie right now, and how many points for the hoozits? When is the game going to end?

If flooies are a lot of points, and hoozits's not much more, you go for the flooie. If hoozits's are a lot of points, and flooies not much at all, you go for the hoozits. Unless the game is about to end and you won't have a chance for a hoozits, or unless playing on the flooie gives you bonus abilities that will ultimately result in more points.

If the decision is too obvious, then there's no real choice. If the decision doesn't make a difference, because you get the same amount of points either way, it's also not really much of a choice, is it?

The only time it's really fun is when you don't know exactly what's coming:

- When you can't be bothered to add up all the possible point combinations,
- When the result depends on a certain amount of luck or skillful exertion, or
- When your opponent can figure out what you're doing and thwart you if they are on the ball.

Tiebreaking Means That Points Are Being Undervalued

Imagine Louis XIV with different point assignments. 50 points each for the missions, and 1 point each for the chips. You get a game where the missions are all that matters, and the chips are simply used for breaking ties.

That's kind of what you have in Power Grid, where the money only matters if the city points are tied. Imagine Power Grid where each city is 5 points, and each $5 you have left over is another point. The inevitable annoying win based on a tiebreaker is no longer as annoying.

I think that's what's blocking me in my own game design at the moment. I have a whole barrel full of nice mechanisms, but unless I get the points balanced, the game doesn't make any sense.

Multiple Wins for Multiple Types of Points

You know me. Always trying to find yet another alternative to points and winning.

I was thinking of how Gilbert won the medal, while Anne won the Avery Scholarship. Couldn't a game do that, too?

For instance, a game could give out red points and blue points. At the end of the game, there would be a "Red winner" and a "Blue winner". As a result, you would have to decide which type of points to focus on - which track to pursue - based on overall competition during the game.

Kind of like many real-life situations, no?

Wouldn't you play a game like that?

Yehuda

It is Now Illegal to Play Board and Card Games in South Carolina

Welcome to another game news bulletin, where you won't read yet another story about the exciting chance to get your city listed on Hasbro's new UK Here and Now Monopoly board, or about Settlers of Catan finally going live on the Xbox, since you can read all about those stories on a hundred other blogs.

South Carolina

Anyway, as the title says, it is now illegal to play board or card games - actually, any game with dice or cards - in South Carolina. Way to go doing your job, local government. This joins the rank of all-time stupid South Carolina laws, such as not being able to have a horse in your bathtub.

Update: Actually, the law is over 200 years old, but it is still occasionally enforced, like this 79 year old woman and her friends who were recently arrested and fined for a house poker game.

Hotels and Board Games

Not including my stories about Chicago Hotels doing this thing with board games this summer, I've seen a number of other Hotels and Resorts around the world advertising that, along with their fancy jacuzzi and golf facilities, they offer a library of board games for their guests.

The Fig Tree Manor in Houston offers them. According to an email I received from the owners:

The board games are housed in a small table, which has five drawers, checkers/chess, Chinese checkers, backgammon, tic tac toe, as well as decks of card and one drawer which is felt lined for dice games. We also have horse shoes and bocce ball. This "pool house" has an antique table and four chairs.

Meanwhile, the Cameron Highlands Resort in Malaysia offers hot stone massages, tea baths, "fast internet access and an inviting library with deep-cushioned sofas and board games", including (again, from an email response they sent me) Monopoly, Scrabble, Mastermind, and Chess.

Where Good Play Trumps Good Sense

The Post-Star covers a Glenn Falls Scrabble fund raiser where cheating was declared legal (if you pay for the privilege).

Blog Happenings

Trabsact reports on the Board Games Studies conference that happened last week at St. Pölten.

Yours in a White Wine Sauce points us to Beneath the Waves, a freely downloadable steampunk submarine war game.

Meanwhile, on the Home Front

Rachel beat me at another game of Puerto Rico yesterday. The first set of plantations was three sugars, and the next was three tobaccos. Rachel started us off and had two quarries by round five or so, and then forced a strong building strategy to beat me.

And I thought I was doing well with a four-good Factory going. She won 57 to 47.

Yehuda

A Long As We're Linking 21

Welcome to this month's edition of who's who in the board game blogging world. Last month's edition contained an up-to-date blogging list. This month, as usual, I only list changes over the last month.

Included here are blogs that update with some regularity and frequency, and have something of general interest to say (and are not simply lists of products for sale).

New

Livejournal has a few communities of board games, including the previously mentioned break out the board games. All Board Gamers Everywhere is another.

Boardgamer - This blandly named blog is by Jason from Ontario, Canada.

Dave: The Game - David Chalker, Elkridge, Maryland. He writes some good game stuff on Critical Hits, but only occasionally posts board game material on his blog.

Games and Things - Vinnie, Rhodes Island. Only two entries, but here's hoping.

Games, Gamers, Gaming - David Corbin, somewhere in the US.

The Gameshelf - A new podcast by Jason McIntosh, Somerville, Massachusetts.

KGB - Session reports from Amora, Portugal.

Moving Pieces - No idea who this is or where he's writing from.

Numberless - Scott Jon Siegel, New York. Also writes the Off the Grid column for Joystiq.

Roll For Initiative - Michael Erb, Parkersburg, W.Va. writes weekly reviews for his newspaper and BGG.

The Wandering Settler - Creech from Singapore.

Changed

Ed's Gaming Blog is now called When Dice Attack.

RCK has moved his board game material to RCK:BG.

Games Gist has moved to WordPress.

Dropped

The Magic Rat has passed away. RIP.

Family Boardgaming Podcast seems to have petered out. Same goes for Mike Siggin's Gamer's Notebook on Funagain, The Game Table by Ward Batty, Petworth Game Night, and Tree Weasel Weekly. Update: Seems that I spoke too soon; Gamer's Notebook is still around, after all.

markandeya apparently doesn't talk much about board games, after all.

Yehuda