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With that context in mind, I thought I'd reprint my Boardgame News column from January 23, 2007 to provide more history on CGF. —WEM
Time to look into the heart and soul of another independent publisher, and the willing victim this time is Ed Carter, the man behind Cambridge Games Factory, which released its first four titles – Glory to Rome, Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace, Splat!, and Sneeze – in October 2005.
BGN: How did Cambridge Games Factory come into existence?
Ed Carter: Cambridge Games Factory began in late 2004 as a conversation at the MIT Strategic Games Society. I'd been turning up regularly for a few months and had been very impressed by half a dozen of Carl Chudyk's designs; most were large, expensive-to-produce board games but a couple were much simpler family games which I knew he could print for a few thousand dollars. I didn't have any interest in getting back into games publishing myself – the main thing I'd learnt in two years trying to market Kersplatt! (a previous version of Splat!) was that there's precious little money in it – but I was interested in helping out, so I started asking a few questions to see where he was planning to go with the prototypes he'd been creating.
It turned out Carl had spent the previous four years working as a messenger in Boston while he perfected over 20 game designs, but he really wasn't sure what his next step would be to try to get any of them printed. I offered some suggestions, but as you know it's a tough industry to break into – maybe too tough, I started to think. Here's a guy with a dozen really strong games and no idea who to call to even have them looked at. I'm a business-guy and this was starting to smell like a business opportunity. I still wasn't hooked, but I was starting to get interested...
The game that launched the company was Organic Soup – another of Carl's great but simple family card games. What I loved about the game (apart from how good it is) is that it's also a serious organic chemistry lesson, which means it can sell in a lot of places where more traditional games are not going to get shelf space. As it turned out, Glory To Rome swept it and several other games out of our first release, but we're currently playtesting Organic Soup for our latest set of games.
BGN: What's your role at CGF, and how is Carl involved in the company?
EC: When we started, publishing games was all Carl thought he'd ever want to do. The plan we came up with was for this to be a real job for Carl and a hobby for me; we'd call it a partnership and split the profits 50/50. During our development cycle, our team picked up a third member (Erek Slater) who was a huge help through the game development cycle, and he would have been running the sales and marketing side of the business if he hadn't moved to Chicago two weeks before we published.
Carl tells a story of how he lost his job after he and Erek played Glory To Rome until 10:00 AM with someone who followed them home from a playtest session. He doesn't always mention that he quickly got a much better job and shortly after that a new girlfriend so that just as we were getting to market he found he wasn't quite so sure about spending the rest of his life making no money as a games publisher after all. At the same time, I wasn't too keen on spending a lot more time than I'd originally expected building 50% of a publishing business for a partner who wasn't putting in the kind of effort I was expecting.
It took some working out, but I'm now running Cambridge Games Factory as a sole proprietor, with Carl acting as an independent designer – we put together a document called "Ed and Carl's Particularly Cool Shared Asset Management Agreement" for the games we designed together.
BGN: What's your gaming background?
EC: I've always loved board games and I grew up role-playing – first D&D and then every system I could find while I was at University. I've never quite got into massive wargames (they look like too much work), but I'll play pretty much anything else. I'm a sucker for a good theme – if I'm playing a pirate game, I want to be able to think like one and devise effective strategies accordingly. When I design, I usually start from a theme or a story and work backwards to an interesting mechanism. These days I'm doing much more game development than working on my own designs, so I'm working the process the other way round – for example, when Fox first showed me Between The Lines, the game was called "Merchant Mayhem" without any specific period or context. We brainstormed a variety of potential settings (e.g. Camel Traders in the Sahara, Modern Day Gang Leaders, Renaissance Italy) before settling on World War I profiteers as the right fit for the high risk, high reward game she'd designed.
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EC: If you self-publish one game with black and white cards and square corners with a rulebook that is virtually incomprehensible and then spend two years trying to market it without actually having the first idea what marketing is, let alone how to do it, you will probably not succeed, even if you get a couple of good reviews.
BGN: Well, given that experience why create your own game company?
