Act of Treason: Direct To Your Door!

I have the tendency to pontificate. So, allow me to get right to the point.

I’ll be releasing Act of Treason for open play testing.

You read that right. I’ll be releasing Act of Treason for open testing. As many of you know, I’ve been developing Act of Treason for over 5 years now. I am very confident of how solid Act of Treason is, so why open play testing?

Why?

• Additional Marketing: Marketing has always been a large hurdle for me and for Act of Treason. Everything else has been polished and tucked away. It is my last and only hurdle  - hence the open playtesting. I figure it’s a great way to get the game out there, and get some marketing going. If people like it, it will spread organically.
• For The Fans: I have a lot of pride in Act of Treason, and I wanted to see it through to the end. Over the years, my interest in becoming a game designer has waned somewhat. I still want to make games, but I cannot dedicate as much time to it as I would like. It doesn’t help that getting Act of Treason across the line has been so difficult. I’m not complaining, it is what it is. I would never want to lock Act of Treason away from the world. Act of Treason has already cost me thousands in time and money. Some of that is my own doing - again, not complaining. It is what it is. I’d just as soon release Act of Treason and make no money than not release it at all. This is a thank you to all of those who were fans of the game, and who waited for it so patiently, and so eagerly, for so long. Thank you. I hope it was worth the wait.
• Feedback: While it will be unlikely that I’ll be making any sweeping changes, it will be great to get feedback on the game, and potentially improve it further still from where it sits currently. Every little bit helps, so feel free to share your thoughts. To that end I will provide feedback forms as well as an email address for feedback. All feedback will be reviewed and potentially incorporated into the official Kickstarter release.

An example Printout

When?

I’ve managed to overshoot timeline estimates in the past. Things crop up that I cannot control, and I have to adjust my schedule accordingly. So I am reluctant to post a firm date. However, I will aim for the first week of December. It would be great to get it out to you all before the Christmas and New Years holidays, giving you ample time to prepare a game to play over the holidays with family and friends. 

I’ll be removing the art, tweaking some of the rules and images used in the rules and on the cards. In addition I’ll need to make sure everything is set on the website, mailing list, and with Gamecrafter, in order for a smooth transition into a public trial. It’s a bit of work, but I imagine I should be able to get it done in time.

Where?

You’ll be able to get the game in two core ways:

• Print and Play: Sign up to the mailing list and you’ll get a link to download the Act of Treason print and play PDF. I’ve had to remove all card art from the game, as I do not have permission to use it for this purpose. The print and play will be roughly 20 A4 pages + rulebook. It includes standard Magic: The Gathering sized cards, which can easily be sleeved, and a few larger printouts to make up the board, which had to be cut up into sections in order to fit onto A4. This trial edition, once released, will be available indefinitely.
• Gamecrafter: I don’t like excluding those who might not have access to a printer. For those who may be willing to pay a little extra for the convenience of not having to cut up 20 pages worth of cards, I have decided to offer a printed trial edition of Act of Treason for a limited time. It is essentially the same as the print and play, but professionally printed and delivered to your door for your convenience. How much will this service cost? Don’t know yet, but I’m not trying to profit from this, and I don't want to charge people retail prices for what is effectively a trail copy. I will seek to make the cost as cheap as possible, but bear in mind that a large part of the cost will be determined by The GameCrafter, which is the service I'll be using.
  Edit (2018/01/06): I would love to offer this service, but after some research it's sadly not viable as an option. However I am happy to offer a copy to reviewers for the purpose of evaluating. If this is you, you can contact me here.

I think that about raps it up. I look forward to the coming months, and to your feedback.

Cheers,
 Tyson

Development Diary #10 - Back on the Path

Hi All,

Sorry for the hiatus. I was away on a spontaneous 4 week break. I was doing some housesitting and taking some time to get a couple of things sorted. Either way it was really great to collate my thoughts before I dived back into some more Act of Treason.

As many of you know, Act of Treason was up on Kickstarter recently. I've put up a short article: What I learned from Kickstarter here on the Blog. It's a pretty good read for any aspiring game designers or entrepreneurs if I do say so myself. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and gain a little bit of insight into that side of things.

Before I launched Act of Treason on Kickstarter I had said:

"I hope Act of Treason is successful, but if it were to fail anywhere along the road to funding, I can almost guarantee it will be due to a lack of strong marketing" - Tyson, Myself and future projects

I've been asking people and researching how best to market Act of Treason, but there's no silver bullet here. I think I just need to be patient and slowly crank out content - building support where I can. We will get there in the end. It may just take a while. An added complication is that I work full time and have a fair amount going on outside of work, so time is a rather limited commodity that I'm working with. I'm not saying any of this as an excuse or to gain sympathy. I'm just honestly laying out how I think it is.

A big part of why I find marketing so tough is because it is somewhat antithetical to who I am and what I like to do. I am very much a lone wolf type of character. I would self describe as quiet, reserved & analytical. I deliberately move away from the lime light. I enjoy designing and creating. I love Act of Treason a great deal, but I also dislike marketing a great deal.

I think the best way to progress from here is to stick to my strengths. This means I'll be doing things that might not seem related to Act of Treason from time to time. This likely means more focus on Dominant Strategy posts - this could also mean I spend a bit of time to work on other projects that will drum up interest in its own right. This isn't me turning away from Act of Treason - I honestly do think this might be the best path forward. Me taking on the these other tasks will drive interest back into Act of Treason in the long term. It's kind of the only way I see me being able to move forward. I ask for your patience and support - I'm doing the best that I can. This is a road now that I've be walking on for over 5 years. I'm already well accustomed to just how long and difficult this journey is. I'm not here to put out something that I'm not going to be proud to stand behind. I'm not here for a cash grab, or a quick buck. I'm doing my best to deliver a product that I will be proud of and that will stand the test of time.

