The Other 9/11
September 11, 2016 11 Comments
43 years ago today, the government of Chile was overthrown by its own armed forces in a coup d’etat.
Coming soon, perhaps, to a small/ very small/ ludicrously tiny publisher, a mini-game by me on that topic, designed late last year. Samples shown.
About brtrain
brtrain 
Who is the lucky publisher? TB or Hollandspiele?
Maybe. Might be BTR Games, even, so you can have the joy of putting it together yourself for a quarter of the price.
Or, a VASSAL only option might work as well. Not sure if there is much demand for purely VASSAL games. Though, you could charge a minimum price for digital delivery only, then add on a fee if someone wishes to receive a DIY paper version in the mail.
Or, just collect old cans, as, you know, that actually works out to be more profitable, per hour.
I’m looking into Unity as a platform for supporting conventional paper games. Its so popular, overkill really, been putting it off for a while.
Yeah, my remark about aluminium cans is going to follow me for the rest of my alleged career.
If I knew more about VASSAL I might consider that, more and more people are using it for playtests but the end product is made of paper.
I’m just not sure there is sufficient demand for some of my games in any format… anyone who’s into coups would not mind the sticking and cutting business, so might as well sell a dozen of such.
Unity, huh….
hi Brian
This looks really interesting. If you put it up on BTR Games you can take my money now !!!
cheers
Roger
Chile ’73 is out now!
Well, I’ve been “Entertaining” (slowly, cautiously) the concept of porting some art I’ve done over the years to any/whatever sorta computer based framework I could master (time consuming).
Really, its just to see if I could get more “Mileage” out of the artwork I’ve done, even if the games end up playing different. Still skeptical I could break even, short of a Kickstarter miracle type phenomenon.
I’m a paper gamer myself. But, VASSALs so popular, it makes me more open-minded about computerization (and perhaps, automation of mechanics) in boardgaming.
I’d like to skip physical publishing altogether (Who wouldn’t!), and some of the stuff I do would simply work better in an “Assisted Environment” (ie: computer doing some/all of the thinking). Don’t wanna dumb it down, surplus of those mindless games. Just wanna reduce workload.
I don’t mind the complexity of wargames, a small number of us don’t, but the majority of humanity….
As for sales of esoteric wargame concepts (ie: coups in Chile decades ago): Yes, those who are sufficiently interested in the topic will make the extra effort to surmount barriers in order to get it up and running (whether it be print, mount & cut or scanning for vassalization / cyberboardzation, etc).
So, I’m not suggesting any significant increase in sales by offering additional channels for product delivery, just thinking that there is more potential to open some minds if the workload to get it set up is reduced.
Who knows, Probably all in futility.
Oh, I certainly learned that lesson when I posted the files for Ukrainian Crisis… on the first day almost 2,000 people clicked in, saw it was not a computer game, and clicked out again.
I’m a paper-game kind of guy, and probably always will be: I like getting together with real people in real time for a game that I can touch. Over time I have found a number of people who have donated their time and effort to make digital copies of my games for people without that option, in Cyberboard or VASSAL.
https://brtrain.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/play-my-games-online-sort-of/
I remember reading (somewhere, here probably) your post about significantly increased traffic to your site during the crisis, probably due mostly to the unique keywords that you used in the header (or to describe in the article) your quick design Ukraine game.
The irony there is that you received so much traffic, yet, so many companies must fight to achieve higher results in Google ad placement (SEO), often paying a lot of money to do so.
I’d be curious to know what terminology drove them to your site in such large numbers. Hmmmm….maybe your in the wrong business! Maybe you should be an SEO consultant or sumpthin…
Which leads me to the question – Were you able to tell how many complete downloads of the game actually occurred, as well as how many of the hits to the article were actually unique? (and not, for example robots or DOS idiots or other crap). Is it all data via WordPress? Or are there third party tools/sites that provide that info?
Maybe you should make a simulation about what the Kardashians are wearing, or who Taylor is crying about in a song. See if traffic increases, then capitalize on that market capture info by selling ad space to corporations.
Well, WordPress tells me a few things… the main page where the Ukrainian Crisis files are linked has been viewed a bit over 8,500 times.
https://brtrain.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/a-new-pnp-game-ukrainian-crisis/
5,000 of them were in the first 75 days or so.
So soon does the Net forget, though every day there seems to be at least a few views of the page.
Didn’t seem to be anything too unique in terms or text.
I can tell from the clicks to media files that there have probably been about 1,000 complete “sets of clicks”, implying a download of a set of map, cards, counters and rules (adding up the minimum clicks through to the least downloaded component in each year).
For some reason the cards seem to have been downloaded a lot more than the other components.
So sure, probably most of the clicks are robots.
On BGG.com only 32 people own up to having the game, including me!
8500 clicks!?!?! Wow, massive. Impressive. 1000 downloads?!?!? Again, big number, amazing.
Hmmmmmm…. This is where the concept of “Effortless Micro-Payments” comes into play. If you could charge people just a nickel, and do so in a fast and painless way to them, then,…well…you’d have a few bucks. Not alot, but, bigger companies scale that concept up and make some viable dough.
Well, if the cards were at the top of the list, then both humans and machines are more likely to select them first. Witness any post on CSW that has 3 downloads (the max number of attachments in a CSW post, it seems). The first post usually has the largest number of downloads, assuming all three attachments are similar.
Also, most people are general gamers, and when they see “Cards”, they think “a stand alone product”.
As for robots, I guess ya gotta do observation while its all happening, trace back, IP, cycles and frequency, whatever.
32 people registered ownership on BGG?!?!?! Again, big number. Amazing. I thought it was a quickly forgotten flash in the pan, but evidently not. Being a free download probably helped alot.
hmmmm….maybe you should develop it further. Deluxe version. GMT P500. Lotta wood cubes.
And cards. Lots and lots of cards.