Board Game Authority

A while back I had the opportunity to speak with Joel Colombo, who has backed 180 different Kickstarter campaigns (he has since broken the 200 mark).  I wanted to talk with Joel to gain insight from a backer perspective.  What makes him click the pledge button?  Or maybe more importantly, what scares him away?  As always, you can listen to the podcast on iTunes, or via the embeded player right here on our site, and the excerpt can be found below. RICHARD MILES: Hi! This is Richard Miles of Board Game authority and today I’m with… JOEL COLOMBO: Joel Colombo. RICHARD MILES: Hi, Joel. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. We are in quite a few Facebook groups together. Facebook groups about board-gaming in general, some on the design aspect but a lot of groups focusing on Kickstarter, and from those groups I have learned that you are, for lack of a better word, a ‘Power Backer’. I don’t know what to call it. JOEL COLOMBO: It sounds weird. But yeah… RICHARD MILES: Yeah. You back a lot of Kickstarter games. How many Kickstarter projects have you backed to date? JOEL COLOMBO: As I looked, preparing for this, I’m at a hundred and eighty (180), and what’s even crazier is I think my first one was backed around mid-2014, so, the last two (2) years. RICHARD MILES: Wow, wow, wow! That is a lot of projects backed. Today on the show, I would like to just go over what it is from a backer perspective of what you’re looking for in a campaign. What makes you click that pledge button? What is desirable? What campaigns do you pass over? Things of that nature. JOEL COLOMBO: Sure! I would love to. RICHARD MILES: Do you ever back any games or projects on other platforms other than Kickstarter? JOEL COLOMBO: Honestly, no.  I haven’t. I’ve maybe popped over and looked at a few that I’ve seen shared on the boards but I’ve never… There’s just something about Kickstarter being a hub that I’ve been drawn to.  It almost feels off going to some of the other networks that just don’t have that same board game community already built in. RICHARD MILES: Yeah. It’s the same for me, and I think you hit on a good point there and that’s community. I think that Kickstarter does have a very nice community surrounding it for board games. But why pledge it all? Why not wait until games hit the retail shelves? JOEL COLOMBO: So, there’s a couple things really with this.  This is a big question with it because a lot of times you’re not getting a super sweet discount deal so it’s not about the money. It’s really, I am a business owner myself. It’s a software industry thing. But when I put down my money I know that it’s going directly to the publishers, especially the indie publishers. When I look at it, it’s just one of those things where I know that I’m supporting them. There’s no middle man. There’s no distribution retail cuts, all of these other stuff. A hundred percent (100%) of what I’m giving them is going in to their business, and that they’ll apply that towards the game, towards building their business going to the convention so they can promote it and really start something. As an entrepreneur, I really am a big believer in trying to help people get off the ground. I moderate. I’m one of the couple moderators on the Card and Board Game Designers Guild. I’m seeing six thousand (6,000) designers on there all sharing their stuff. You start to build relationships. You start to see what they’re going through developing to get to that point. When they launch, sometimes, if it’s somebody I’ve seen that’s really been working hard at it, I don’t even dig in to it. I’m like, “You know what, I’m backing this one. I see what this guy’s got going.” Worst case, somewhere down the road it doesn’t work out, I can trade it out or something like that, on a BGG trade. RICHARD MILES: Right. JOEL COLOMBO: That type of thing. I look at it as saying, the games don’t all make it to retail. They don’t all get funded.  So,

In today's podcast, I get to talk with Chern Ann, co-founder of CoolMiniOrNot.  We discuss all things Kickstarter, and what it takes to manufacture a game with plastic miniatures.  We also discuss the humble origins of the CoolMiniOrNot website, how long CMON takes to plan one of their mega Kickstarters, why Chern Ann is active on Facebook board game publishing groups, why zombies was an easy sell, and more. Richard:                                Hi, this is Richard Miles with Board Game Authority, and today I am talking with… Chern Ann:                           Chern Ann from CoolMiniOrNot Richard:                                Thank you for taking the time out to speak with me today.  Most people are familiar with CoolMiniOrNot, at least in the board game industry. Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with the company? Chern Ann:                           I am one of the founders of the company. We started it out in 2001 as a community site, for people to upload the pictures of painted miniatures, to rate it, kind of like “Hot or Not” but for miniatures.  