pt 1 of how to publish a small card game
I was at a Van Gogh exhibition today, and the quote “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”, admittedly this was followed up by “The sadness will last forever”, but that initial quote still sums up the importance of taking a risk. And self-publishing your own card game is a big risk. So what’s stopping you?
Costs? The biggest cost will be artwork, followed by production of prototype copies for reviewers. Assuming a Kickstarter route, provided you have costed everything else up accurately you won’t pay out for anything else until you’ve got the money. As for the artwork, clever design is required- a card game requiring unique art on every card will be prohibitively expensive, but rarely is such a thing needed.
Contacts? It’s a myth that games publishing is some exclusive club you need to break into. All you really need is a facebook account and a willingness to approach people at conventions. Most people want to discuss there projects with each other, and there are always reviewers, podcasters and bloggers looking for games to review and designers to chat with. You just need to reach out to them.
Lack of confidence in your game? If you’ve designed a small card game, playtested it to a point where your happy with it and people enjoy it, you’ve nothing to be concerned about. You’ve already done so much more than other people in terms of games design, and if people enjoy it it’s by definition an enjoyable game. Some people won’t like it, but you can’t let that hold you back- even your favourite game is hated by someone, just don’t take negative comments personally.
The legal stuff? I’ll be writing primarily for UK designers, and am not a lawyer, but this was my main concern, and one which needed a bit of research, but the legal side of self-publishing is actually navigable. Labels required to be on the package, CE marking, starting a company- I’ll try and explain what I’ve done for these to ease other people through them.
Time? This one I can’t help with. Publishing Forks took all of my spare time over a period of months, and a good proportion of spare time outside of that. If you have lots of time commitments and can’t dedicate your time to self publishing, then it’s probably not for you. Especially as soon as you become customer facing on Kickstarter (although, I did manage to go on holiday in Japan for two weeks between Kickstarter and fulfillment, so you can have some time to yourself).
Inclination? If your not inclined to self-publish then don’t. You’d end up spending all of your time doing stuff you don’t like and it would drag.
So whilst there are some reasons for not self-publishing, there are more which can easily be overcome. Clearly if you want to go the publisher route there are loads of benefits to that- I’m not suggesting that self-publishing is objectively better, just wanting to help those people who want to (I loved the ability to keep control). I’m definitely no expert, just talking from experience. If you can think of any other reasons people might be reluctant to self-publish, or any other comments, please let me know!