IamA I spent the last 2 years turning my idea for a MMORPG into a board game and raised over $250,000 to make it, AMA! AMA!

This looks pretty awesome!

My question is how did you go about making sure the game was properly balanced (enemies not too hard, progression in skill tree vs. difficulty of enemies, skills being balanced)? Was it a kind of test, tweak, repeat or something more technical?

Thank you!

It was really that, a lot of testing.

Sometimes testing specific parts of the game, sometimes full runthroughs and eventually getting hundreds of other people to play the game too.

The other day I even did a "The Internet plays The City of Kings" and had the people in the chat controlling 1 character. That was an interesting way of testing how people thought about the various decisions.

With that said, I do have a lot of spreadsheets which I used to calculate all the possibilities. I know the best and worst cases in all scenarios and made sure to keep referring to these and testing them.

What's the worst thing that can happen in this situation: Ok, let's set that up and see what happens. What's the best thing that can happen in this situation: Ok, let's set that up and see what happens. And so on.

Awesome! I made Skyrim Risk- map, new rules, everything- and balance was the part that really seemed abstract to me. Games like Diablo (though a bit different) seem to have it down to such an exact science and it's always been super intriguing for me personally. It's nice to see how it actually starts! Thank you for the response!

A Skyrim Risk map sounds cool!

And no worries, I could probably summarise my answer to:

Know your best and worst case scenarios in any given moment and test they are within expected parameters.

How have you felt dedicating the last 2 years of your life to this game in terms of quitting your full time job? Were you worried about the risk of it not taking off? How are you feeling now that you've realised you've more than succeeded? Have you started working on expansions/a sequel?

It's been a very challenging couple of years, there have been a lot of 18 hour days and I've had to give up a lot to get to this point.

Quitting my job was a very difficult decision but the 18 hour/days weren't viable for much longer. Realising there would be no money after I burned through my savings if the Kickstarter didn't do well made it much more stressful, but it also allows me to dedicate myself to it full.

Right now I'm feeling great and I'm starting to put plans together for expansions. I still need to get the first game manufactured which will take a while but I'm hopeful a new game will be ready for next year!

Is it science based? Does it have dragons?

The game is set in a fantasy universe but we do spend a fair bit of time thinking about the science behind these things. Many of our races are inspired by animals and follow specific traits. My girlfriend is a biologist and we like to understand how things work in our world and not always put it down to magic.

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We don't have dragons but we do have the Makar which are dragon like!

What was your favorite part about world building?

There were a lot of great parts but I think the freedom of creating whatever I wanted was certainly a great feeling. Knowing that whatever came into my head "could" be done, as long as I could find a way to validate it within the world.

I think the best feeling though was when I shared it with the world and everyone started asking questions and wanting to learn more.

Does it make you feel like Tolkien?

Maybe his little finger.

What are your thoughts on oatmeal cookies?

I think they are great! You can even get 5 big, nice ones for £1 from the shop just down the road and in part, they have helped me survive for the last 2 years!

When making this game, did you do it all solo or did you get help? If you did, were they paid or was it more of a favor?

Hey ZakTheCthulhu,

The project was always very much my girlfriend and I, she's spent countless hours working on the game, helping with ideas, making prototypes and playtesting. Not to mention offering support.

I also hired a full time artist, a part time writer and a designer to help with building an identity for our brand.

So there have been a fair few people involved!

Everyone always got paid, I'm a firm believer of paying people for their skills and believe this to be the best way to get great results.

If you can answer this, thanks. If not I understand. What does a full time artist charge and where do you find them? That's currently my hurdle.

Hey,

The answer to this will really depend on a lot of things, mainly the country you live in, whether you want someone in house or whether they are working from their own place.

I wanted someone full time in the office with me, so this comes with a lot more expense. For instance I had to buy computers/desk/monitor and so on as well as pay a salary and taxes.

But if you just want someone full time and can chat over Skype, you can find cheaper people from all around the world.

You could be looking at £500 / month up to £3,000+ depending on how good they are. I'm sure others charge much more!

Did you protect your concept before showing it to people or beta testing it? At what point? What are the essential steps to filing a patent or whatever for the idea (not just trademarking the name)? Is it worth hiring a lawyer? What would you recommend doing differently than you actually did?

Hey WobblyGobbledygook, great question!

The short answer is no. The only protection I ever took was asking a few people to sign NDAs when I was sending over artwork that I didn't want released to the public.

I believe there are many great ideas out there all the time and it comes down to the execution, which isn't something you can easily copy.

I believe The City of Kings is a great game due to the combination of mechanics, world and the overall experience I tried to give.

Having someone steal/copy any one of these points wouldn't cause me any damage, and I don't believe another person, or team of people, would have put them together in the same way I have.

how much of the $250,000 went to cocaine and hookers?

I've not received the money yet! But I don't think there will be much to spare. Manufacturing board games isn't cheap!

make them in china.

That's the plan!

