I love checklists. Better yet, I need checklists; without them I would forget some of the steps we take to bring a product to market.
I have a detailed, ever-evolving checklist I use for every Stonemaier product. Whenever I mention this checklist in an article, a few people ask me to share it, but I’ve avoided doing that because there are a lot of Stonemaier-specific elements on the list (i.e., “Commission the game’s disc golf disc design”) that aren’t applicable for other publishers.
However, today I decided to take the plunge and edit the list down to the 130+ entries–some big, some small–that are potentially relevant to any publisher. The one “catch” is that Stonemaier Games doesn’t use crowdfunding; also, we tend to keep our projects secret until the manufacturing process is complete. The primary reason for both of these is that we feel the best way we’re able to serve our customers is announce, reveal, sell, and fulfill a product all within the span of around a month (opposed to years).
With that in mind, here is the checklist. Hopefully you find this useful even if you operate quite differently than us. Feel free to repurpose it as you wish.
If you have any questions about this checklist (or additions), please let me know in the comments.
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10 Comments on “My Game Publishing Checklist”
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I love this: “treat the fulfillment center teams to lunch”
I recently heard a podcast featuring Fat Mike of the punk band, NOFX. He was asked how he defines success and he said something to the effect of “True success is helping the people around you be successful.” You embody this so completely, with both success and happiness.
You are a rising tide, my friend.
I love that! Thanks for sharing, Jeremy.
Thanks for sharing this Jamey! As a studio artist who makes small editioned handmade books, all of which involve many steps that have to be completed in a particular order, I am a DEVOTEE of checklists. Developing a checklist as I make the prototype copy of a book means I have made myself a guide for future copies. Appreciate the confirmation in your post that successful “creative” work isn’t all about cool ideas and artistic gestures; it’s at least as much about managing a whole lot of details in an effective way.
Thank you, Heather! That’s brilliantly said. From my perspective, creative work is about actually creating something, and there’s a lot of work that goes into that process. :)
I am *all* about checklists! From cruising/traveling, where I use a multi-tabbed Excel spreadsheet to my actual job, these come in handy. In my regular job, even though I’ve done a certain procedure many times, I still generate a checklist or flowsheet for what I’m going to do in the lab. One big reason for this is that in a biocontainment lab, it’s not as easy as just walking out of the lab to get what you need. There are multiple steps, and even showers to complete before exiting the lab.
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a great book about this subject. Worth reading by anyone who is involved in the planning or implementation of complex and/or critical processes.
I share your love (dependence even for me) of checklists. They are especially useful projects with lots of small steps. Some of my more robust checklists are for preparing for, running, note taking and record keeping for Board meetings, for new hires/enrollments of employees/students and employee/student departures.
I like how you have color coded phases and some timelines. Do you ever plug in a target launch date to identify specific date ranges when tasks should happen?
For example we enter a date of hire and many tasks then have automatically determined due dates say if they are to be completed before hire or within a week of hire.
I do! I have a different column for each project in my master Google sheet, and I often plug in various dates and reminders. Thanks for your comment!
I love the checklist – thank you for sharing, Jamey! I’d want to see a version where the vertical height of the row is proportional to the time it takes to complete that step. :)
That would result in some very tall cells! :)