New Halloween Warmonger Robots – Free Download

To go along with the new Warmonger Halloween Limited Edition on Kickstarter, I’ve made 4 new Robots. You can download them for free as a pdf right now!

Halloween 2018 Robots:
The Black Cat, The Witch Queen, The Zombie Nation, and The Suits

And be sure to check out the Warmonger Halloween Kickstarter campaign to get your own copy of Warmonger (in original Pack-of-Death Edition, USA Edition, or Halloween Edition).

Exploding Ideas

January 20, 2015 — 9:13pm my friend Adam Post messaged me “guys did a million in 7 hours” and a link to the Exploding Kittens Kickstarter.

Note that Exploding Kittens was produced by The Oatmeal and thus started off with what Gary Halbert would call a “starving crowd” of fans looking to buy something. Hence the spectacular results.

Exploding Kittens -- Kicktraq Mini

That set me down a path of researching what it costs to print a deck of cards which led to the discovery that the print minimums on playing cards are relatively low and that some card printers will even print a single deck of cards — a QTYONE advantage.

Since that message, I’ve been thinking about game design and marketing and publishing. Putting things together.

Dysfunctional Families is now on Kickstarter and just about to hit $1000 in funding. Not 8 million dollars, but it is a start.

There’s plenty more to come — and I’ll be documenting it all here on igpay.com so that whatever I’ve learned in the process can help others do the same.

Dysfunctional Families Card Game - You'll Say Funny Things! -- Kicktraq Mini

DO NOT SCATTER YOUR POWERS

Engage in one kind of business only, and stick to it faithfully until you succeed, or until your experience shows that you should abandon it. A constant hammering on one nail will generally drive it home at last, so that it can be clinched. When a man’s undivided attention is centered on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a dozen different subjects at once. Many a fortune has slipped through a man’s fingers because he was engaged in too many occupations at a time. There is good sense in the old caution against having too many irons in the fire at once.

from
THE ART OF MONEY GETTING
or
GOLDEN RULES FOR MAKING MONEY

By P.T. Barnum

THE ART OF MONEY GETTING by P.T. Barnum online text

Happy Friday the 13th!

Hi! Things are going great here and I want to wish you a happy (and safe) Friday the 13th!

I’ve got a new ad spot video for Dysfunctional Families – just under 1 minute 30 seconds. Please check it out and share it around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQE8XAwAhHo

—> SHARE THE VIDEO ON FACEBOOK

–> SHARE THE VIDEO ON TWITTER

We’re almost at $900 — which is amazing!
Thank you so much for making this possible.

I think that at $1000 I’m going to have to come up with something special to celebrate!

Talk to you more on Monday! Have a great weekend!

– Eric

This post originally appeared as a Dysfunctional Families backer update here.

Small Tweaks Improve The Game Even More!

Dysfunctional Families Kickstarter Campaign – Part 3

Yes! Dysfunctional Families is currently 5861% funded!

I just wanted to say Hi to you and thank you for being a part of the Dysfunctional Families success story!

One of the great things about running a Kickstarter is getting feedback on the prototypes of the game and thus being able to make an even better game.

My friends Wayne and Ruth playtested Dysfunctional Families with their family, and Ruth came up with a good suggestion to improve the game.

Read more

Is the funding goal really only $13? (Dysfunctional Families Kickstarter)

Dysfunctional Families Kickstarter Campaign – Part 2

I received an excellent question from a backer and I am posting the answer as a backer update and also posting it here on the blog.

Is the funding goal really only $13?

Yes, the funding goal this time is $13. This is for 2 reasons:

1. For publicity.
2. Because it IS technically possible.

Read more

Kickstarter – What happens when you press the “Continue to launch” BIG GREEN BUTTON?

Dysfunctional Families Kickstarter Campaign – Part 1

Ever wonder what happens when you go to launch a Kickstarter campaign?

I wondered. I couldn’t find any information about it.

So this is what I found happens:

First you submit your project for approval. Depending on some mysterious formula, it will either take a few days for a human to review it or the website will instantly approve your project. In my case, I got instant approval and was presented with the “Continue to launch” BIG GREEN BUTTON.

Ah… but what happens when you press the BIG GREEN BUTTON ?

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QTYONE Business Plan for the Dysfunctional Families Kickstarter Relaunch – Part 1

Between my first attempt to launch Dysfunctional Families on Kickstarter and now, there has been an exciting new advancement in card game printing. DriveThruCards has started offering tuckboxes on single orders of a deck of cards. They are now my #1 choice for Quantity One (the ability to produce ONE end product for a customer) card game production.

This post will describe how I set up Dysfunctional Families as a QTYONE project and will fill in some broad strokes of what would be success levels beyond the minimum and how the project can scale up to a traditional publishing model if it sufficiently successful.

Feel free to use this as a model for setting up your own card game projects and to ask questions below.

Read more

MakePlayingCards is Creating a QTYONE Marketplace

MakePlayingCards.com (MPC) just announced that they will be offering a marketplace so that card creators can sell their creations directly with no upfront fees. This means creators can use them as a QTYONE storefront.

My first printed demo decks of Dysfunctional Families were printed with MPC and I found their printing to be extremely high quality. Very slick and they feel very good to shuffle. For me, it was right up there with buying a “real” deck of cards that was printed in volume. The turnaround time from MPC is also very fast — as it should be from a POD printer.

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My Favorite Improv Game: Because I Said So!

Improv (as I’ve learned it) is taught by learning various games, where each game develops a certain skill. Eventually one builds a repertoire of skills and is able to combine a bunch of them and so some impressive stuff.

However, some games I find to be a ton of fun just on their own. (Which is probably because I’m naturally best at them.)

What I also like about the “Because I said so!” game is that if someone asks you about improv, it’s fairly easy to explain the game to them and get them up and running DOING some improv so that they can get a feel for it.

So here’s my understanding/explanation of the improv game “Because I said so!”

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Improv in Dysfunctional Families

I’ve written about the importance of improv in daily life.

The way one gets better at improv and having an “improv outlook” to life is to practice it in various ways throughout the day.

Which leads to the design of my first game, Dysfunctional Families.

I got tired of card games where the only funny things said were things
pre-written on the cards. So I created Dysfunctional Families.
— Eric Shefferman

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