A dragon's tale (part I)

Simurgh was the first game ever picked up by NSKN Games after a pitch, and it is the first ever project in which we had to work with a designer who was not part of NSKN Games.

It all started at the Nurnberg Toy Fair back in 2013. It was our first appearance at a large fair besides Spiel and it was as surprising as our first presence is Essen. A lot of famous designers come to Nurnberg to present their new ideas because unlike Essen which offers some incredibly busy four days, Nurnberg it 6 days long and quite relaxed, with fewer visitors and time to catch a breath.

That's where we met Pierluca Zizzi, a charming Italian game designer who pitched a "board building game with some awesome worker placement mechanisms and...dinosaurs", and we were intrigued. The game was sharing some game design principles with one of Pierluca's other designs, so we had to wait for another 5 months to actually play the game.

Our first game of Simurgh (back then Mu) took place in GobCob later that year. We said yes to the game the very same day and we brought along the prototype for further testing, but we already knew known that we had found a gem.

You need to know a few things about the earliest prototype we've seen. It did not feature dragons, but dinosaurs. Everyone, including the designer, knew that dinosaurs are not there to stay, nevertheless we had lots of fun imagining dragon... pardon me... dinosaur raiders foraging through some ancient forest. Dinos are not a bad thing - take a look at Evolution or Dominant Species - they were just totally out of place, not fitting at all with the game mechanics. But the game itself was so good that we decided on the spot to publish it after we found the perfect theme.

It wasn't long until Simurgh found its name and theme. It took some 12-hour car ride, a ridiculous amount of emails (if you have not tried brain storming by email, do not miss this unique opportunity... just kidding) and a few months later we were ready to dress the game into some beautiful artwork and present it in Essen. That was still back in 2013.

Dragon sketch by Enggar Adirasa

A legitimate question at this point is "Why dragons?" and what does the name of the game mean. We must admit that we were somehow conditioned by the original dinosaur theme and we were not able to shift our thinking into a completely different plane, so we gravitated around "stuff which can fly, stuff which can be ridden" and "a mythical universe", "of man and... (add word here)". Add to this mix another key ingredient - we like dragons  -  and we had the cocktail ready for a dragon themed game. The truth is that all the game mechanisms fit perfectly with the theme we chose and we were very happy to see the metamorphosis of Mu into Simurgh.

Our dragons were never meant to be evil. Scary - yes, by all means, but never evil. The legends of many peoples are filled with dragons, from Asia to South America and from Europe to Africa. We search the mythology for a perfect match and the Persian Simurgh came as the obvious choice.

Stay tuned for the second part of the story, coming up in a few weeks.


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Conventions and trade shows – and why we attend them

A convention or a trade show is a very special event, both for those gamers who are more deeply engaged in the hobby, as well as for us – publishers and designers of board games. Some of us love them, some of us hate them, but most of us attend for reasons I’m going to share below. And it’s a great time to share, since it’s all still fresh in my mind after the recent UK Games Expo.

Let me again start with a quick preamble: NSKN Games is very much like other publishers, but neither I, nor any other member of our crew has yet mastered the art of mind reading (though Andrei, the Big Boss himself, is most likely to make that breakthrough, and when he does a voice in your head will happily announce it to you), so whatever I say here will not be true for all publishers. Although, from our own experiences, educated guesses and some beer-propelled conversations with other people in the business, it probably is true for most.

So, let’s start with the basics: going to a convention is both expensive and exhausting. I won’t be talking about actual prices of space in different convention halls, but just know that the owners of these facilities know their worth. They also know very well that not all booths are equal, and not only size, but also multiple other factors influence the final price of being able to set up shop during the convention or show you saw us at – with all sorts of corner booths usually being the most expensive, and the first to go.

When it comes to exhaustion, just remember that whatever you see around you at a booth, was brought in by a number of human beings. And if you’re in a booth belonging to a smaller publisher (like NSKN Games), also know that those same human beings are most probably surrounding you now – all bubbly, enthusiastic and happy to see you, often despite being quite tired. Incidentally, this is why if you are absolutely certain you are not interested in a product they are to tell you more about, just tell them. You’ll save yourself some time – and they’ll be able to preserve their voice.

