Ep7: Publishing Board Games on Kickstarter with Dan Nichols

Join Josh on The Business of Gaming podcast as he visits with Dan Nichols from Gadabout Games in Austin, Texas. This episode discusses the process of creating a board game, how to use Kickstarter to bring your game to life and the challenges of the Kickstarter model for board games.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Hey, y'all.
Welcome to the Business ofGaming podcast.
I'm Josh with Game Haven Guild,and today we're sitting down
with Dan Nichols from GadaboutGames in Austin, Texas.
He's designed and publishedseveral games, including Turf
War and You Shady Pooch, withhis newest game, Bad Deals, out
now.
Why don't you take us to thebeginning?
What got you in the mind stateto say, I want to make a game?

(00:20):
Delusions of grandeur, mostly,I'd say.
No, I guess...
For me, games have always beenkind of a creative outlet and a
creative hobby.
When, you know, as a kid, we hadall the standard board games.
We played a lot of cards.
We did, you know, Uno and Euchreand all that great stuff.

(00:42):
And, you know, we were a littledirty.
So eventually we discoveredMagic the Gathering too.
And I was like, that was just,oh, games can do this.
Games can do these things.
And Magic, it's a lot ofdesigners kind of first
addictive game because it's justdesigner catnip.
It's rules.

(01:03):
It is rules printed on cards.
And you're like, oh, wow, I'mmixing and matching rules and
I'm making different gamestates.
And What if I made my own rules?
What if I made my own cards?
And so that kind of modularityof the game, it really invites
participatory play and inventiveplay in a way that sparks a lot

(01:23):
of young designers for the firsttime.
So, you know, when I was inmiddle school and magic was like
a new thing and it was hot, Iwould run home and I'd make my
own cards and I'd write themdown in journals and then they
would never see the light ofday.
But I was still going throughthat activity and that kind of
evolved a bit to working withlike video game world editors,

(01:47):
like big into Starcraft andWarcraft.
And I would sit down there andmake my own levels or make up
new characters or new abilitiesor all that kind of stuff.
I let that go kind of fallow fora long time, honestly.
I was more focused on getting acareer going, getting

(02:09):
established, and all that goodstuff.
I kind of rediscovered boardgames and the board gaming hobby
when I had moved down to Austinoriginally.
I was maybe the mid-aughts.
And some friends turned me on toSettlers of Catan, and they

(02:31):
turned me on to Dominion.
And I was like, oh, well, boardgames, they got something going
on.
And so, you know, as any kind ofviral hobby does, I introduced
my family to those things andstarted playing those things
more regularly.
And...
I started doing little gifts forthem, kind of harkening back to

(02:53):
my old custom magic card dayswhen my brother and his wife had
their children.
I made custom Dominion cards forthem to celebrate the occasion.
And, you know, fiddling with it,I was like, oh, well, I could
make like a little customDominion set and I could print a
little custom Dominion set if Iwanted to.

(03:13):
And then that kind of finallyturned into, I could actually
just make a game at this pointif I wanted to.
And that, plus a little COVID, alittle lockdown, ended up let's
start a business.
Let's do this.
Let's make some games.

(03:34):
The first one you published isTurf Wars.
Where did that idea come from?
I mentioned messing with theworld editors in StarCraft and
WarCraft way long ago, and So Iwould be spending just kind of
hours looking at these greenrolling hills in Warcraft 3 and

(03:55):
thinking about going and messingeach other up and having bases
and combat and conflict in thatkind of setting.
And it...
put this little nugget of anidea in my head about kind of
warring neighbors.
And there's always that centraltension with an RTS where it's,

(04:15):
do I kind of stay home and buildup my base or do I go out
marauding or exploring orwhatever it is that I'm going to
do?
And that idea kind of lentitself to an over-the-top
comedic take of folks in aneighborhood having that same
tension between neighbors of,well, I can stay home and work

