[Editor’s Note: One of the perks of writing for StarCityGames.com is that we’ll occasionally allow you to shill your professionally designed games, especially if your name is Chad Ellis. That’s what you see here – obvious Christmas shilling, with a baby as the professional spokesmodel. Go buy Chad’s games, and then come back on Friday when he as a really good article on how to draft Arcane Control.]
Summary
As any of my readers know, I tend to be wordy. So if you don’t want to read a brief (for me) ramble about the past several months as my own boss (co-boss, with Robert Dougherty), here’s the conclusions:
Go to your local retailer and buy Succession: Intrigue in the Royal Court as a gift for yourself or for the gamer(s) in your life and/or buy Space Station Assault as the perfect gamer’s stocking stuffer. (Space Station Assault is particularly good for kids, since even if they don’t get all the strategy they’ll love blowing up spaceships. Plus the art is super cool.)
If your local retailer doesn’t have it, or if you prefer to buy online, go to www.toysrus.com or www.gamefest.com. Or, if you want to help us get in with www.funagain.com, contact them and tell them you want to order from them so they’d better get the games in stock!
When I submitted my last article to StarCityGames.com, Ted sent me an email he’d been in the middle of writing when the article arrived. He was about to tell me that I was a double-slacker for not writing and for not promoting Your Move Games in the Christmas season. That’s when I realized that I hadn’t done any promoting in the article at all!
Let’s rectify that. First, we start with the requisite baby picture:
“I know Kung-Fu. Now buy my daddy’s games and I won’t have to hurt you.”
Jade has learned to crawl. With the help of a sliding table, she is now walking. My life is over. Oh, and she knows Kung-Fu and has already beaten up three people who didn’t buy our games. We’re trying to teach her a non-violent approach to life, but in the meantime – better safe than sorry!
On to the games. Since our launch at GenCon Indy, things have been moving at a pretty crazy pace. We got a rave review from Inquest magazine for Succession, as well as good reviews for both games on www.gamingreport.com, www.rpg.net, and www.gamefest.com. Games Magazine has the games and is considering them for review, which would, of course, be huge. Counter Magazine and some other, smaller UK and European magazines are also doing reviews.
On the sales side, things are going well. Most games sell a few hundred copies at launch and then peter out. We’ve sold more than that and seem to be keeping good momentum. Our demo master program has been very well-received by stores and players alike (hey, who doesn’t like free stuff?) and will hopefully keep sales momentum going until our next game comes out around August 2005. (If you think you’d like to do demos for us, email me!)
There’s also no way I can begin to describe what it’s like to run your own company, even if you and your partner are the only employees at the moment. It’s scary, it’s fun, it’s tedious (in other jobs I’ve had people to do the tedious stuff for me!), it’s more fun, it’s exhausting and once you’ve done it, it’s hard to imagine doing anything else. I’m currently writing a semi-monthly column about the experience for www.thegamesjournal.com (I’m in the October and November issues and should be in January again) if you want to read more about it.
Plus, it means I get to work from home mostly, which means I get to spend more time with Jade. When Jade was tiny, she liked baths. Then as she got a little bigger she hated them. Hated them as in, “I’m going to scream from the moment I figure out that it’s bath time until the moment you take me out of the bath so make it fast!”
Now Jade is a bit older still. How does she feel about baths? Judge for yourself:
Now I just have to wait to see if she grows up to be a gamer!
Hugs ’til next time,
Chad
*Assuming you haven’t already spent all your money at StarCityGames.com – The Management