The NSKN Team at our UK Games Expo Booth

Having revealed the awful truth about conventions and trade shows, it’s time to finally get to answering the titular question. Why? Why do we attend? Is it for the possibility of making a quick buck on games that sell well, or sell out? No. Definitely not.

The truth is that selling a lot, or even all the games you bring to a convention, does not “make” you money – not in the sense of coming back with more cash than you had coming in. Most times, when you saw a booth selling games left and right, or have come too late to pick up a game (this may have happened to you for example last year in Essen if you wanted to pick up Praetor or Versailles on Sunday – or Progress on a Saturday afternoon), the publisher was not in for a big financial gain, but was happy that the event will break even.

Yes, between the prices of exhibitor space, the travel and transport costs and the hotel bills, a convention or a trade show for a publisher is a financial success if it makes them, all in all, spend a relatively small sum or no money at all. But no matter how much we pay, we do bring something back from each such event. We bring you.

Exodus Proxima Centauri - base game and the Edge of Extinction Expansion at UK Games Expo 2015.

Trade shows and conventions are important because of people we get to meet. We are happy to get to know new people in the industry, joke around a little bit, congratulate our competitors on a job well done (yes, that really happens!), and share experiences in the evening, in a hotel filled with exhibitors and attendees, or in a nearby pub overrun by the convention crowd. Apart from that, hands are shaken, eyes are looked in – and deals are made. Sometimes deals that make smaller publishers stay in the game – or help them develop, expand and grow.

Finally, conventions are important because of all of you. All of the people that come by to say hello – and all those who come in to ask: “Who are you again?”. Believe it or not, but we not only get a kick out of meeting new people, or getting to shake the hands of those of you, who we usually know by their Facebook profiles, Twitter or BoardGameGeek handles, but we are also interested in what you have to say. 

Clicking a thumb up on Facebook or bashing a game or mechanism online is so easy, that sometimes it almost goes unnoticed (although we always try to listen). Having an actual, face to face conversation with a person wanting to praise or critique something we’ve done is always memorable. And having ten people say “we did/did not like this and this” to our faces may actually influence what and how we’ll do in the future.

For all of you who asked about the NSKN Cats during UK Games Expo :-)

I’ve written all of the above mainly because we’ve just come back from UK Games Expo, and I had a chance to show off an advanced prototype of Mistfall to both new people, and our extraordinary backers. And this made me aware of one more thing. Each time (after playing a few turns) someone would tell me: “Yeah, I’m happy I backed this, it’s an awesome game”, I felt that a total of four hours in the air, two take offs and two landings between two consecutive flights suffered by a guy who hates flying, was something that guy would happily endure again. And each time we would say: “Yes, both Exodus: Edge of Extinction and Mistfall will be delivered without delays”, and see perplexed faces of gamers not used to their Kickstarter stuff ever arriving on time, we got a feeling that it is something we are simply unable to put a price tag on.

So, in short, the people are why we attend. The lure of talking to all sorts of individuals from all corners of geekdom, the chance to meet the persons we are fans of – and the people who are our fans, and the chance to share in stuff that is not only good for our business, but also pretty cool as a memory for us, simply as human beings

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Exodus: Edge of Extinction and a video

On behalf of the whole NSKN team I would like to thank every one of you who took the time to help us find a great name for our upcoming Exodus expansion. Whether it was a vote, an opinion, a piece of feedback or a proposal for the name itself, this could not have happened without you. So a big thank you for transforming the Exodus expansion into Exodus: Edge of Extinction.

We had five proposals on the table and one of them stood out, both here - on the NSKN Game blog poll - and on BoardGameGeek. While you were casting your votes, we had a 'secret' internal meeting and everyone in the team also favored this cool name. So, with this much harmony we will proceed to create online material for Exodus: Edge of Extinction and keep working on the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

While we were busy looking for a name, our artists kept on working so that today we can show you 3 pieces of the final artwork...

