I gave a presentation of Virtue Cards today to a local store owner about potentially carrying copies in his store.
The meeting went really well, and the store owner was gracious and helpful, but at some point he had to address a glaring fact that would prevent him from carrying it:
Virtue Cards is a “religious game” (his words, not mine).
In several conversations now, there has been an unspoken/implied indication that if I were to make the game “less religious”, there might be a broader market.
No doubt this is the case…but this is not something I am willing to compromise on. The premise and the entire system rely on a Christian world-view, indeed Christ is the very center of the entire enterprise.
If this principle prevents sales….so be it.
I figured going in that promoting the game was going to be the hardest part...and boy was I right.
I am not a huge fan of self-promotion to begin with, and definitely not given to hitting my friends with requests for money,etc. But, the quickest and most effective way to start to get some exposure is to ask them to spread the word.
I'm using Facebook and email to friends and acquaintances as my primary means of advertising.
Also sending emails to various sites/blogs that I think may be interested in posting a link back.
It seemed to me that a promotional video clip on the IndieGoGo site was a pretty important part of promoting the game....so I've spent a few days making a PowerPoint, converting it to video, capturing some footage of my boys playing with the prototype cards, and putting everything together in a nice (short) clip.
Strangely, the hardest part was getting the audio right...which I never did. Lots of hiss on the line....oh well.
Check it out here:
Well, I'm getting a little traction with the indiegogo site. Just friends and family so far. I'll be cranking up the promotion machine here in a couple of days. I am fighting the urge to be uptight about this process....I really want to have a story to tell when it is all over. (hopefully a good story!)
After getting everything uploaded I decided to make a few more tweaks.
I figured out that TCG (now no longer affiliated with Superior POD) prints in sheets of 16. So with only 52 cards in the deck, I had 12 cards to play with. I decided to create some "support" cards that may come in handy for game design.
Also, changed the background image, fixed the game cover image, and updated the rules.
Finally, I decided to go ahead and publish the current version...more as a motivator than anything else.
Putting in my order today...
Wow, another month has gone by...(!)
The "plain generic" version of the Virtue Cards deck is complete, uploaded, and ready to be ordered. The Game Crafter's recently moved their facility, so they are back-ordered. I'll probably have to wait a couple of weeks to get the order.
Assuming the quality is good, I'll place a few more orders to have some play-test sets.
Must - keep - moving - forward......
It's been a little over a month since the last blog post. In that time I've changed jobs (my "real" job as a software engineer), but I've also continued to work on Virtue Cards in my spare time.
Based on some of the issues I was having with card quality, and the fact that adding heraldic images to the cards was taking up most of the design time...I decided to produce a deck of "generic" versions of the cards.
This will give me a good baseline to use for playtesting. I can always work on the themes later.
I have finally a full set of cards!
Tavis over at TGC has been really helpful trying to help me diagnose the problem with the prototype cards I received from them...but I'm still not sure we've got an answer.
He's saying it is image quality issues but I'm not convinced.
I've been thinking about the artistic style of the cards and have decided that for the prototype/play test versions, it might be better to go with a more plain style anyway. Really, I envision the cards ultimately being produced in many different styles...so for this first run I could go with a plain vanilla version.
Hopefully, cutting down on the image complexity will help me figure out if it really is an image quality issue.
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