I want to thank you all for your support so far - It has been really great to see! The Mailing List subscriber count has been moving up each day! Thank you for your follows, your support, and getting the word out! Every little bit helps!

I'll be spending a lot of time on Dominant Strategy posts in the coming months. In addition I'll see if I can queue up some play through of gaming groups playing Act of Treason from start to finish to showcase on the website and on the next Kickstarter Campaign. If you're interested in playing or reviewing Act of Treason or you know someone who can showcase it on their website, blog, or channel, don't hesitate to get in touch.


Until next time,
 Tyson

Act of Treason Design Journal - Part 3

Why aren’t there more Examinations in the game?
I’ve deliberately put many opportunities to gain Examination Blocking and few opportunities for players to examine other players in Act of Treason for very good reason. If too much information is given out as to the loyalty of the players then the mystery and tension of the game is stripped away. Players can narrow down the suspects and simply make a plan to win, eliminating those they need to - there is no more unknown - The fun gets sucked right out of the game almost instantly and the game becomes an accounting exercise to wrap up an who wins.

If you know too much, then Act of Treason is no longer a game of intrigue and deception, and the whole point of the game is lost. I’ve witnessed this effect many times during my early playtests, and because of this, I’d rather have too few examinations than too many. You need to keep the suspense of who is who right up until the very end of the game for the maximum fun.

As it currently stands. Act of Treason has a good balance. You won't get too many examinations to reveal too much, and it's highly likely you'll get one or two - enough to encourage suspicion, interaction, and added conflict.

Why are there lots of ways to get Examination Blocks?
Sort of the inverse question to the one above. Examination Blocks gives both the Heir and Traitors the ability to pick up these cards without being too suspicious - after all if there are so many it's tough to avoid them... right? This makes getting an Examination Block less suspicious.

Added to this, you don't want the game flooded with Examinations, as noted above. Players will have to adapt their examinations to the blocks that are currently in play - It just makes getting clear information that much more tricky, which is a plus. In my opinion, there definitely isn’t too many examination blocks. I’ve never seen full saturation of Examination Blocking - there’s always been at least one person at the table who can still be examined by the end of the game.

Depending on your loyalty, the trick is trying to get an examination block as inconspicuously as possible! At the very least you may want to try to stop others from getting them, or use the opportunity to throw suspicion on them if they do!

Why do players gain Examination Blocking if they Examine?
'Chaining' examinations is a very powerful strategy that has been used in previous editions of Act of Treason. What is 'chaining'? It’s when player A examines player B and then Player B examines Player C. By 'chaining' examinations in this manner you gain an extremely strong sense of who is who, to the point of sometimes actually knowing for certain. A can’t be lying unless C is on their team, and so forth, The larger the chain, the stronger the information. This is very bad for he game as mentioned in 'Why aren’t there more Examinations in the game?' The fun gets sucked right out if you know too much!

As an added negative, this gives examinations so much power that players were incentivised to get Examinations at any cost. Worse still, the strategy was only dominant for the loyals, and yet the Traitors would be forced to go along with it or risk exposing themselves as a Traitor! This created a terrible dominant strategy that removed all meaningful choices from the game and replaced them with "buying Examinations so that you can chain them".

Examination chaining was removed from the game early on. Now, Examinations are both scarce and they can never really be proven to be correct because 'chaining' has been removed. This keeps the mystery of the game going. In the current iteration of the game, players who examine others or who get examined gain examination blocking - this is what prevents examination chaining. I trailed this in a few games a while back and have never regretted my decision to add it to the game. This is a very good mechanic to have because it keeps distrust and intrigue going, and if anything it adds to it!

Why does the Steward get to reward a Court card if the Quest passes?
The Court is where players can go to purchase cards that give them additional powers and effects. A Court card must be purchased buy spending Knowledge. Since Knowledge is used to pass Quests, players will be lowering the chance of the passing the Quest that round, and potentially subsequent rounds.

This has mostly been covered in parts 1 and 2, but simply put, the Court is restricted to put a limit to the amount of damage that players can do when acquiring cards from court - knowledge spent on court card can't be used to pass Quests for instance. Likewise, allowing the Steward to reward any left over cards in Court is a nice free bonus that rewards players as a group for not just buying cards outright.

Without these mechanics in play, new players have a strong tendency to purchase cards without knowing why it’s the wrong time to buy, or what it means. Then some new players may blame the game rather than realise the fault was with them. With these mechanics in place as well as the tips in the rulebook, players are more likely to build up the understanding that buying without solid reason is the reason for their downfall, not the game or anything else.

Why are the Quests ordered?
This is highly related to the point above, and why it is recommended that advanced players play with the Quests unordered and randomised.

For beginning players, playing with ordered Quests is somewhat like playing with training wheels. In blind playtesting some players would leap into tactics that were quite destructive without realizing. This could lead to them blaming the game for their actions, not realizing that they were "playing the game wrong". Now as a designer I don't believe players can play a game wrong, so I needed to provide a clearer incentive and push for players to play in such a way  I covered this before with the social contract as discussed before.