On a completely unrelated topic, you can have a look at an interview recorded at Spiel 2014 by Paco from G*M*S Magazine with Agnieszka and Andrei, talking about the current and future games from NSKN.

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First post-Essen thoughts and some more pictures

Essen 2014 was awesome! So many people we had seen in the past came by our booth again, lots of handshakes and hugs made Essen feel like a gathering of old friends, brought together by teh same passion - board games.

For the first time in the history of NSKN Games, we sold out in Essen having more than one product at our booth and the quantity was not negligible. Delivering more than 200 Kickstarter rewards while serving a lot of customers was another big challenge, but we seem to have passed the test.

It's hard to draw all the conclusions after just a few days, but the whole NSKN team has returned with a very good feeling. Next week we'll have to look more in depth into what this event represented for us and we'll come back and share the conclusions.

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Essen 2014 - day 2 & day 3

This year's Spiel Essen turns out to be a truly amazing experience. We continue our story in images with photos from day 2 (Friday) and day 3 (Saturday).

Day 2 - what was supposed to be the slowest day...

Happy owners of brand new Progress: Evolution of Technology

Explaining Progress

...and playing Versailles

Happy girls

Day 3 - the "sold out" day

Hard thinking and... watching

Progress countdown on Saturday morning

Game delivered!

That's what we call original

Around 11;00 AM

One of the last copies of Progress delivered at Spiel

4 copies left

and just a few minutes later...

With Progress sold out, we still invite you to visit our booth. We have a few copies of Praetor and a few of Versailles for Sunday.

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Essen 2014 - setup and day 1

Being in Essen for Spiel is always an amazing experience, but this year's first day has exceeded our expectations by far. Since another big day is ahead of us in several hours, we'll let the pictures do the talking...

Day -2: leaving home

Leaving friends at home...

Day -1: setting up the booth

No less than 10 pallets of games made it to our booth in Essen

The setup day was looooong

... and it included climbing a giant ladder

Day 0: the day before the official opening

Delivering Kickstarter copies of Progress

The game have slowly found their places on shelves... and everywhere else

Game previews at the BoardGameGeek booth

Day 1: Spiel '14 Essen has finally starter... full speed ahead

Playing tables

The stock of Progress is running low from the morning hours... should we have brought more games?

Versailles

Progress: Evolution of Technology

And Versailles again

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NSKN Games @ 3 years

Arthur Ashe said that "success is a journey, not a destination; the doing is often more important than the outcome" and this very quote describes very well the 3-year history of NSKN Games.

We know where we came from... but where do we go?

We started in 2011 not really knowing what we're getting ourselves into and not knowing how difficult is the transition from gaming to designing and publishing. The journey used to be the means to reach a destination - making a living out of publishing board games - and now the journey has become a life style. The purpose has not changed, but the defining paradigm of why and how is no longer the same.

Playing and designing games are not all that different, but publishing is. In 2013 I have questioned my decision to do both many times, because there are many turning points in the career of a designer/publisher when one conflicts with the other.

People say that time flies when you're having fun and I must admit that it's absolutely true. The past three years have flown by and I must take a moment and look back at what we have accomplished.

I won't go through the whole history of NSKN Games again, but if you're curious you can still read about our previous anniversaries:

NSKN @ 2 years (part 2)

NSKN @ 2 years

NSKN @ 1 year

...but there are a few things worth mentioning about our third year of being in business. 

The summer of 2013

One year ago NSKN Games was preparing the revised edition of Exodus: Proxima Centauri. That was our only release for 2013 and, even though we had another 3 prototypes ready and play-tested, things seemed to move a little too slowly. I wasn't sure if it's something we're doing or this is just the way things go, but one thing was for sure, publishing looked like a tough business with many pitfalls and a tremendous amount of work for uncertain results.

I know it sounds grim and discouraging, but figuring out how to dig your way out of the hole when you find yourself stuck is not an easy task. The publishing business was going well, it was simply too slow to make a decent living out of it. Rushing games to the market wasn't a solution, we never wanted to cut corners for an easy living. So, we decided to go one more time full speed ahead and bring our unfinished work to Essen, getting a lot of feedback from all kinds of gamers to figure out if we were going in the right direction or not. All the effort, money and creativity went (besides Exodus) into preparing the game we would publish in 2014 and 2015.

