Over in another thread, Neil said...

The question is, are these true sales or are they expected networking dividends? Are they one and the same? In terms of your games success does selling a copy to a member of CE 'count' with the same sales weight as selling one through IPR to someone you have had little or no contact with?

...which I have opinions about.

Yes, they're true sales. In fact, all of the following are true sales:

• Books you sell to people in your game group
• Books you sell to people you know

We all do it.

We all go searching on Google for mentions of our games on fora and so forth. Not only does it allow us to see what people are saying about our games, it also allows us to contact those people, give them help, feedback or simply offer thanks for purchasing and playing the game.

This is where Google Blog Alerts come in. You may already be familiar with them. You may already be using them. If not, you should be. It's an immensely useful tool for talking directly to people who are playing and purchasing you game.

Unfortunately I have had to start thinking about the money side of games design again. When choosing a price point for B-movie I wanted it to be affordable whilst still giving me enough profit to invest back into the business and break even without too much sweat.

So the price point is ...drum roll.....£8. Does that seem ok for a 63 card game?

I think in the states I will go for $15 dollars or so but will consult with Ryan, of GOB, on that front as well. I will not be selling in the states till the second print run.

Cheers

Iain

Hi guys,

As you can see from my other recent post, I will soon have a card game in my hands. I am just doing some blab for the back of the box and was wondering what you thought of these two attempts:

1)"Welcome to the fast paced world of B-Movies where ridiculous names and outrageous concepts are the order of the day. Put on your director's cap and try and come up with the most ridiculous movies you can think of, and make a bucket load of money in the process. Just remember to 'suggest' all the bad ideas to your rivals.

Paul recently got in touch to ask if I had a tagline for Hot War. Which made me think: No, I don't have one. Rattling my brain around, I've been struggling to come up with it. Cold City was pretty easy:

"Hidden agendas, trust and monster hunting in 1950 Berlin"

Simple, says exactly what the game is about.

So what is Hot War about?

Factionalism, trust, rebuilding, fear, xenophobia, monsters, cruelty, friendship, agendas and so on. Distilling this down isn't as easy as I imagined, as the game is, in many ways, a lot more broad than CC. My first thought was this:

recently, I've been experimenting with the various forms of paid-for advertising offered by the PDF sales sites that CGS products are on. Normally, I'm one ot shy away from paid for advertising (years of shelling out big bucks for the stuff in the real world of marketing has made me very dubious about the value it offers). However, front page Mention of the Day (MOTD) advertising on RPGnow is cheap enough to make the experiment affordable.