2021 Year in Review (Stonemaier Games)

As we approach the end of 2021, I’m going to revisit some notable moments from each of the last 12 months. These are all related to Stonemaier Games and this blog in some way, though many are indicative of the industry and the world. Our data-driven stakeholder report will follow in spring 2022 (when we know the financials for the year).

January

• Bookkeeper: One of the biggest additions we made this year was to contract a bookkeeper to record our revenue sources and expenses and to calculate the monthly royalties we pay to game designers. Stephanie at Timely Totals has been truly amazing.
• Anniversary events/sales: A recurring theme of 2021 was that I celebrated–and encouraged people to celebrate–the retail release anniversaries of our games, starting with Euphoria. Sometimes this just entailed me encouraging people to play and post about the game; other times it involved a special sale.

February

• Red Rising announcement: I’ve been trying to design and publish a game based on the Red Rising series of novels for years now, so I was incredibly excited to announce this new game. We sold 9,535 units during the preorder (before which we donated $10,724 to the ACLU based on the number of preorder launch requests), and there are now over 120,000 units in circulation worldwide. I shared lessons learned about Red Rising as our first IP game and printing the Collector’s and standard editions together.
• BIPOC hires: In addition to the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color we’ve hired in the past for art, game design, and other crucially important elements to the game creation process (Hoby Chou, Katie Khau, Justin Wong, Heriberto Martinez, Natalia Rojas, Ana Maria Martinez, etc), this year we sought to continue to hire a diverse array of talented people, including Miles Bensky, Raven McKenzie, Mihir Shaw, Lydia Wehmeyer, Michael Lee, Lamaro Smith, Tim Chuon, and Kwanchai Moriya (several of whose projects won’t be revealed until 2022 or 2023).

March

• Australia/NZ storefront launch: Thanks to the monumental efforts by web developer Dave and Director of Communications Joe, this year we created e-commerce storefronts for Australia/NZ, Canada, and Europe. We’ve shipped from fulfillment centers within those regions since 2013, but separate storefronts allow us to offer products to people in their local currency and to ensure accurate inventory for each specific fulfillment center.
• Giveaway experiment: Providing free games for giveaways isn’t part of our marketing strategy, but we experimented with a very specific version of it earlier this year with positive results.

April

• Ambassador applications: In April, we had around 1500 ambassadors (volunteers) around the world, but it was increasingly apparent to me that some ambassadors–while passionate about our products–weren’t fully on board with our core principles of inclusion, diversity, generosity, and more. I try my best to respect different points of view, but ambassadors are representatives of Stonemaier Games, so sharing core principles is quite important. So I updated the application and asked all ambassadors to reapply. We now have around 400 ambassadors.
• Tim Chuon photography: We’ve worked with a few different photographers over the years–all of them great–and this year we just couldn’t resist working with the amazing Tim Chuon to photograph our products (new and old). I really like that Tim provides both warm lifestyle photos (like the one below) and polished studio photos (see the Rolling Realms photo further down).

May

• Secrets & Soirees (Between Two Castles expansion) announcement: Our second product release this year finally brought a solo mode to Between Two Castles (among other additions for the multi-player game). We sold 852 units during the preorder, and there are now over 9,000 units in circulation worldwide.
• Cultural Consulting: To ensure that no aspect of our games cause unintentional harm, this year we started working with Kate Edwards of Geogrify for cultural consulting.
• 20-Day Price Guarantee: In May we officially defined a policy to ensure customers that they can buy something from our webstore today and not need to worry that they’ve “lost” if we offer a special price for that product tomorrow. If you buy anything from the Stonemaier Games webstore and later (within 20 days of the purchase) see a better sale price currently listed on our webstore, you can send us your order number and we will refund the difference.

June

• Wingspan Nesting Box: Over the last few years, most of the products we’ve made have been a secret until we’ve already made them (“secret” is relative–playtesters, proofreaders, and others involved in crafting the product know about it). However, I broke from that strategy to crowdsource ideas for a box/organizer to hold all Wingspan content, and I think the process was quite fruitful. The Nesting Box is now fully designed and ready to go to print; we’re just waiting to finalize the next Wingspan expansion so we can ship them together in 2022.
• Proofreading and oversight changes: Many of my regrets over the years have come from little mistakes made during the creation process that result in production errors that detract from the joy I want people to have when they play our games. This year I revamped our proofreading process to feature a full team of people who can see all files at every step of the process.
• Public Libraries: After a great discussion with librarian and gamer Jenn Bartlett, we created a way for libraries to buy games from us at a significant discount. Here are the details of how we came to that decision and how libraries work in terms of games (and other forms of media).

