“I love advertising!” That’s not a sentence you hear spoken out loud often. Advertising has a reputation for annoying people with messages that aren’t relevant to them, relentlessly wearing them down with half-truths broadcasted over TV networks and on billboards.
Thankfully, that’s not the whole truth. The relieving truth is that advertising is one tool in the marketing toolbox that small businesses can benefit from. Like any tool, it must be used correctly and judiciously, with an understanding of its purpose and its limitations. Whether you’re just spreading the word about one game or whether you’re building a whole long-lasting business from scratch, you should consider advertising as part of a larger marketing plan.
Why advertising is good
Advertising is the fastest way I know to bootstrap a company. Think about it. There are three ways you can build your audience for the first time. You can reach out to people individually, you can create content for them to consume and come to you passively, or you can advertise on an existing platform. The first one is great – you’ll make a lot of contacts, and even a lot of friends. It’s also slow and it doesn’t scale well. Making your own content is good, but doing so with no outreach will make you feel like you’re screaming into a void. Advertising is much faster, though it does cost money.
If you want to get your feet wet in advertising, the best way I know to do that is through Facebook. Once you’ve built up a Facebook page, you’ll gain access to Facebook’s incredibly robust Ad Manager. That will let you target your ads to really specific audiences, tailoring messages specifically around people’s tastes. What’s more, you’re provided with tons of metrics that help you optimize your ads so you get what you’re paying for.
Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that you use Facebook for advertising. You’ll want to think of your objectives before you start any ad campaigns. Do you want to get web traffic, social media engagement, or emails? Don’t think in terms of “getting the word out there.” Build a system that pushes people where you want them to go – a sales funnel. Then use your advertising to get people into the sales funnel.
Nuts and bolts of advertising
The most important part of any advertising campaign is the audience. Think about the age, gender, geographic location, and interests of the people you’d like in your sales funnel. You only want to attract people who would ultimately be interested in your product. For example, if you’re creating a fantasy area control game, you could target people in countries that speak the language used in the game and target people whose interests include both “board games” and “fantasy books.”
Most online advertisements have three parts to them: the copy, the image, and a call to action. The copy is simply the text on the advertisement. The image is exactly what it sounds like. The call to action can be a button, a link, a sign-up form, or something else like that. You take out the advertisement with intention of getting people to heed the call to action.
Making great marketing copy takes a lot of trial and error. I often have to try three or four different variations of my copy on simultaneous ad campaigns to see which one performs best. After a couple of dollars in each simultaneous campaign, I go with what performs the best. Some general rules of thumb to follow:
Keep it short.
Make it clear.
Make it exciting, intriguing, or otherwise cool.
Experiment until you get it right. Use that data!
Images also take a lot of experimentation to get right. Here are some rules of thumb you can follow when choosing an image:
Make sure it is the right size for the ad.
Use a high-quality image.
Have a clear object in focus.
Use contrasting colors.
Match the copy to the image.
Experiment until you get it right.
The call to action is pretty simple. It needs to be clear like “click here,” “sign-up here,” or it needs to simply be a link. Don’t be overly clever with your call to action.
Advertising and experimentation
I must reiterate how much advertising involves testing. Gather data and keep experimenting until you make the most effective ads you can. If an ad is clearly not performing well, pull it and don’t spend any more money. On Facebook, the direction of an ad is usually clear enough after $5 are spent.
You’ll notice that all this testing has a side benefit. Advertising provides an empirical way to analyze how good your ideas will perform in the market. Advertisements that perform well tend to go alongside games that will perform well. If something inspires people enough to click, it’s more likely to inspire people to buy (provided your game is a good value). This is such an underrated quality in advertising. You can use it to gauge product-market fit as well as build an audience.
Naturally, advertising is no replacement for real human interaction. While it can bootstrap your company quickly, it doesn’t pay to be friendless. You want to get to know people, make some connections, and make some people’s days better. Genuine human connection is a much sought after quality in a noisy digital world. Advertising will help your game sell, but connecting with others will help your game be remembered. The importance of the latter cannot be overstated.
