NDE & Taxes

Two things that can't be avoided in life, and thankfully, I'm only dealing with the latter of the two. Once a year, just about this time, I get to revisit all my prior year expenses for the game company and get it all down on the tax form. It's almost as much fun as rolling the dread NDE. Can't wait to get filed and back to the game table!

All work and no play...

Feb's been a busy work month for me, thus the first posting happening mid-month. There was some headway on the WEGS front in the fact that I was able to launch the first Master Minion, Mushpot the Great! The first WEGS module, B1 Hobgobble's Eve, will arrive on the wegsite later this month. And speaking of work... The Origins and GenCon event schedules are due this month, too. Hard to believe that it's that time of the year already! I always forget that Feb is a big push month for getting everything lined up for the spring and summer cons (this stuff just sneaks up on you). On the game front, the first convention of the year is hitting this week: Dreamation. Looking forward to throwing down some WEGS this weekend; it's the first chance I'm going to get to sit back and have fun in some time (and hopefully sell some product, too)!

Time To Start Rolling!

With Christmas, New Years and all those other sweet gatherings in the past, it's time for GameWick to start looking at what's in store for '09; the clock is ticking away already! By the end of this month, the con schedules for GenCon and Origins will need to be in place, as will the schedules for any cons we plan on hitting before then. Even more important than that is getting a couple of new products out the door before the summer cons hit (that WEGS 101 book is getting awfully lonely all by itself). Our goal for 2009 is to get three new products out the door:

1. House Rules! The Kreators Guide for how to run WEGS.
2. WEGS 202 Pirates of Penzantium (yar!)
3. Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom (mini wegsventure for 101)

Plus, we're hoping to post a monthly freebie wegsventure, the first of which will be Hobgobble's Eve! toward the end of January. Details on all this stuff will be blogged about in my next posts.

Health and Happy Gaming to all of you for the New Year!

Death and Coffee...

From one of the seminars I attended last week at the GAMA Trade Show in Vegas... There was a discussion of sales cycles... It was pointed out that from a consumer standpoint coffee is something that you can market for daily consumption. Coffee is something that most folks will buy once a day (assuming they're coffee drinkers and your target audience). All that the coffee companies have to do is set up a store and be there waiting. Opposite that is funeral homes where it is estimated that there's a sale once per seven years. Seven years is a long wait. Maybe that's why morticians have that strange, patient, lurking look... And why those coffee counter folks are so damn happy!

Point is that hobby store customers wander in every now and then to the store - and it ain't daily. When they do wander in, you want your product to jump off the shelves and into their hands. The only way to do that is by making sure your product is eye-catching and sells them the moment they see it. This means front cover, back cover, spine, all slanted to sell. It's important too that when they casually flip the pages of the book, that sells them too.

I'm hoping WEGS sales teeter more toward coffee than death.

Right now it's sure hard to tell!

Last Week... This Month...

Last week...

Las Vegas.

A whirlwind of gaming activity and business stuff and some gambling, too! The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) held their GTS (Gama Trade Show) at Bally's in Las Vegas. WEGS 101 was featured for the evening gaming as part of the Play With The Creator series. It was a great time. There were lots of great seminars and workshops, the best of which was a focus group session where 6 industry folks sat down with me and WEGS 101. Without allowing me to speak, they took the book and deck and assessed it on face value. It was a great reality check. After assessing it, they started asking questions as to what the game actually was - questions generated from their cold reading of the front/back cover and paging through the interior a bit. They basically gave it the "once over" that any customer walking into a store would. Then they hit me with all the questions that a shopper would have about the product - the stuff I didn't include on the covers. I had great feedback on the pros and cons. This seminar alone was the value of the $125 registration fee. There's lots more to discuss on the GTS - but that'll have to wait...

This month...

May!

I'm going to do short blitzes on the blog. My energies are pouring over the summer Pirates of Penzantium release at this point. So, luckily for all 9 of you who check this blog, the blogging will be shorter and to the point. Random thoughts... Strange short rants... Production updates and worries... The odd pic or two... Quick hits!

