A Great Game is Not Enough
It was summer 2014. My dad was visiting me in New York City. The air hung heavy with August heat and day old garbage that piled shoulder high on collection day. I left work early to meet him, the sun refracting off glass buildings, finding improbable angles around my sunglasses. I peeled through crowds of men and women in business casual who walked with measured steps, careful not to over exert themselves and stain their linen shirts with sweat.
I met him at Penn station when the first weekenders were fleeing the city heat for the Hamptons, or Fire Island, or the Jersey Shore. We walked cross town, deposited his bags, wandered around mid-town, to Mid-Town Comics, Montasy and finally, with iced coffee in hand, to Bryant Park. Twilight was settling in in soft sherberts as the lawn filled with blankets and mid twenty-somethings for a movie night on the outdoor screen.
We had Thai that night on thirty fourth street. I had the Pad Prik Khing, then again, I always had the Pad Prik Khing.
My dad is a gamer. He taught me chess and checkers. We battled for days on Axis & Allies boards, for bloody afternoons at Stratego. He DMed our first Dungeons & Dragons campaign, helped me paint my first Warhammer figures, and passed on his old Backgammon strategy book from the 70s.
I think he had me playing games before I could talk, and even now, thirty four years older it remains a bond between us. So, when I saw a Meet Up hosted by a real life game designer, I knew we had to go.
That Saturday we took the train down to the West Village, bought our time at the Uncommons and sat down to learn some games, and hopefully some wisdom from a gaming master.
Game design wasn’t on my radar. Sure, I’d written D&D campaigns, made the odd custom magic card, performed admirably poorly in seventh grade when I had to make a board game in Spanish class – but by and large I was a gamer, not a games maker.
But, there in front of me was a real life game designer, and his real life game (I don’t remember all the details, but it was about the ocean and had a set collection mechanic). I was enraptured by the process. This man had an idea, created it, tested it, commissioned artwork, graphic design, figured out how to manufacture it, ship it, fulfil it, and there it was, in front of me, an actual tangible thing made of chip board and cardstock.
It was inspiring.
Since that afternoon I’ve designed a number of games that… well, it’s been a learning process. I made an engine building game with Frankensteined bits from Orleans, a bluffing game that was glorified rock-paper-scissors with cards, and some sort of mash up of a trading card game and tabletop wargame.
It was never my main focus, but the kind of hobby I would flit upon when an idea struck me. Now it is something more.
I stumbled upon an idea in Summer/Fall, 2020. I ordered some hexes off amazon, laid out my meeples and got to work. As soon as we started playing I knew we had something special. The rules have gone through iterations, we streamlined some mechanics, combined others, but the soul of the game has remained the same. And trimming the fat has really shown us how much fun that core is.
In the intervening months I’ve poured through Jamey Stegmaier's blog at Stonemaier, eaten up James Manthe’s content, and prowled the BGG forums. I have learned that there is a hell of a lot more to publishing a successful game than the game itself.
Over the next months or years I will bring you along as I figure out this business from the ground up. I’ll take what I think is a great game, and bring it from polished concept to a self published game. I will be as open as possible about my expenses (while respecting my counterparties, artists, designers etc), be honest about my challenges, and hopefully celebrate together in my triumphs.
What do you have to lose? I’m fronting the money, hopefully we’ll succeed, but if we don’t then at least we’ll learn something along the way.
Join us as we publish Nut Hunt! A Game of Territorial Squirrels.