Where to advertise board games
You must first understand the reason for advertising, how to get started, and the importance of experimentation. Once you arrive at that point in your understanding, it’s time to put your new skills to use. The next logical question, then, is “where do I advertise?”
I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating that Facebook is the best place to start. You don’t have to put a lot of money into it, you can target very narrowly, and you track success and failure easily. I can personally vouch for Facebook because I used it extensively for the Tasty Humans Kickstarter campaign.
After that, I would recommend Board Game Geek. I cannot personally vouch for it, but I’ve heard pretty consistent good feedback online about it. It makes sense, too. Board Game Geek caters to a highly targeted and engaged audience. It’s not as accessible or cheap as Facebook, though, so I would recommend practicing on Facebook first.
Other ways to advertise board games
You’re not just limited to digital advertising, though. As much as I love digital marketing, I must admit that not everything must be done by Facebook, mailing lists, and social media.
Indeed, you may have success advertising in your local news. Even if they’re not a good place for advertising, the act of contacting your local news may lead to some favorable press coverage for you. The same basic principle applies to local radio, too.
We could go into a discussion about national radio, news, TV, or billboards. But I’ll be direct with you. Board games are an extremely niche item for a clearly defined hobby audience. I advise against using these means to push your games.
Not exactly advertisements, but worth considering
Lastly, I want to mention other forms of outreach as well. People tend to think advertising and outreach are the same things. They’re not, but nevertheless, other forms of outreach in tandem with advertising can form the basis of a very good marketing plan.
Overall marketing costs will vary based on the nature of your campaign as well as your goals. Once you master the basics of marketing and advertising, the amount of money you spend will quickly become a very important factor in your overall return on investment. Generally speaking, more money is more leverage.
Advertising can be a great way to draw some attention to your game quickly. Used wisely, advertising allows you to spread ideas faster than you can on your own. It can also help you test your ideas with an audience, refining them until you find something that fits with both your vision and others’ willingness to buy.
Have you ever taken out ads for your game or games? How’d it go? Let me know in the comments below 🙂
One message you might be receiving loud and clear by now is simple. Game development is a lot harder than you’d expect. It takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of hard work – both mental and emotional.
Game development is a lot like juggling when it comes to responsibilities.
Things Have Changed in the Last 3 Years, So Read This First
This interview originally took place during the month of July in 2017. Most of this interview is still extremely relevant to today, though three things have changed in the last three years that I think you should be aware of:
First, the Trump administration introduced some new tariffs as part of the trade negotiations with China. Board games are affected, which drives the price of manufacturing overseas up.
Second, according to the shipping carrier Asendia, “due to last September’s decision at the UPU Extraordinary Congress in Geneva, which allows for a phase-in of self-declared rates beginning in July 2020, the USPS and other foreign postal administrations.” In plain English, it costs more to ship internationally now.
Third, the coronavirus pandemic has caused dramatic disruptions in the global supply chain. This is because a lot of flights and sea shipments had to be canceled on short notice. As a result, the price to ship freight went up. We don’t know yet what the long-term impacts will be.
Long story short: it will more expensive than what you read below.
Setting Expectations for Board Game Development
It’s no accident that you’ve been receiving this message. I’ve programmed it into the undertones of my last four articles. I am consciously working to set your expectations to a reasonable level. This is because I care about you and your well-being. Get a bunch of therapists in a room and you know what they’ll say? Unrealistic expectations make people miserable.
Don’t get me wrong: game development is a lot of fun and totally worth the journey. I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into. To help me get my point across, I’ve recruited Garret Rempel of Tricorn Games. He’s the developer who created Go Fish Fitness and successfully launched it on Kickstarter in March 2017.
His game was made with standard-issue cards, no special pieces, and was made for children. He handled the project very well. Yet even with all these factors working in his favor, it still took a lot of time and money. We’re going to explore why that is so that you get a clear-eyed look at what you’re committing to.
Garret is a sharp guy and a good game dev. That’s why I hit him up on Discord with the following message:
I’m going to be writing a post soon called “Let’s Set Expectations: Time, Money, Effort.”
It’ll be aimed at letting first-time game devs know what they’re getting into with self-publishing.