Eat! Drink! Play! Sleep! Rinse! Repeat!

March madness! From Cold Wars to Wittcon, the last couple a weeks have been non-stop. Wittcon, hands-down our favorite college con, is only a one day con with three sessions. We sandwich-ed our appearance at the con between in-store demos, turning last weekend into a whirlwind WEGS experience. Add to the fact that we played the largest games ever (12 and 13 gamers in a session) and you get a sense of the game scope. Eat. Sleep. Game. Rinse. Repeat.

Friday began with demos at an amazing store called Krystal Keep in Kettering, Ohio. This is a gamer's nirvana - the size of the store is unbelievable (compared to the standards we have here in NJ). It seems designed so you could use a shopping cart, and its luxuriously roomy. The amount of merchandise is amazing and it's all neatly arranged. It's obvious that the owners care about their business. But that's only the beginning... There's a second half to the store that is equal in size to the front. This is the gaming arena and is equipped with about 14 gaming tables and some of the most comfortable cushioned stools in ample supply. The walls have a racking system with a ton of gaming supplies (mostly terrain) - again all organized in categories, neatly arranged. I've never seen anything like this! And, oh yeah, there are private gaming rooms off of the arena. There are restaurant booths up front placed in a row in the front of the store for painting minis or small game sessions. There's concession machines in the back. This place is unbelievable. It was no shock that the store was full of gamers the whole time we were there.

As two Jersey boys, me and Willy the Two were in awe. And it was here that we ran one of the biggest WEGS game ever... Details on that will follow later this week...

Con Crazy...

The last couple of weeks have been con crazy! I'm not talking of actually attending conventions, but of attending to all the details associated with each individual one (the event schedules, the hotel details, the airfare/transport, booth research). All this is amplified by the number of cons we're considering. Some cons only have a month or two lead time (like the local cons), others want info 6 months in advance. What ends up happening is that March is madness, as the local April/May cons want your info and the June, July, August cons want it, too - pretty much all at the same time! Business suff, man... Anyhow, we're off to WittCon this weekend and doing some WEGS store demos, too - then we have a wee break until April where we have one con every weekend. The wegsite will be updated with all this info in a couple of weeks. 'Til then!

WEGS at Dreamation 2008

Well, the first con of 2008 has come and gone, and it was good. Of the 5 WEGS games we had scheduled, 4 of them ran: Dungeons Or Dragons, Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom, Reservoir Dwoirves and Sunday session of Dingbitt's. We canceled our "midnite quicky" session of Dusk Til Dead ('cause we were bordering on being undead by that point). We ended up not running our pirate rule set (more details on that later this week).

This was the first con that we had an official WEGS booth at, and although this was a small con, it was a critical step for us to figure out "booth-ing". Up to this point, we've just run games at cons, and haven't had the responsibility of a booth. It will be a very real responsibility at the cons this summer. This con was a baby step in that direction and we learned a lot from this test run. We know that we need a box with booth supplies, and were partially prepared there. What I wasn't prepared for was the in-booth demos that Will and Don began to run. I hadn't thought of game supplies at the table (like Ark Kards and dice and minis). At the next con, we'll have a mini-game set for this.

All in all, we learned a lot and had a blast. It was a balance between business and pleasure. We had two outright amazing game sessions (the first and last) - so, we began and ended the con on a high note. A good con.

Business Suff-Jan 2008

This year is off to a busy start. Lots o' projects lining up on the runway, in addition to many business-based responsibilities (like taxes, 1099s, distribution, summer con planning). Projects include: the official WEGS 101 Skill Card deck, Pirates of Penzantium deck + game book, Big Bang Mudang game book. And, oh yeah, a little book called WEGS Copper (that's three years late...). I'm hoping to release one new product per month until May (but that will be tough).

For me, the winter months are the best time to be productive. I just wish the weather would start behaving like winter to keep me indoors more. Nothing like having no option but to stay inside and focus on getting things done. January is also my time to plan out the rest of the year for convention-hopping. The summer is a killer with one big con after another - and you have to plan NOW for it. Aside from coming up with the game schedules for each con and hitting those deadlines, there's the logistics of getting there (and getting your product there, too). This is the first year we'll be selling at cons, so there's a whole learning curve with that, not to mention the added expense of the table!

