First Meeting

Scott came over today and we talked shop. I am now very excited about the future of board game development. Scott's got a lot of free time coming up soon and he seems driven to complete a huge board game project he's been working on, a fantasy dungeon crawling game--I don't want to say too much more, because it's his project, but from what he and our mutual friend, Mike have told me I know that it might be something worth getting onboard with.

I traded some information with him and I learned what I already suspected: while his knowledge was more in the actual world of games itself mine was more in the business element of it. He makes the games playable, I make them sellable.

After I resolve the issues in my personal life (which may now be as late as March) I plan on going gung-ho on getting board games made. The money at work has been great (even if the clientele has not) and I feel pretty secure about my position there as long as the lingering effects of the court decision don't hurt things too badly.

No matter what happens, I will stay optimistic and persistent in my goal for getting a game company off the ground.

February 9th

Getting close to the court date and I'm nervous. I know it's going to be bad, but I did the crime so I gotta do the time. It's something I needed, tho', something to set me on the right path. I'm fortunate to have a wonderful girlfriend by my side in the whole matter and hopefully, it won't affect work too much.

After I find out what's going to happen regarding the DUI, I can then start getting on with life. I can start putting together board games and building game companies.

Right now, the entire thing has blasted me financially and logistically. The lawyer is damn expensive and having no car means getting around is a pain. I've relied heavily on the internet for my newfound interest in board games, but it is a bit slower than I care for.

I don't mind things going slow, tho. The excitement continues to build and it's letting me know whether or not I'm really interested in what I'm doing. For so many years my only interest was in socially drinking, spending money at bars and clubs, trying to become friends with musicians or goths or DJs or club owners, whatever. I suppose that was my hobby for a long time.

Now that the drinking is gone and replaced with this overwhelming fear of succumbing to alcohol's effects again I have so much time to think and explore my future opportunities. I'm finally writing again, something I haven't really done since I started working at Bistro 27. And there is so much time to do things. Despite working 45-50 hours a week I can get things accomplished.

The prototype for the restaurant game is looking great and plays well. The next step is to start working on a more finished version--re-do the game board, get more professional chits (thank you, Casey's Wood), and start getting other people than myself to play it. I think I'll come up with some feedback sheets to rate what people think.

I want to have the game in production by the end of the Spring and up on a website for sale. By then, I should be working on my next project. What it is? I don't know. But I've got some ideas bouncing around.

Of course, I've got to get past February 9th and its after effects first.

New prototype

Tomorrow, I'm going to put the finishing touches on the restaurant game's rules and produce a working prototype. Depending on how things turn out on the 9th (the court date for my DUI), I should be able to start getting a real production out of everything.

The biggest addition I've added to the game is the "ASSISTANTS" part of the game. Originally, I wanted to add in a bunch of wild cards a la Zombies!! and other games, but decided to instead go with just a few cards that can be auctioned off every turn. I'm still hammering out the actual rules there, but I'll have it soon. So far, I know that there will be a busser, bartender, hostess, food-runner, and manager. Toying with the idea of a sommalier, but that may work better as an expansion.

Cost Analysis

Shrewdly, I've worked down the price of making games to as small as I can for the time being

Thinking for future productions, I've managed to incorporate a game construction system that will reuse certain elements so that I may order in bulk. The only difference between each game set will be what I print.

Of course, I'm sure this has been done before.

There is an awesome wood cutting company that I learned about on BoardGameGeek last night called Casey's Wood (http://www.caseyswood.com). You can order huge bulk orders of little wooden shapes, everything from wooden discs and squares and game pawns (which is what I'll be incorporating) to... well... hell, EVERYTHING! It is PERFECT for what I need in terms of game-making.

My idea is to take the pieces, especially the more basic shapes such as the game pawns, the cubes, and the discs, spray paint and seal them myself then apply stickers to them. That way I can have a lot of those pieces and still manage to keep my costs way down by ordering in bulk.

The game board I can get down to about $1.04 right now, which is still higher than I'd like. Adding in the cost of having it book-wrapped, printed, and mounted, and it may be higher still. However, I have the contact of a local box maker, so I may be able to get sheets in bulk.

Another design idea that I'm toying with is having all gameboards I make come only increments of 12" x 12". So I can have a 1 sheet board that's 12" by 12", a 2 sheet board that's 12" x 24", a 4 sheet board that's 24" by 24" and so on.