(04:39):
on my yard and guard my home,but I also need to work and make
money and bring things.
But what if my neighbor, who Iam in this intense rivalry with,
messes with my stuff while I'mgone?
So that kind of bore the centralmechanics of turf war.
The next step of you've got theidea, you're working through it,

(05:02):
you're showing it to family andfriends, you're showing it to
play testers.
Yep, yep.
So pretty much victimizingeveryone in your nearby area by
like, hey, want to play a game?
It's going to be terrible.
Please?
Yeah.
And so you shake that treepretty hard, as hard as you can

(05:22):
to get in as many rounds as youcan.
As I matured a bit as adesigner, I started doing more
with solo testing, more withdigital testing as part of that
upfront process to kind of workthrough a lot of those early
kinks before I would have tobribe a loved one or subject

(05:46):
someone else to the games inthat state.
But yeah, it's really like it'sa numbers game.
How many playtests can I get in?
What am I trying to test?
Who is ready and willing to dothat for me?
Now I work a lot more with theATX game designers and

(06:08):
playtesters group.
They meet a few times a weekhere in Austin, try to go to as
many of those meetups as I can.
You know, both to see what otherpeople are cooking up and get
exposed to some different notready for primetime ideas and to
see what's working, what's notworking and stuff.

(06:29):
It's good to have a place to dothat.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's an invaluable resource.
You mentioned digital tools forplaytesting as well.
Is there something in particularyou're using these days?
Yeah, I've done a lot withTabletopia in the past.
I actually use it a little bitless now than I was, but it's

(06:52):
just a very basic upload images,get digital cards in there,
throw them up and see what'sworking kind of thing a little
bit.
easier to get up and runningthan Tabletop Simulator, but not
as robust and not quite asplayer-friendly.
Great for playtesting, though.
What options did you look at onhow to get it to market?

(07:12):
Or was it Kickstarter is whereit went?
Is Kickstarter the plan from thebeginning?
Yeah, Kickstarter was a prettyearly part of the plan.
I was just doing web research,going through podcasts like
Board Game Design Lab to to tryand understand kind of what my
options were, what differentoutlets were.

(07:33):
I've always been prettyentrepreneurial, so didn't
really back down from the ideaof starting a business or
working through manufacturingmyself.
And I knew that with this typeof product, it being a small box
card game, I wouldn't have toventure that much.
I wouldn't have to risk thatmuch kind of the time the worst

(07:57):
case scenario wasn't that bad.
And so, you know, wanting to getmore exposure to different parts
of the process, went out thereand started looking at what are
my manufacturing options forthis?
And I started with a lot ofthose print-to-order companies
that I had been using, butpretty quickly found that those

(08:19):
prices did not scale well atall.
And that I could probably get ahigher quality product and more
of it at a better price if Iwent through an at-scale
manufacturer.
The manufacturer I...
you know, I talked to a fewdifferent folks, uh, went

(08:41):
through, uh, an industryassociation that's, it's, uh,
unfortunately no longeroperational, but, um, they, uh,
they referred me over to thepartner that I've used for all
of my manufactured games now.
Oh, so you had a good experienceon the first one.
You continue to use them.
Yeah.
You know, I found, um, the, thequality was, was great.

(09:03):
Um, you know, timelines were,were fine.
Costs were, were really solid.
Um, and, Communication could bea problem at times, but there's
not going to be a perfectrelationship.
Or if you are expecting a reallyhigh touch kind of service from

(09:23):
a manufacturer, you'redefinitely going to be paying
for that.
Luckily, I had enough kind ofdesign and print background
competency that I had a lot ofconfidence in what I was
requesting and the kind of specsthat I was providing.
And that relationship turned outwell.
Manufacturer lined up, you thengo out and start your

(09:45):
Kickstarter.
Was there a process or did youhave a mental process around how
you wanted to go out and do thator start your Kickstarter, the
marketing around it?
For me, it was a lot of askingand absorbing and reading and
researching and working out thisprocess probably over elaborate
grand plan and spreadsheet ofwhat this Kickstarter was going