Super geeky thing. We did it for quite a while, until 2009 when we decided to see whether we could take this further, and that’s how we started getting into making miniature games, and finally board games. Richard:                                And so, whose decision was it to get into board game publishing? That’s kind of a big stretch from a “rate your painted miniature” website to full on board game publisher.  How did that process happen? Chern Ann:                           We were publishing or making miniatures for the hobbyist market for quite a while, I think since 2006, special edition figures, stuff that would be compatible with Warhammer, publishing games like Dark Age, skirmish miniature games, a lot like Warhammer 40k or Wyrd miniatures… Malifaux. During that time I had less time for  miniatures, miniature painting and the miniature hobby, and I was thinking that I’d love to combine miniatures with some way of making it easy to set up and play, and easy to store, and the board game format seemed to be a good idea.  So coincidentally, I mean this is a shout-out to those Soda Pop boys. They had pitched us a game called Super Dungeon Explore in 2010.  And they said okay, “This is our game, it’s full of these cute figurines, we’d like to make as a metal miniature line and sell little smaller expansions, maybe you could get one figure for like seven dollars or eight dollars, and could you guys publish us?”  So I took a look at the game and thought “Well this is ideal, why don’t we try a different format? Let’s make it a miniature board game instead.”  So that you could get all 50 figures at once with a reasonable price, or relatively reasonable compared to what miniature gamers are used to. And that is how we started publishing board games. Richard:                                Wow, I’m always interested in how things come together. After that initial run with Super Dungeon Explore,  CoolMiniOrNot really took to Kickstarter and your company has done really well on that platform. How many Kickstarters has CoolMiniOrNot been involved with? Chern Ann:                           We’ve run twenty (20) Kickstarter campaigns so far. Not all of them were for games, some were for base inserts and things like that, hobby products, but most of them were games. Richard:                                Twenty Kickstarters is quite a track record and every single one of those has successfully funded. Correct? Chern Ann:                           Well, successfully funded? Yes. And most of them have been successfully delivered. We are still delivering... I think we’re delivering Zombicide Black Plague right now.  We still have B-Sieged and The Others left to deliver and of course Arcadia Quest: Inferno that just completed a couple of days ago. Richard:                                And so,

In today's podcast Randy Hoyt, of Foxtrot Games, goes into a lot of detail regarding all of the costs associated with running a Kickstarter campaign. We also talk about what it was like when Lanterns won the Mensa Select award, and we learn that Randy doesn't like getting wet. RICHARD:        Hello, this is Richard Miles with boardgameauthority.com and today my guest is RANDY:            Randy Hoyt, owner of Foxtrot Games. RICHARD:        Hi Randy, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. You have a Kickstarter coming up for World's Fair, tell us when we can expect to see that? RANDY:            Yeah, we're targeting September 29th, which is about two weeks from when we're recording. RICHARD:        Now, we'll certainly get into World's Fair but, first let's talk about the other games that Foxtrot has. You have two games on store shelves right now, is that correct? RANDY:            That's correct, we have Relic Expedition, our first game. It's a jungle exploration game, think, like Indiana Jones. The board starts small and as you explore out a bunch of new tiles are revealed and the jungle grows in unpredictable ways each time. The second game is Lanterns the Harvest Festival, that's another tile laying game, you're playing an artisan in imperial China decorating the palace lake with floating lanterns to gain favor with the emperor. RICHARD:        Now, I must confess, I haven't played Relic Expeditions but I have played Lanterns and that's a family favorite. It's actually a big hit anywhere I take it: board game night, a relative’s house, everybody seems to really enjoy this game and, as I understand it, Lanterns the Harvest Festival won a Mensa Select Award. Is that correct? RANDY:            It did, yeah, it was in, I guess, the beginning of May. RICHARD:        And what was winning the Mensa Select Award like for Foxtrot Games? RANDY:            Oh, man, it was so great to, hear the news. It was on Twitter, we'd been told that it would be about two weeks after the judging that we would hear but that afternoon it started coming up on Twitter and, you know, we saw the first tweets I'm like, "Is this for real? This person seems to be, like they're part of the Mensa Select, like, is this, is this, really happening?" And so, just sort of over the course of an hour seeing a bunch of different tweets that it finally seemed real and it was, just great to, when you put so much effort and energy into a product that you love and to just have, you know, just hundreds of people that participated in the judging love it also, it's just so rewarding and so wonderful, yeah, it was, I