Interestingly, Casey's Wood also prints 3" by 3" hexes, which will be great for constructing tile based games.

Superior POD (http://www.superiorpod.com) will be good for small order card printing. The waiter game currently has a need for five cards (maybe more, still working on that part of the game).

Here is my cost breakdown for the waiter game:

* Board for $1.04
* Table Tokens @ $0.058 per token, 50 for $2.90
* Order Tokens @ $0.03 per token, 21 for $0.59
* Game Pawns @ $0.10 per pawns, 5 for $0.50
* Colored Dice @ $1.00 (this is retail price, so I'm sure I can find cheaper) per die, 2 for $2.00
* Printing/Mounting Costs, estimated $2.50
* Box for $2.00 (still need to research this a bit more)
* Assistance Cards @0.072 per card, 5 for $0.36

C.O.G.S. for waiter game: $10.89

Still a little higher than I want it to be, but at least it's a workable number. I don't plan on selling huge quantities of games ANNNNY time soon, but at least I know that I can realistically make my costs back on selling one item.

Right now, my goals are to find the boxes, boards, and dice for cheaper prices, those being the steepest prices. Ultimately, I'd like to get the basic production of the game at $8.00 or less, so my ideal mark-up will be $12.00--frankly, a steal!

Board game design isn't some get-rich-quick scheme for me. It's somewhere to put my creative abilities to use, and I'd love to just get the games out there at little to no cost to me (although, I've probably already spent about $300 in development on this one, d'oh!)

All My Best Thinking...

I do all my best thinking in the shower. Or waiting for the bus. But mostly in the shower.

This is where my girlfriend would normally make a euphemistic comment about "what I am really doing in the shower", but she's in bed reading right now so I will continue this blog in the direction I had originally intended... *ahem*

Perhaps it has something to do with temperature extremes, the warmth of the shower, the cold of the bus stop, that gets my brain moving. Or perhaps it's the solace. When my girlfriend, Tracy comes into the bathroom while I'm in the shower I immediately stop using my brain. I've been interrupted! Same thing happens at the bus stop; if there is someone else standing near me I can't think straight.

Because I need to be alone. I work well in a vacuum. I love being alone with my thoughts. Since I am currently car-less, I walk a lot and walking also lets me think a lot. When I used to drive I'd do a lot of thinking, too.

And I do a whole lot of awesome thinking when the music is good. Ratatat Radio on Pandora is my current favorite selection for think-music... much to Tracy's chagrin.

"It sounds like a video game having sex with a guitar!"

... she never really said that. But she does think it's annoying.

ANYWAYS (as Chuck Klosterman says), back to the point, I get a lot of thinking done when I'm alone, the temperature is at some sort of extreme, the music is good, and I have nothing but time.

I love Mondays because I get to be by myself for eight hours. Please don't get me wrong: I love Tracy. More than anyone that I've ever loved. But Mondays are her office day and I have off work therefore it's a day where I can be alone and get work done on my projects. When she wakes up at 9:30am to get ready for her 11:00am shift, I'm up, too... I'm up and I'm being productive!

It is then that my brain is in full gear. I have my art supplies in front of me. The laptop's all fired up. The temperature is at the right setting. The cats are fed and leaving me alone. The dog has been walked and has calmed down from it's typical morning high. I have red bull. I have yogurt. And I have time. Glorious, glorious time.

In The Weeds

The first gaming project I've been working, tentatively titled "In The Weeds" is a game about waiting tables. Go with what you know, right? This is also the game concept that led me to choosing "Wine Key Games" as my future publishing company's name.

With "In The Weeds" players are waiters in a busy restaurant. The objective is to collect as many cash tips in one evening as possible by taking orders, placing those orders, running food, and bussing their tables. Throw in a few wild cards like vegetarians, smoke breaks, and dropped food plates and it could be a wild night at the Bistro!

So far, I've put together all of the rules and made a prototype game board on poster board. I've hand designed all of the table chits and I am in the process of creating the gameplay cards.

I hope to have a working copy for all to play soon.

21 Days Sober

That D.U.I. changed my life.

I am twenty-one days sober as of this posting. Not only do I feel better physically, but mentally I am a lot clearer, too. I can think straight again.

