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.
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.
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.
The Roach Returns is getting the glossy perfect bound treatment but it’s slow going due to the weird pulp/flip-it-over format. People have asked and we want to get this out there.
Patrick’s got the Business Solutions draft (revision #60 if you are counting) for some initial kicking around. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with in terms of layout and graphic design. It’s out with playtesters and I’m waiting for some feedback before I get too crazy with revisions. It feels close to done, though. I really like it and want to play it some more!
Night Witches hasn’t moved in a week or so - I’ve been playing around instead of designing. And reading Dancing With Death. I’m not sure what will happen with this one once the game is playable. It’s insanely narrow in scope. It’s so narrow I think it represents a stylistic end point for that avenue of inquiry. I’m thinking about how nice it would be to do something open-ended. I’ve got a really interesting idea in that direction that I am mulling over.
Scott Nicholson of On Board Games reviews The Shab-al-Hiri Roach and gives it the green light (.mp3 link). It’s interesting to hear a board-game-centric take on it.