EC: Err...it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I've always wanted to start my own business, but now I know how to build one. I also know that unless you're coming in with a résumé like Gail DeGuilio (formerly with Wizards of the Coast, now with SimplyFun) this probably isn't the best industry to pick. That said, I'd always wanted to have another go at game publishing and so I'm very glad Carl gave me the excuse to get back involved.
BGN: What do you hope to achieve with CGF?
EC: Profitability. When I joined Staples in 1994, I imagined it would be a temporary job to tide me over while I worked out what I needed to do next to get my games business up and running. Twelve years later I'm still with Staples (although now as an independent contractor) and I've built four businesses for them in three different countries with combined sales of over $100 million. What I haven't done (yet) is built a profitable business on my own without the deep-pocket backing of a corporate parent.
Once we've done that, it gives us a launch point for several longer term plans, both within and outside of the games industry, but right now we need to show that the car has an engine before talking too much about the places we'd like to go in it.
BGN: What makes a game a CGF game?
EC: It's probably easier to describe what makes someone an ideal CGF games designer. I'd expect a new designer to have at least 3 or 4 (and probably 10+) really solid game prototypes made up and playtested, with several more in various stages of development. They'll have played a large variety of games and have well thought through ideas about what they do and don't like about games they've played.
From there we look for games which are non-collectible and can be produced without electronic or custom molded components and have a good match across theme, complexity and target audience. We put a lot of emphasis on "theme integration" – for example, we reworked the entire Glory To Rome role structure to get Patron onto the most expensive material to match the Roman social structure – and we use a fairly limited set of components to both keep costs down and create a consistent look and feel across our range of games.
Then I try to work out how to add poker chips...
BGN: What audience are you trying to reach?
EC: People who love to play games. In the ten years between closing down Blaze of Glory (my first games company) and opening up Cambridge Games Factory there were some long periods when I didn't play a single game – not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't know where to find other people to play with. For three years I was living in Central Square, Cambridge (a mile from MIT) with no idea that there was a games club meeting there – now I drive almost an hour to get to it. Sites like BoardGameGeek and Boardgame News are doing a superb job of connecting the active gaming community together which has made a big difference to the number of people playing games, but when I introduce myself as a games publisher I'm far more likely to hear "I loved playing games when I was a kid" than "I play games all the time".
BGN: Glory to Rome is CGF's deepest game, yet the artwork bears a cartoony look similar to other CGF games aimed at much younger audiences. Why take this approach with a game meant for a different audience?
EC: As Harry Potter approaches his final desperate conflict with You-Know-Who, there's one last spell he's weaving on future generations; today's kids grew up with him, so they took it in their stride that each book was more grown up than the last, but the full series starts out with a fun story about a magic school which is very accessible to an eight-year-old and ends up in a gritty magical thriller laced with some pretty hard core necromancy – talk about an incentive to improve your reading age!
We're aiming to create a range of games that does something similar, leading players from UNO and Sorry through progressively more involved games until one day they wake up and find they're playing games like Puerto Rico and Power Grid. I guess I don't really think of the Glory To Rome audience as different from our other games but more like the same audience, a year or so later. Consistent look and feel is key to making the progression work – tuning the artwork to established gamers would be like building a railway from Chicago to Boston and then putting the station in New York.
While I'm committed to the colors and the style, I do recognize there are improvements we can make; the Noble Jack actually gets hate-mail, so I've let him know we're not going to be renewing his contract for the next edition. I'm very open to swapping images on individual cards if I get specific feedback on them.
Incidentally, since I'm hoping to avoid making graphic design a permanent career change we're on the lookout for an entry-level graphic designer. We're still very much in start-up mode so they'd find themselves doing a lot of other stuff, too (playtesting games, attending conventions & store demos, etc.), so I'm really looking for a committed gamer (hence mentioning it here).
BGN: You have released numerous editions of CGF games with minor changes to the rulebooks, packaging, and game play. Do you worry about creating confusion in the audience about which game is which?
EC: Yes, sorry about that.
