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[quantumpotato]

Hello, I make Board Games.

Currently in development:

A light euro-style about buying dogs with different stats and entering to shows for medals

A couple strategy+prediction+deduction games about diners.

What are you making?

[Capntastic]

Tell me more about the diners

I thoroughly love diners

[quantumpotato]

Tell me more about the diners

I thoroughly love diners

The first game is "Barista Bustle".

Barista Bustle is packed! So packed, there's no time to place orders for the most select coffee in town.
Customers enter hoping for their favorites. Baristas recognize their Customers and serve them their favorite drink to score the most $Tips.

Each turn each player picks 2 drinks (out of Coffee, Espresso, Latte). Reveals hand to other players. Then each player picks a card secretly indicating which intersection they will Bustle to.

If you are the only Barista at a spot, you serve a drink to a Customer @ a connecting table. Students, Professionals, Moms and Tourists have different tip values for different drinks.

Bustle to the same spot as another Barista and roll a D4 to see which Customer your drinks spill on!

Combination strategy (reading the board of which customers are where + what drinks give you best tips) + prediction (what other players are doing).

[pelle]

I made a small introductory wargame about ww1 Trench Raids called Trenches of Valor that was published by Victory Point Games in 2009 and an expansion in 2010.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42881/trenches-valor
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/87824/trenches-valor-expansion-kit-1



My avatar is from a very early playtest prototype for that game.

I have made some games of varying quality for various print'n'play design contests since and I always have some games in various states of prototyping, hopefully something more serious will be published in the future.

[s0]

Oh hey, I own several VPG games and just bought Nemo's War 2nd edition last month (it's pretty great).

[quantumpotato]

Wow, congratulations pelle! (And to Silbereisen for good taste)

Can you share about your publishing process with VPG?

I just started prototyping a strategy/war-game and I'd heard of VPG through the http://www.boardgamedesignlab.com/feed/ from their single-player episode.

[pelle]

Wow, congratulations pelle! (And to Silbereisen for good taste)

Can you share about your publishing process with VPG?

I just started prototyping a strategy/war-game and I'd heard of VPG through the http://www.boardgamedesignlab.com/feed/ from their single-player episode.

I contacted them just when they started out (early 2008?) and just briefly pitched my game subject to Alan Emrich. Only good experiences working with them.

They are shutting down their own production of print-on-demand games and only doing bigger games, but hopefully they will still be picking up games from new designers (they still have the instructions to submit games on the home page, so that is a good sign at least).

https://www.victorypointgames.com/news/vpg-news/vpg-moving-out/

[quantumpotato]

Cool, their process looks straightforward. I am going to keep prototyping my wargame!

Congrats again btw that's awesome!

Are you able & willing to discuss anything about sales / % profits to you etc? I have this perception that - if - you can get a board game published, you're getting *some* money - at least a few hundred or a few thousand the first year if a few sales are made, with potentially more after that if it gets high demand.

Seems like the barriers to entry help the profit compared to (video) games.

Do the sales motivate you to continue adding to your back catalog to create full-time income?

[pelle]

No, no, no. Very few can make a living designing boardgames. Even if you get something like 5% royalties (and I suspect only low-priced small games will have that high royalties) if you do the maths you will find you will need to sell way too many thousand copies of the game every year to live. And with a small publisher like VPG we are not talking about thousands of games per year.

Almost everyone designing games have a dayjob, or at least they do other work in boardgame publishing, like running their own company publishing boardgames for instance.

I am not complaining about the royalties I get paid. I like the fact that I get paid to design games at all. But it does not really make an impact on my personal economy. It pays for a small part of the boardgames I purchase in a year. I guess if I had the royalties from a few more games like that at least I could say that my boardgaming hobby paid for itself, but even that is optimistic.

[quantumpotato]

No, no, no. Very few can make a living designing boardgames. Even if you get something like 5% royalties (and I suspect only low-priced small games will have that high royalties) if you do the maths you will find you will need to sell way too many thousand copies of the game every year to live. And with a small publisher like VPG we are not talking about thousands of games per year.

Almost everyone designing games have a dayjob, or at least they do other work in boardgame publishing, like running their own company publishing boardgames for instance.

I am not complaining about the royalties I get paid. I like the fact that I get paid to design games at all. But it does not really make an impact on my personal economy. It pays for a small part of the boardgames I purchase in a year. I guess if I had the royalties from a few more games like that at least I could say that my boardgaming hobby paid for itself, but even that is optimistic.

Thanks for the honesty here - also interesting to get an idea how many copies a random VPG sells for.

I feel like BG are the Videogames of games when it comes to "yeah only do this for fun".

Congratulations on publishing a game, still.

What is your next game?

[whistlerat]

A light euro-style about buying dogs with different stats and entering to shows for medals

Ooh, I'd like to know about the dogs!

[quantumpotato]

A light euro-style about buying dogs with different stats and entering to shows for medals

Ooh, I'd like to know about the dogs!

Poise, Agility, Wiggle and Speed are the 4 stats. 3 dogs are available from the trainer to buy. Their cost is the total of their PAWS.

You have 3 kennels to store dogs in. On your turn you can train your dog to add a Poise*tm Shampoo token, increasing it's Poise, consult for $or enter your dog into a Show.

The Judge cycles between Sponsor, Bronze, Silver, Gold. When the Judge moves to Bronze, Silver or Gold, they award medals to any dogs entered into the Show.

Each show has medals for P, A, W, and S. The dog with the highest in that stat wins the medal.

You can sell your dog with medals for more $ or keep them to get discounts and enter better shows for cheaper.

Donate your dog to charity and get its medals in your Hall of Fame for Victory Points = its medal value.

[Tanner]

i am super into that dog concept

[quantumpotato]

i am super into that dog concept

Cool!

I started designing it after my second game of Puerto Rico.

Dogs are marked with collars (colored cubes here) of their owners so you can tell them apart when they enter Shows.

There's a little bit of strategy around when you enter a Show: When the Judge isn't at Show, money counts double for getting your dog in (Bronze takes 10 money but without the Judge they'll do it for 5 ).

With the Judge on a Show, Champion Dogs (those with medals on them) have their medals count extra to get in.

This Corgi has won a Bronze Medal.
The Mutt has 2 Poise, which gives them an advantage in winning Poise medals + a 2point discount at entering Shows.

[quantumpotato]

I made a prototype for 18 Card Microgame Challenge

https://quantumproductions.itch.io/jungle-frenzy
https://boardgamegeek.com/article/27062227#27062227

[tank.donuts]

This dog game is pretty interesting