Scurvy Contracts

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may know that my pirate game, Scurvy Crew, has been in the works for a long time.  OK, so it has spent a lot of the time on the shelf, but occasionally brought out for another round or two of development.  I eventually got the game to a state where I felt I could show it to publishers, and I approached a couple of publishers I thought might be most interested in the game, had a meeting with one of them at UK Games Expo, and they took a prototype from me.

Over the following couple of weeks I had assorted messages from the publisher, who played the game at least a couple of times (maybe more, I don't know) and started enthusiastically coming up with ideas to turn my game into their product.  And as a result of this and some to-and-fro discussion, I am pleased to announce that, as of today, Scurvy Crew is under contract to be published by Braincrack Games.

This is what the top of a contract sometimes looks like.
There's a lot of personal and business confidential stuff in there, so this is all you get to see!

If you don't know them, Braincrack is a small UK-based publisher with a steadily growing range of games.  Their first title, Downsize, is a nice, lightweight cardgame that we have played and enjoyed at work a bunch of times.  More recently, I was really impressed with their smallish-box tile game, Dead and Breakfast.  And I am really looking forward to getting hold of the currently-on-a-ship Ragusa, by the designer of the excellent Calimala, Fabio Lopiano.  Add to that the fact that they have a game on the way by the fantastic David Turczi, and this is a stable of games that I am absolutely delighted to be a part of.  I must admit that I am more than a bit nervous.

Anyway, that is where we are at right now.  There will now be a period of development where I work with the Braincrack team to turn the game that I am proud of into the final product that they want to publish.  Ideas are bouncing around at the moment, but I can't really reveal anything yet other than to say that there may be a change to the game's title, and that it is planned for a Kickstarter project some time next year. 

Other than that, I will be blogging and tweeting about this from time to time, but as we are now working on a product, and there is someone else's business involved, I can't really be completely open about everything that is going on all the time.  I'm looking forward to the process though.

Self-publishing

A few days ago I read a very interesting blog post about self-publishing games by Doug Levandowski, linked by a friend on Facebook.  The main thrust of the post is that publishing games as a hobby quickly becomes rather more than a hobby and ends up being more like an actual job, something that the writer finds a lot less enjoyable than creating games.

I'm pretty sure this is still an accurate depiction of a publisher's office.
(Image public domain, source: commons.wikimedia.org)

I must say that I can sympathise with that.  If I was to publish any of my own games myself, I think I would have to:

• Either pay someone or get dramatically better at both artwork and graphic design (very different skills) than I actually am.
• Find someone to help with editing the rules that I write.
• Figure out how I am going to get all this stuff manufactured.
• Liaise with manufacturers in order to actually get the games made.
• Figure out shipping from the manufacturer and warehousing.
• Arrange fulfillment, distribution, etc.
• Do heaps of marketing.
• Somehow find the funds to make all this happen.
• Maybe running a Kickstarter project, and that's a whole heap of Interesting Times right there.
• Customer support.
• Bookkeeping and other financial stuff.

And that all takes up a lot of time that I could be doing things like, I don't know, eating, sleeping, or goofing around making new games.

I don't envisage myself becoming a publisher any time soon as all those things look like they would be better done by someone else.  The way I am going, if and when I manage to start getting games to a presentable state, I think pitching to existing publishers looks to be the most sensible path.

Doug goes on to talk about reasons designers might choose to self-publish their work, arguing that if publishers aren't interested in your game, it just isn't good enough.  This, of course, has fired off some debate about niche games, and publishers making mistakes, which lead to Doug providing a clarification that, if your game is good, you should be able to find some publisher out there if you look long and hard enough, unless it just can't be produced profitably.

I don't think any of this is worth me worrying about right now, but I find it all interesting discussion.