BGN: Why make so many changes anyway?
EC: We learned a lot from these first editions, mostly the hard way. When it became clear how badly we'd underestimated the time we'd need to fine tune and test the rulebooks we seriously considered putting Glory To Rome on hold for six months while we got the other games ready for market; in hindsight we really should have done so in order to avoid all the changes we've ended up making since then.
Beyond that, there were also some one-time format and packaging changes to incorporate feedback we've been getting as we've started to get wider distribution; we're getting great feedback on our latest formats, so I don't see any major changes there going forwards.
BGN: Is any game ever finished, or are changes always possible?
EC: We're not going to release another game which has not got through blind-testing with flying colors, but it's amazing what you find out when you put a game onto the market. Perhaps with time enough and money you could work through all of them, but for a company our size publishing several games a year, there will always be minor niggles that get through. It can be especially tough to spot the issues that only really come up when someone is trying to learn and teach the game from the rules since you simply don't see them in regular playtesting.
Our business model assumes two editions: an initial one on a short print run to test the market followed by a more serious print run once the game has shown it has sales potential. The aim is to use that second print run to fix any issues that got through into the first release (think Puerto Rico's University) before the game gets into wide distribution.
BGN: What advice can you offer aspiring self-publishers and independent publishers?
EC: Think very hard about why you want to do this.
If you're trying to make money, you'd probably get a better return buying lottery tickets. If it's because you love your game, think very, very hard about how much you're going to enjoy it once you've played it several hundred times. After a year of playing Kersplatt! non-stop I hated the game and hadn't come close to making my money back, even though I'd sold several hundred copies (convention fees, petrol, hotels – it all adds up). If it's because you want to get a game in print and you have no idea how to do it, shoot me an e-mail and we'll take a look at it.
Don't assume you'll see your initial investment back; I'm happy when my sales cover the cost of getting to a convention. As a hobby, game publishing is not quite as expensive as scuba-diving, but it's close.
Do, do, do blind-test. If your game fails its blind-test, fix the issues and then blind-test some more. You really don't want your reviewers to be the fix-it people who discover that you forgot to mention leaving a 1⁄4" gap between bay cards in your pirate game (sorry Matthew) or that "may execute immediately" is basically incomprehensible (sorry Tom).
BGN: What mistakes have you avoided, and what mistakes have you made that they should avoid?
EC: We didn't really avoid many mistakes; most of them we took head on. I can think of two big ones that we did avoid though: firstly, we didn't invest thousands of dollars in marketing (going to Essen, etc.) before the games were ready for prime time; secondly, we didn't not learn from our mistakes.
On mistakes we made that you should avoid, I think you'll find plenty in the previous sections – did I mention that you should blind-test?
BGN: What changes would you make if you were launching the company now instead of several years ago?
EC: This is not really a fair question. Knowing what I know today, there are lots of things I'd do differently, but the main thing I've been doing over the past couple of years is learning the industry, so if I were launching the company now I wouldn't have that knowledge.
The second time that I really, really kicked myself (after the blind-testing) was when I discovered Aldo Ghiozzi at Impressions Advertising. For a start-up publisher his service is superb – worldwide hobby distribution for an 18% cut – and if I'd known about him as we were starting up I'd have signed up in a shot, but by the time I found his website we were down to 250 copies of Glory To Rome and so the conversation broke down at "So we'd start off by taking 400 copies of each game".
BGN: Why did you sponsor a prototype contest at Unity Games XI [a day-long open game event in the Boston area]? What were your goals for the competition?
EC: Prototype contests have always been in the plan as a way to find new designers, but they got pulled way forward when Dave Bernazzani put out an "anyone got any ideas for an event" e-mail a few weeks before UG-XI. With typical foresight and planning, I'd volunteered CGF to run the event and got halfway through planning it before checking my calendar and realizing that I was going to be in the UK for my father's retirement party. Fortunately Anne and Eric from the MIT crowd pulled together and signed up to run the competition without me; a little weird, but we got some great experience out of it, Best of all, it did exactly what we were hoping – found us an excellent game from a brand new designer: Huang Di by Bryan Johnson.