I've found that using ordered Quests help to keep the kingdom nice and controlled in the early game, with some of the more dangerous cards coming out near the end game to help facilitate conflict. This guides players into the the social contract and tactics that keep the game on course. When the Quests are unordered, players will have to organise themselves to ensure that they stay on track and that Quest and the Court cards aren't misused by the other players.

Why do you have a Deception Phase?
I've played a lot of games both with and without a Deception Phase, and with many different groups. The consensus is that including the deception phase is more fun and allows for more tactics with your Traitor friend. That said you don't have to include it as stated in the rule book. Optional rules exist that allow you to play without it. In fact for the five player game it's mandatory that you play without it.  Both ways of playing are equally viable, and in my opinion.

Why do you not reveal Loyalties after a player dies?
This keeps the suspense of the game going until the very end of the game. As discussed above, revealing too much can take away the suspense, and locking down a players loyalty after they die so that they cannot be examined adds yet another factor into if killing them is a good idea.

Tune in next time for the following:

Why is the Quest phase before the Action Phase?

Why do you discard down to 4 Knowledge cards each round?

Why is the cost of Court cards variable?

Why is there a Town Watch?

Are the Court cards balanced?

It seems way too tough for the Traitors/Loyals to win Tribute/the game?

Why do you not reveal Loyalties after a player dies?

Development Diary #9 - Less than 24 Hours to go

Hey Y’all,

Under 24 hours to go until Act of Treason launches on Kickstarter. It all just feels so surreal.

The Update

Let me take you through some of what I’ve been up:

• Updating the Act of Treason website (playaot.com) and prepping it for the Kickstarter launch. It’s mostly new art assets and concept images, but the biggest update was adding the rules for Act of Treason, which are all sitting online now at www.playaot.com/rules.
• Created a press release, and sent it around to various bloggers and board game related news sites.
• Act of Treason is now up on Board Game Geek. If you've played it, feel free to create an account and post up your review.
• The Kickstarter page has seen a ton of work and is looking very swish now. I’ve included a mixture of text and what I’ve been calling “long tiles”, which are basically just images. I call them long tiles because they are tiled down the page and are typically quite long. A fair bit of work went into Photoshop to make sure they all look good and they covered all the needed information.
• I created my own company called Saffron Entertainment. It doesn’t have an identity of itself yet, or website, or anything really - right now it’s basically a holding company for Act of Treason, but it will be getting its own unique personality & all the frills sometime after the KS launch.
• Prepared some blog posts to come out before and during the campaign. A recent one went up for those who are interested in learning more about me and my future projects. You can read it here. Also, expect posts to come up soon for both The Dominant Strategy as well as parts 3 and 4 of the Design Journal.
• I created an Act of Treason video with some basic animation for the KS page. It's embedded below. It took me roughly three days out of a planned two. First was getting the VO right, cutting out the background noise proved both necessary and more difficult than I had anticipated. That was most of Day 1. Days 2 and 3 where on the visuals, first half and second half respectively. I had most planned out ahead of time, but winged a couple of parts when I arrived at them. I think it’s important to stay adaptable for situations like that - you can sometimes stumble upon an easier and/or better solution if you stay flexible and open to it.

Personal Stuff

So about two weeks ago, windows decided to push updates on me really hard, and so I decided to go ahead with them. The next thing after I boot back into windows - my screens are glitching out and artifacting, flashing gray for a frame or two. Thanks Windows update! I trouble shoot to try resolve it via updates etc, but it keeps happening. The graphics card is the likely culprit - Gigabyte GTX980Ti for the tech nerds out there who are interested. So I decided to take my graphics card out and clean it. That's when I notice that it's boiling hot. I'm beginning to suspect overheating.

Sure enough I clean the card to remove the dust and then when I plug it back in I find out the fans either aren't spinning, or are making weird noises when they do spin. Sure enough, shortly after plugging in the card the fan falls off and I'm getting the artifacts again. I jam a large fan next to the case for a while until I can get my hands on a replacement - it actually worked too! No more artifacts while I had that setup. The culprit fan must have not been spinning for a while, or something came loose with it? Who knows. All I know is that I'm down one boss graphics card. RIP.

My makeshift cooling setup

Now I'm running my brothers old card, about the same power as an Xbox360 gfx card. While I wait for gigabyte to examine the card under warranty. The timing is just great as you might imagine. Right as the Kickstarter campaign is about to begin. Oh well, could be worse. I mean I could have had my hard drive fail with all my Act of Treason stuff. Instead I just had my hard drive fail with all my old movies and TV shows. Yes, you read that right - one of my hard drives failed like a few days ago! Afterwards I Immediately rushed and backed up my entire Act of Treason folder. At least I can still work and all my files are alright. That's the main thing. It is genuinely painful to work on some of my files now however. Even slightly large Google Docs documents are laggy at times!

Okay Google

So when I first started prepping Act of Treason for Kickstarter, I knew I wanted to have a website dedicated to Act of Treason. One of the things that really got stuck in my craw was that my website wasn’t appearing on google unless you typed in something very specific like “Act of Treason board game” - even then I don't think it was top of the page. Back then, typing in just “Act of Treason” had my website on page 5 or something, which might as well been tantamount to it not existing.

I’m proud to announce that when I typed “Act of Treason” into google today I got the following:

3rd result, not bad! And when I type in “Act of Treason board game” the results are even better still! It just feels good to make progress on something like that, especially when it has mostly resolved itself.