(10:08):
to look like and all the thingsthat I needed to do and lining
up this piece and this piece andthis piece and building up an
email list and startingpre-advertising and making
plenty of mistakes along the waythere.
So there was a pretty extensiveprocess to get to the actual

(10:30):
Kickstarter itself.
And I would say that For thatearly game, I probably rushed it
a little bit too.
I was eager and hitting theaccelerator kind of as hard as I
could to see where I'd get.
Going chronologically, theKickstarter goes live.
Yep.
Any big surprises?
Did you set up multi-tiering forit or how did you...

(10:52):
I worked with a few folks tofigure out kind of what is the
right product mix here.
And there were a few pricepoints that really emerged as
like, this is good, this iswhere you should be.
One of the challenges with TurfWar as a product in that format

(11:12):
and one that I've seen a lot ofother Kickstarters struggle with
is the price point for a tuckbox card game.
It's 12 to maybe$17 is kind ofthat range that people are
expecting for that type ofproduct, depending on the size
and format of the cards.

(11:32):
when you're thinking aboutlaunching a kickstarter paying
for advertising to go to that uhyou know all that that kind of
marketing and support effortthat comes into it it's pretty
hard to make that back on youknow 15 bucks a pop and so uh
Working with a few folks in theindustry, a few consultants

(11:56):
figured out, okay, well, havingthis kind of base level is good,
but we need to expand both upand down.
We expanded down to lower pricepoints with a print and play
version of the game that startedemerging as kind of a bigger and
bigger request.
So we quickly added that andrealized, oh, hey, there's this
whole market segment that's notactually interested in a printed

(12:19):
product at all.
They want to make their own.
And that was a great way tocapture additional folks.
And you'll also see with theKickstarter people come in at
very low pledge levels ifthey're kind of passively
interested in a project.
And maybe they want to wait fora pledge manager or they're not

(12:42):
really going to commit to ituntil the thing funds.
So it's a way for them to kindof bookmark it or toss a few
dollars in and say, hey, I'minterested in this.
Going up the scale, the$25 pricepoint,$30 price point, that's
where you're going to see thebulk of your sales on a smaller

(13:03):
Kickstarter.
That's both a price pointthat...
People generally feel prettygood about paying that amount of
money for a game or risking thatamount of money on a Kickstarter
and might never deliver, as someof us have been burned in the
past.
Or if you do get friends andfamily members in for that first

(13:27):
Kickstarter, a lot of them feelvery comfortable pledging at
that kind of level to helpsupport your initial effort.
then you start getting intobigger tiers, right?
And I think one of the thingsthat was surprising to me about
that first Kickstarter is, oh,hey, it's not just mom.
I was going to give you ahundred bucks for this game.

(13:48):
There are people who are goingto be generally interested in
the concept and into it, andthey need a more deluxe product.
They want to get a product thatthey can feel some more personal
attachment to that they know isgoing to be kind of special to

(14:10):
this campaign.
And so that's where we created adeluxe edition of the game and
went even further and made a$250tier.
And when you start getting intothat, it's like, okay, well,
what am I really doing for thesepeople?
So for that one, you would get ahand-picked gnome statue, some

(14:32):
kind of ridiculous garden gnomefor your very own lawn, as well
as a prototype copy of the gameitself.
So stuff that you just wouldnever get at retail or as part
of any kind of normal buyingexperience.
Kickstarter is an interestingkind of beast, but At its core,

(14:56):
it is a very interactive andtheatrical experience that
people are looking for whenthey're participating in a
campaign.
And if you reward them withthat, they will reward you back.
In terms of rewarding, Turf Warsdid fund over 200% that next
day.
It's done, funded, first thingsto call the manufacturer, or

(15:19):
what happens now?
Depending on where you startyour Kickstarter, you've
probably already done a proofcopy with the manufacturer.
It depends if the game is fullyfinished or not.
I made a little bit of a mistakeby getting a proof a little too
early with Turf War and thenmodifying the product a bit

