Ingeniators Art and Playtesting
Never build a level two show in the game of Coliseum, and never build the University in the game of Puerto Rico. They're priced wrong, so that all other options are always better by the time you can buy them. It's a shame, because each and every piece of equipment printed in a game offers a strategic choice, and it's wasted unless there is a circumstance under which it's strategically advantageous to use it. That's the kind of flaw I'm looking for in Ingeniators, and I'm happy when playtesters discover one so it can be fixed. I'd like the "save up for big purchases" strategy to be competitive with the "spend early and often" strategy. I'd like the diversity strategy to compete well with the uniformity strategy. I designed the gadget cards so that there are several design paths that support these strategies, and if you see an opponent building toward one you should get there first. Which strategy to use should depend on circumstances.
What worries me about publishers is not that they'll tweak the strategic options (for which I would welcome the help) but that I'll lose control of the art, theme, and fonts. If they take it away and when it comes back it's a historical period piece about covered wagons, or if the rules are printed in an illegible font on an illegible background, that would not be acceptable. Most game designers are not artists and graphic designers like I am. But if this is going to have my name on it, I have decided I need some measure of creative control over the visuals.
P.S. Speaking of illegibility, check out this title image I made. I know modeling pretty well, and have started teaching myself lighting in 3D graphics. Here is a work-in-progress draft. I'm going to add a lot more gearteeth and chains to the backdrop, but lower its contrast. I'll add steam floating through the air. I'll make the lighting warmer, fuzzier, and more sepia. I'll also add backlighting to make the edges of the letters stand out more.
Comments
atropis on Jul. 13, 2010 1:58 PM
is there anything parallel to cafe press for games instead of t-shirts? if there is, it could go a long way towards solving the publishing concerns...
matt-arnold on Jul. 13, 2010 3:08 PM
Yes, and that normally an excellent suggestion. Most of those companies will only print on rectangular pieces of paper. My tiles are triangular. Tiles are too frustrating to handle and keep in place unless they are on thick chipboard, at the least.
Blue Panther LLC is a print-on-demand company that prints one copy of a game at a time, instead of a huge print run. They showed off equipment at Protospiel that can print full color on wood. I saw squares and circles, so I'll ask them if they can do triangles. They can certainly do custom dice, with no problem.
One advantage of a traditional publisher is that when you print a huge print run, an economy of scale means that the customer pays a lot less for each copy. The webcomic artist and musician Rob Balder once used crowd-funding to pay for such a print run for a self-published game he designed. A crowd-funding website (this was before Kickstarter.com, but the idea was similar) took people's pledges for money. Nobody would pay until they got enough pledges, and then it was a form of pre-order. Rob took that amount of money and did a big enough print run to get a price break, then shipped the product to everyone who had pledged.
I'm not saying it's going to come to that. In the best-case scenario, I'll find a publisher whose changes I can live with. Publishers handle promotion, and distribution to stores, which result in more players. That's why I would prefer not to self-publish. I won't sabotage getting published by assuming it will go wrong, and they don't necessarily want to work with an Orson Welles who has to act all the parts in the movie. I just had to decide what I can and cannot compromise.
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