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Hi,

I got my card game I made by thegamecrafter.com yesterday. I made a box and used poker cards. The cards feel good, the print is nice and centered. The box is nice too but the colors are much darker as the png I made. The green and the blue are too dark, the red color is better. The yellow I used is exactly what I wanted and on the back of the box there is a photo which is good.

Had some good tests of my wizard dueling game Order of the Wand at Protospiel. Many small issues where pointed out that I had not noticed and we ripped into the turn tracking mechanism too. There are several issues including clarity of the rules but most are mechanical. Major changes are needed to smooth out and shorten play time.

Now I have a laundry list of suggestions to consider before I rewrite the rules and change the components. Best of all the testers liked the main mechanic, using wands to cast the spells, which is the one thing I don’t want change.

Of course, given the trends in publishing it would be very wise not to start a print magazine. Game Developer Magazine, a venerable print magazine for videogame professionals published by the same company that owns the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and Gamasutra.com, recently closed down. It was always profitable but not sufficiently so to keep it alive in the current climate. The World Wide Web is effectively a competitor with magazines, and I’ve seen in the video game fan magazines how competition from websites has changed the nature of Gameinformer and PC Gamer. The reviews always appear much later than the reviews on the web, so both magazines now devote a large fraction of their now-thin printed form to extensive previews of unpublished games. Print magazines are not sufficiently immediate for the Age of Instant Gratification.

But if you’re going to start one, and you want the largest possible pool of contributors, then your writers’ guidelines should not omit some of the things I’ve just seen omitted from a recently started print game magazine’s guidelines.

I just had two games released from their contracts because the publisher has changed their focus and is not going to make games. Not the first time I have gotten close to have it fall through and probably not the last.

Anyone know of a publisher of children’s games other than Haba that I might submit them too? One is for 6-8 year olds and the other 10 + speed game and would fit the family market.

As you can tell from my last post, I have been working on my game for many years. Ultimate Football won the Game Design Contest at Kubla Con in 2011. It is nearly ready for a Kickstarter campaign.

ULTIMATE FOOTBALL is currently being reviewed by GotGameTesters, in Idaho. They put up a board game review each week and one of the great things is they review your game while it is in the PLAY TESTING mode. So you can find out if your "GAME" as "GOT GAME" (Their expression) before you go spend tons of money on it.