Learning From Mistakes

I was going through the Kickstarter, typing up the "Risks and challenges" section. For the unfamiliar, this is an area that sits at the bottom of your Kickstarter page. It is for the project creator to explain: "The risks and challenges that come with completing your project, and how the project creator is qualified to overcome them."

A rather important section for some projects and for backers too. It helps set the stage for what could go wrong and should be used by the creator to honestly reflect on where they could become stuck, which allows the backers to make a informed decision about the level of risk they are willing to take on.

In typing up that section, it made me realize something: It’s all about trust.

Trust is a huge part of any business interaction. If you don’t trust whom you’re dealing with, it’s unlikely that you’ll give them any money in exchange for a good or service. Why? Because you can’t be sure of the level of quality you’ll get, or that you’ll get the product or service you asked for. Heck, you could potentially not get the product or service at all. Any number of things can go wrong in a business situation, and not having trust and confidence in whom you’re conducting business with means that you might not get the outcome you want. Trust means you're confident that you'll come out okay, even when things go wrong.

Now, with all that in mind, I need to come clean about something that has been buging me.

This was not a great promotion I ran. I’m going to peg this one up to me not being so great at marketing - but even then I should have known better! Some of the things I mention in my post when I first revealed this are just straight up wishful thinking. It just wasn’t very grounded of me. I’m going to unpack it a little here for you so you can learn from my mistake. 

Let's start with the reward of this promotion - doubling the marketing and art budgets. My rationale at the time makes some sense:

“I wanted a reward that didn't detract from the product and divert attention or effort elsewhere. I also wanted a reward that all backers could enjoy. A reward that would be fair to all backers. This reward is in line with my main concern - making the best game possible.”

While I stand by this rationale, the biggest issue with the reward is that it’s vague, and not very tangible or salable. What does "double the budget" actually mean? Having values such as an increase of $4,000 for both would have been much clearer and more transparent. But even then, that’s not a very salable reward. No one is going to get excited when you tell them that they should sign up to a mailing list because they then get to increase the numbers on somebody's else budget.

A better reward would be in line with all the rationale I laid out above, while at the same time being  more tangible, salable and clear. I would give you an example, but if I could do that I would have run a better promotion in the first place. Something like adding a new card or two into the game kind of works, but that comes with it's own cost. I for one am very dubious of any Kickstarter game when they do this - offer to increase the components or mechanics of the game as a stretch goal or bonus. I wonder, "why am I not getting the most complete/best product when the idea is already out there and tested?", and "Doesn't adding/removing that component upset the balance of the game?" Both fair questions.

Another smaller mistake, but a mistake none the less, is that I should have taken a different tact with the x3 mailing list “rule” worked into this promotion. I should have only applied a 1 for 1 across all social media accounts, OR only included the mailing list in the promotion. Having mailing list sign ups count for x3 followers is a confusing and convoluted message.

In marketing, I think you should treat everything that you do like you’re playing Chinese whispers - if it can be miscommunicated, it probably will. You should always aim for the clearest and most impactful message you can as this has the greatest distance - a convoluted message won’t travel very far. This is one reason that memes have the spread that they do. They are a short snappy highly shareable idea or message that provides some level of value - The messages you give out to the public should be almost like memes. Clear, short, snappy and valuable. If you can do that, then the message will share itself. In hindsight I should have gone with email signups only for a clearer message.

But by far the biggest error I made was the amount of followers needed for the promotion to be successful. 4,000!? Are you serious? In my defense, I figured that if they were to all be email sign ups which is what I was pushing for the real number is ~1,333. Added to this I already had quite a few signups which made the number of signups I needed less still. But having such a large number as the goal would have made me look like I was living in a dream world - and let's be honest, in some sense I was.

I did see an increase in the email signups at the start of the promotion. I want to thank my supporters for that, but I’m sure it’s much less than it would be had I included a sensible goal, focused purely on e-mail signups, and had a much clearer, salable, and tangible reward for hitting the goal. My bad.

As it turns out, after doing some more calculations and juggling the budget, you’ll be getting some of this reward for free anyway. I really want to see the final product have great art, even at the lowest possible funding goal. So the minimum Art budget for Act of Treason has been tweaked to just under double of what it was to ensure this. The marketing playbook has also had some rework to allow for easy scaling. I might not be doing more marketing spending, but I most certainly will if the advertising has good hit and conversion rates.

Please don’t make the same mistakes I did - focus on simplicity & clarity. Run your ideas past someone first who will be willing to challenge you.

----

That about covers it. I look forward to the post Kickstarter blog write up where I can break down what went right (or what went wrong).

See you on the other side.

Cheers,

 Tyson

Music of the Week

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Development Diary #8

Hey Y'all,

Merry Christmas and I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

Only 43 days until Act of Treason is up on Kickstarter! I'm currently rushing, making sure all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. This week I'll be talking about the most recent Act of Treason review by Unfiltered Gamer, the website update, social media, and other sundry miscellaneous thingys.

Unfiltered Gamer - Act of Treason Review

I'll start with the most awesome news - Unfiltered Gamer has reviewed Act of Treason, and from the sounds of it they really liked it! For those of you who don't know Unfiltered Gamer is an independent 3rd party board game reviewer. They often review games that are going up on Kickstarter to help people get to know if the game is for them. Overall I loved the review and I'm very happy with it. You can watch it below.

In addition, Unfiltered Gamer will be doing a live play of Act of Treason on Wednesday the 17th of January PST. This is the best opportunity to check it out and see what AoT is all about before the launch date ! You can watch the livestream at the Unfiltered Gamers Facebook Page. Be sure to sign up so that you get notified when it's on!

