Wednesday 6 September 2017

Development Diary #5

Hi all,

It's been a while. A lot to cover off since the last update.

For a start I've been in hospital with a collapsed lung (spontaneous pneumothorax) - just felt a spike of pain and shortness of breath on my way into work a few weeks ago. It was kinda scary at the time. Spent roughly 5 days split over two visits getting it sorted. There was also the strong possibility that I would need surgery, but after further review this is not happening (phew!).

x-ray of a collapsed lung!


The final prototype has arrived and it's looking glorious! I've been prepping the game for blind playtesting - I have a group all set and ready to go. A prototype is on rout to them as we speak. I'm very much looking forward to hearing how they get on. I'm looking into getting more blind playtests set up too. As much as I'd love to jump into third party reviews, I need to make sure all the blind playtests go smoothly.

Prototype looking very shwifty if you ask me


There was a great update that I put through on the website recently as well. It was mostly quality of life stuff, and should hopefully get more people pointed through to either the email forum or the twitter page. Which was a major goal of the update - trying to land more conversions to the Kickstarter hype lists buy improving the user experience and clarity of message for the 'purchase' page. The Email list and Twitter page will be the core ways I'll be tracking 'hype'. Not that the other social media isn't important! It's just negligible at this stage in comparison to the others.

You can't tell me that that doesn't look amazing

My main efforts right now are getting the word out and marketing - Blind playtests and 3rd party playtests are a bit of a "set it and forget it" kind of deal, but I'm actively tracking tracking the ones I have ongoing. Honestly, my traditional advertising has been working the best so far it seems, but that's mostly due to me not being a "Social Media" kind of dude. It just doesn't come naturally to me (heck it barely comes along as a learned behaviour).

I'll also research around to see what's my best approach for advertising - It's one of those things that I've researched in the past, but since it's not my forte I'm in definite need of a refresher - stonemaiergames.com actually seems like an amazing avenue for this. The guy behind it seems like a bit of a genius when it comes to marketing and running a successful Kickstarter. I'll definitely be spending some time this weekend going through their countless articles and using the insights to fine tune my approach.

Oh, and I almost forgot - A very cool update is that I've put more rules for public consumption on the official Act of Treason page! Feel free to check them out and stay updated on our social media so you can see when I publish the next batch of rules.

Read the rules update at www.playaot.com


Until next time friends.

Cheers,
 Tyson

Facebook | Twitter | YouTube