Hi. I'm Greg Lam, from Pair-of-Dice Games (www.pair-of-dice.com). I just signed up for this forum, and thought I'd say hello. I guess this is a good place to do it.
I've self published 7 games along with a couple of friends on a micro-scale (around 100 each for the largest runs) beginning in December 2001. We were lucky enough for two of our games to be included in the GAMES 100 issue of GAMES Magazine. The games were Warp 6 (runner up in the Abstract Games category) and Knockabout. Both are available on funagain.com as well as our own web site.
I'm currently trying to pull together enough money for a printing of some new games.
That's enough for now. I'm glad I finally signed up for this place.
Yes, after you get into GAMES, you get your games placed at funagain, which probably wouldn't touch an unknown micropublisher. They'll order games from in lots of 30 to 60 an order.
With the exposure from GAMES, we could have gotten our games carried by a fulfillment house and in some stores. However, that called for a bigger commitment than we were ready to make, as we would have had to had our games professionally assembled in lots of 1,000 or more. Right now, I'm just trying to get enough energy up to keep up the "homemade" games and add a few to the line.
As for production itself, it's all do it yourself. We buy bolts of felt cloth, get them cut and brought to a silkscreener. The pieces are mostly dice, though now I can make tokens with wooden discs I get from caseyswood.com and small inkjet labels I get from planetlabel.com. The tubes we custom order, though I think I'd like to switch to boxes, which is easier to mail. Pretty much, my limitations are that I can't find a reasonable way to print cards, detailed boards, or game boxes. If anyone knows, please tell me. We've kept the production as simple as possible, though it's still a pain in the ass to do, but that's the nature of it unless you go full professional.
So that's the overview. We've started with very abstract games, though I want to do a few with some theming and artwork. Time will tell if I can actually get a new game out this year or not.