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This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
Wits & Wagers made the list! It's 80% down the chart on the right hand side.
In other news, Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: the Next Generation) posted a picture of a Say Anything game that he was playing! Someone sent me the link last night.
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
I was recently informed that two of our games are nominated for an award on About.com. Say Anything Family Edition was nominated for Best Family Game of 2011, and Crappy Birthday was nominated for Best Party Game of 2011. This is an award where the people get to vote. This means YOU! (yes, you are the people)
The Prizes: If Say Anything Family wins, I will send a case of Say Anything Family (4 games) to a random person who thumbed this entry. If Crappy Birthday wins, I will send a case of Crappy Birthday (6 games) to a random person who thumbs this entry.
Here is the weird part... you can vote every day! Yes, you heard me, you can vote once a day. Does it make any sense? No, but those are the rules. So feel free to vote for your favorite game every day until the contest ends on March 21st. You don't have to vote for one of our games, but you should get involved. About.com reaches a large audience, and it would be nice to have the BGG represented in the games that win. There are 11 awards in total including one for Best Strategy Game where A Few Acres of Snow is going head to head with Dragon Valley, Eminent Domain, and Mage Knight: Board Game. Here is a list of all 11 of the Reader's Choice Awards for board games.
Eric Arneson runs the board game section of the About.com website and he deserves a shout out.
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
We're hosting an iPad contest to celebrate getting Say Anything into Target and Toys-R-Us this year. Woot!! Just go to the North Star Games Facebook page and play a sample round of Say Anything. It only takes 30 seconds to click on your favorite answer!! Here is the question and the answers to choose from:
What would be the coolest technology to exist? 1: A car that turns your traffic lights green 2: Animal Translator 3: Cheap, green energy source 4: A robot masseuse that also serves drinks 5: Something that could defeat Chuck Norris 6: Invisibility Cloak
After playing, we would greatly appreciate it if you invited some friends to play. We want this to go as viral as possible, lest Say Anything gets dropped from Target and Toys-R-Us, and millions of families never get the chance to play the 2008 BGG Party Game of the Year (that would be a travesty). To help it along, if one of your friends wins, we'll also send YOU a free copy of any one of our games!
Note: You need to like our Facebook page to play, because we need to keep track of the participants in order to contact the winner. Disclaimer: If two or more people claim to have invited the same friend, we'll go with the first person to have posted it on their Facebook page. Probably. Or if it is only two people, we might just send you both a game!
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
Wits & Wagers goes Gold!!!
About 6 months ago, we contacted the Totally Rad Show to see if they would review Wits & Wagers. We thought it would be a nice way to commemorate the fact that Wits & Wagers would go gold sometime over the 2011 holiday season. They wanted to play the game before committing, so we sent them a copy. We didn't hear back from them for 3 or 4 months, so I thought they had dropped the idea. I was wrong! Here is my favorite quote from the show:
"I think it is the best party game ever made." - Jeff Cannata
My favorite part of the review is how they dive into several different aspects of the game that are fun. It is very similar to the way I think about Wits & Wagers as I try to figure out how to streamline the rules for television and future editions of the game. My goal is to maintain all of the aspects of "fun", while decreasing the learning curve and the cost of the components (more about that later with an update about Wits & Wagers Party). They also like the game best in teams, which is exactly how I feel about it.
To celebrate selling our 500,000 copy, we will be giving away a free copy of the game every day this month. Watch the show to get the details, or go to the YouTube page and post a comment starting with "#WWC". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCFXy3Jv7Ow&feature=player_em...
Thanks to everyone at the BGG for helping Wits & Wagers go gold. We could have never done it without your help!
Please share this link on Facebook. We want to give this video as much visibility as possible.
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
I was asked to speak about board games at a TEDx event in Washington DC last week. The over-arching topic of the event was Reinventing, so my talk examines two transformations that are currently shaping our industry.