Hi Frank, You should think about Mexico instead http://tacna.net/mexico-vs-china/

I've been working with some people from Mexico for a few things but the manufacturing team in China I'm very familiar with. They offer great prices but they're also people many of my friends have worked with over the years and we have a good relationship (which is half the battle!). Thanks for the link though, I'll read through it in a bit!

This kickstarter just came to my attention yesterday and I am so on the fence right now! I watched a good portion of the live stream yesterday and really appreciate your passion. I'm probably going to end up kickstarting it just on your passion and preparedness alone.

My fear, however, is that you'll end up pulling a KD:M or Gloomhaven and have another kickstarter 18 months from now that will fix all the problems that are uncovered and have higher quality components (or dare I say it, a version with a ton of mini's, which honestly I want more than this version) which will then make me feel stupid for kickstarting V1. What are your thoughts on this?

Hey Joiafour,

I'm glad you've seen the KS and watched the stream, thank you for joining it!

I think your concerns are valid questions and I'll try to address them individually.

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Will there be an improved / higher quality Kickstarter later on? The game is very expensive to manufacture, there are a lot of pieces in the box and I am doing the first print run with the highest quality components I believe make sense for the game. So I don't anticipate ever printing it with 'better components' as I don't believe better components are needed.

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Will there be fixes later on? It's possible there may be fixes, but if there are I would imagine this being rulebook clarifications more than anything else. The game has been played and tested hundreds of times by a lot of people, so I'm doubtful anything in the core game will change. If it does, then it's more likely to be a 'second edition' several years down the line rather than part of a reprint.

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Will there be a version with minis later on? Miniatures will come into The City of Kings universe at some point, but they will be as a separate item rather than inside the game box. So when they eventually happen, you wont be able to get them cheaper as part of the game.

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Does that cover everything? Please feel free to follow up if you wish to :)

Hey Frank, I'm confused is this a board game or a digital game? I am totally interested. Just a bit daft as far as how it works. Thanks in advance.

Hey whistler6576, no worries about being confused!

This is a board game, but it's completely inspired by video games. In fact many of the 3rd parties who talked about the game couldn't compare it to other board games as it felt too much like a video game.

There's a video here from Man vs Meeple where they basically say it's Diablo and Warcraft in a box.

When will your game be available for purchase? My house is big into board games and I'd love to have this one. How much is it going to sell for?

Hey ReadySteady_GO,

That's great to hear!

The Kickstarter finishes on Thursday so it's still available to back now and then pre-orders will take place over the next few months. After that it'll be early next year that retailers will start selling it in a limited form.

Hi Frank, congratulations on the success of the KS campaign so far. I think you've built a very interesting world and some interesting gameplay and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it!

1) Any chance in the future we would get to experience Vesh's rise to power or a more morally grey setting (rather than simply always saving the world)? 2) how much time did you dedicate researching and preparing for the Kickstarter? You mentioned that you didn't launch it until you were sure the game was good. 3). Did you use a lot of resources like Jamey Stegmaier's blog to prepare?

Thanks

Hey there, and thank you.

1) I certainly intend to explore as many points in time as possible, there are many years of history before Vesh existed and I hope to make games across the entire timeline. I've already got some prototypes surrounding Vesh's rise to power and hope to flesh these out in the coming years.

They wont all be adventure games either, for example I have been working on a social deduction game where you play the role of the great leaders during the time Vesh is creating his armies. You're fighting over whether or not you should leave Vesh alone or whether you should join together and fight him. (I probably need to work on the elevator pitch for this one!)

2) I've been studying Kickstarter for many years, I've spent hundreds of hours researching it, reading blogs, backing projects and helping others with their own campaigns. I even ran a survey which received over 20,000 answers during my research phase.

3) I have read some of the articles on Jamey Stegmaier's blog, but mainly when looking for specific information. For instance I used his statistics articles covering % of backers per region to prepare my shipping calculations.

Typically I like to use all the different resources available a little bit, rather than a specific one a lot. There are a lot of Kickstarter advice groups on Facebook, there's Board Game Geek, Jamey's blog, James Mathes blog, the Board Game Designer forums and many great podcasts.

What does the process look like for manufacturing the the board game? Example, does one company do the pieces, one does the packaging, one does the printing/instructions, etc? Or does one factory do it all for you?

Hey derolle, there are many different ways of approaching this! The main 2 are probably:

1) Some people will source different components from different companies and box it themselves. Some will do this but higher a company to box it.

2) Some will pay a primary manufacturer to sub contract individual tasks out.

I took option 2, a company called Whatz Games who are fantastic and manufacture some awesome board games. They are manufacturing about 95 % of the game and sub contracting the other 5%. They then pack everything together and assemble the boxes. The output from from is a bunch of cartons (cardboard boxes) on pallets ready to ship.

I then have a company that will ship them from China to Europe, America, Canada and Australia and then companies in each of those regions to handle local fulfilment.

For a smaller game / print run I could have avoided splitting to so many locations but I wanted to work on a larger scale and offer the cheapest prices to people possible.

