Archive for Greg Lam
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Greg Lam
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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It's not my day job, but I run a game publishing company. Pair-of-Dice Games was started in 2001 by me and a couple of my friends. My friends moved on after a few years while I kept the business going, and in the ten years I've been running Pair-of-Dice, I've self-published 12 games that run the gamut from simple abstract games (Knockabout, Warp 6) to a dexterity game involving chopsticks (Chopstick Dexterity MegaChallenge 3000) to a Euro game with the game board housed in a restaurant's menu cover (Restaurant Row).
The common thread between all of these games is that I make them by myself. When someone orders a game, I go into the Ikea storage bench which houses most of my game bits and dig out the right combination of dice, dyed wooden bits, screenprinted handkerchiefs, bowls, sauce dishes, and eating utensils that comprise one of the seven games that I currently offer.
Every once in a while, I realize that I'm running low on restaurant menu covers (which I order from a restaurant supply company), little wooden stars and spools (which I order from a company in Maine), or plastic bowls and sauce dishes (Dollar Store and Super 88 Asian Grocery store, respectively) and have to get more. How many games I sell is pretty much directly proportional to the effort I put into promoting them. Have I sent reviewers, podcasters and other board game cognoscenti review copies? Should I go to this or that convention to do game demos? Orders trickle in by ones and twos off my web site, or by one or two dozen if Boards and Bits or FunAgain calls. It's not the most efficient way to build a brand, I know, but it's one that lets me concentrate on the part of game design that I enjoy most: Making new games.
Chopstick Dexterity MegaChallenge 3000 – game pieces drying after being dyed
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Chopstick Dexterity MegaChallenge 3000 – game pieces drying after being dyed