was grinning like the whole next week. RICHARD:        Congratulation, it is well-deserved, that game is deceptively simple, with some underlying complexity, due to the fact that on your turn you not only select the colors that you're going to receive but also what colors you're going to give your opponents. I haven’t really seen that mechanic in a lot of games and I really enjoy it. RANDY:            And when I first saw, when I first read the rulebook for it, I mean, this was a game designed by Christopher Chung, and he submitted it to us, and when I read the rulebook and saw that mechanic where when I place a tile I give everyone else, including myself, a resource I just thought, "Wow, that's really cool. That’s a really easy sale when I explain it to people and if the game is really fun, I’m going to want to make this.” And, still, to this day when I explain the game to people, I get 30 seconds, and their eyes just light up when I tell them, "You get a resource but so do all your opponents." And, that's the hook in that game and it plays out so nicely. RICHARD:        Yeah, it really does. I read a few days ago where Lanterns is about to sell 10,000 copies. RANDY:            That's right, we just sold out of our second print run and when we sell out, as a publisher,

RICHARD:        Hello, Richard Miles here for BoardGameAuthority.com. We have a pretty good show for you today. Our guest for this episode is Gil Hova and I'd like to start introducing our guests a little bit like this: [awesome Gil Hova intro] but we'll see if that sticks. For now, I'll probably just stick to letting the guests introduce themselves. Today, we're going to cover Gil's philosophy of board game theory, what led to his decision to self-publish, why he's not looking forward to the new Star Wars movie, and of course, we'll talk a little bit about his upcoming Kickstarter campaign 'The Networks.' So today, I'm talking with... GIL:                  Gil Hova of Formal Ferret Games. RICHARD:        Gil, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with me today. I know that you are in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign that has 28 days left to go. It's called 'The Networks' and before we get into all that, and we certainly will talk a lot about that, I would like to, if you don't mind, to begin our discussion talking about game design theory. Some people might not even know what game design theory is or that it even exists, but I would like to talk about game design theory and possibly your philosophy that goes into game design. GIL:                  Sure, I think, for me, I can summarize it in three words and that is: Incentivize Interesting Behavior. I think that those three words sum up what good game design is. I think a good game designer it's not just a matter of choices, it's not just a matter of fun. A game designer wants to figure out what the interesting behavior is in their game and then arrange the game so that it incentivizes players to keep doing that interesting behavior. RICHARD:        I think a lot of game designers, at least today with the rise of Kickstarter, a lot of game designers get into designing board games because they've played a lot of games. That’s their credentials, they're: "I play a lot games, I love games, I want to make a game, I think I can do it”, but your take on it, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is that there's a little bit more to it than “you've played a lot of games”. GIL:                  Yeah, I mean, playing a lot of games is very good. I think a good designer really should be playing a lot of games just like a good musician will generally listen to a lot of music and, of course, you always have your outsiders. You have your people who came in from nowhere and haven't had a lot of experience, you know, someone they stumbled across something but that's a really hard road to lead to. You know, I would recommend that if you have the choice you'll have a much easier time of it if you play a lot of games but that said, you know, perceiving a game as a player is not quite the same as perceiving it as a designer and there's going to be a real difference in how the game plays when you're just looking at it having never really been on that side of things before and it's really, I mean, the incentivization is really an important part of that. Now, I'll give you an example: I was play testing a game this past weekend and that was actually a really nifty game but, you know, there were characters on a map and you had the option of either moving your characters or drawing tiles from a bag and nobody ever really moved the characters. On their turns everybody moved the bag and the designer said afterwards, you know, I asked the designer, "So do players usually move because it seems like we are pretty static?" And the designer answered, "Well, usually players move but I had one game where nobody moved and everybody lost the game because they kept on drawing tiles out of the bag. And I pointed out, 'Well, you know, you've got sort of an incentive of, “if you don't move then you're going to lose the game”, but if that's not clear and the game doesn't give that sort of feedback the fact is drawing the tiles out of the b...