Since you successfully funded Go Fish Fitness, would you be interested in working together on this article?
What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation over DMs in Discord.
Who is Garret?
Brandon: If you please, go ahead and tell me a little about yourself and Tricorn Games. How long have you been making games? What games have you worked on?
Garret: My name is Garret Rempel, I’m a 34 year old Canadian father of 4. I’m an IT Consultant with a Comp Sci degree from UWaterloo.
Garret: I have been making games all my life, from building and tweaking Amiga Basic examples from a textbook when I was 8, to making Quake2 mods in my teens, to redesigning an all new dynamic version of Axis and Allies with my friends in university. Playing, modifying, and creating games have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
Garret: However it’s only been in the last year (July 2016) that I decided to try and do something formal with that hobby. I founded Tricorn Games with the aim to craft, publish, and distribute those ideas I had been tinkering with forever. As an official company, I have released…
Garret: Flipped Off!– a card game (print & play) that was primarily a study of implementing a card-flip mechanic (where cards had different effects depending on which side is face-up) that ended up being fun enough to at least make it publicly available.
Garret: Go Fish Fitness – my first Kickstarter print release. It was designed around the concept of creating a version of a simple game that kids were already familiar with, that also incorporates physical activity as part of the game. In Canada, our winters are cold and long and kids can get a bit wild when they are cooped up indoors for long stretches. The goal of GFF was to give them a fun outlet for that energy, and the end result has been received with amazing enthusiasm by our pint-sized participants.
Brandon: A longtime interest in games – that’s super relate-able to me. I feel like a lot of people find their interest in gaming in those tender childhood years, and it seems that the both of us are no exception.
Garret: Playing Marble Madness on my Amiga 500
Brandon: Lots of N64 games and smack in the middle of Pokemon years for me
Brandon: Speaking of childhood years, do you see yourself continuing to make more children’s games or is that more of a one-off thing?
Garret: With 4 kids (ages 8, 5, 2, and 9 months), being able to make and play games with my kids is one of the driving reasons behind doing this officially. I will certainly be making more games aimed at kids of varying ages, as well as games aimed at an older or more sophisticated audience. Of the projects that I have underway, the one furthest along is a fun, lighter game from an adult perspective, but one that could easily include kids in elementary grades.
Brandon: Your house has to be a lively place with kids of those ages!
Garret: And my wife runs a home daycare – you have no idea
Brandon: Sleep must be like a long-forgotten dream by now.
Garret: Nah – all my kids were sleeping through the night by 7 weeks old, it’s less than it used to be but not unmanageable.
How long does board game development take?
Brandon: In regards to your first printed game, Go Fish Fitness, how long did it take you to make it?
Garret: From concept to fulfillment, 10 months…
1 month to finalize the initial design and prototype
2 weeks to contact and come to an agreement with an artist
1 month of vacation (he was on vacation, my wife and I were welcoming our most recent child into the world)
2.5 months to complete and finalize the artwork
1.5 months to prepare the print files, finalize the box art, and print sample production copies
1 month to prepare for the Kickstarter
1 month to run the Kickstarter
1.5 months to manufacture and distribute
Garret: The vast majority of that time was spent planning, coordinating, marketing, and simply waiting. Although it took us 10 months to go from concept to delivery, it could have been done faster – but we were in no hurry to rush it out. We took our time, made sure it was exactly what we wanted it to be, and didn’t worry too much about multitasking, preparing ahead of time for things like the Kickstarter, or being efficient in our processes. That’s the advantage of doing this for fun, we aren’t beholden to dates or deadlines. I was much more interested in learning the parts of the process and getting things right than getting them out the door.
Brandon: Ten months sounds like a pretty good time frame for a game of that weight, size, and complexity to me. In fact, I did a double-take on that manufacture time before I found out you had it done on the same continent instead of way out in China like many campaigns!
Brandon: I’d like to really drill home that time frame point, though. Even if you take out vacation, that’s 9 months – I feel like that’s a surprisingly long time frame to a lot of first time devs.