I felt out of my league by some of the other speakers, and was very nervous before the talk, so I was waiting to receive a copy of the video to see if I wanted to distribute it to friends. But my dad found it on YouTube yesterday, and I was pleasantly surprised by how I came across. It could have been better, but even so, my Dad said he was so proud "his buttons were popping out of his shirt." That made me laugh.
I'd love to hear your comments. I made up most of everything I said, so feel free to let me know that I'm full of it. I'd love to hear other people's opinions about this stuff.
While searching for the video, I noticed another short clip that people might enjoy. It is about the role the Cupid Cup played in our company's development.
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
Happy Crappy Birthday Variant Our graphic designer, Jacoby O'Connor, created a variant that we like so much, we're considering changing the rules for the next print run. I just posted them under the Crappy Birthday rules variants.
Quite honestly, it took me by surprise at how much fun I had with these rules. I've seen all the cards a 100 times and talked about the merits of each one and the exact wording for over a year including ... blah blah blah. I've played the game to death over the past year as we've tried to figure out the best version and what makes a good card. But playing with these new rules (even with the same old people) somehow brought the game back to life. After the first game, my wife asked if we could play again, which was surprising since A) she is not much of a gamer, and B) she played this game a lot when we were testing the cards. When the second game ended, I was having so much fun that I wanted to keep playing.
We're going to continue testing with both rule sets for the next 6 months before we decide what to do, but for now, my sense is that we will change to the new rules for the next print run.
An Actual Crappy Birthday Party My son Daniel had his first birthday party over Labor Day weekend, so I decided to test out Crappy Birthday in exactly the way it was intended (given as a gift and played at the party it is brought to). This is a report of the occasion:
Crappy Birthday was among the other gifts that Daniel received. To my dismay, the packaging failed at being noticed. In fact, Daniel passed it up repeatedly for other gifts even though I put it as close to him as possible.
This demonstrates a flaw in the packaging design. When I finally got him to sit down and play the game, it was obvious that he did not grasp some the rules. For instance, he like to reveal the cards to everyone before he played them.
This demonstrates that the game is too complicated, or that the rules were not clearly written. We finally got him to understand that the cards are to be played secretly...
... when we ran into another problem. Daniel thought it was MORE fun to eat the cards than play them:
I looked through the rules, and sure enough, nothing addressed this problem! Daniel thinks it is a glaring omission, and I have to admit that I'm not sure how to counter that argument.
With all of this negative feedback, I was expecting Daniel to give Crappy Birthday a bad rating...
... but I was pleasantly surprised. Daniel says he had a wonderful time playing and he recommends it to anyone over the age of 11 months.
Daniel's Rating:
He also wants me to let everyone know that Crappy Birthday will be available at Barnes & Noble starting next week. Cheers!
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
Crappy Birthday was a big hit at GenCon this year. We ended up selling out of all 200 copies, which is better than we've done with any of our games in the past! It was designed to be like eye candy (so it could be opened up as a gift at a party and immediately enjoyed), and it looks like me may have succeeded with that goal. Here are some pictures of our booth:
SETUP:
DURING THE SHOW:
SETUP:
DURING THE SHOW:
I'm also happy to announce that Crappy Birthday will be at Barnes & Noble starting in September. We just heard the good news last week.
This is our first game where we think the packaging might be able to sell the game. This is different from all of our previous games, where we had to build up word of mouth sales before being able to go into any national stores. So this is a pretty exciting experiment for us. We have no idea if the name and packaging will be able to sell the game off of the shelf, or if it will be a total flop (like most games that go national before they have built up a grassroots following). Wish us luck!
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
We are going to release Wits & Wagers Party in 2012 as a Wal-Mart exclusive. Right now we are working on the art, compiling questions, and choosing between three possible rule sets. It is VERY important that we nail the rule set, because I will be pitching a Wits & Wagers television game show concept based upon the rules that we choose for Wits & Wagers Party. We need these rules to be stupid intuitive, and the game play to be as exciting as possible.