Spiel Essen and the autumn of 2013

The key moment into our finding a direction for NSKN Games and effectively working towards a goal - to stay in the board games industry and make a living out of it - came in Essen. The amount of interest and feedback we received was overwhelming and it helped us focus our efforts in the right direction.

NSKN Games @ Spiel '13 Essen

Besides selling out Exodus: Proxima Centauri soon after Essen, we have had a lot of good feedback for Praetor, Perfect Storm and our other prototypes. The light at the end of the tunnel was not a speeding train, but a guide towards what we were supposed to do next. For the rest of the autumn we finalized Praetor and closed the deals for the 7 editions in various languages adding up to a total of 7500 copies - almost as many as our previous board games combined. I must admit that having my name on a dedicated Romanian edition of a game made me feel especially proud. 

We have also "upgraded" the way we work. Having direction and focus saves a lot of time and effort. Even though we cannot say that NSKN is a large team, we've been growing steadily. With adding people we have also gained expertise and enthusiasm and thus we were able to cover more than one project at a time.

The winter of 2013/2014

By December 2013 all the graphics for Praetor were ready and we started submitting the final files for production. With a print run as large as we had, preparing for production was no easy task. We had several meetings to check the color proofs, the die cuts for the punchboards, the size and shape for the box tray and this just the tip of the iceberg.

Due to our new workflow philosophy, we had time to develop more games for 2014 and 2015. We continued developing and play-testing Progress: Evolution of Technology which will soon become our first ever Kickstarter project and we made created the framework for the long-awaited expansion of Exodus: Proxima Centauri.

Springtime 2014

With Praetor out of production in April, our first weeks of spring were dedicated to avoid a logistics nightmare. Shipping more than 7000 game boxes to 12 different countries was no easy task but we can proudly say that the the preorders were sent out 3 weeks before the promised deadline and every copy of the game is either with our partners or en route to them.

These days we are preparing for the upcoming gaming conventions (TIG Con in Romania and UK Games Expo) and in our "spare time" we're looking after the final details of our upcoming Kickstarter for Progress: Evolution of Technology.

Conclusions?

Designing and publishing board games is the most interesting life experience I could have ever imagined, very fulfilling and just as hard. As long as we can keep in mind that it's all about the journey, I think the future of NSKN Games looks brighter than ever.

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Board games - status and plans for the future

We are in 2014 for less than a month and we're already crazy busy with our upcoming projects. But before we talk about them, let's see what has happened since our last post...

Exodus: Proxima Centauri

We though that after the release of the Revised Edition the sales of the first edition in the retail stores would cease. Fortunately this was not the case and the first edition is sold out almost everywhere. 

Now, moving on to the Revised Edition... the attention it got in Essen and afterwards made us sell out as early as November last year. We have only kept enough games to bring to the events we plan to attend in 2014. So, that's again good news.

Sales aside, Exodus has performed well also on BoardGameGeek. It went up the ranks slowly but steadily and entered top 1200 a week ago.

This makes Exodus our top performer and now we can hope that it will break top 1000 by the end of the summer.

Speaking of Exodus, we are working constantly on the expansion due in Spiel '14.

Praetor

Praetor is our next big project and we're getting really close to the start of production. We have good news for our non-English fans. Praetor will be published not only in English, but also in French, German, Japanese, Romanian, Korean and possibly 3 more languages.

The French box of Praetor

The rules are ready and the translations are almost final. We are waiting for the final numbers from our partners and we hope to release the game in the spring.

The Blog

We have reached an audience of over 10,000 viewers per year and we want to thank all of you who are giving us a piece of your precious time.

It's been 18 months since we're writing for the gaming community and there have been weeks with 3 or 4 posts, but also gaps filled with silence. Therefore, we have decided to do this in a more organized way. We want to let you know what you can expect. We plan to write once a week, unless some out-of-the-ordinary things are happening and we cannot hold back.

