Re: card/board games as income source

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@indiegamedesign.com>]

WFreitag@aol.com wrote:

> But however bad that advice would be, trying to improve 
> one's financial situation by attempting to design hit card/board games is at least 
> a hundred times worse.
>  
I don't know that this is true.  I think anyone who works in a 
hit-driven industry can't be risk adverse.  I don't think "you should go 
become a banker" or some other more predictable profession is an 
answer.  That's just being chicken.  I really don't believe it's about 
"the odds" so much as going up a long learning curve about what matters 
to you, what matters to others, what you have energy to pursue, and 
staying focused.  Some things are bigger than us, but we do have a lot 
of control over our own destinies.

> But leaving "hits" aside, modest profits from designing _good_ card/board 
> games are a different matter. Card/board game self-publishers like Looney Labs 
> and Cheapass Games earn enough to make their efforts worthwhile. As for making a 
> living, someone _might_ be making a living from Cheapass, which has by far 
> the larger catalog of the two companies, with 50-some games. But Looney Labs (a 
> household of three adults, whose family name actually is Looney), publishing 
> about 10 games, always has at least one full-time professional day job salary 
> coming in.
>  
Hopefully that meets their happiness-to-dollars quota.  In the small 
computer games dept, I wonder how Digital Eel is doing.  I really liked 
"Strange Adventures In Infinite Space," and one of those guys wrote a 
Gamasutra article recently.  If I could ever get past my basic 
programming language and tools issues, I might write a small game or two 
myself.  But so much depends on very basic enablers.  I've been chasing 
bad open source tools for a long time.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

I'm doing Linux because I'm cheap.
"Good, Fast, Cheap - pick any two."