Not having to pay nightly $100 bar tabs I find myself with an abundance of cash. My Roth IRA is quickly reaching its yearly limit. I've purchased (and read) multiple books. I have invested money into hobbies and research. And debt is history.

I no longer have a car so I am forced to walk everywhere or wait for Tracy, my live-in girlfriend to drive me to where I need to go. Thus, every trip to the store, every outing for food, every movement I make must be carefully planned and executed. I can no longer just run out the door, jump into the old Mitsubishi and run off somewhere on a whim. I have to plan bus routes. I have to wrap myself up extra tightly in warm clothing to fight the cold air of Virginia's winter as I walk ten blocks. I have to plot out where I need to be and in which order to be at these places.

But the most interesting change is my sudden desire to do something with my life. Sobriety was just the beginning. I will be thirty this year which means I have been a waiter for almost a decade. There have been times when I have applied the moniker "professional waiter" to myself and that notion scares me. Having just read Steve Dublanica's "Waiter Rant" wherein he, also a professional waiter, eventually escapes the food industry to become a writer, I, too, want to escape the restaurant biz. I am sick to death of reciting specials to guests that don't listen and opening $100 bottles of wine for people that don't appreciate them. I want to stop explaining to people what foie gras is without being too literal. I want my dry cleaning bill to go down drastically from a lack of grease-stained shirts. I want my knees to stop hurting. Most of all, I want to do something fun and creative and stop being a worker drone for a restaurant in downtown Richmond.

Like many "professional waiters" who don't want to admit their profession outright, over the years I have told people that I am anything but a waiter, from accounting major to film director, writer to entrepreneur. The cold truth of it becomes apparent when I put on those black slacks, that French blue shirt, my wine key and pens and start memorizing the evening's specials. It's then that I can no longer lie to myself. Shit... I really am a professional waiter.

Sadly, Dublanica explains in many of "Waiter Rant's" chapters that substance abuse is a huge part of most waiters' lives. We work around boozing and partying and debauchery so much that we want to be a part of it, too, to capture that sense of the excitement we see in others 40+ hours a week; it's our job to keep the party going and when we're done making other people tipsy, we too want to get that way ourselves.

But now I am sober and I have to find my way "out of the bottle." I have to do something else with myself that doesn't involve trying all sixteen beers on a bar's list in one sitting or drinking that $100 bottle of wine that I tell myself I can afford.

So I chose board games.

It will be ten years in February when I met my gaming friends. Back then I was nineteen and a victim of the relatively new and exciting world of MMORPGs; I was a huge Ultima Online geek. I delivered pizza on the side and lived at home with no desire to be more than what I was. Glenn Gibson, one of the other drivers at work, invited me out to a poker game with some friends. Reluctantly I agreed and he drove me out to an apartment in Richmond's Oregon Hill district. This is where I was introduced to the world of gaming.

And not just poker, either.

The guys at the HUB (the nickname for the apartment) had it all. Diplomacy. Axis and Allies. Civilization. Risk. Any kind of board game you could imagine. They collected miniatures and had giant plywood gaming tables. There were shelves lined with books on role playing from D&D to Call of Cthulhu to Vampire. This was a whole new and exciting world to me.

Pretty quickly, gaming changed my life. For the first time since graduating high school, I had new friends and in a few months of meeting those guys at the HUB I moved out of my parents house, got an apartment in Richmond, and stopped delivering pizza.

Over the years I grew apart from the old gang at the Hub, a large part of that having to do with our opposing schedules as they are mostly 9-to-5'ers and I work until 10pm most nights. Their game night is on Saturday one of the busiest nights for my restaurant. They are free to go to conventions and paint miniatures and still be a part of the gaming world while I am mopping the floors and counting my cash tips.

Yes, I also chose drinking a lot of times over gaming. Instead of leaving the restaurant and making my way to the HUB for a late night game, I headed for the bar. Instead of buying Zombies!! new expansion pack at One Eyed Jacques, the local gaming center, I picked up a six-pack at Kroger. No time for Betrayal at House on the Hill when you're recovering from a massive hangover.

So here I am now, sober and looking to start over, hoping to redefine myself at the age of twenty-nine. I need to reconnect socially and one of the best ways to do it, in my humble opinion, is through board games.