Website Update

With the new video from Unfiltered Gamer I wanted to slap on an update to the Act of Treason website. I've added the following:

• Featured the Unfiltered Gamer review on the front page as well as on the feedback page.
• Revealed more rules for Act of Treason in the Rules section.
• A few other small tweaks and Quality of Life improvements here and there.

Social Media Promotion

I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who is signing up to the Kickstarter mailing list. I've already seen a notable increase to the number of subscribers there. It has more than doubled since the 8th of November, which I'm pretty ecstatic about, which brings us to a solid ~700 followers. We're well on our way folks!

As some of you may know where currently running a promotion whereby if we get enough followers before the Kickstarter launch date on the 10th of Feb we'll be boosting the art/marketing budget. I think 4,000 followers may have been a bit high in hindsight, but it's still very much possible! If we can make a sizable dent in it then I'll definitely consider giving a small bonus as a reward even if we don't hit the 4k goal.

I'll be working hard to make sure that we try to collectively hit the 4k goal! I want to be able to make the best product possible and 4k would make for a very stable foundation indeed.

If you know any podcasters or 3rd party reviewers who might be interested in covering Act of Treason to help get the word out please do let me know in the comments or you can contact me directly.

Miscellaneous

I'm not sure if I've shared it yet, but here is the final prototype all boxed up. The art is subject to change, and the components might be altered a bit, but at this stage the mechanics are all pretty much locked down.

That's Emilien Rotivals artwork featured on the back an front of the box. Great artist, you can find more of his work over at theartysquid.com.

Frontside of Box

Backside of Box

For those of you who may have missed it, the first article of The Dominant Strategy is up. It's called 'What Makes Games Fun?' In it I explore the various reasons why we enjoy games and give some color to how a game designer might use this information to inform your design choices. If you're interested in game design, feel free to give it a read here.

I think that about covers it for this week.

Cheers,
 Tyson

Music of the week

Development Diary #7 - 10th of Feb

Hey Y'all,

Today I am excited to announce that on Saturday 12pm on the 10th of Feb Act of Treason is planned to launch on Kickstarter ( Friday, 9th,11:00 am GMT).

To aid in a successful launch I will be running a promotion leading up to the release date. As previously mentioned I've been toying with bonus "Social Media" stretch goals to help spread awareness of Act of Treason before the Kickstarter goes live. After much deliberation I have landed on going ahead with this plan, and aiming for 4,000 followers which should be an obtainable goal. That should be enough to help me to secure funding for Act of Treason.

4,000 may seem like a lot to some of you. I have laid out my rationale below which I help explains where I'm coming from. I'm trying to choose a number that will yield a successful Kickstarter - nothing more.

To reward all of us for hitting 4,000 followers, I will personally turn my pockets inside out and lay down *double* of the budgeted money for both the Art of the final product as well as the Marketing during the Kickstarter campaign. This helps me and it helps you. I get to make a more beautiful product that I can be prouder than a gushing parent over - and you can have a nicer, better looking game that you can love playing with your friends. We all win!

Note that there are additional art budget increases in the kickstarter stretch goals as well. So even if we don't hit this goal, there is still plenty of opportunity to fund even better kick ass art for Act of Treason.

It wasn't easy to come up with that reward. I wanted a reward that didn't detract from the product and divert attention or effort elsewhere. I also wanted a reward that all backers could enjoy. A reward that would be fair to all backers. This reward is in line with my main concern - making the best game possible.

It's easy to just say doubled - what does that actually mean? Well, for the Art, the current baseline  budget is ~$5,000 USD. Which is roughly break even when hitting the Kickstarter funding goal. This will double to ~$10,000 USD if we hit 4,000 followers! Marketing during the kick starter is currently set to $2,000 USD. Naturally this will increase to ~$4,000 USD. Keep in mind, marketing doesn't just help me! More marketing means more pledges and more pledges means hitting stretch goals. It means even more budget. It means economies of scale. It means negotiation power, etc.  Ultimately, this all leads to an even better product for you!

So, How'd I settle on 4,000? Well previously on the blog I've floated the figure of 1,000 eyes on, within the first 24 hours. Or even better 1,000 pledges within the first 24 hours. I have been assured by others and my own research that this is a good step in the right direction, and will definitely help to reach a successful kickstarter campaign.

In order to reach 1,000 I figure that we'll need more than 1,000 followers. The conversion rate for each social media account I have isn't likely going to be 100%. I imagine that for twitter I'll have a very low conversion rate of say 10%, and for the email list I will expect something along the line of 70%. Because of this I definitely need more than 1,000 followers across all social media if I want 1,000 pledges within the first 24 hours.

Also to note, nothing stops people from signing up to more than one social media channel - which is fine. However, what this translates to is an even lower conversion rate for each social media channel. For example, the same follower could be spread across 4 different media channels, but would only result in one sale. Because of this I would imagine that 4,000 is at least the bare minimum needed to get that delicious 1,000 within the first 24 hours. If anything 4,000 could be too low - but I want to set an obtainable goal for you all that incentivises both you and me to make this project a success!

Note there will be some foot traffic from Kickstarter as well as marketing traffic from my advertisements. So naturally we will get a few bonus pledges that won't come directly from followers, but the more we get in the first 24 hours increases our chances of hitting that glorious front page and getting that prime spot on that Pareto distribution.

4,000 Followers just seems like a good start to me. Who knows, if we happen to hit 4,000 quick enough I can always offer another bonus reward!