Garret: Yes, the turn around time for overseas manufacturing would have been 2-3 months easily had I gone that route. But I my case the print run was small enough that I could use a boutique manufacturer locally, since there are basically none that do large scale stuff onshore.
What should you expect the first time?
Brandon: Let’s say I’m a brand new board game dev. Hardly know a thing about making games. I ask you how long it’ll take to publish my first game. What would you tell me?
Garret: Time frames are a tough thing to gauge, a lot depends on how efficient you are, how well you can have parallel streams working, your manufacturers schedule, and how you are going to fund it.
Garret: If we work backwards, let’s assume you are going to run a Kickstarter and manufacture overseas. Budget 4 months for manufacturing, fulfillment, and delivery to your customers using a worst case scenario of 3 months from payment to a manufacturer until the boxes are on your doorstep plus 1 month to pick & pack and mail individual packages to overseas backers.
Garret: Before that is the Kickstarter campaign – assuming the best case scenario of a successful campaign, you are looking at 1 month plus 2 weeks to receive the funds. I strongly recommend having a complete product and manufacturing arrangement in place before even launching that Kickstarter, because the chances of being successful go up dramatically if you do.If you want reviews available when you launch you Kickstarter (I didn’t, but it is highly recommended) you need to have your completed prototypes in a reviewers hands 6-8 weeks before you launch.
Garret: So adding up all that time – you are looking at 7.5 months between the moment that your final gold-copy prototypes arrive at your door, and your backers receive them in your mailbox. This isn’t digital distribution… you need to have patience. Most of that time is in the hands of other people, and there is nothing you can do to speed it up.
Fulfillment for Go Fish Fitness
Garret: The rest of the time you spend, is how much time it takes to develop the game, playtest, produce the artwork, playtest, write the rules, playtest, revise, and prototype. This is the part of the process that is within your ability to control. It requires a ton of work and organization, but the amount of time you spend on it is entirely up to you and how much effort you commit.
Garret: A complex game is obviously going to take a lot more work in this phase than a simple one, but it really depends on your commitment to getting it done.
Garret: The hard part, is recognizing and accepting that even if you power through it and “finish” your game in a month, or you take your time and spend 3 years perfecting it. Once you are finished, it will take nearly 8 more months to get it published.
Brandon: A very sobering thought for new devs.
Brandon: For comparison, the time between me “completing” War Co. as a game and getting it published was about 7-8 months.
Brandon: An unexpected beautiful thing about this is that you can actually run multiple projects in parallel using the downtimes of each project. (Not that I can recommend that in good conscience to newbies.)
Garret: Perhaps – if “publication” is their primary goal. For me, publication is the after-thought. I publish and make my games available for fun. My goal isn’t to make money, it’s simply to make something fun to play. If other people get the opportunity to share in that – great! But 7-8 months wait between finishing and publishing isn’t going to cause me to bat an eye.
Garret: Actually – I highly recommend doing them in parallel. Other projects are idea factories – if you can not worry yourself about how fast you are getting things done, working on other projects can open your eyes to solving problems you have on your primary project. Right now I have 12 projects on the go. Some are just a few lines of an idea, some are in design, others are being prototyped. A number of them will likely never see the light of day, but the simple act of working on them can break new ground and reveal better ideas that will.
Brandon: It’s interesting that you say this because while I record ideas for other games, I tend to work on one thing at a time.
Brandon: This goes to show how personal creative projects are. I figure most creators will slowly find their groove over time, seeing how much they can comfortably do at once.
What is surprising about making board games?
Brandon: Speaking of starting as a game dev…
Brandon: When you first started game development, what surprised you the most?
Garret: It’s a tough question, but I would probably have to say the most surprising part was the repetition required in building components and the amount of effort that took. When you are creating a prototype you can cannibalize parts, sketch out cards, using a random assortment of pieces from other games. But when you need to perfectly craft and align the detail on 50+ unique components that vary in only small ways – that can get tedious. Then having to change each and every component every time you make a revision… that was the surprising part. The sheer amount of repetitive transformation that is required.
Brandon: The amount of iteration that goes into making a game can be jarring.
Brandon: This is one of the reasons I like using digital prototypes: Find/Replace and regex operations to change a bunch of stuff at once. But that can only go so far.