The problem is that we want to test these options with people who have never played Wits & Wagers, and the friends of everyone we know have already played the game. In fact, the friends of the friends of all of the people we know have probably already been sucked into the testing of either W&W, W&W 2nd Edition, or W&W Family. This makes it very difficult for us to get fresh, unbiased opinions.
This is where you might be able to help out...
We are looking for 5 people who can put together 4 or 5 playtests with people who have never played Wits & Wagers. These testers need to be non-gamers, so I'm thinking people with strong ties at a church, or a high school, or some other community center would be good candidates.
We're only looking for people who can make a serious time commitment, and we need the testing to start as soon as possible. Did I mention that there is no compensation for this position? We need people who want to do this because it is going to be fun. We will send you a pre-release copy of the game before it comes out, but please don't respond if that is the reason you are interested in helping out. We might also credit you in the rules, but only if you go above and beyond the call of duty. Again, please don't respond if that's what you're interested in. We only want people doing this if it is going to be fun for them.
I'll be off-line most of the day today, so I will get back to volunteers tommorrow or next week. Cheers!
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
Free Games We will be running a weekly Say Anything contest throughout the summer on our Facebook page. The answer with the most thumbs each week will get a free game. This week's question:
"If I were an ant at a picnic, what would I say?"
Toys-R-Us We just got our first order from Toys-R-Us! If everything goes as planned, Wits & Wagers and Say Anything will be at Toys-R-Us for the holidays. This alone will increase our sales by nearly 50% for the year. Wish us luck. It's hard to get a second chance with these guys.
New Hires We just hired two new people! This means 7 people come to my basement each day to work. (It also means that I need to start looking for a new office space.)
Nicole Ross is our new bookkeeper. She also does order-entry and inventory management. She is cool as pie. (and 3.14 times more efficient than the person she replaced)
Always the jokester, Nicole told me to take another picture so she could pretend to be working.
Like I said... always the jokester and cool as pie.
Ilham is the first person at our company dedicated to sales. I wish we had hired her sooner.
Ilham is very organized. Thank god! Our office is in dire need of some organization.
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
Crappy Birthday is a party game where you prank your friends with crappy gifts. After six months of delays (don't get me started about the hassles of licensing photographs), we have finally sent it to the printers. It is officially scheduled for release on August 1st!!
I am very happy with the final product. Here are a few of the gifts that made the final cut:
There are more cards posted on the Crappy Birthday page, but more importantly, I want to highlight some of the fun Easter eggs we were able to put into this game:
This picture was taken at the 50th birthday party of a BGG user named Tony Allen (tada). Both Scott Alden and I attended the disco themed event. I posted some pictures of the event on Tony's geeklist about it. That's Tony on the left, and let me tell you something, that guy knows how to disco! He used to go dancing "every night" when he was younger and it shows.
We took a bunch of pictures from around the office (AKA my house). We tried to sneak the Crappy Birthday box into most of them. This is a picture of Satish Pillalamarri, one of the co-presidents of North Star Games. I gave him a Snuggie as a joke for Christmas, but he wears it around the office quite frequently. (You can tell he likes it - just look at his face!)
This picture was taken in the kitchen directly behind the couch where Satish modeled for the Snuggie picture. Who would want to play with this bunch of geeks all night long? Definitely a crappy gift!
Andrew Chen used to be our trusty intern but I'm happy to say that he is now a part of the full-time team! He has taken over all customer support issues, so you might run into him on the BGG. You'll notice that this picture was taken on the same day as the one above by Andrew's clothes. The check is a $2,000 People's Choice prize that we won at a local business plan competition. I'm not surprised "the people" chose a board game company over the fridge rental company.
There are several other gifts that we created from around the office, but I don't have them in JPGs right now. One of them is of my wife's penguin collection (don't ask). You can find these office gifts by looking at the photo credits. Anything that we took ourselves is credited as NSG something or other (although the pictures were actually taken by Amber Cook).
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