(15:44):
during the course of thecampaign.
I hadn't fully kind of gamed outhow I was going to manage it.
modify the product at the timethat the campaign started, which
led to a really interactivecampaign.
And it led to folks having a lotof drive and being able to kind
of steer the product indifferent directions.
But it meant that themanufacturing cycle wasn't quite

(16:06):
ready to go.
As soon as I hit the gettingback with manufacturer and
putting together another proofand going through a final
production cycle.
The Kickstarter campaign itself,it goes through a few phases.
So you get that right out of thegate kind of nail biter.

(16:28):
Is this going to fund?
Is it not going to fund?
What's going to happen withthis?
And then it finally funds andyou're like, oh my goodness,
thank heavens it funded.
And then you start getting intoa little bit of a lull.
And there are days where Uh, youdon't have any new pledges and
some of the pledges drop andit's just, so it's this insane

(16:48):
nerve wracking experience rightup until you get to the last
sprint of the campaign again.
Uh, and then you, you start tobenefit from Kickstarter's
algorithms again and you seesome more traction and things
start, start picking up.
Yeah, exactly.
It's about, uh, I think 48 hoursfrom the end is when the last
email that Kickstarter blastsout to folks who might have been

(17:11):
following the campaign.
So that really starts picking upsteam again at that point.
And you'll see some campaignshave actually a lot of their
funding come in those final fewdays, or maybe even a majority
of their funding come in thefinal few days.
Most typical is kind of a bigburst out of the gate.
long plateau and then anotherlittle spike at the end, which

(17:34):
is what Turf War did.
Games get manufactured.
They come to you.
Can you walk through thatprocess of then how do people
get their games?
Yeah.
So, uh, you know, you're workingwith manufacturer.
Um, we were using a Chinesemanufacturer, um, and we also
worked with a, uh, adistribution, uh, and
fulfillment company based outof, out of China.

(17:55):
So, uh, you know, we arrangedfor a factory pickup, uh, that
they take custody of all thegames.
And then we set up the pledgemanager for folks to go and
enter their personal info andtheir updated shipping and get
any kind of dues or customs paidthrough there for the countries

(18:17):
that we were doing friendlyshipping to.
Pull some extracts from that,work with the shipping provider
to make sure that, hey, allthese games are going to the
right people, we've got theright orders mapped to the right
addresses, and blast thosedetails out to folks through the
Pledge Manager tool, give themtheir tracking numbers.

(18:40):
After all that, there's stillquite a bit of coaxing that you
need to do with a Kickstarterbecause it is a pre-order,
because you're collectingshipping information later, You
do see a fair number of folkskind of wander away and forget
or not check their email or notput in their addresses or
anything like that.
I think the last copy of TurfWar that I shipped out was

(19:07):
probably a year and a half afterthe campaign.
And there might still be acouple people who just never
gave me their address info orfell down a well or I don't
know.
I don't know what happened tothose folks, but I thank them
for backing.
If you want your games, I stillplug there.
So that distributor, how did youfind the distributor?

(19:29):
Was that the manufacturer havesome recommendations or is that
through some of those industrycontacts?
Yeah, that was another onethrough industry contacts.
So there's a few differentcompanies out there that
specialize in game fulfillmentspecifically.
Um, the strategy that I wastaking with tier four was, uh,
direct shipping from China, uh,to folks.

