Unsure

For the first time since I started developing my game I'm really starting to doubt the mechanics of it. I was always unsure about the fiddly multiplying of scores at the end based on whether you choose to play at easy, medium or hard difficulty and after a consideration of the game ending at a certain number of points (based on the player's chosen difficulty) rather than after a fixed number of turns I'm even more unsure.
The whole idea of players competing against each other but at different difficulty levels doesn't make a whole lot of sense anyway but it seemed from the start like one of the key choices a player had to make.
I was always concerned about the lack of interaction between players since the sport my game is based on is one in which competitors don't directly compete rather its just who does the best.
It seems to be glaringly obvious that I've thrown aside the main way in which players could interact - cooperatively. The sport itself is cooperative and it seems silly to throw that away.
This does of course mean a complete redesign of the entire game but at this point I think it's well worth pursuing as an idea....

Meh+1

I'm just looking through my email and the India one is definitely the most appealing at the moment. At about £1.50 per deck they're half the price of cartamundi. It's risk but they seem legit and when you times by 1000 copies, there's a significant difference between £3000 and £1500......

Meh

So the cartamundi quote came in and as I suspected, the confusing quote was hiding the total amount. They've come in at just under £3 per deck which is slightly better than before but still isn't rocking my world.
I'm still waiting to hear back from ludofact (in germany) who seem to be a major player and well used by gamers so hopefully they'll be competitive.
My only other options are the place in India which I'm reluctant to go with just because of geography or JKLM games who I'm reluctant to go with since they aren't an actual printer which means they're basically passing the work onto someone else and (presumably) taking a cut. Nevertheless they are the cheapest European quote so far.
I've amended the cards as per my specialist consultation and I'm hoping to play a game with Inky and Cathy tonight which will give me an idea of what a gamer and a non-gamer think of it so far.

Specialist help

Met up with "The Specialist" last night and got the points for the card game in order.
I'll put it together as soon as I can and then I can start the proper play testing :-)
I'm thinking once I've done some testing I'll get a POD copy sorted out just to do further testing with rather than using my pencil on blank cards thing.
We also came up with the idea of selling advertising space since 72 cards is the golden number for the printer. My main deck is 50 cards and the side deck is 20 cards which leaves 2 cards for adverts. Could be a good way to offset the printing costs.
I got a decent quote from cartamundi yesterday after a comedy of errors. I'm inclined to go with them due to their world wide presence - it'll make it easier to go overseas with the game. I'm waiting to hear back on an actual total price though since the quote was a little confusing.

Getting older

I certainly wouldn't say that I'm worried about my age yet but I have some concerns about some things. I'm worried about the amount of hair that seems to be growing from my ears, nose and eyebrows - regular maintenance is needed. Certainly my eyebrows grow to extreme lengths if left unchecked.
I set myself some random targets a few years ago of things I would like to do before turning 30. One of them was creating a game - at the time I was referring to a pc game that myself and Russ were making but I'd be happy to replace that idea with the one for a card game.
Another was to hold a charity auction. I'm no closer to doing that than the day I came up with the idea except that it'd probably be more of a fundraising auction for our cheerleading team now.
I have a feeling that a third idea I had was to film a cult tv quiz show but again, I'm no closer than when I came up with the idea.
It's funny how quickly life passes you by - I still have a year and a half until I turn 30 but I remember when I set those targets it seemed like I had a lifetime to sort them out. If I can get a game into print next year and maybe even sort out a fundraising auction then I'll be very happy. I guess the quiz show can wait until the year after ;-)

Follow up

Following up on my last post, an official organisation (for my market) that I contacted seem to think there's 21,000 people (at least) in the UK that I could consider to be my target market. That's a better number than I had estimated :-)
Given that the population in the US is 5 times that of the UK, even if I discount the fact that the game's theme is way more popular in the US, that gives me a US estimate of 100,000. For a sellout I'm now looking at a 0.83% hit on the estimated available market which is gooood :-)

