Reflections from a first time creator

With 1861/1867 finally getting delivered to backers, I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on this project. I know this will sound a bit dramatic, but this is the hardest thing I’ve ever worked on. What could be so challenging about reprinting a game that has already been out in the wild for years and is well-loved, you ask? Well a few things.

First, neither 1861 nor 1867 are small games. Each game has lots of companies and a lot of components. In terms of total materials printed, each game is more than twice the size of 1830. More components means more things to consider and more things to potentially screw up.

Second, 1861 and 1867 had never been combined into one edition before. This means figuring out how to combine the rulebooks, how to present both games in one box, all while keeping usability high and costs low.

Third, I wasn’t just trying to reprint a game, I wanted to see if I could experiment with the way 18xx is published. This meant lots of energy was put into testing different graphic designs for virtually every component and doing a full revamp on the rulebook such that a new player did not need a teacher but could learn to play from what came in the box.

And fourth (probably most importantly), I was not a publisher before this project and there were a multitude of things I had to learn while working on it. Here are some of the questions I had to figure out along the way:

• What is the minimum number of games you need to justify a print run?
• How much does it cost to print a game? What could/should you price it at?
• What games do you think you could do a decently-sized print run for?
• How do you get a license to those games?
• What should that license contract even look like? Royalties? Length? Legal jargon?
• Is there a graphic designer or illustrator that understands how an 18xx game plays and what information is critical? Okay, maybe that person exists. Can I afford them and are the willing to work with me?
• How do I run an effective Kickstarter campaign? What should my funding goal be? What should my stretch goals be?
• Who should manufacture the game? What is the manufacturer’s quality/price ratio
• How much should I charge for shipping? How do I even plan for logistics?
• Should I print extra units? If so, how many extra units should I print?
• How will I get those distributed? Where do I store my extra inventory?

Most of these questions are tough to answer but even for the questions that have an obvious one, I second-guessed myself nearly every step of the way. Much of the work felt like it was dealing with the stress of not having any experience to compare to. I was consistently worried that I was overlooking something huge even though most of the time I wasn’t.

So what I’d like to do is share some of the lessons I’ve learned working on 1861/1867. They will probably sound pretty cliche, but they are nonetheless true. And as much as I’m writing these lessons for you, I’m also writing them for me as a reminder for all of my future projects.

Things take a long time, much longer than you would ever expect — communicate accordingly

GTG was announced in January 2019. 1861/1867 was announced as GTG’s first title in April 2019. The 1861/1867 Kickstarter ended in November 2019… and 1861/1867 is being delivered in February 2021.

Now I’m not the most competent person, so 2 years to deliver my first game (after announcement) probably isn’t that surprising. But even optimistically that would have been 1.5 years. Lots of that had to do with growing/learning pains of a first-time publisher, but even once we factor that part out, it’s still at least 1 year from start to finish on a project. The three most significant delays for 1861/1867 were graphic design proofing, finalizing the rulebook, and iterating on the tile trays.

The early versions of the graphic design and the rulebook were created before the Kickstarter, but getting both of those items over the finish line took 3 months and 6 months respectively. We prototyped the tile trays through a good chunk of 2019, but we couldn’t really start on production tile trays until we had other graphic design dependences (i.e. box size) finalized. As it turns out, designing trays that are both good for storage and good for gameplay is a pretty big undertaking. This was a fairly novel design and I probably should have known that it would add a lot of time to the project. The kicker here is the clock for the tile tray iterations can’t start until graphic design is complete, so there’s no way to make progress on it concurrently with other workstreams.

I know many of you have been waiting for Shikoku: 1889 for quite some time already, but one thing I learned is that I’d like to do as much work ahead of the Kickstarter as possible. I didn’t want graphic design to be set in stone for the 1861/1867 Kickstarter so I could still have room to implement feedback. However, for Shikoku: 1889, I’d like to have graphic design for both the components and rulebook to be “proof-ready” before the Kickstarter.

Nothing will ever be perfect and it is better to make a bad decision than no decision

Something I said early on was that “18xx has been done wrong so many times, I want to see what it looks like when it is done right.” Big words for someone who has never published board games before! Since this was my first project, the stakes were quite high and I knew that if I had any glaring mistakes that I would lose credibility and the trust of my backers. As a result, I ended up overanalyzing and dragging out virtually every aspect of the process. I would make a decision for how the board should look, then would wake up in the middle of the night to email Karim that we needed to scrap the board and find someone to do a fully-illustrated map. (yes, that really happened)

This pattern was especially painful for the rulebook because there really isn’t a “right” way to learn new content. Everyone who looked at it had their own opinion about structure, phrasing, format, examples, pictures, etc. I would act on feedback to change the rulebook one way, then literally the next feedback I would get would be to change back what I had before.

I see no issue with spending the time to create a quality product. However, I ended up spending months only getting marginal gains in the game’s visual presentation and learnability when the entire project was 95% of the way there during the Kickstarter. And guess what — despite all my efforts to think through all the components, polish the rulebook as much as I could, and QA every aspect of the project by dozens of people, I STILL had lots of little issues that were overlooked for the rulebook as well as the tiles.

The reality is that no matter how hard you try, and how many people you have to validate your work (even with QA signoff from the designer himself!), “perfect” is not possible. It would have been much better for this project if we just made decisions and stuck with them rather than second-guessing ourselves (since we got it 95% right the first time anyway).

When you do make a mistake, don’t let it haunt you

This is already a long-winded post (as usual) so I’ll keep this last one short. Since GTG has been such a personal endeavor for me, it has been pretty tough to not take any issues with 1861/1867 personally. The long production delays for example were largely due to my own inexperience as a publisher and that weighed on me pretty heavily through all of 2020. Similar to the previous point, rather than focusing on getting things perfect, I realized I need to allow myself to make mistakes. It’s funny how when I look at 1861/1867 I tend to see all the little issues I got wrong while most people who have received their games have been floored by the production quality. I think it’s important to keep a more holistic view than getting bogged down by things that could have gone better.

I can already see Shikoku: 1889 going much more smoothly and I am incredibly excited to continue bringing you the best production quality, prices, and approachability for 18xx titles!