Here is our progress so far:

It's looking pretty nice so far, but we only have three months to hit that 4,000 follower goal!

Now, as alluded to above, I believe the email signups are a much stronger indicator of interest than the other social media follows. Because of this I have offered a very nice x3 bonus for *all* email signups - the strongest indicator to buy of all the social media. After all, an email signup is someone who has taken the time to sign up either using a link on the blog or from the website - they aren't just looking for a follow back.

This is reflected on the graph above, so the actual number of email signups is around ~25 at the moment, this gets boosted to ~75. If you wish to help me out, you know what to do.

Thank you to all of those who have followed the journey so far and I hope to open my arms and invite many more of you in the coming weeks!

The Part One of the Design Journal was quite well received, which I am humbled by. I'm glad to see people enjoyed reading through it and hopefully they gained insight from it. In the pipeline is part 2 of the Design Journal and I will be also running a series called The Dominant Strategy, where I will be talking about all aspects of game design, game theory, and game analysis. This is inspired a little bit from the stonemaier blogs which discusses all things related to Kickstarter. A fantastic resource which I hope anyone looking into releasing a game on Kickstarter checks out - A ton of great info there! Well I want to do a similar thing, but for Game Design! The first article of The Dominant Strategy will be "What makes games fun", and I can't wait to share it with you!

Both part two of the Design Journal and Article one of The Dominant Strategy will be posted up in the next week or two.

Until next time squad fam.

Papa bless,
 Tyson

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Development Diary #6

Hey Y'all,

Sorry for the delays on these posts. Life, as always, gets in the way.

Act of Treason has been progressing nicely, and we are nearing the end game. 3rd party reviewers are almost all lined up. The biggest two things on my plate are Marketing/Promotion and the Kickstarter page.

We really need to try hit 1,000+ followers before launch day (which will be revealed very soon). In order to help us hit the goal, I'll be looking to up my social media presence, release more videos, and increase my spending on advertising. Hopefully the holidays will allow me to make some great progress in this arena.

I am also toying with ideas for an additional social media goal that will apply to the Kickstarter. eg: if we hit 2,000 followers before launch day, then I'll unlock a stretch goal for free, or something to that effect. So stay tuned for updates to that! It's looking very likely I'll do something on that front!

I've also done some work on making a placeholder box for the prototypes, see below. Note that this isn't the final as with all of the game assets you've seen so far. It's just nice to have a box that I can hand to people to review, instead of a blank cardboard box.

That does it for this week, I have scheduled a blog post for later in the week regarding a certain "Act of Treason Design Journal" that you may be interested in checking out, especially if you are interested in game design.

Until next time my dudes.

Cheers,
 Tyson

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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

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Development Diary #4

Hi all,

Sorry for the bit of a hiatus since my last post. There are a few reasons for this which I've detailed below. Nevertheless things are still getting done and I'm very proud of how things are turning out - Rules are really coming along and everything is lining up for blind playtesting - I'm sure that when everything is done and dusted we will have a fantastic looking product with streamlined mechanics that Loyals and Traitors alike will really enjoy.

I've been quite unwell as of late. I managed to get sick *twice* with a nasty throat bug since last blog post. I've been feeling better at times... feeling much worse at other times. I think some of this has to do with exercise, but I'm beginning to suspect that it's been mostly diet related. I'll be starting up a food diary and tracking what I eat and how I feel each day to see if I can isolate if it is certain types of food that are the cause. Feeling tired, low energy, bloated, among other things. I don't wanna whine, but it's something I need to work proactively towards. I'll also be trying to cut out as much sugar as I dare to. I'll let you know how I progress and if I notice any major differences - who knows, it might help someone out.

Example of me working hard on Act of Treason

Those of you who follow the blog, you'll know that marketing isn't my forte. I'm trying my best to figure out what works and what doesn't. Twitter seems to be *the* number one place for people who are interested in upcoming Kickstarter projects like board games and so forth. I don't actually don't like Twitter for a number of reasons, the main one being that they seem to be quite political, often silencing people wherever possible who disagree with their companies political stance and views. Google and Facebook are just as culpable here. Since I'm a strong proponent for free speech that kinda rubs me the wrong way. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of Twitter, most of my followers seem to be coming from there. As much as I dislike Twitter I will focus my efforts to gaining followers on Twitter and staying in with the followers (other than this blog of course). So please make sure you follow me on Twitter to stay up to date with any major developments. Naturally I will also be echoing out the other important updates over my other social medias listed here.

One message I need to remember to push is how Act of Treason is going to be a great game for those who love that social deduction styled games like mafia and werewolf but are looking for even more opportunity and ability to deceive, bluff, persuade. I think that's the strongest part of Act of Treason. Act of Treason was designed specifically to allow players to flex their social deduction and prowess as much as possible, And that's purely because that's exactly the game I wanted to play! I got tired of playing games like Mafia and Battle Star Galactica where the opportunities for social deduction are limited. Playing Act of Treason is very humbling. Just when you think you've got a handle on how to play well, someone will show you that you can still be fooled and maybe you don't know everything you think you do. It's not an easy thing to fit all this into a soundbite however. "Act of Teason - Betray your friends, Deceive a Kingdom." It's close isn't it? it's certainly the best I've heard so far.

