To start the week, I have a few links to share to content about starting a board game company, a personality quiz app, pre-Kickstarter Facebook ad reviews, and a documentary about game design.
Starting Now
I recently had the pleasure of joining Jeff Sarris on the Starting Now podcast for a 42-minute chat about starting a game company. We talked about why and how Stonemaier has stayed small (up until this year, we only had 1 full-time employee–now we have 2!), why I originally used Kickstarter…and why I stopped using it as a creator in 2015, and about how I manage my time (particularly in terms of the ancillary content I create every week for Stonemaier). Jeff’s podcast covers all sorts of startups–I’d highly recommend checking out some of the other episodes too.
Roll Player Class Quiz
One of my favorite things about the recent Roll Player Adventures Kickstarter campaign was the class (as in “classification”) personality quiz. It’s available for everyone to take, not just backers. It’s just a fun little thing, but it offers instant immersion into the Roll Player universe. I’ve been looking for something like this that’s easy to create, and it looks like Thunderworks used Typeform–I’ll have to check that out. Also, for the record, I’m a Scout.
Pre-Kickstarter Board Game Facebook Ads with Great Conversion Rates
Facebook ads are something I’ve experimented with multiple times without much success, so I’m always curious to learn from other creators whose ads and techniques have resulted in clicks and customers. Andrew Lowen notified me of this article, which highlights 5 different Facebook ads, reveals their conversion rates, and discusses what they did well.
Gamemaster Documentary
I love hearing the stories of other designers and publishers, so I was excited when Jimmy Nguyen shared the Gamemaster documentary with me. It follows a variety of people in the game industry, including Klaus Teuber (Catan) and the folks who made Exploding Kittens, as they discuss what it took for them to bring their games to life. The documentary is exceptionally polished and accessible to people in and out of the gaming community. Also, I really liked that it highlighted Nashra Balagamwala, designer of the game Arranged.
***
Have you learned something interesting recently from an article, video, or podcast? Feel free to share it in the comments!
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on his blog each year, please consider championing this content!
7 Comments on “4 Fun and Informative Links for Creators”
Leave a Reply to PaulCancel reply
If you ask a question about a specific card or ability, please type the exact text in your comment to help facilitate a speedy and precise answer.
Your comment may take a few minutes to publish. Antagonistic, rude, or degrading comments will be removed. Thank you.
I like the personality quiz. They’re fun and accessible and get you relating to the game’s or story’s characters pretty quickly. They also make for good conversation if people don’t take themselves too seriously “haha, this quiz says you’re Darth Vader!”
I’d love to see a Scythe personality quiz (without RoF spoilers), just for fun. I like all of the characters (and especially like that over half of them are female) but it’d be fun to have quiz results to call attention to a character I might have not played in a while. Pendulum might be interesting too since the characters are pretty unique and each seems menacing in their own way.
Permission to link back to your BIPOC article and this article.
Can I ask how you sit morally with advocating facebook advertising when many large companies are pulling ads in an effort to rein in the lack of responsibilty displayed by facebook as a company for some of the racist/sexist/bigotted content it permits.
Ok, it has been said the large companies doing this are only doing so for the headlines/free exposure and that facebook will be pretty much unaffected by it due to the majority of it’s advertising income being from small enterprise. If that is the case as one of those small advertisiers is it acceptable to turn a blind eye to the issue because the advertising exposure obtained out weighs the morally questionable platform it is delivered through or does that make you complicit?
I am not trying to have a go at you specifically, just pose it as a question in a sort of devils advocate kind of way having read this and the articles either side of it discussing inclusion.
Paul: While I don’t think I’m exactly advocating Facebook advertising here, I think this is a great question. I think, like any company or platform, that Facebook has a lot of good aspects and some areas for improvement. I don’t see it as an inherently immoral platform. I think their positives outweigh their negatives, which is why I have Facebook groups for each of our games and a Facebook page for Stonemaier Games. But I also haven’t spent advertising dollars on Facebook in quite a while.
Hi Jamey. Thanks for the news. 8 months back you said in a YouTube vid that you can’t understand how in deck building a player can have an item equipped and yet it comes up randomly. 2-part answer: 1) Memory: your player or character collects many treasures and in peril it suddenly Dawn’s on them to try that item. (Example I have my keys in my pocket and can’t seem to open my front door. I fish through my deck, bag, pocket for my keys. 2-Recharge/ reliability: I equip an unreliable old/ damaged/ cursed/ mind-of-its own item. When suddenly it appears to wanna work. Simple.
Cheering you on.
BigQ
Thanks! I like those thematic explanations for the most part. But if I use my sword, why would I then immediately forget where my sword is? :)
You could not be used to it yet (like a scrawny lad) not finding it extremely effective until you pick up new skills with it. Also energy weapon may need a recharge.
In a melee perhaps you drop it or can’t barely lift it to swing it and have to improvise. BigQ