In 2017 I had an idea to create a physical card game about programmers and the technologies they use. So a player could slam a card on the table and shout: “I summon a Backend Developer, and increase his power +3 with this Continuous Integration knowledge card!”, just like summoning a Blues Eyes White Dragon in Yu-Gi-Oh :)
Post tl;dr: managed to successfully self publish a physical card game about IT/Programming in Poland in 2018, then released the game globally via Kickstarter in 2020. In the meantime 2 expansion packs for the game were developed. Everything with the help of a freelance illustrator and a freelance DTP guy - the rest (game design, marketing, contact with a print house etc.) was done as a one man army: a geeky side project that went a bit too far.
This post is a short case study.
Have fun,
Mateusz
From a prototype to a nice looking game
Playing around with this idea lead to this quick & dirty prototype:
The premise was simple: we play developers with a certain efficiency to get project points (develop a software project), increase our developer’s efficiency with knowledge cards (+2 efficiency for teaching a dev Continuous integration- yay!). And if an opponent has a great developer… We can use one of our recruiter cards to convince the DEV to work for our company instead. All rounded up with some sabotage options, Scrum Masters, HR and employee burnout (avoiding employee burnout became one of the main game mechanics).
A first human readable prototype after about 2 weeks looked like this:
I was lucky to have a Polish YouTube channel and blog about programming, so I had some followers who were happy to help me test the game at this stage.
After iterating on the game design ideas I paid an artist to make the game look nicer:
If you are interested in the gameplay details. Here is the rulebook PDF.
There is also a video “how to play “IT Startup - The Card Game”
The game played fine, the prototype testers also have very positive feedback. Now I needed some proof that people would pay actual money to play this.
Crowdfunding sounded like the way to go.
Crowdfunding in Poland and no-budget marketing
My marketing consisted of 3 main things.
Vlog about the project on YT, and write about it on my blog, to get some initial interest going.
Post funny card prototypes on social media, to get some organic traffic. People like to click and share things that are funny. So I made cringy programmer humour an essential part of the game.
Providing a free print & play prototype as a lead magnet for joining the projects email list. “Like the game idea? Great! Sign up for an email list, and the game as a free print & play”. This way I got more free testing of the game + I had an email list that could get a direct email in their inbox when the crowdfunding starts. Emails from email lists sometimes go unnoticed, or get filtered by spam filters. But they still are more effective than social media pages on FB that cut almost all your organic visibility if you don’t pay for ads.
The Polish crowdfunding results: almost 1000 copies sold to a little over 800 first clients (some people bought more than 1 copy), and 63 262 PLN (about 15-16k USD) in initial project funding.
The game was still selling well after the crowdfunding campaign: this led to a first small expansion pack and a humorous mini-set in 2019.
After two years the game sold over 4000 boxes in Poland. Almost 100% were direct sales without any middleman in the middle, which made it a profitable project.
Benefits of having an industry focused game (in this case IT / Programming)
Companies were happy to help fund this project for a sponsor slot on the game box. The sponsor slots alone provided more than enough to pay for the 2 freelancers (an illustrator and a DTP guy).
Another benefit of an industry focused theme: I get regular bigger orders from corporate clients who find the game a cool gift for their employees. Some companies order 20 copies, some 50. The biggest order from 1 client contained 250 game copies.
This moderate success motivated me to try to publish the game globally via Kickstarter
Going global via Kickstarter
In 2019 a friend of mine (Konrad Kokosa) also started tinkering on a card game: his idea was to make a game for .NET developers. I was planning a 2020 Kickstarter for my game, and Konrad had a similar release date in mind. We decided it would be great to join forces and launch our game ideas on one campaign (so one could get 2 games about programming with paying only once for the shipping costs).
The marketing plan was similar: give the print & play prototype away for an email on the email list, post about the game on our social media + blog/YT about it.
Unfortunately, only my game ended up on Kickstarter in the end. Konrad due to some organizational issues has postponed his project, so after a few months of marketing collaboration, we decided to publish our games separately on a different date.
Also in 2020 Covid hit hard, so everything got delayed for various reasons.
Finally The Kickstarter for IT Startup - The Card game launched in June 2020, and again the crowdfunding managed to sell almost 1000 copies. The campaign had a lot more rewards than my 2018 Polish campaign (a first expansion pack + gadgets like fancy binary dice), so it managed to get a lot more funding: 856 backers pledged £27k / ~ $34k. More than double of the 2018 PL campaign with almost the same number of backers.
Almost all was done with organic marketing. I spent only about 500$ on paid Facebook ads to promote the Kickstarter campaign (mostly as a boost for the campaign launch).
If you would like to buy the game today: here is my Shopify Shop.