Garret: Especially when you are used to playing with friends where a rough prototype is more than good enough.
The cost of game development
Brandon: Harder question.
Brandon: If I asked you how much it cost to make a game, what would you tell me? What sort of questions would you ask?
Garret: Go Fish Fitness cost me $2,845.49 to make not including my own time (which I am treating as free) and most of those costs would scale linearly. My key questions would be – what components are you using, how much artwork do you need to commission (vs doing yourself), and where are you going to have it manufactured? Those three are the biggest variables in cost per unit, and the number of copies you are going to manufacture is going to be the single biggest cost that you are going to incur.
Brandon: I agree that the three biggest determinants of game cost are physical components, artwork needs, and manufacturing.
Brandon: As far as games go, yours is close to the simplest possible in terms of materials and it still cost in the thousands. That’s important for people to realize, because manufacturing often depends on MOQs – minimum order quantities in the hundreds. Smallest print run most places will do is around 500 games, and that’s pushing it. This is not even factoring in shipping to customers or taxes.
Brandon: War Co., by comparison, was around $20,000 to create and print and it’s a card game based on six decks. It had an enormous art demand, but the lion’s share of that cost was manufacturing (covered by Kickstarter). My personal investment was about $8,000, all of which I’ve gotten back in either cash or at-cost inventory. I was really aggressive about control costs, too. It could have easily been far worse – especially on art.
War Co. Fulfillment
Brandon: If I asked you how much effort I’d have to put in, what would you say? What sort of sacrifices would I have to make, if any?
Garret: I would say that you get out of it what you put into it. I enjoyed the work that I was doing to make a game, so it doesn’t feel like there was a great deal of effort involved. The most “work” work was researching and setting up the supply chain – which was entirely new to me and so involved the most uncertainty.
Garret: Sure there is a lot of effort involved overall, you have to put in the time to make your game the way you want – but I wouldn’t say I sacrificed anything except maybe some TV watching and computer game playing to do it. I really am doing this for the fun of it, so trading one hobby for another isn’t giving anything up. Of course you can give things up if you want to try and make a living out of this kind of work, but I am not, nor am I willing to sacrifice time with my wife and kids to do it. I work on it when I can, and I am happy with the results from that level of involvement.
Garret: I think it’s more important to set realistic expectations of what you are willing to do, and what you will be able to do with that level of commitment – measure your progress as you work, and either adjust your expectations or your work habits to match. In the end, it’s a matter of being happy with accomplishing what you can with what you have.
Brandon: The time commitment can be shocking, but it’s honestly worth every hour I’ve put in. Sounds like you feel the same.
Brandon: Agreed on the supply chain, too. That’s a bear the first time around.
What would Garret do differently?
Brandon: Okay, so one more question.
Brandon: Is there anything you’d like to go back and time and tell yourself before you created Go Fish Fitness?
Garret: Work more on building a social following and media/reviews before launching a Kickstarter, and do more media and update prep ahead of time. Really, building the game was a fantastic process – but setting up, running, and succeeding at Kickstarter – no matter how much you read about it ahead of time – you won’t really know what it’s like until you do it once. I did a lot of prep work and a lot of things right on my KS, and I still fell down on half a dozen other facets of the process that could have made it a lot more successful.
Garret: Fortunately in that regard, I knew to set my targets small and work towards a level I knew I could achieve with the intention of using GFF as my test project so that I could learn the ins and out of Kickstarter. And I gained a great deal of valuable experience in that field as a result, which went exactly according to plan. Next time I will be aiming higher and I will have the tools I need to hopefully be successful at it a second time.
Brandon: So much of Kickstarter success depends upon business skills that go beyond the purview of simple game design.As you hinted at with social media and reviews, an enormous part of the business challenge that comes along with self-publishing and crowdfunding depends upon your ability to effectively reach out to people who are interested. I cannot emphasize this enough. There are so many people who care out there, but they won’t run to you. I have a long list of things I’d do differently. My biggest area I’d change though is a variation of yours. I had a big social media following. I wish I’d had a deeper one at the time. A real community and not just a bunch of followers.