Recently, I got to talk with Emerson Matsuuchi of Nazca Games.  I've met Emerson twice now, once at Origins and once at Gen Con.  For those that haven't had the pleasure of meeting Emerson, let me attest that he is the nicest person in the board game industry.  And he makes great games.  In the podcast, we talk about what it is like having Plaid Hat Games publish your design.  We also talk about the companion app for Dead of Winter that Emerson is working on.  The Crossroad Cards are voiced acted, which is so cool.

While at Origins Game Fair, I was able to talk with Colby Dauch of Plaid Hat Games.  We mainly chatted about Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn and Specter Ops. I asked Colby how they decided how thier miniatures should look, specifically, how should a werewolf look for a Plaid Hat game? At their level, does the company image go into the thought process when creating art and miniautres? Turns out, Plaid Hat Games has used the same sculptor for all of their minis, and him and Colby were friends before either of them were professionals in the board game industry. Cool. (Apologies for the audio, it was recorded on the convention floor.)

While at Origins Game Fair this year, I tracked down Andrew Federspiel of Knapsack Games. We talked about their current Kickstarter, Apotheca, which has already reached its funding goal (congrats Knapsack team). I got Andrew to talk about the inspiration behind the games he designs and publishes, and there's even a teaser for Knapsack Games' next release, which will feature super heroes.

I got to talk to Jamey Stegmaier about the Stonemaier Games upcoming release, Scythe.  The transcription of the interview is below and you can always subscribe to iTunes and listen to the podcast there.  In addition to talking about Scythe and the hype engine that surrounds the game, I also ask Jamey a few unusual questions, which serve as the beginning of a, hopefully ongoing, segment I like to call "Inside the Designer Studio" or something like that.  The name is a work in progress.  Lots of laughs were had.  After seeing the amazing miniatures for Scythe, I cannot wait for this game to launch on Kickstarter. RICHARD:        This is Richard Miles with Board Games Authority and today I have the privilege of talking with… JAMEY:            Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier games. RICHARD:        Hi Jamey, thank you for agreeing to be on the show today and taking some time out of your day. JAMEY:            I think the last time we chatted was at Gen Con, when we had a good time just hanging out in the demo room that we have there. RICHARD:        Yeah, yeah, those were good times. For me, Gen Con is just such a big, awesome, experience. It was my first time so I was just overwhelmed and blown away by just how much of an awesome convention that was. JAMEY:            Yeah, yeah, that was my second Gen Con and the first year I just walked around for four days just kind of overwhelmed and trying to figure out how I could fit my little company into that giant entity that is Gen Con. RICHARD:        Alright, well, let’s jump into some Stonemaier Games news. In 2015 it seems like we will see at least two games from Stonemaier games. We'll see 'Between Two Cities' and 'Scythe'. Let's talk about Scythe first, if you don't mind, because that game has received a lot of, a lot of hype for the limited information that has been released on it. Most of the hype has been completely positive that I've seen. It's been overwhelmingly positive and, I think, rightly so, but there has been a few negatives that I've heard.  And a lot of it has to do with the hype. It has to do with: it has too much hype for too little information and it's just a hype engine. It's just running on your past success and an image, a good looking image, a great looking image, but that's it. There's no meat. How do you take that kind of, I don't know if that's a criticism, but how do you take that? You know, does that put a dampener on your day and what do you do about that? JAMEY:            Well, I think hype, hype is an interesting thing because I've heard that term thrown out, definitely with Scythe, and even with previous games. And what hype, to me is, is it's a lot of people being excited about something, and then it's some people who end up getting that thing, and they end up being either not as excited about it as they were like a few months before that, or they're not as excited, or they don't end up liking it as much as people seem to be excited about it. Like, hype in its essence is kind of an empty thing. I guess, it’s just people being excited about something. Right? RICHARD:        Right. JAMEY:            Well, most hype is, I think, I mean, the