XOXO Fest and the last “regular” update
You should totally play the game this beer drinking maniac has designed!
First day of XOXO Fest
Surprisingly cold and rainy for August in Portland.
Was XOXO Fest the perfect venue to show off my board game in progress? No. However, it was great venue to meet people, see their projects, make connections and generally have a good time.
One of the most interesting things at XOXO beyond all the amazing speakers, was their commitment to ethical business, and following their values when creating the festival. It got me thinking a lot about how I want to market my game (common wisdom is: Meta/Facebook ads) and where I want to produce my game (common wisdom is: China). I have thoughts on both of those things and I’m not sure that’s where I want to send my money.
There’s a tension that I heard from people about the idea that you can either get your product in front of people on your own terms, or you can make money from it. One seems to preclude the other (depending on your values, I guess). I met a few people who had run multiple board game crowdfunding campaigns and their thoughts about it now “never again”. It seems just running the campaign is a full time job. So I ask myself again: what is it do I really want from this venture?
Me, right now, more than anything - wants to build prototypes for testing. I don’t want to look too much further than that right now. There’s certainly a lot I could be planning for, but in order to keep going I need to maintain my focus on getting the game tested and seeing if people are actually into it.
Which brings me to my last point: Based on some information I’ve heard around crowd-funding and email lists, it’s NOT a good idea to send out regular emails without a call to action. The idea is that it gets people used to not doing anything when they see the update, so when you actually need them to do something, no one is paying attention.
For that reason, I’ll be discontinuing the regular updates here and only sending out emails when I have a call to action. The next update I send out will be asking for volunteers for first round testers. You’ll know when the demo copies are ready, because you’ll get an email from me about it. :)
Until then, I hope you are well, and I very sincerely appreciate your all encouragement on this journey!