2022 Year in Review (Stonemaier Games)

As we approach the end of 2022, our 10th year of existence as a game publisher, 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 2023 (when we know the financials for the year).

January

• Accessibility: To pair with our inclusivity efforts (BIPOC and eco-friendliness), we started off the year with a close examination of the accessibility of our products using a wide range of metrics.
• Susannah: To facilitate the growth of our direct retailer program, Susannah Eisenbraun became our Retailer Relationship Manager in January. She has been an amazing addition to the Stonemaier team and the greater community. In coordination with Susannah, this year we realized we could best serve retailers by focusing on fewer distributors, resulting in the difficult decision to proceed with GTS as our hobby game distributor in the US and Universal in Canada (among distributors for other regions).
• My Father: My dad fearlessly beat cancer 3 times, but the 4th time was too much, and he passed away in January. The time I focused on family in late January was a good reminder that Stonemaier is the work of many people–we’re blessed to employ the services of over 100 people (3 of whom are full-time employees) who have an ongoing impact on our products, along with a few dozen insightful shareholders.

February

• Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest Announcement: After some speculation that we were reprinting Libertalia, we announced that we had done much more than that–we worked with designer Paolo Mori to create a completely new version of the classic pirate game. The playful Disney cartoon-style art wasn’t always met well by those who prefer the playful Disney Pirates of the Caribbean-style art, but the new mechanisms, variability via loot tiles, upgraded components, and revisited/additional cards has seemed to win over a new generation of pirates, leading to a 7.5 user rating on BGG (compared to 7.1 for the original).
• Ukraine: A few days after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion to conquer the sovereign nation of Ukraine, Stonemaier Games cut off ties with our Russian localization partners, forgave any payments owed to us by Ukrainian localization partners, and donated $10,830 to support emergency humanitarian aid for Ukraine (see related post). Paired with the ongoing pandemic, this continued invasion has had a massive impact on the world economy–it’s a good reminder that yes, this seemingly unrelated topic does indeed have quite a bit to do with board games.

March

• 11,000 Champions: Four years after we created the Stonemaier Champion system, in March the total number of Champions climbed over 11,000. We’re honored by their support of our content, and I’m glad to see that the perks of being a Champion (20% discount on all webstore products and prioritized shipping) continue to entice those who prefer to buy directly from us.
• Coronation Street: British birders were surprised to see Wingspan appear on a soap opera! Wingspan would later also be seen on the table of actor Mandy Patinkin.
• Leaderboards: As an experiment, I created a way for players to post their best scores for various Stonemaier games, then I shared the best scores at each player count for the month. Participation was great for a few months before decreasing for most games…except Tapestry, for which 50+ scores are recorded each month (which is very helpful for the final printed civ adjustments we’ve worked on all year).

April

• Disc Golf: I’ve had so much fun playing disc golf with a growing group of friends in St. Louis, so I thought April Fools would be a good time to share my love of this giant dexterity game with the Stonemaier community. Stonemaier worked with Innova to create a line of discs with custom stamps inspired by many of our games, and much to my surprise, they sold out within minutes! We’ve reprinted the discs half a dozen times since then, and I love seeing people tag me with their outdoor exploits with our discs on Instagram.
• Viticulture World: It had been a while since we released an expansion for our evergreen game, Viticulture, and this was our first product focused solely on bringing a cooperative experience to tabletops. It was also the first time we included an expansion inside of a big box (the Wine Crate). This was quite a shaky release, as there were freight shipping issues, a late solution to address first-game difficulty, and a huge mistake on my part to not remove 2 problematic cards. All of this seemed to overshadow the quality of the expansion (7.9 user rating on BGG) and how it actively includes LGBTQ+ couples into the world of Viticulture.
• Book Club: Starting in April in a series of live videos (now on YouTube), I hosted a chapter-by-chapter revisit of my 2015 book, A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide. I really enjoyed this series, especially the viewer participation.

May

• Jigsaw Puzzles: As a surprise to Wingspanners who also love puzzles, this month we revealed three different Wingspan puzzles, each scaling in complexity (and each with completely different birds). We weren’t sure how they would sell, so we didn’t make too many; we still have some in stock, so I think we made the right amount, and there are no plans to make more.
• Hackstone Experiment: We don’t typically use traditional advertising methods, but we like to experiment to see if we’re missing a way to reach customers. A marketing company called Hackstone ran a video-based ad campaign for 2 months…and the final results yielded a net loss of of $19,065.