Brandon: Thank you for working with my on this guest post! It’s been a pleasure and I wish you lots of luck on your next game!
I’ve written before about my fondness for Escape Rooms. Certainly, board game designers can learn a lot from well-designed escape rooms. The only trouble, of course, is that being in a small indoor area with a handful of other people in close contact isn’t exactly a great idea right now. Exit Games by Kosmos are the closest we can get to the authentic in-person experience right now.
I’ve wanted to write about Exit Games for a while, but it’s tricky! You see, the whole concept of the game is that you are trapped in [insert place] and you have to solve riddles to get out. The game is full of mysteries, riddles, and puzzles. They can also only be played once due to their nature.
This, of course, means that any specific discussion of any particular Exit Game will ruin the game for you. However, I will talk about them generally and summarize key lessons that I’ve learned from the six or seven that I’ve played so far. If you’re a fan of these games, don’t worry, I will not spoil them!
1. Use components uniquely.
Exit Games come in small boxes. Each one comes with two decks of cards, one containing riddles to be solved and another containing hints in case you get stuck. They also all contain a booklet full of riddles and clues as well as a short leaflet containing basic instructions. You will also find unique components in many of the Exit Games, though the specifics will vary from game to game.
It’s not a lot to work with, and yet Exit Games make ingenious use of their limited physicality. I have seen Exit Games deploy the box, inserts, required legal labeling on the back, and bar codes into the game. In other cases, players are asked to use scissors, markers, and even candles to modify the game and give it new life.
After a few games, the novelty wears off and you begin to see patterns. I don’t blame the creators for lack of cleverness, though, since there are only so many ways you can use limited parts. The point is: they make a lot out of a little, and game designers, particularly ones working with a tight budget, could really learn from this.
2. Give the players a way to get unstuck.
Some of the puzzles in Exit Games, much like in real-life Escape Rooms, are devilishly hard. Other puzzles are more obvious, but for whatever reason, you hit a wall and you spend 15 minutes making zero progress. This is a motivation killer and it’s something you absolutely have to avoid as a game designer, even if that means reducing the purity of the game’s challenge.
Exit Games find a workaround. They give their players the opportunity to take hints, but only if they want them. If you want to play with no hints, you can. It will probably take you hours to complete the game, but it can be done. Similarly, if you’re just in it for fun and four minutes of puzzled grinding is too much, the hint cards are always there to help you.
3. Use technology to enhance the experience.
Board games are special largely because they are an analog, physical hobby. Being able to step away from the computer screen in our digital era, particularly under coronavirus-related lockdowns, is both an economic luxury and a psychological necessity. That doesn’t mean that board games are only for Luddites, though. We’ve seen the industry adapt to concepts as alien as digital play-testing.
Kosmos was smart and they released a companion app for your smartphone to be played alongside Exit Games. If you use their app, it will count down a timer, calculate your score at the end based on the hints you use, and play a soundtrack during the game.
You don’t need the app. It’s purely for show. Yet isn’t it remarkable that they took the time to come up with a way to digitally augment your experience?
4. Build a lasting brand so you can release multiple products.
Kosmos has one of the cleverest, least appreciated business models I’ve seen in the board game industry. Exit Games have a defined purpose and clear branding. If you like one, you’re likely to buy others. They completed nailed their vibe, brand recognition, and purpose.
That’s remarkable from a business perspective. They’re able to crank out genuinely new and unique experiences to please their audience without long development times. This is great for customer retention, community-building, and, yes, money-making. They come in small boxes, too, so shipping and manufacturing costs are not that high either.
Sure, I will grant you that there are purer, better board game experiences on the market. Yet Exit Games are consistently good and sometimes even great. That’s hard to do, period. It’s a miracle to do that with a great business model.
Final Thoughts
Exit Games can teach board game designers a lot. They are good at teaching us how to be resourceful with components. Their hint system provides a good way of keeping challenges present but not overwhelming. The companion app is a good example of using technology to enhance the board game experience. Finally, it’s just a plain good business model!
Have you played any Exit Games? How’d you like them? Let me know in the comments below!
