Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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Well, it's Thursday night, and tomorrow morning Michael and I get back on a plane bound for Tucson. Now that we've about wrapped up our adventure here in Atlanta I thought I'd share some of our experience with you, our faithful followers!
Sunday morning we set out on our adventure, driving up to Phoenix and arriving with perfect timing to grab lunch at the gate before boarding our plane. The trip went well, and before we knew it we were in Georgia! We'd planned on checking out Towers Games where I'd heard they have game nights til midnight on Sundays, but when I called they said it had wound down already and everyone was leaving. Instead, Michael and I played Jab, Thunderstone, and Fermat (which is like Set with math) at the hotel.
Monday morning on the way to the warehouse we went to ANOTHER warehouse to pick up some desiccants - silica packs intended to soak up moisture in the games to keep them from arriving "damp" and potentially molding. That would be awful! We arrived at the warehouse just as our hosts at PSI arrived, and we met Fred, Dean, Alex, Mike, and some of the other people who make things happen over there. they showed us around the warehouse and told us a little more about the process - how games are ordered, processed, and then shipped. I found that all very interesting.
Finally, they got us set up in a corner of the 50k sf warehouse (pretty big!) to work on our games. We brought over some palates of cases of games - 4000 games is a lot! - and started opening them up. Just looking at the tower of games on the 2 palates we brought over was very daunting, and knowing there were 8 more just like them - we thought it best not to think about that...
After lunch we got a temp to help us with the project. Her name was Toni, and she did a wonderful job all week opening boxes of Homesteaders, making sure all the bits were there, and adding a desiccant to each box. Next, the boxes moved down the line to me or Mike, where we removed the punchboards from a large baggie they were packaged in, checked to make sure the correct 8 boards were present, and remove any boards that were severely mis-cut, misaligned, or damaged. We were disappointed at the error rate in the Homesteaders boxes - probably 10-15% of the boxes had a collation error (doubles of one punchboard and missing another, or simply missing one or containing an extra). If you add to that boxes which had bits mis-collated as well, and also damaged or miscut, we're probably talking 25-30% of the print run was unacceptable. We worked to fix errors as best we could by cannibalizing some games to fix errors in others.
Tuesday we had 2 more temps in addition to Toni. Tamica (sp?) spent the day opening, checking bits for and adding desiccants to Terra Prime boxes while the rest of us continued to work on Terra Prime. I did not catch the name of the other temp.
Tuesday afternoon I signed about 90 copies for Terra Prime for pre-orders. It was pretty neat seeing boxes and boxes of my game piled on the table, and even neater signing them! My silver sharpie started to give out though, and I'd left the other one at the hotel, so I signed some more Wednesday morning. In all I signed about 180 copies or so!
We were finding that the error rate on Terra Prime was much lower than on Homesteaders - maybe 5% or so. Half of those errors were that the game was missing dice - had they gone out that way at least people would be able to play, substituting their own d6's! With that in mind, and knowing we needed to get through all of the Homesteaders boxes, we stopped opening Terra Prime and concentrated on Homesteaders. In the end we barely finished with Homesteaders, but the PSI people should be opening the rest of the Terra Prime boxes, removing the bag around the punchboards, and adding desiccants for us before they're shipped out to stores.
Tuesday night we borrowed a copy of Castle Panic from Dean and Mike and I played it once. Mike didn't like it too much (I didn't either really, but would have liked to play it again before making up my mind). We kinda thought the system was too easy, but maybe that's because we weren't being "greedy" enough... Mike was being more greedy than I was, but in the end I was crowned Master Slayer (or whatever it's called). I kept wondering why cards aren't kept secret in hand.
Wednesday we had a nice surprise - we got a call from an Atlanta gamer who offered to help us out! So in exchange for a copy of each game, Jay spent a grueling day in the warehouse with us, going through Homesteaders boxes and helping Mike pack pre-order boxes. About 1/2 of the pre-orders went out on Wednesday via FedEx, and the rest went out today (with the exception of foreign pre-orders I believe, because I don't think they'll be using FedEx). We're bringing a few home with us to give to Tucson people directly to save on shipping - we';ll contact you about delivering your games in the next couple of days.
