PAX PAX PAX
Wish I could be there.
Fair Play
The Roach in Retrospect
Matt McElroy asked me to write an article for Flames Rising, so I did!
Ambushed!
Luke Crane and I chat about art and game design for his audio column at See Page XX. It wasn’t actually an ambush; I knew what I was getting into. It is telling that questions about what constitutes art are difficult to answer. In retrospect, I think I’d revise my reply after thinking about what separates “fine art” and “craft” a bit – a beautifully turned chair leg can be functional art, so a game can as well.
In Mammon’s Passionate Embrace
Over here at BPGHQ, we’re rolling on beds stuffed with hundred Euro bills. Take The Roach Returns, for example – which we’re in the process of reprinting. It’s a fun little trifle, 32 pages and 16 new cards that we released in a punk rock low-fi version at Gen Con last year for six bucks. We printed locally and paid Graham Walmsley fairly for his 16 pages. We sold through in a hurry. Prepping for the reprint, we did the math and found that we made sixteen American cents per copy.
So our to-do list looks like this:
1. Take credit for Graham’s work and stiff him next time
2. Don’t try to sell anything for six dollars
3. See if they will buy back the yacht
To be fair, we knew going in that it was more of a marketing expense than a go-getter, but still, 0.16! I laughed when I found out.
Dawn of The Roach
I’m deep in Game Chef (and excited about my idea, which is all weepy-jeepy), and I was thinking about Game Chef’s past. So I dug up my very first, nascent first-weekend-didn’t-know-what-I-was-doing notes on The Roach from 2005.
It started out as a very different game! It’s interesting to see which bits survived through every edit and made it into the published game.