(19:51):
And there's really just two orthree companies that, that will
do that in a specialized wayfor, for games.
There are a larger kind of groupof companies that will do that
for, uh, for direct to consumere-commerce.
Um, but yeah, we've foundworking with a game provider,
they, know kind of how topackage this stuff and and how

(20:12):
to send this stuff out andthey're they're accustomed to
working with kickstarters and uhdealing with the kinds of
product mixes that that need toto get packed together uh so it
made a lot of sense to go withthem um i don't know that that
particular fulfillment model isstill viable you know this was

(20:34):
before um We saw a lot ofserious spikes in fulfillment
costs related to internationalevents before we saw a lot of
the customs landscape change asit has in recent months.
And yeah, I don't know that youcould follow that same recipe

(20:54):
again.
Post-Kickstarter gettingfulfilled.
Yeah.
Is there a life for Turf Warafter that around other
distribution methods, or whatkind of happened to the game
over the next two, three years?
Yeah, so one of the things thathappened during the campaign was
getting some interest from aThai publisher as well as a
distributor based out of the UK.

(21:17):
The distributor out of the UKended up picking up the game, so
we ran a large order, sent thema lot of stock, ended up in a
three-year distribution dealwith them.
The Thai publisher requestedprint and play files and then

(21:38):
vanished into the night, and I'mpretty sure there might be a
version of Turf War Bootleg outthere somewhere, but whatever,
it's fine.
Part of the game.
Yeah, part of the game,unfortunately.
And so those were major salesoutlets for us.

(21:58):
There's also a lot ofdirect-to-consumer support that
needed to happen.
So still did events and storesas we finally had inventory.
Didn't have to give people thiscockamamie sales pitch of like,
hey, I know I'm showing thisproduct to you in a store right
now, but you can go to thisother unrelated website that's

(22:18):
not me or the store and sign upfor an account.
And in several months, you'llhave the opportunity to order a
product in several months thatyou'll then go to a pledge
manager and fill out yourdetails.
So it's just this really weird,crazy kind of pitch that you're
giving to folks.
So it was nice to finally havethe product and be able to be

(22:40):
like, oh, yeah, here, this is$15.
Thank you.
Well, how does your distributionwork today then at the U.S.?
Are your product is gettingshipped to someone here or do
you have a big garage somewhere?
Yeah, no, games in a garage andalso just ship everything out of
HQ.
So we'll periodically go on.

(23:01):
Hey, we're having shippingdelays, free shipping for
everyone, but it's gonna be aweek or two.
And that just means I'm onvacation, so I'm not packing
boxes that week.
But yeah, at this point, packand ship everything myself.
We're still working with afulfillment company out of China

(23:21):
to help direct large shipmentsof product and direct some
international shipments ofproduct.
But otherwise, mostly focused onUS market at this point.
So Turf Wars success, next oneyou come out with essentially
kind of a second edition Trickor Treat edition.
Any big changes to that, or isit more of just a styling change

(23:43):
to a Halloween theme?
Yeah, so Trick or Treat was anexpansion to the game, and that
was something that was kind ofearly in development before the
original Kickstarter ever hit.
It was something that I had beenplaying with and experimenting
with.
So it was kind of ready to go inlate stage.

(24:06):
We knew we could get that outthere pretty quickly.
The second edition of Tour 4 wasboth a reprint of the new game,
because we did not have anycopies of the first edition to
sell with the expansion at thatpoint, thanks to the
distributor.
And it was also to clean up somerough edges that, you know,

(24:32):
that's the thing with the gameis that you look at it and
there's something that you wantto change with it every single
time that you look at it kind ofno matter what.
But having the benefit of havingit in way more people's hands,
having some much broader set offeedback around the first game,

(24:54):
You know, we've heard peoplereally wanted four player out of
one box.
You know, we heard there wereproblems that some folks were
having with feeling like some ofthe individual cards were maybe
a little too mean or too sharpor too swingy.
And so sanded down a lot ofthose kind of rough edges and

(25:15):
worked on reformulating thatbase product to be four players
out of a single box and then youshady pooch came out yep so
brand new concepts had this beensomething you've been working on
for a while as well or is itsomething that just kind of came
up afterwards yeah shady poochuh so shady pooching bad deals
once upon a time were the samegame which if you look at the

(25:37):
boxes of each of those games youwould say that's not true uh but
it is it is they uh they bothhad their dna in um kind of a
casual card game that I wasplaying with and kind of
evolving and creating withfriends who would sit down and
come over for cards.

