I’m forever grateful for crowdfunding, as Stonemaier Games wouldn’t exist without it. It helped me learn how to gauge demand, improve the product via feedback and stretch goals, build an engaged community, raise funds, generate awareness, and determine inventory quantities for various fulfillment centers. I’m also incredibly grateful that we took the leap away from […]
Read More
Recently I’ve seen and participated in some interesting discussions about eco-friendly components in tabletop games. One of the overarching topics in these conversations is the perception that some eco-friendly components offer a strictly worse user experience than their less environmentally sustainable equivalents. Perception is inherently critical to the user experience, but before I discuss it, […]
Read More
Counterfeit board games exist, and the problem is getting worse. Let’s talk about what we can do. Tabletop counterfeiting has been around from a while in a few different forms: Actual printed versions of games using either stolen source files, print-and-play files, high-res scans of the printed game, or printed versions of files uploaded to […]
Read More
Sending games to reviewers and content creators continues to be a key part of the Stonemaier Games marketing plan. It’s far from the only part, but it remains an important and significant marketing expense. I estimate that we sent at least 1,000 free units of Stonemaier products for review in 2023. Since my original post on this […]
Read More
I haven’t really stopped to breathe for the last 30 hours (aside from a fitful night’s sleep) since announcing Wyrmspan yesterday. But I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the announcement and what I’ve learned from it. First, a few key facts: Wyrmspan is a new, standalone game designed by Connie Vogelmann (Apiary). […]
Read More
If you’re a game designer, I highly recommend Adam Porter’s YouTube channel, Adam in Wales. It has a similar vibe to my game design YouTube channel in terms of its focus on specific game mechanisms, but Adam is far more eloquent and polished. Adam has a series of videos about what he’s learned over 10 […]
Read More
“I had a lot of experience in high school alone when I would share my excitement with someone, and then they’d immediately shut me down for being so excited. I would hate to see that within the fan community as well, because it does feel awful. If people are excited about something, let them be […]
Read More
Whether this is the 1st or the 100th article you’ve read on the Stonemaier Games blog this year, I’m so thankful that you’ve decided to read along (and sometimes join the discussion in the comments). Today I’m going to share my most-read articles of 2023 and a key takeaway from each. The 10 Best and […]
Read More
At Stonemaier Games, our philosophy on installment payments–offering customers a way to pay for an order over several months instead of all at once–has been that we don’t want to encourage someone to buy something they can’t currently afford (and don’t need). As a result, we do not offer installment payments on our webstore. However, […]
Read More
The recent Kickstarter campaign for Kelp raised over $1.5 million, aided by a hot start in which it raised around $240,000 in the first 48 hours. I learned a lot from corresponding with Kelp’s publisher, Laia Gonzalez, about their advertising strategy, including a new-to-me technique: Selling a promo, accessory, or expansion in advance of the […]
Read More