thread: 2011-03-17 : My First-time Publishing Advice
On 2011-03-17, jenskot wrote:
Vincent,
this...
"if people aren't lining up to try your game out in late-stage playtesting, people won't line up to buy it when it's finished. It's troublesome, because when people don't line up, they don't give feedback, so you have to figure out for yourself what's not grabbing them. If people are going blank during your pitch, change your pitch; if people are excited by your pitch but go blank when they look at your game, there's nothing to do but go back to design. If you publish it as-is you'll just get the same response."
...is amazing advice!
I spoke to a few people at PAX who printed 500-1,000 copies of their game that no one outside their personal gaming group had ever played. One of the reasons to print games is to supply demand. But if there is no demand, why are you spending money? I asked...
1. What problem does your game solve?
2. Whose problem?
...most people couldn't answer these questions. It's totally cool if your answers are we want to fix X issue with D&D for our own weekly gaming group. That's great. You don't need to print 1,000 copies if your gaming group consists of only 6 people.
One person asked, "how do you sell a game no one seems to want?" I asked, "why would you want to?". "Because we spent money." "So why don't you sell your game at cost?" "Because we want to make more money." "Then you need to sell something people want."