At lunch on Wednesday Jay and I played a couple little games that were sitting on the conference room table. One was called Poo, and was about monkeys flinging poo at each other! As expected, the novelty of the game was better than the game itself, but the art was real nice. We then tried Staccabees, which is, of all things, a Dreidle variant! There are cube pieces of 3 sizes, small, medium, and large. Each player starts with 3 of each, and on your turn you spin the Dreidle - on a Gimmel you choose 1 TYPE of cube, and place ALL of that type on the "stack" in the center of the table, one at a time. If you knock the stack over, then you have to take all of the cubes in it. On a Hey, you choose a type and place 1/2 of the cubes of that type (round up) on the stack. On a Shin, you have to take the top piece on the stack and add it to your supply. On a Nun you do nothing. the winner is the first player to get rid of all their pieces. As a Dreidle variant this is pretty interesting, but in reality it's pretty easy to balance the cubes on top of each other. Play this with Bausack pieces or something and use colors instead of sizes and it could be pretty good!
On Wednesday night, Towers Games had arranged a Demo Night for us, inviting people to come meet us and play our games. 9 or 10 people were there, and we taught both Homesteaders and Terra Prime, as well as our big 2010 release, Belfort. Everybody loved all the games, which reminded us why we're doing this in the first place! 2 people bought a copy of Terra Prime, and asked me to not only sign it, but pose for a picture with it! That was fun  I hope to see those pictures on BGG soon!
After those games we also played our other 2010 hit (and it WILL be a hit) Train of Thought, which was well liked by everyone as well. Finally, we pulled out a game which is either being self published by the designer, or possibly published by us, Jab. That went over well also, all in all a great night of gaming with some neat people who liked our games and will hopefully be watching for the pre-order specials for our 2010 lineup!
Back at the hotel after game night, I still had some "homework" to do - I had brought home some Homesteaders boxes to work on before going to bed. At 3:30 in the morning I jumped in the hot tub (as I did each night before going to bed), which was very relaxing!
Thursday was rough. 4th day in a row of going through box after box after box. We didn't have Toni that day, but Tamica was a champ - she helped us get through it all - for a while I didn't think we were going to make it! 4 days in a row of doing the same thing over and over again isn't very fun, and finding error after error was pretty disheartening, but in the end I feel like we persevered. There are now some umber of Homesteaders games at the warehouse, ready to ship to distributors, and we know that at the very least (alignment issues aside) they have all the right pieces so the game is playable.
As I understand it, the games will ship out to distributors who've ordered them in the first 2 weeks of January, so if you want your retailer to carry our games, tell them to ask their distributor for them now!
Mike and I finished off the week with 2 games of Bananagrams and a nice soak in the hot tub, and now I'm finishing off this post (at 1:15am) so I can get to sleep - got to wake up at 6:30 to drop the last of the 'homework' off at the warehouse on the way to the airport!
For anyone who's read all this, thanks for your support! If you've ordered games, then they're on their way! We also sent some copies to various reviewers such as Scott Nicholson of Board Games With Scott, Shannon Applecline at BoardGameNews, Nick Cassidy at 2d6.org, and Eric Burgess of Boardgame Babylon (though not really for review purposes on that one - though you're welcome to review it if you like, Eric!) - and maybe others - so hopefully those reviewers will like the games and post a review to let people know what the games are all about. If they do, I'm sure Mike and I will post about it all over and michaelmindes.com and BGG.
- Seth
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Rob Bartel
Canada
Edmonton
Alberta
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Thanks for taking the time to tackle the problem head on, Seth, and keep faulty games out of the retail chain. With an error rate that high, I assume you'll be changing manufacturers for 2010? No doubt that will make for an interesting blog post at some point.
Anyhow, I'm glad to hear that more and more people are enjoying JAB: Realtime Boxing. I'm definitely looking forward to its release.