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Bye bye 2013

2013 has marked the third year of existence for NSKN Games and it has been one great yet challenging period for us. We had ups and downs, we sold a lot of games and we made mistakes which made us learn and improve.

Jan 2013 - For the first time in our brief history, NSKN Games attended the Nürnberg Toy Fair, a fair very different from everything else we had previously experienced. From the board games world only a few publishers made it there due to the prohibitive prices and also because it's not a trade fair - meaning companies may not sell games to the public and the attendance is restricted to traders. Nevertheless, it was a  very proud moment, NSKN was the only company of its size to exhibit in Nürnberg.

Feb 2013 - The first edition of Exodus: Proxima Centauri became officially sold out at publisher level. With the exception of a around 40 copies especially saved for gaming conventions, there were no more games to sell to distributors or retailers. This was another proud moment, because Exodus became the first ever published game of our to be completely sold out.

Mar-Apr 2013 - The spring was dedicated almost entirely to working on the new prototypes, games planned for late 2013 and 2014. As it turned out, our plans changed a little throughout the year, however the outcome of the spring was that NSKN had no less than four fully tested prototypes ready for showing to the public: Praetor, W, Perfect Storm and Evolution.

Besides working on prototypes, we have also decided to re-print Exodus, backed by popular demand. Taking into account the issues encountered with the first edition, we decided to produce the game in Europe.

May-Jun 2013 - The first month of summer was dedicated to gaming conventions. We went first to UK to attend for the second time the UK Games Expo and what a convention that was! With a new venue and almost double the attendance, it's one of the fastest growing gaming events in Europe. Add to this experienced gamers and very positive people and you have the ingredients for a great event. Next we went to Italy for the 5th time to attend GobCon organized by La Tana dei Goblin and we had fun, we played cool games and sold whatever was left from our "convention stock" of Exodus.

Jul-Sep 2013 - Reprinting Exodus was no easy task. With the decision to produce in Europe and to keep the same retail price, we had to work really hard to re-engineer the game. We changed all the think paper components to 2mm cardboard, we gave a new look to the game without changing core concepts and we supervised closely the entire production process. It was very hard work, but we saw the light when we opened the first box of the game. 15 punchboards, 2 decks of cards, 72 dice, almost 200 wooden pieces and 48 plastic space ships added to a total of 6 pounds (3 kilos) making it a massive games really well packed in a standard box. Another moment to make us proud.

Oct 2013 - This October, the same as the for the two previous years, was dedicated to preparing and attending Spiel Essen. For the first time we went with a large booth - 4 times the standards 10 sqm - and we brought our remaining stock as well as three final prototypes to be displayed on five gaming tables. It was a real success and you can read more about our experience in the posts we wrote before, during and after the convention

http://nskngames.blogspot.com/2013/10/spiel-essen-day-2-playing-and-preparing.html

http://nskngames.blogspot.com/2013/10/spiel-essen-day-0-playing-and-preparing.html

http://nskngames.blogspot.com/2013/10/space-battles-or-spiel-essen-days-12.html

http://nskngames.blogspot.com/2013/11/first-thoughts-after-essen.html

Nov 2013 - The Essen follow-up proved very fruitful. By the end of November, Warriors & Traders and Wild Fun West were sold out at publisher level, meaning that we kept enough copies to fulfill a few online orders and cover the next gaming convention we plan to attend. On top of that, the orders for the Revised Edition of Exodus: Proxima Centauri exceeded what we had in the warehouse so we had to turn down a few orders and work hard on the upcoming expansions. As a consequence, NSKN Games experienced another great feeling, that of having an empty warehouse and lots of games in the stores and on gamers' tables.

Dec 2013 - Our next big release is Praetor, our first worker placement game. We plan a massive production with editions in English, German, French, Japanese, Romanian, Korean and more. We have just finalized the graphics and we plan to release the game early next year, so the next few months will also be very busy for everyone at NSKN Games. But before that happens, we are going for holidays, some well deserved two weeks of relaxing and... playing, because we are gamers at heart and mind.

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