Example draft of the rules

I've been fixing up all the assets so that they are as close as they can be to the final product. This helps as the less changes I have to make, the less something will go wrong in the drift from the prototype to the final revision. I always try to follow the adage "Train how you play". I think that is fantastic advice that is applicable in so many parts of life - and definitely applicable here. The Act of Treason Prototype is close to the final product in everything other than the final art. It should just be a matter of 'dragging and dropping' in the new artwork to make the game look as nice as possible. Everything else is already in place. Part of revising the assets involved me getting the Rulebook as close to the final as possible with the layout, diagrams and references in place - this is actually a major task surprisingly, and I don't doubt that blind playtesting will reveal even more changes that I need to fit into the rulebook to help smooth out any sore points. I've just been working on the rulebook all of today, it's surprising how the tiniest of details can help to smooth out the explanation for new players. I look forward to having the best rule book possible, as well having the rules online, and in a video, at www.playaot.com.

Example of the online rules

We are getting very close to the Kickstarter. Once I get the Rulebook checked a couple more times by third parties, and I get my prototype from Game Crafter delivered and checked, then I'll be ready for blind playtesting! After that it's third party and then right onto the kickstarter! Very close folks! I can see the horizon and It's looking glorious!

I also want to give a shout out to Shem Phillips (@garphillgames on twitter) who I met at Boardgames By The Bay, a local board game convention in my area. He has given me some great advice on how to progress towards the Kickstarter. Feel free to check out the awesome games he has made here. I also found out about the Game Artisans NZ Facebook Group at the same convention, which will be a great resource for me going forwards.

I've not forgotten about some of the other topics I promised to cover in previous posts. I'll be doing a big recap over some of them closer to the Kickstarter - or after. It will depend on the topic. But that's plenty for this week.

Cheers all,
 Tyson

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Development Diary #3

Hi all,

Just wanted to keep you informed of a few updates that have been going on behind the scenes. I'll try do it quickfire, as there is a lot to cover.

For a start, I've been trying to fix up the website and the google search a bit. This has been more time consuming than I would have liked. The thing is that AoT, Act of Treason, playaot, are all not showing near the top of the google search page. As you might imagine this is a serious issue. This will WRECK my online visibility. I'm still trying to find out what happened and why it isn't showing up. I'm currently working through guides on how to correct this, but unfortunately the cause isn't clear. All I know is that if I do everything to secure the SOE for my site fortifying my position on the list as best I can, which can only be beneficial. It's painful, but like most painful things, it's worth doing. So I'm doing it.

For the website, the main thing I've fixed is the video link, that would take the user out of the website and to the YT channel. This may seem minor, but is it very unprofessional and a disconnect to the reader if they are navigated away from the site like that. We should be keeping the user there as long as they need to start soaking in the information there, and to hopefully convert them into a patron of our excellent product. Keep an eye out for our next video, it will be coming soon!

How the video appears now

Ultimately, I'll be doing more beatification of the site and the product as I feel that it should at the very least lead into more shares. People will be more inclined to share a link to something of high quality. Almost all shares come from a space of "Hey this looks awesome, I saw it and thought I would share it with you because you might think it's awesome too". This is where being 'good' or 'alright' doesn't really cut it. Having a great product is one thing. But demonstrating that the product is great - totally different story.

A mockup of the game box and setup I've made

Anyway. I've also been coming to grips with online paid advertising using very small dollar amounts, but making sure that I'm still getting eyes on page + gearing up. I want to make it so that when the big day hits I've already have maximized my advertising potential.To this end I have a couple of ideas that will help me to get a rough projection on conversion rate, which will be useful in determining how effective advertising will be, and if I should amp it up, or just let it simmer.

I've also filmed some more footage with the help of my brother and his company bbgroup.net.nz. This is all a bit of a learning curve, but I think video is definitely the way forward and I will be trying to use as much of that medium as I can. I need to make shorter snippets and use them in posts. Something like a live play through and having the rules 100% exposed on the website are examples of this, which is definitely something I have planned to do.

An Actual Act of Treason Advertisement

I'll also be trailing videos to use for advertisements, I think the current one I'm using is good, but it needs a much better readout and a call to action to drive those who are interested to join the mailing list, or follow on the social media. It could also be a lot shorter. 30 seconds would be ideal.

I've decided to release a public schedule of things I have still to do with a rough time frame associated with each block of tasks. Bear in mind this is a ROUGH outline of the things I have left to do. But it will hopefully provide some clarity as we move forward. Bear in mind that timelines may get vastly pushed out depending on what blind playtests reveal. But at the same time, lots of these tasks can occur concurrently.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, I had a playtest last Friday, which went awesome. The changes added to the game seemed to have fixed things. As mentioned in Design Diary #1, I would shed some light onto what I was testing, why, and my findings.... But not just yet. That was plenty to cover this week and I have a lot to say on the design choices and my thoughts behind them - So I'll save that for my next post soon. Super excited for everything to follow!

Be sure to follow this blog or out other social media below and make sure to sign up to the Kickstarter Mailing list so we can let you know when the game comes out!

Until next time friends.

 Cheers,
 Tyson

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Development Diary #2

Hi all,

Just a quick update.

Working on more videos with my Brother who runs BBgroup.net.nz so I'll have plenty of content going forwards. Also working on a bit of a secret gambit which will pay off in spades if I can pull it off. I won't share any details here, but I will in time depending on the outcome of it. Needless to say for a somewhat small sacrifice in time I have the change to gain a LOT of exposure, but I can't guarantee I'll be able to pull it off. Time will tell.