(25:58):
There were elements of that gamethat were working, and there
were different elements of thatgame that were working in a
different way.
So it was time to do a littlesurgery and pull those two
halves apart.
The first half of that becameYou Shady Pooch.
And that was the more rowdydrinking elements of the game.

(26:23):
Like all good names, a lot ofthe theming there was just puns.
Just total goofy, how do we takeour dogs that we're totally in
love with and...
uh, mix in like weird elementsof drag culture and just total,

(26:44):
total nonsense.
Uh, and you shitty pooch wasborn of that.
Well, after those three allsuccessfully backed on
Kickstarter, comic book boomcame out and it did not get
funded on Kickstarter.
Yep.
Can you talk to us about why,why do you think it didn't, but
then what happens to the gameafter a Kickstarter isn't
funded?

(27:05):
It was definitely adisappointment.
Uh, when that one didn't hit itsfunding goal on Kickstarter.
It did have a higher fundinggoal than the other projects.
It's also a much more complexmanufacturer than those other
projects.
It needed a lot more originalart than the other projects, so

(27:26):
it needed the higher fundinggoal.
There were some misfires withmarketing.
I think one of the things that Isaw with it in particular is
that the social mediaKickstarter marketing is a

(27:47):
struggle right now.
I've bootstrapped a lot of mymarketing myself.
I've resisted using an agency.
I've resisted using outsidelists or things like that
because I've run the numberswith it and it's would be
exceedingly difficult to breakeven on the games with that kind

(28:10):
of assistance.
We've seen Facebook kind ofcollapsing as a place that
people go for real content orreal interaction.
And that is somewhat reflectedin advertising performance there
too.
A lot of advertisers arestruggling on those platforms

(28:31):
now, both to reach real peopleas well as to re-engage with
their existing customers.
And being an amateur marketereffectively, that was hard.
That was a hard thing to gothrough.
The other side is that it is abit more of a niche product.

(28:57):
So we've got a more expensiveproduct.
We have a more difficult productto market.
We have a smaller segment thatwe're effectively marketing to.
And I was still surprised whenit didn't fund, frankly.
But it is still a product that Ibelieve pretty strongly in.

(29:21):
And it's one that I think willdo well in person or on shelf
and be able to perform in waysthat more convoluted sales pitch
that you get with Kickstarterjust isn't able to penetrate to
that smaller audience.
So you still did bring it tomarket.

(29:42):
You've got it available.
It is in the works right now.
So we've got it going from thefactory to distributor right
now.
We're expecting to openpre-orders on it soon, but I
want to hear, yes, I have it inhand.
It is in the warehouse.
We're ready to start shipping itbefore I do that.

(30:04):
Well, then tell us about BadDeals, because Bad Deals did not
go through Kickstarter.
Tell us about that decisionslash what's different and how
you're distributing that.
Yeah, so Bad Deals is anothersmall box game, right?
And yeah, I spoke a little bitearlier about the difficult
financials of making a small boxwork on Kickstarter.

(30:29):
You know, we've seen somedivisions in the Kickstarter
audience and there's anincreasing amount of noise on
the platform as well.
So all that kind of suggestedlike, this isn't a good
Kickstarter product.
This is a fun card game.
This is a great small box game.
this is not something that has athousand minis and costs a

(30:52):
hundred dollars and it's got alicense ip associated with it so
there's a built-in fan base andyou know yada yada yada this
isn't something that i'm gonnabuy a convention booth for to uh
to support all on its own and sobad deals um became a way to
start experimenting with somedifferent manufacturing and

(31:13):
distribution options.
We didn't print that one withthe manufacturer that we've
worked with in the past.
We did print that with a smallerorder manufacturer.
And it's part of an area ofexperimentation that I'm really
interested in, in the industryof, hey, if we make 50, 100

(31:36):
copies of a thing, Is thatsomething that is viable or as
viable as making$1,000 or$10,000of it?
Certainly the profits aren'tgoing to be the same.
It's going to be a much lowerprofit venture, assuming it all
sells out.

