The best laid plans....

Still terrified.

I've done a lot of the pro and con thing and came to the conclusion that I should be publishing the games as well as designing them.

I'd say that part of it is that I'm lazy, but it will actually be more work to do it with my own company than it would be to work with an established publisher. I think the biggest reason is that I'm trying to build brands rather than just games. The company's positioning statement (tagline) is "Where games live." To me, that means more than just publishing the game. That means supporting it through any means necessary. In the case of the games I shall speak about later on, that means developing the game worlds through expansions, other games, books, comics, etc. I'm a storyteller, and I'm telling a story through the games that I hope the players want to become part of.

So to best preserve the intellectual property as I see it, I need to do this myself. Not all on my own, mind you. Woodbine Street Games is a company, and "company" intrinsically implies more than one person. I will and do have help bringing these games and worlds to life, but if they were to be published by a different company the final say would no longer be mine. If my product is going to fail, I'd rather it be my doing than watch helplessly as it gets distorted.

Although, looking at all the small publishers out there, I don't really see that happening. The hobby games industry is generally populated by a very wonderful, creative, and friendly lot. We're all in the same boat, and we're all more or less cut from the same cloth so to mix my metaphors again: birds of a feather and all that.

At the moment I'm feverishly getting things ready for the GAMA trade show. I had a game come out of nowhere last week and it came together pretty quickly, so I'm trying to add that to the things I'm getting ready. I didn't think I'd be ready to work on it for a while yet, but somehow my brain worked out the kinks and handed it to me on a silver platter during my morning commute. There's a lot to do with it, but my wife and I are already having a lot of fun playtesting it. So I'm piling that on top of getting my first product ready to show around, putting together (yet another) business plan, and researching the hell out of the publishing business.

Not to mention putting a website together so I have somewhere I can refer people.

There's a lot of work to be done, but I'm energized. It's the fear talking, but it's a good kind of fear. I haven't felt this way since the first day of college. I would say I have no idea what I'm doing, but I do. It's more accurate to say I have no idea what to expect and that I've never done this before. This is going to be a fantastic adventure, and hopefully the blog will turn out to be useful instead of just my rambling.