other type of hype that, I think is, can be misused, is a company or an individual hyping their own thing and saying, "This thing is awesome, you should be excited about it." And, I think, that's a key difference here because with Scythe I, yeah, I basically put out a press release with an image and I talked a little bit about the game, but I made sure that people knew, in that press release, and on BoardGameGeek and everywhere I could, that the game was in very early development. So, this wasn't really a case of me going out there and saying, "Hey, this thing is awesome, you, everyone should be so excited about this thing." It was more like, I put this little thing out there and people got really excited about it and I kind of love that. I mean,

A few days ago I was able to corner Jamey Stegmaier into doing a podcast with me. The transcription of the interview is below and you can always subscribe to iTunes and listen to the podcast there.  In this awesome episode, Jamie and I talk about Between Two Cities, which should launch on Kickstarter on February 25th.  We also talk about Viticulture and the cock jokes that can be made because of the rooster tokens, and then we discuss the Tuscany tile misprint and whether Jamey lost any sleep over that.  We also touch on the topic of board games being a great tool that introverts can use to connect with other people and how board games can be used either during or as a part of therapy. RICHARD:        This is Richard Miles with Board Game Authority and today I have the privilege of talking with... JAMEY:          Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games. RICHARD:        Alright, well let's jump into some Stonemaier Games news. In 2015 it seems like we will see at least two games from Stonemaier Games. We’ll see ‘Between Two Cities’ and ‘Scythe.’ Let's talk about ‘Between Two Cities.’ JAMEY:          Yeah. RICHARD:        This game will actually come out before ‘Scythe’ but I haven't seen as much hype surrounding it. Have you seen a difference as well from ‘Between Two Cities’ and ‘Scythe’ and why do you think that would be? JAMEY:          Well, yeah they're very different games. I mean I wish ‘Between Two Cities’ would have gotten as much attention and excitement as ‘Scythe’. But, and part of it is that we didn't have art for ‘Between Two Cities’ until fairly recently and it was on the Board Game Geek list for like games people are most excited about in 2015 and it's near the, at least it was nominations, it is near the top of that list. It was definitely in the top 20 and that vote is currently happening. So, my sense is that a lot of people are excited about it. It's just not, like it's a gateway game so it's like getting super, super excited about ‘Settlers of Catan’ when it came out. Like it might end up being a game that hits the table all the time but you're going to get more excited about the Star Wars Imperial Assault game, even if you don't buy it because it's so expensive you know. So I'm kind of putting it in that category, you know, of excitement and hype. This is the first game that we're publishing that wasn't designed by me, basically, right? RICHARD:        And do you think that has anything to do with the hype or lack thereof? JAMEY:          No I don't. I mean that's a good question and it was my concern. Like one of the major discussions we had early on was… So the designers are Ben Rosset and Matthew O’Malley. They're both talented designers and they have a few games published and I knew going into it that I would be developing the game which was essentially like, you know, the designers design the game and the developer comes in and hones the game and helps balance and makes it better, makes every element of it interesting and fun. At least that's the goal right?  So, one of the discussions we had early on was: should my name go on the box as like ‘Developed by Jamey Stegmaier’? And so we had a big debate about it. And the only reason… and that may sound egotistical.  Ego wise I don't care at all about having my name on the box but I thought if it helped sell it to our followers, the Stonemaier followers, if that would help then I would put it on there. What we ended up determining was that that probably wouldn't matter. Like all the people who already follow us, I could directly tell them through the Kickstarter page or through my e-newsletter that I was involved in the process and that I didn't need to put my name on the box to ensure that that was communicated. RICHARD:        Since this will be the first game that is just kind of published by Stonemaire Games, that's not a Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone game. Do you feel this is pivotal to the future and the success of Stonemai...