Some positive feedback after the Kickstarter :)
General no-budget card game marketing tips
Prioritize building a project’s email list over growing the social media profiles. Emails from email lists sometimes go unnoticed, or get filtered by spam filters, but they still are more effective than social media pages that cut almost all your traffic if you don’t pay for ads. This will give your project the boost it needs to catch more organic backers from a crowdfunding platform.
Consider giving a print & play prototype of your game away for free (as a lead magnet to sign up for an email list). This way it’s easier to post about this project on social media: “Hey guys, check out my game for free”, and people that are interested in your game get a direct notification.
Blogging/vlogging about your project: post updates about your project, to gather more people on your lists. You get a great advantage if your game is themed similar to a blog/YT channel you own. This way you can get a lot of initial prototype testers and valuable feedback from your reader/viewer base. It’s also a nice marketing boost.
Memability of a product: if your project can be posted as a humorous post (for example making a meme/comic out of your game), use this to your advantage. This stupid Valentine’s Day post generated of 140k impressions on Facebook.
Rule of 7. In marketing the rule of 7 states that it takes an average of seven interactions with your product before a purchase will take place. So posting about your project a few weeks before Kickstarter launch is too late. Personally I started regularly posting about my game about 7-8 months before any crowdfunding launched. It’s a tedious grind, but it looks like it works.
People need to know you, trust you and like you. Then they are more likely to pay you money for a product. Just basic marketing 101, but you really don’t need more to get you foot in the door.
Btw. emails can also be collected at offline events. Here is a picture from a local board game event in Katowice, Poland:
I also recorded a short vlog from the event:
How the game was manufactured
This may sound like an oversimplification, but this part of the project was really not that complicated. After all, the product is just a card game with some tokens.
I wrote an email to a few popular board game print houses in Poland: “Hey, I would like to have a game with this specification manufactured. What would it cost?”.
They send me the technical details (how to prepare the print files), and their pricing. I paid a DTP freelancer to prepare the files, paid what they asked, and… that's really everything there was to it. Now I just had to wait a few weeks after my order, and the games were delivered to my address.
Kitty for scale.
The main challenge is to design a decent game and to market to the right audience. Actual manufacturing is just a matter of raising enough money for the print house costs and paying a freelancer to prepare the files for the print house.
To manufacture the game I used the services of the print house Trefl and (later) Cartamundi in Poland. So I don't have to worry about shipping problems from China.
Some unpleasant experiences
It’s not always fun and games. Here are some unpleasant experiences I had along the way.
Be aware of review scammers. I was kinda naive, and sent out game copies to people who asked me for review copies for free. Only 1 person out of 10 actually posted a review. The rest was probably sold on ebay or craigslist.
Don’t provide your game to stores without upfront payments. One store owner was really liking my game at a local convention, and asked for a few dozen games with the promise to pay in a few months. It’s been over 2 years, I haven’t gotten a single dollar from this guy, lol. Fuck this guy. At least I learned my lesson, to not trust people so easily. Most people in the board game industry are extremely friendly and nice - sometimes you just get a rotten apple.
Posting publicly about your project has its costs. In 2018 I posted a more detailed case study on my Polish blog. This led to a lot of malicious comments on some of my social media channels. I’m not sure if this is mostly an Easter European thing (especially in Poland), but it has been my experience that posting about the financial aspects of side-projects triggers a lot of online trolls. That’s why I hesitate to post more details about the financial aspects of my side projects (outside of the publicly visible crowdfunding numbers) .
Don’t underestimate the anxiety of self publishing a physical game. Once the game hits the printing press there is no option for bug fixing or uploading a day one patch. You will have to learn to live with the little mistakes you made in the game. And a reprint is expensive. I’m not kidding: this has been one of the most stressful projects I ever took on. The design phase is a lot of fun, but sending the “final final” files to the print house was a nerve wracking experience.
What’s next?
A few days ago a new standalone expansion “IT Startup - Office Lockdown” was published in Poland. Funded again through crowdfunding.
I’m planning to release this expansion globally on Q2 2022 Kickstarter. The project just got approved and you may already sign up for a Kickstarter notification. :) you also join the project's email list to get a free print & play prototype of the new standalone game expansion.
This time I also hired a freelancer to prepare a miniature for the game! It’s Post Apocalyptic software developer :D
There is also some Unity prototyping going on to bring the project to Steam as a single player roguelike card game. A first Steam Page is already online for wishlisting purposes.
A quick look at the current state of the Steam Game prototype:
That's all for now folks!
If the physical card game catched your interest: you can buy it in my shopify shop.
Working on this game is quite a journey and I hope it will continue for a while because making a card game is a lot of fun :)
A photo of me with the new standalone expansion pack’s promo rollup.
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