BGN: What information can you share about CGF's upcoming releases?
EC: I'm sure there's a really good reason why I'm supposed to be secretive about our upcoming releases, but I haven't worked it out yet, so here's the scoop:
Our next set of releases is going to be a mix of first and second edition games. I'm working on final artwork now – we'll be playtesting all of them at the Unity Games convention in Framingham (outside Boston) on January 27, 2007, then getting them into blind testing straight afterwards.
Because we share print costs across games, everything prints at once so we won't have final release dates for a few more weeks but we're getting very close.
The new games are:
• Huang Di, by Bryan Johnson
You have been chosen by the Emperor (Shi Huangdi) to help construct one of the greatest man-made structures in the world: The Great Wall of China. Your goal is to become the most distinguished master builder in China with the help of your taskmaster, workers and Shi Huangdi himself! Each player uses an identical deck of eight cards in which to plot their actions such as purchasing workers, building, collecting money from the treasury, etc. In addition to scoring points for having built the majority of blocks on each level of the wall, players can also boost their income by completing favors for the Emperor.
• [thing=27752]Between The Lines[/thing], by Fox
The Great War is underway and Europe is being torn apart. Will the Lusitania sail or sink and catapult America into the war? Will Churchill's ill-fated adventure finally capture Gallipoli, or result in ignominious retreat from the Dardanelles? The money is in the details. You are a war-profiteer buying and selling in an attempt to turn a quick pound or two against a backdrop of rapidly changing events – don't get caught selling Arms when the Armistice is signed!
• Organic Soup, by Carl Chudyk
Atoms build molecules. Molecules react to create bigger molecules. Beware of entropy – it may create reactions you weren't expecting. Find the right recipe and the right fiendish reaction and you could create one of the building blocks of life – and win! Organic Chemistry, the card game!
[Note from present me: Not to bag on Ed, but the "really good reason" some publishers shy away from touting future releases is that those games never come into existence (Between the Lines & Huang Di, which also didn't appear from JKLM Games) or appear from another publisher (Organic Soup). I know, I know – events happen, plans change, and you do the best you can... —WEM]
The second editions are:
• Glory to Rome, by Carl Chudyk – Mostly card balancing, with a few minor changes to game mechanisms.
• Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace, by Carl Chudyk – Slightly simplified to get it more squarely into the family game space (much closer to Carl's original version).
• Splat!, by Ed Carter – Massively simplified to get it back into the family game space (much closer to Kerpslatt!).
We'll be offering a "new cards for old" trade deal for both Glory To Rome and Splat! for a couple of months following the actual release date; only a few cards are changing in Ice Pirates, so we'll offer those as a free upgrade to existing owners for the same period.
•••
That intention was fully realized because the game's complexity starts on the first page of the rulebook and will likely continue far into your first game. The main source of the complexity? Order cards, which are used (1) as building materials, (2) as a building foundation, (3) as a role, (4) as a client, (5) as victory points, and (6) as special rule-breaking possibilities once the building it represents has been completed. Order cards come in six colors – laborers/rubble/yellow, craftsmen/wood/blue, legionary/brick/red, architects/concrete/gray, patrons/marble/purple, and merchants/stone/blue – with each color also representing a role and a material. The game also includes 30 site cards; each building foundation must be placed on a site to begin building, and when the last site is claimed, the game ends. (The game also ends if the deck is exhausted.)
Game play is played in turns, San Juan-style, but the roles that the active player (called the Leader) can choose are determined by the cards in his hand. Either the Leader will think (drawing one or more cards) or he will choose a card in his hand and play it onto his camp, declaring the role for that turn. If the Leader plays a card, each player in turn can either think (i.e., draw card(s)) or follow; to follow, the player must play a similarly colored card onto his camp, play a Jack (which serves as any role), or have a patron of the appropriate color. (More on patrons later.)