June

• Discord: Inspired by Garphill Games to better serve Stonemaier fans who prefer Discord over other social media for Stonemaier-related discussions, we started a Discord server! The community there is warm and welcoming, and there’s a link to it in our e-newsletters.
• Teasing Wingspan Asia: We decided try something different with the latest Wingspan expansion reveal this year. Months before the preorder, we revealed the continent, started sharing teaser images of some of the beautiful bird cards in the expansion, and gathering email addresses (for each one we gathered, we donated $1 to a few non-profits benefiting birds in Asia for a total donation of $13,130).

July

• Audio Version of This Blog: Starting in July, every time I wrote a new blog post, a few hours later I recorded an audio version of it (usually 3-5 minutes of audio). A helpful ambassador, Joshua, uploads it to a few different podcasting services. Hopefully this additional option is helpful for those who prefer to listen than read.
• Dized: We’re always looking to find new ways to help people get our products to the table for the first time, and this year we’ve been happy that Dized released interactive tutorials for both Libertalia: WoG and Scythe.
• Virtual Staff Lunches: At my coworker Joe’s suggestion, we started gathering as a team for staff lunches every couple of months. The core Stonemaier team is scattered all over–Reno, St. Louis, Florida, Denmark, and the UK–so it’s really nice to have some low-key time to just hang out.

August

• Eco-Friendly Improvements: We’ve been working with Panda to improve the eco-friendliness of our games, and several of those endeavors started appearing in Wingspan and other games around this time. They include pulp sugarcane trays, biodegradable bags, FSC certified cardboard and wood tokens (including eggs), and the use of natural rubber instead of neoprene for playmats.
• Inflation: Inflation had a major impact on the world this year. I viewed this as an opportunity to serve our customers better by not raising prices and to serve any contractor who provides paid services to Stonemaier Games to increase the minimum hourly payment to $25/hour.

September

• 10th Anniversary: This was a really special occasion for us–Stonemaier Games has been a company for 10 years! We celebrated this by giving a free copy of a 1-2 player cooperative game I designed (Smitten) to anyone who placed a webstore order, and we also announced and started selling 3 new Rolling Reams promos and Between Two Cities Essential Edition. I feel incredibly fortunate for the support over the last 10 years, and hopefully we’ve brought some joy to you and your table during that time.
• Score Calculator App: We commissioned developer Paul Hart to create a Stonemaier-specific app to calculate and record scores. The initial builds have focused on Wingspan, but we’re continually rolling out updates and improvements. It’s free!

October

• Charity Auction: Our annual charity auction featured another 10 amazing content creators, and 10 very generous people bid on the items shown below. Stonemaier Games matched each winning bid (and Fulfillrite matched the highest of all bids) for a total donation of $29,289 to 10 important nonprofits.
• Design Day: The ninth annual Stonemaier Games Design Day was at Pieces Board Game Bar & Cafe in St. Louis again this year, and yet again I was impressed and amazed by the creativity and generosity on display. This year was pretty similar to previous years, though we added a disc golf outing on Saturday and a new rating system.

November

• Nesting Box and Wingspan Asia: This was a doozy! We sold all 10,000 Nesting Boxes within a few days (many within the first 6 hours), plus another 8,000 copies of Wingspan Asia. We’re so grateful to the fulfillment centers–particularly Aetherworks and Spiral Galaxy–who stepped up their services at a busy time to promptly ship these products to customers. The difference between supply and demand led to some great discussions about how we can better serve customers, particularly those who don’t mind preordering prior to production based on minimal information. We will experiment with that in the future.
• Black Friday: We tried something a little different this year for Black Friday; instead of offering a special sale, we posted this on Instagram and asked for people to share their favorite hobby game retailer in the comments. I’d like to do this again in the future.

December

• Playmats: Playmats for Red Rising and Tapestry arrived just in time for the holidays!
• Rolling Realms and Liveplays: With quite a few Rolling Realms promos in the works, this year we shifted to a strategy of releasing a new batch of 3 realms every few months. They coincide with my bi-weekly liveplays of the game on Facebook (posted afterwards on YouTube); I’ve now run 39 live games of Rolling Realms that anyone can play along with in real time or at their leisure. I’ve really enjoyed this, and I’m delighted that people continue to join me for this game.

***

That’s our year in a nutshell! I’m excited about what we have in store for you in 2023. 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!

What was the highlight of your year as it relates to Stonemaier Games, and what would you like us to learn from 2022?

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

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