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 At
GAMA
we met someone from a company that specializes in gaming-oriented
T-shirts, and he said he'd love to add a Fluxx shirt to his line.
This would be a great deal for us, since someone else would then
be out there making and distributing T-shirts which advertise
our product, paying us a royalty for the privilege, and even
selling them to us at wholesale rates so that we can offer them
to you here in our gift
shop. The only question was, what design should we use? Having
pondered this for awhile, I came up with the Twilight Zone-style
collage you see here. It would of course be printed on a black
shirt, perhaps with a Looney Labs logo on the sleeve, and unlike
the Keeper
shirts, which came in so many flavors we couldn't cope with
providing sizes other than XL, this "Fluxx Zone" T-shirt
would be available in the full range. (So, what do you think?
Would you buy one? Or is there another design you'd like better?)
This weekend, Dale
Newfield started getting involved in the mountains of computer
work that Kristin's been struggling to keep up with for eons,
and I think he's going to be a big help. He's about to leave
grad school in search of a life, and even though it doesn't pay
anything, he's eager to get involved in helping us build our
company. (Thanks, dude! You rock! ) So, he spent the weekend
with us, getting started on the work, and it looks like he's
going to be our Unix guy, at least for the time being. He's trying
to find a job in the DC area, so that he can make a living while
also working with us, but there's also a chance he'll move out
west or something instead, so we'll just have to see how it goes.
But he's already been of great assistance to us, so hopefully
he'll be able to find some lucrative and interesting computer
science work in our area. (If you know of something, let him
know!)
 As
usual we also found time for gaming over the weekend. Here you
see Kory and
Dale as we simultaneously playtest both Chrononauts
(my new card game) and Volcano (Kristin's new icehouse game).
Volcano is the first game that requires both a full Icehouse
set and the two extra colors featured in the new Black
Ice expansion, and it's proving to be really cool. Last week
at the Pop-Tart
Cafe, we discovered the ruleset was broken, but Kory had
some new ideas, and after tweaking the scoring system and ending
conditions again, it's feeling more done (and more fun) than
ever. Hopefully by next week I'll get the rules written up, so
that more people can get in on the playtesting...
The object that you can't see on the right end of the table
(shown more clearly at the top of this page) is a really cool
pottery fish sculpture that Alison brought home from the studio
this week. (Having made plenty of bowls, she's begining to make
more exotic creations...)
We're still getting lots of e-mail with comments and ideas
about our
search for funding. Our ideal situation would be to find
a business angel with assets enough to fully support us on their
own (and who of course is also a good fit with us as far as business
goals, personality, politics, etc). But realistically, that's
a lot to hope for, and it's not likely to happen quickly, so
while we continue to look for this angel, we're trying to figure
out a way of taking advantage of the many smaller offers of investment
funding people have been hinting at.
Our current idea is Product-Backed Investments. This is a
way of allowing someone to fund a specific project, with a payoff
that reflects the product's success, with the inventory of product
itself being the collateral. Our idea is to offer a royalty on
the sale of a specific game to the person who puts up the money
needed to pay for the printing (or re-printing) of that game.
The royalty rate would be calculated so that the investment would
have a tidy return if the games sell relatively quickly, and
less of one if it takes longer, so that our investors' success
rate is tied to our own. Every three months we'd make a payment
on the loan, based on the number of units we'd sold, with the
loan being fully repaid by the time that print run sells out.
We're thinking to try this idea out with the next printing of
Aquarius, and if it works out (and we haven't found an angel)
we'll potentially do the same thing with the next printings of
Icehouse and Fluxx, and even Chrononauts and Zendo.
Speaking of the next printing of Aquarius, we're thinking
about having it done overseas. (!) As with our other products,
we've currently got plenty in stock and really need to be focusing
on getting them sold; but it won't be long before our supplies
dwindle. Now, we could just let Carta Mundi print more as before,
but at Toy
Fair we met with one of our Dreamers,
Mark Rice of Games 2 Remember, who gets all of his card printing
done by a printer in Hong Kong. We've never really considered
this before, having heard plenty of horror stories about the
downsides of cheap overseas labor, but Mark (who was a fellow
veteran of the C&W Printing Vortex that also plagued the
first printing of Fluxx) has learned the ropes and is now helping
his overseas partner find more work here in the States. The quotes
we've gotten are great - definitely cheaper than anything we
can find here, even with the added shipping costs - but of course,
the production cycle is a lot longer too, and still being mindful
of the horror stories, we also want to allow plenty of time for
problems to arise. So, what we're thinking to do is to let this
company in Hong Kong take on the next printing of Aquarius, since
there's still a fair amount of time before the first printing
is expected to run out. This print run will cost around $5K and
we'd like to sign someone up as a backer for this project, as
a first go at our Product-Based Investment program. So now the
question to you (if you're a reader who digs our games and has
a few extra sacks of money lying around) is this: Would you like
to fund the next printing of Aquarius?
 Have
a great week!
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