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WAN CHIU
United States
SUNNYVALE
94089
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Great writeup. Can someone point me to the backstory behind this trip? Thanks.
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Sheamus Parkes
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
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chooche wrote: Great writeup. Can someone point me to the backstory behind this trip? Thanks.
You can find much of the back story over on Michael Mindes blog:
http://michaelmindes.com/
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Red Rook
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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I'm glad that worked out, thanks for the updates. Hopefully your next games won't run into these issues.
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Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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... CONTINUED...
This morning we managed to miss our plane (my fault!) so we spent the day at PSI's warehouse again - but this time we weren't buried in work! Instead we talked to the PSI guys, showed them Train of Thought, and played a few games... Staccabees, Poo: The Card Game, JAB: Realtime Boxing, Such a Thing?, and Ground Floor. We also talked with Fred about packaging for Train of Thought, as it looks like there's a good chance it could be carried by Barnes and Noble! That would be awesome.
We did eventually make it to the airport, I'm sitting at our gate getting ready to board as I type this. It's been a long week... an interesting and educational week, but also a long, tedious week. I see that people are starting to receive their orders which we just sent out yesterday and Wednesday! If you have pre-ordered the game (and you're in the US), you can probably expect to get it any minute now!
There's our boarding call... I hope everyone enjoys their games! And please bear with us if there are small errors!
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Michael Mindes
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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sedjtroll wrote: ... CONTINUED...
There's our boarding call... I hope everyone enjoys their games! And please bear with us if there are small errors!
Woo HOO, In 6 hours I get to see all of my sleeping family...
Plenty of blog posts to come in the future, although it may be awhile before I can post them.
Michael
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Alan
United States
Lawrenceville
Georgia
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Hey Seth,
It was a pleasure meeting you and Michael at Tower. Im glad I purchased Terra Prime and cant wait to play it again. Ill look into posting the picture we took with you, onto the site. Hope you got home safe.
I look forward to trying JAB, it looked like a lot of fun.
Thanks,
happyabg
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Kurt R
United States
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
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What a tale... I'm happy to report that my copy showed up in good condition, with no smell whatsoever. I haven't punched things yet, but so far things appear to be perfectly acceptable.
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Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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enzo622 wrote: What a tale... I'm happy to report that my copy showed up in good condition, with no smell whatsoever. I haven't punched things yet, but so far things appear to be perfectly acceptable.
What a relief to hear that!
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Michael Mindes
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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DrMayhem wrote: sedjtroll wrote: ... CONTINUED...
There's our boarding call... I hope everyone enjoys their games! And please bear with us if there are small errors! Woo HOO, In 6 hours I get to see all of my sleeping family... Plenty of blog posts to come in the future, although it may be awhile before I can post them. Michael
Here is the first blog post: http://michaelmindes.com/week-psi-warehouse
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Jim Brown
United States
Edgewood
Maryland
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I finally received my preordered games, late January. I can't find the signatures, but am otherwise pleased. The backs of some of the LPs in Terra Prime tore, because of the moisture, but otherwise, all seems well.
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Peaceful Gamin'
Canada
Vancouver
BC
It was solitaire with cool cards. Zero interaction
Looking for a playtester/editor/translator for your cool new game? Contact us, we're free (but we ask to be mentioned in the acknowledgements, and a copy of the game would be a nice gesture, but not necessary).
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were they printed there or overseas?
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Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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salish99 wrote: were they printed there or overseas?
They were printed in china, by a company called Xinghui.
The worst part about the production issues is that we did some research - the last game that company had produced (Galaxy's Edge) did not suffer from such problems, and it had similar components. We even ordered a copy, and it did not come with any moisture in the box, or misprinted punchboards, or anything.
I feel like we did our due diligence, and then we got screwed 
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Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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Michael posted some pictures from our trip to PSI's warehouse - if you're his FaceBook friend you can check them out! Not sure if you can see them if you're not his friend...
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Michael Mindes
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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sedjtroll wrote:
I actually posted them quite awhile ago, but somehow they are just getting noticed now...
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