July

• Target: After a lot of hard work and a significant amount of time, our Director of Sales (Alex) worked to get Red Rising–and then Wingspan–into Target. He was able to do so without any special versions of the games or exclusives.
• Viticulture on Board Game Arena: BGA was completely off my radar before the pandemic, and now I play games there every other week with friends from around the world. We’ve been trying to get a few of our games on their platform, and July marked the month when Viticulture made its official appearance there. Tapestry is also now in beta on BGA.
• Signed cards: I don’t attend many conventions (where I’m happy to sign anything). After hearing from people for a while that they wished they could buy a signed card, I signed a bunch of cards and made them random add-on products on our webstore for $1.

August

• Rolling Realms announcement: I originally designed and playtesting Rolling Realms purely as a way to connect with people during the early-pandemic days of self-isolation, but it grew into something I was excited to publish. We sold 2,056 units during the preorder (before which $1975 to the International Tree Foundation based on the number of preorder launch requests), and there are now over 36,000 units in circulation worldwide. I’ve had a lot of fun with the weekly liveplays, which are all on YouTube (you can play against past me remotely at any time). Also, we had the pleasure of working with talented voiceover artist Megan Selke for the first time for the teaser trailer (as well as video editor JC Trombley, who was also great).
• Slate article and advances: We were blessed with a feature article in Slate magazine about Elizabeth Hargrave and Wingspan. The article provided some great food for thought about designer advances (which we then increased to $10,000) and about the accuracy with which non-tabletop journalists talk about the tabletop creation process (leading to this article).
• Environmentalism: While eco-friendliness has been important to Stonemaier Games from the beginning, I was particularly inspired by Andrew Navarro of Earthborne Games to be much more assertive and proactive about making our current and future games more eco-friendly. I dove deep into the topic (research and discussions with our manufacturer), and so far it’s led to some important insights and changes (see related articles here and here). It’s not an overnight process, but I’m continuing to pursue it, and I’ll continue to post updates on this blog.

September

• Design Day: After a virtual-only Design Day event in 2020, this year we hosted a fully masked, proof-of-vaccination event at the amazing Pieces Board Game Bar & Cafe. It was wonderful to connect with some new and old faces, and there wasn’t a single reported case of COVID afterwards. I discuss it in detail here.
• Font Rights: Due to a combination of unfortunate factors, we learned this year that we didn’t have proper font rights for two fonts we use on specific game boxes. This resulted in a significant expense and some lessons learned the hard way.

October

• Charity Auction: Our 9th annual charity auction featured signed copies of Red Rising, Rolling Realms, Tapestry Arts & Architecture, and Secrets & Soirees. The auction, which featured some amazing content creators, ended up generating $8,901 in winning bids, with Stonemaier matching each of those bids (and Fulfillrite matching the highest bid), resulting in a total donation spread over 12 charities of $19,608.
• Geekway to the West: My favorite convention is the only convention we attended this year in any capacity (other than our own Design Day event). It was fully masked with proof-of-vaccination, and I had a great time playing a variety of new-to-me games with a variety of people.

November

• Arts & Architecture (Tapestry expansion) announcement: Our second expansion for Tapestry added a new advancement track, new tile and card types, new landmark miniatures, a new type of capital city mat, and more. We sold 3,543 units during the preorder, and the retail release date will follow on January 21, 2022.
• Freight shipping woes: I have a few blog posts on freight shipping crisis (first and second), which now involves $30k+ invoices for containers that were once $4k and containers that arrived at port months ago and still haven’t been delivered to their final destinations. Credit to Alex for handling the logistics of a vast variety of shipments, including an increasing number going directly to distributors instead of first processing through warehouses. In total, I’d estimate that the freight shipping crisis cost us around $1 million in profit in 2021.

December

• Terra Mystica realm: Earlier I mentioned Rolling Realms, but in December we revealed something new to Stonemaier Games: A promo pack based on a non-Stonemaier product, Terra Mystica. This is the start of Rolling Realms as a living card game with realms based both on new Stonemaier games and brands from other publishers.
• Wingspan crosses 1 million threshold: A little less than 3 years after publication, Wingspan has now sold over 1 million copies! We’re so glad that this game by Elizabeth Hargrave has brought so much joy to tabletops worldwide.
• DEI consultant: As revealed in a recent blog post, we hired Lydia Wehmeyer as our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant. While I’ve known Lydia for years now, I’ve really appreciated her insights in this role.

***

That’s our year in a nutshell! I’m excited about what we have in store for you in 2022. Our goal at Stonemaier Games is to bring joy to tabletops worldwide, and we’ll continue to strive to do that through our games, this blog, YouTube, social media, and more. Thank you for your support!

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