Market

So I had a chat with a guy at work today who has set up his own business.
The main concern that has been raised is the size of my market. Basically I was looking at a guesstimate of 5000 people in the UK who would be interested in my game. Given that I only need to sell about 200 copies to break even I'm looking at needing to sell to 4% of my market.
That's all well and good (assuming I CAN sell 200 copies) as long as this is just a hobby and I'm not bothered about making a profit. Unfortunately more recently I've been thinking that this could be a career in which case I NEED to sell all 1000 copies that I get printed.
We're now at 20% of the market. It might not sound like a lot but imagine 1 in 5 friends buying the same book or cd. It wouldn't make sense since they could just lend it to each other (assuming of course that all 5 friends LIKED the book or cd).
Of course my market opens up considerably when I factor in the US. Significantly in fact. A quick facebook search finds a group with 68,000 members which is quite a nice potential market although I have no idea where these people are in the world.
If we imagine that I can market to all these people (unlikely but lets go wild) then I only need to sell to 1.5% of my market which is a much more attractive proposition. Of course there's no way I can sell direct to anyone outside of the UK which means I take a big profit cut due to the retailer.
As my friend at work pointed out, creating a mass market game has far more potential business potential. I'm talking 68,000 people but a mass market game has a market of millions. The trouble there of course is making a mass market game that is any good. The mass market is flooded with games and most of them are complete rubbish.
There is of course the chance that my game will appeal to the gaming market and/or the mass market to some degree but only research will tell me. It's really tough to do research without letting the industry know that there's a gap in the market but if I do want to make this a business then I don't see that I have much choice....

Seriously...

I'm getting pretty sick of my company now. The corporate policy regarding computer use just seems to be in place to make my job harder.
First they enforce some stupid password policy onto everyone's mobile phone, then they cut everyone off from the wireless in the office and tell them to use wired connections, now they've enforced a policy on all company phones denying the use of internet explorer.
I seriously hope this game publishing thing works out for the best otherwise I think I'll lose my mind...

More printing updates

I got in touch with a game printer in India which (assuming they're legitimate) is looking promising. With postage, it's looking like about £1.50 per deck which is better than the previous quote I had.
I've also fired off an email to a card game printer I've found in the UK so hoping they come in competitively :-)

The arrival

SO. B-Movie arrived today. I now understand the difference between a professionally made card game and a budget card game.
This is in no way a criticism. Yes the cards are of a lesser quality material and are clearly printed off center but it's still a decent quality product that allows the designer to order a small number of units without remortgaging his home first.
It's still certainly a viable option but I'm more inclined to investigate other options now. JKLM are a publisher who've mentioned that they can assist with the finances of game production on a larger scale.
The question is, can my game sell a thousand copies? I don't think there's enough of an appeal to gamers for it to sell well to them. I have a very specific target market in which I believe it will sell but the question is, how well? There's also a potential secondary market (fear the specifics) which is more mainstream but that would mean getting the game into retailers that will interact with that market.
The pricing is just silly although I'm sure it makes sense in some way or other:
3000 copies (yeah right) will cost me £1 per unit.
2000 copies will cost me £1.25 per unit.
1000 copies will cost me £2 per unit (quite a jump there).
500 copies will cost me £3.50 per unit.
That's the last reasonable cost price. When we get to 100 copies it would cost far more to make than you could sell it at. So I could potentially "just" get 500 copies which still works out far cheaper per unit than the US printer I had in mind. It would unfortunately cost me £1750. To be fair, if I'm then selling at £10 I only need to sell 175 units to break even leaving me with 325 units of pure profit (assuming I can shift them all).
Of course if I'm spending £1750 on 500 units, it almost makes sense to get 1000 copies since it's only £250 more (ie 50p per extra unit). Of course that takes the break even number to 200 units.
The good news is that with cost price going so low (ie £2 per unit) I could then reasonably afford to sell to retailers. Apparently they like to buy at 40% of RRP which would be £4 so I'd still be making £2 profit even on those sales. I would of course need to sell 500 units to break even by this method.
It's all very complicated. It's not about the profit at all but if I can print a top quality product and break even then that's better than printing a low quality product and breaking even.
More investigation needed!

Revenge of the B-Movie

My copy of revenge of the b-movie has been dispatched.
That game was printed at the same place as I'm looking at so it's a good way for me to judge the quality of what my game will look like should I choose to print it with them.

Stuff

So I guess it would be silly to pretend that there's no problems between me and Laura at the moment. I'm not going to go into details here for obvious reasons but we are talking about the most serious levels of problems whereby our future is uncertain and we're in counselling to try to sort it out.
Frustratingly there seems to be little I can do although I will continue to do everything I can :-(

Business

So the general consenus seems to be that I need to start a business. I'm arranging to speak to someone at the local branch of my bank to talk about setting up a business account and what else I'll need to do.
Seems so silly to have to go down this road but I'm determined to see this game to print and I'm also fairly determined not to break the law while doing it ;-)