Looking back at last year, I've come to realize the stress of getting a single product to market. There's so much work associated with printing/distributing a single book. Most of the stress hit pre-publication (just getting the book done and off to the printer). Once you're through it once though, you learn. You're not as nervous about the process. I'm looking forward to each of my upcoming projects for this reason. It's not nearly as daunting. I've been through the cycle once. It's stressful, yeah - but a heck of a lot of fun, too.

And yeah... "suff"...

As in "suffering"...

The game part is fun. The business side I could do without...

Tribulations...

A couple days before Christmas I had scheduled a WEGS game at my local game shop. The game setting was perfect for the holidays: The Isle of Misfit Dwarfs. This game store has been selling WEGS 101 since a little before Thanksgiving, and I was showing up to restock the shelves if needed. Initially, I dropped off 10 books. They sold 5 within a week (local gaming fans), so I restocked them with another 5. Grand tally for books on their shelf was 15. It was a casual consignment agreement: they'd pay me a percent of book sales. I was giving them until the end of the year before cashing out. I really wasn't worried about it.

Imagine my surprise when I got to the store and found all the lights out and an eviction notice pasted on the door! There was a note from the owner that said something about "hard times" and re-opening soon... I could look through the window and see my little stack of books sitting in the darkness gathering dust. I told a co-worker about it and he informed me that he had just been to the store a few days prior and purchased a copy for himself. The rub is that he could've got it from me directly! I find the whole thing kinda funny.

It's shocking that a store closes during their busiest time of the year. The folks who manage the strip mall had some malicious timing on the eviction. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the store re-opens and I can get my books back (and, hopefully my consignment, too!). Time will tell.

The trials and tribulations of running your own game company...

$$$ and Sense

For those who care and are calculating how much money I'm spending... Attending MACE cost me around $500 (travel/hotel/car/food). I sold some books, but that doesn't even begin to defray the cost of publishing. At this level, it's not about profit. It's about doing what I love to do. I had a complete blast running the games at MACE for folks who never even heard of this game system before (and, besides, a trip to Vegas would have been 4x the expense....). The point is I'm doing what I love to do - and promoting my game system. It has nothing to do with $$$ and sense. Period.

If, for example, I opted to "do Vegas" and just soak in the sun and gamble at night. I would be down about $2000. Sure, I would get my "fix". The difference is... The BIG difference is that I interacted with other people who have an interactive interest in my hobby. I have done something real. When you go to a craps table, you don't get to know folks. Not really. You all just have a one-night stand around a game table. RPG-ing is different.

You meet people.

It's that simple.

Sales So Far...

Well, WEGS 101 is officially three weeks old. Sales are trickling in via the internet/Paypal store. For all 12 of you who read this blog (and who haven't picked up your copy yet), details are here:

http://www.gamewick.com/Buy_WEGS_101.html

So far we have WEGS 101 in Ohio, Colorado, Oregon, New York and, of course, New Jersey (I made my mom buy a copy...). We did a limited run of 250 - so don't wait to get your copy of the first print run! I had wanted to go with 300 copies to be in sync with the fated Spartans, but just couldn't muster the courage to do so...

I'll probably need those 50 for the Christmas rush, too...

1776 Business Plan...

Everyone needs a three year business plan.

Here's the one I cooked up.

I want to introduce WEGS to the original thirteen colonies within the next three years. I'm figurin' that's where the colonization of America started, WEGS colonization can follow that same course. If nothing else, I have a little checklist to tick off to keep me occupied.

So far, we've hit a lot of cons in NJ and one in NY.

That gives me a solid 2 out of 13 start... 15%

We've taken WEGS to the midwest, too (WittCon, GenCon, Origins). So, nationally that gives me 4 out of 50... 4%

I like the colonist numbers better.

Think colonial.

Dream national.

I didn't say it was a good plan.