In case you haven't seen it. Video below explaining in brief what Act of Treason is - More to come!:

I've got two playtests lined up over the next two weeks and development has been going well. Once these playtests are done I’ll be in good place to begin blind playtests – I’ll ask groups of completely new players to pick up the game and understand/follow the rules without any assistance from me. I’ve run blind playtests in the past and the results can surprise you. People get snagged or confused about something you wouldn’t have guessed. It is mostly to ensure the game components are easy to follow and intuitive as well as the rulebook is clear. Blind playtests are crucial though, as you won’t pick up such issues before it’s too late without them.

So I'll be spending some time on revising the old rulebook which has become a bit of a tangled mess - The new draft I've been preparing is far slicker and hopefully will be a much better rulebook once I'm done with it.

Make sure you guys are getting enough rainbow

After blind playtests, I’ll be able to send the game out to 3rd party reviewers, which will be important step as not only do they have their own followings that they can bring to the kickstarter, but if they do a good endorsement of the product, it will significantly help to convert more visitors to the Kickstarter page into pledges.

Lots to be done whiles all that’s happening though - Website is up and is undergoing updates. I’ve also put out a video explaining what Act of Treason is and all the social media is in place. I’m slowly gaining followers, especially on twitter for some reason. I’m doing some learning as I’m prepping things, as I've mentioned, marketing is very new to me. Reading books on the topic, etc. For the most part I’ve just been preparing assets such as images and videos for promotional use later.

One plank at a time

All in all, things are progressing well. It feel a little like one man building a house at times. Yes there is progress, but there is so much to do it just feels like it will never end. Nevertheless I'm slowly ticking things off of my to do and inching closer and closer to a very polished and very slick final product that I know I can be proud of.

 Cheers,

 Tyson

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Development Diary #1

Hi all, just a quick update on how things are progressing with Act of Treason.

I won't be sharing too many mechanics with the game this time around as I've not had a chance to try out my latest changes - that'll be in two weeks or so. Once I've tried the new mechanics I'll do a full dissection on what worked, what didn't, and why. But honestly, this week I've just been so focused on getting the groundwork for the promotion going I've not had much time for anything else.

Global Progress chart - blue arrows show recent progress

As you can see from above we are getting a lot done, it just unfortunately takes a while! Each one of these is a large project in and of itself. A 'three level' system really doesn't do it justice. I might update that to have 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% levels. Very easy to track progress then for both me and you! (This is actually live on the site right now -> you can check it out at the bottom of the about page)

Last week has been mostly geared toward prepping for my next play test. The design pieces are done there. The important conceptual work is done, I just need to do the boring labor part of cutting a hundred cards or so and slipping them into sleeves. This week has mostly been devoted to an update of the website, and a few other minor things as well such as cleaning up wordings and the look of various things (cards, website, rules, you name it), and making new promotional art.

Just one of the many updates to playaot.com

Now don't get too excited, it's not a total overhaul to the webpage. Ultimately I still love the very minimalist design of my website, so it's just a few minor quality of life enhancements. For example, the 'featured wall' (as seen up above) on the about page will be added. I think the featured wall is important as it provides for a very easy 'hierarchy of information' for a new reader to follow.

We don't consciously do this - but we are constantly assessing our surroundings and categorizing the importance of all the information we come across. Things of minor importance we don't track and, things of major importance we do. The number of lights in the room might be of very low importance for example. The number of people might be highest importance, or the nearest exists, or a person of interest. Everything fits somewhere on that spectrum. The featured wall gives the uninitiated a sample of things that indicate that they are of 'high importance'. Otherwise there is just a sea of information and the reader could quickly become frustrated and rightly so if they can't find the information they are looking for. But more importantly, the user isn't shown what is deemed to be important. 

Why is this necessary? Well without this you're sending the message that effectively all information contained within the site is equally important - which is profoundly not true. You're not providing direction, which can be fairly annoying to a reader who simply wants the answer to a would be simple question "What is this about", or perhaps "Where can I learn more?", or maybe even "I'm looking to purchase one of these as I have learned enough from else where". These are likely the three most common questions a new website user will have when coming into the website for the first time (I haven't done the research, but, you know, it's likely true or near enough to truth). I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a website with the simple question: "What is this Business, Product, or Brand about?" and the website seems almost intentionally vague. What, where, how, why, when and who should be answered somewhere on your website, not necessarily in that order.

Another lovely snippet from the website

All of this is nothing new. Many websites do something similar, flagging important information to the user. It's just fascinating to me as it's a whole new world that I now have to be open to and think about.

Oh I also am adding analytics to the site - which I can't believe I didn't add before. I still don't know what I'm doing with it all too well. But at least so far I have managed to get some rudimentary analytics and reports running with it. So will hopefully be able to expand on that in the coming weeks and get up to speed with it before I start rolling out the serious advertising.

I have to say things have really begun to progress rapidly with Act of treason, and it's really hard to pin point exactly why. I think there are actually multiple factors that have all culminated into giving my the motivational groundwork to push off from. I think Jordan B Peterson with his Self Actualizing Suit really helped - you can learn more about him in the op-ed I will be releasing asap. I think my exercise regime really helps. I think having just a little bit of extra time away from work really helps. And I think the added weight of responsibility helps - having responsibility for others who rely on you really does change the dynamic of the situation. Altruism kicks in and you're not just in it for you anymore, you're in it for those you love and those whom you want to support. This is one reason why married people tend to earn more and be more prosperous - they likely have more children, and thus more responsibility.

Anyway that's enough for today. Thank you for reading and see you next time.

Cheers,
 Tyson

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