(31:57):
But it is a way to get ideas tomarket a little bit more quickly
to start getting these kind ofsmaller, edgier, weirder games
out in the world.
We haven't started reallypushing bad deals yet.
I haven't even sent a letterto...

(32:17):
to my email subscribers.
Sorry, email subscribers.
I apologize.
Podcast exclusive.
Podcast exclusive.
You heard it here last.
Because we actually did post onthe website that, yes, we were
putting it out.
But the plan has always been tokind of put that out there along
with the comic launch and putmarketing dollars against that.

(32:40):
So having done this for morethan a few years now, How have
you seen the industry changethat way?
You spoke some about howKickstarter is for sure changed
and become just different,right?
Anything else either fromKickstarter perspective or the
industry in general that haschanged over the years?
Yeah, so I mean, talking aboutthis kind of the make 100 model

(33:05):
or doing smaller runs of games,I think one of the trends that
I'm seeing right now is thiskind of night market, indie
market, thing kind of poppingup.
And I do feel like that is kindof the next, I'm going to take
my game to Kickstarter.
It's now I'm taking my game tothis regional night market.

(33:28):
That barrier to entry withcrowdfunding has just become
absurd.
The amount of money that youneed to kind of pre-invest in
art assets, in campaign, inadvertising, and manufacture
samples, lining up reviews andall this, like you are, you're
paying to just fully producethis game and then opening up a

(33:50):
pre-order on this site whereyou're giving Kickstarter some
chunk of your money and beggingfor attention against all this
other stuff that is just goingthrough the pipe a million miles
a minute.
And that's, uh, that's a reallydaunting landscape to be in as a
designer.
It's not one that's, uh, that'sreally conducive to getting

(34:12):
great experimental indie gamesout there anymore.
It's a pre-sales vehicle forlarger manufacturers.
And so what we're seeing nowwith these Tokyo Night Market
inspired add-ons andmarketplaces that ride along

(34:34):
with larger conventions is spacefor designers to bring these
weirder, rougher cut kind ofproperties, to bring smaller
print boxes out to gamers.
And I think that's really cool.
I think that's kind of the nextbig thing that we're going to

(34:54):
see and the next thing that weneed to start embracing as an
industry.
Looking back to when youstarted, having done several of
these now, what advice would yougive yourself or someone else
just starting right now Youknow, it's tough because you can
give all the advice you want.
It doesn't guarantee your pastself is going to listen to you.
They're probably going to makeall the same mistakes, whether

(35:15):
you want them to or not.
But I'd say, for one, take alittle bit more time in scaling
up efforts.
It's really tempting to...

(35:35):
hit the print button and say,I'll take 5,000 or whatever it
is.
But when you're thinking aboutthat kind of an initial burst
that's coming through inKickstarter, there's a little
bit of a sugar high that comeswith that.
And you're not thinking, oh, nowI've sold these 500 units and I

(35:59):
only have to sell 4,500 or more.
Great.
There's a lot of drag that thatinventory can have.
Warehousing is expensive.
Shipping is expensive.
Remarketing is expensive.
You don't know how much moreit's going to cost or how deep

(36:20):
your audience is or what thatkind of full demand is yet.
So that's the other thing that Ithink is exciting about more
small scale manufacturing andmore experimental manufacturing
is that, hey, it's an easier tokind of scale and do market
testing with activity.
I don't think I'm ever going tobe different than someone who

(36:44):
likes to kind of do all thestuff on their own.
It's one of the reasons why Ihaven't gone out to other
publishers at this stage becauseI like having my fingers in
every part of the process.
But that kind of model is greatfor a person like me.
to explore and get some newideas out there.

(37:06):
Awesome, Dan.
Thanks for taking the time totalk to us today.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me.