  While at Gen Con I was lucky enough to run into Chris Leder, who was a delight to interview.  We talked about the new Deluxe Edition of Roll For It, which is absolutely beautiful (gallery below the interview transcript), and he teased us with a little info on the 10th Anniversary Luxury Edition of Tsuro. Richard Miles: Hello, this is Richard Miles with BoardGameAuthority.com and today I am with… Chris Leder: Chris Leder. I do retailer relations for Calliope Games and I'm the designer of Roll For It. Richard Miles: Tell us a little bit about why we should go out and be excited for the new release that's coming out? Chris Leder: Sure. Roll For It began… Most of my designs were strategic and my family and my wife would tolerate them but they didn't love them so I wanted to create something that my family would play and I could get more people around the game table. Roll For It was my attempt at creating something kind of fun for everybody. It’s cards on the table with dice images and you roll dice and you try to match them to those images and score 40 points worth of cards first. It's really quick; it's really simple. You can learn it extremely fast. Right away, after I designed it and put it on the table and put it in front of people, it got a great response and I was thrilled.  When I came to Calliope three years ago with it, it was a perfect fit for Calliope. We're all about games you can learn quickly and you can play in less than forty minutes and you can seat a large number of people, so it worked really well for Calliope. We found over time that… we originally started with two different sets. There's a red set and a purple set. Each of them can seat up to four but you can combine them. They have different colored dice, different cards, and you can seat up to eight players with the two sets. What we wanted to do is create a set that combined both of those and really spoke to gamers. Something that was just beautiful so we had just gotten Calliope’s brand art redone by a fantastic artist named Echo Chernik. She and Lazarus Chernik had created some amazing layout for our new Deluxe Edition Roll For It. It takes these awesome steampunk whimsical images of Calliope and the Pegasus and the dragon and it puts them on the cards. The dice are translucent and then some are pearlescent and they're metallic looking and it’s just amazing. It's all in a tin that is flocked on the inside so you can roll your dice and take it anywhere. That’s the best thing about Roll For It is that you can take it anywhere. I've played it in airports, I've played it in Irish Pubs, I've played it at the dinner table, I've played it all over the place. The tin you can fit in your pocket. When you open it it's flocked. You can roll your dice into it so it doesn't make a tin noise. It's got a dice bag in there that you can put any components that you're not using if you’re playing with less than eight players. So we try to get this packaged: beautiful, beautiful art, keep the design simple, the way it was, but something that people can take on the go. Gamers can put it out, they’re excited to see this beautiful art and then they can bring new people into their hobby. That’s the main thing. You put this on the table, non-gamers will want to play it and then they might want to take a look at, you know, a gamer’s hobby, maybe that they haven’t looked at before. We’re a gateway company. That's exactly where we want to be. We want to be “filler games”; we want to be “gateway games”. Roll For It hit that sweet spot where you play it with people who don’t normally game and they might say 'Hey you know what? This is kind of an interesting thing where I'm putting these here.' And you think, ‘Hey I'm teaching this person worker placement without them even knowing and now I can graduate them to a different game.’ We want to introduce none gamers; we want to bring them into the hobby, and we want to be a gateway.