Once everyone has decided to think or follow, the Leader takes the action associated with that Order card. In addition, for each patron he has of the same type, he can take the action again. The other players do likewise in clockwise order, then the Order cards played that turn are discarded into the pool in the center of the table. (The pool starts with randomly drawn cards equal to the number of players.) The possible roles on a turn are:
• Thinker: The Leader either draws cards up to his maximum hand size or draws one card (if he is at or over his maximum hand size) or draws a Jack (which are never placed in the pool); no one else does anything.
• Patron: Each player with a patron role can choose a card in the pool and place it under the left-hand side of his camp; this card is now a client of the player, and whenever a player chooses this role in the future, this client will perform the role for the player, whether he thinks or not.
• Laborer: The Laborer role lets you take a card from the pool and place it in your stockpile as building material.
• Legionary: Like the Laborer, the Legionary gets you building material, but you must first reveal the desired material in your hand. Don't have it? Then you can't claim it. In addition to nabbing material from the pool, the Legionary demands one material from the left- and right-hand neighbors.
• Craftsman: The craftsman lets you start a new building or add materials to one under construction. Added materials move from your hand into the building.
• Architect: Like a craftsman, except the building material moves from your stockpile into a building.
• Merchant: Sell one building material on the black market by placing it in your vault; at the end of the game you'll receive VPs for cards in your vault.
The number of clients and cards in the vault is limited to two at the start of the game, but as you finish buildings, you'll score VPs (1-3 per building) and the size of your client pool and vault rise by an equivalent number. Each card in the vault scores 1-3 VPs, which is much more efficient than buildings, but without the buildings you're stuck with a vault limit of two, so a mix of the two is essential.
As I mentioned, each Order card can serve as a building foundation (thanks to the craftsman and architect), and each building has its own special ability. (Multiple copies of each building are in the game, but you can build each building only once.) The building abilities on their own can be powerful – each of your clients is a craftsman in addition to its regular role, for example, or you may use any material in blue buildings – but if you find the right combinations, the game can quickly turn in your favor. Ed has pointed out the lethal combination of the Palace and Circus Maximus, for instance (Palace: May play multiple cards of the same type for additional roles including Jacks (wild); Circus Maximus: May play any card as Jack (wild) during your turn as leader), but your opponents will see you working towards those buildings and will likely be able to limit the flow of the appropriate materials to your stockpile, hampering your development.
As you might have gathered from the description, Glory to Rome is an intense game of hand management. You often need to think three turns ahead, trying to figure out which role you should play to put certain cards in the pool so that you can claim them as materials or clients later. To work towards a particular building, you might need to empty your hand in order to restock with the roles you really need – but that will make more cards accessible for opponents.
I've played only three times so far – once each with two, three and four players – and find the game has worked well at all levels. Certain buildings seem overpowering at first glance, but with experience I imagine you'll be able to anticipate more plays from opponents and have more control over the flow of the game.
The second edition of the game is supposed to have cleaned up versions of a few cards, and the camp – which doubles as a player reference for all of the roles – has been nicely enlarged and redesigned to shorten the learning curve on those first games. The cards are now rounded as well, which makes them easier to handle.
The only drawback that's glaringly evident is the look of the game. Glory to Rome is a deep strategy game which will start your eyebrows twisting feverishly as you try to figure out how to make the cards do the tricks you want – but the game looks amateurish with crude cartoons and clipart images. A player in my game group has been quite taken with the game, but he actually felt the need to write a complaint letter about the art. Ed explained above that he wants to maintain a uniform look to CFG titles, but if any game needs the Mike Doyle do-over, it's this one. (The artwork for the second edition was still being worked on when I played it, but I don't expect to see any radical changes when the game appears in print.)
Despite the graphic awfulness, I highly recommend having someone else teach you how to play. Let them struggle through the learning process, then step in and start learning. Play the first few rounds with the cards face-up, if need be, to understand what's possible on each turn and how the flow of the game changes as everyone thinks or follows. Three games in, I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on what to do, and I'm looking forward to more plays to see what else is possible, a clear sign of a very good game.
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