Frank, what other board games did you take inspiration from for the designs and characters?

In regards to the characters and general world, there were no board games that inspired any of this.

In regards to mechanics, I believe Eclipse, Pandemic Legacy and Dead of Winter were the 3 main ones.

What does quitting your job mean to you? For some, "quitting their job" means basically nothing because they are in stable living situations (spouse, parents, etc) that means little risk. On the other end of the spectrum, quitting a job means your serious lifestyle changes to make it work.

I went from a high end salary where I was saving £1000's a month to buy a house, to using those savings to make the game. I've invested around 40,000 - 60,000 so far and I'm about to run out of cash.

Luckily the Kickstarter has gone very well and will help with this, but it wont fix it entirely.

If the Kickstarter had failed, I would have very quickly had to find a job or my girlfriend and I wouldn't have been able to pay the rent.

My lifestyle will seriously change, I'll be living off about 1/5 of the money I had before and have no idea when more money will come in. It will be entirely dependant on when I can sell more games.

So I think I risked pretty much everything other than my health on this.

What are your top 3 board games to play and why?

I love playing Eclipse with a large group of people over a whole day, it's a great social experience whilst battling in thought against your friends.

I think Innovation as a cool 2 player game, I love how your actions can benefit your opponent and feel this gives the game a cool dynamic.

I think Werewolf is a brilliant group game and love trying to understand human behaviour and work out what's going on.

What board games do you generally like to play?

I really enjoy playing all sorts of board games, I have over 300 of them and like to try new ones as often as possible.

Currently I'm really enjoying Terraforming Mars and Feast for Odin, but they are just my current hotness. I love Eclipse, Innovation, Pingo Pingo, Ultimate Werewolf, Terror in Meeple City and many others!

Hey, this looks great! How much does it cost though. Sometimes I'll go to board game stores and they cost over $60, which feels like a lot. Why do you think board games are so expensive?

Thanks deathstryk!

There are many things that go into the cost of a game and sometimes they are expensive, because they can be - For example a well known designer. Other times it's because the people creating it haven't used the right processes and other times they are expensive because they just have a lot of stuff in them.

Some games are huge and have a lot of stuff in them, I actually discounted The City of Kings to about 70% of what it should be because I know I'm a first timer and don't have the rep to sell off of.

The City of Kings is a big game, it weighs about 6 kilos (around 13 lbs) and is filled with different ways of being played. Typically I expect people to need to play the game over 50 times to experience everything, and even then you could grab the game and find new things.

But this level of replayability comes with a high price due to the amount of stuff you get in the box. You can see all the prices here but the core game on Kickstarter is £59 ($74) and the MSRP is £75 ($96).

What lead to the transition from MMORPG to a table top game? Also what would you say your greatest inspiration was for creating the game?

I spent many years dreaming of making my MMORPG but it was just never a viable option for me, apparently it costs a lot!

As I've been a big fan of board games for a long time I started to realise some of the mechanics I was seeing in these games resembled parts of various digital RPGs and that's what set me going.

I would say the main inspirations were World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 7/8 and Eclipse (board game), I really see The City of Kings as being a combination of these games with many bits of other games being thrown in.

Not many millenials, which I assume is your target market here, play board games or even think of them much any more. How do you plan to educate people about your board game? which actually intrigued me and I haven't played a board game since my power went out during a flood a few years ago.

But there's definitely people that would/do like it due to you raising $250k - congrats btw. Do you see it becoming a big name franchise in the future? And what are your ultimate plans for this?

Cheers!

It may surprise you but my core audience is actually 25 - 40 year olds, they are by far the biggest board gamers for this type of game.

But I'm now trying to grow the younger video gamer audience as these are the people who don't really know about how fun board games have gotten and I truly believe many would love this game. It offers the same experience as a digital RPG but it's a single session you can play with your mates in the same room.

This is probably why I focused on a video game inspired board game, as I believe it will help interest video gamers and get them to want to know more about modern board games.

I had a preview done by Man vs Meeple and they said "If you love Diablo or Warcraft then we can't see you not loving this", but as you say - Getting those people to know about it is a big ask and will happen over time.

I most liken it to sitting on the sofa playing Mario Kart after school on my Super Nintendo when I was a kid, I feel that social gaming has gone away a bit now. Imagine being able to open a box and go raiding with 1/2/3 of your friends for a couple of hours without having to grind potions, wait for people you don't really know to turn up or to worry about lag.

My ultimate plans are to grow it into a big franchise, I'd certainly love to have my own gaming convention in the future and believe it is possible.

Have you thought about translating this game for other languages?

Hey FreshDoctor,

It's something I spent a lot of time thinking about from day 1, this is a very immersive story driven game so simply replacing everything with icons wasn't going to be the right approach. When you play the game you actually play through a series of stories, which you read as you go and they set your objectives.

Due to the goal of wanting to fill the game with story I decided that any translations would needed to be full re-prints rather than adaptations (offering a French rulebook for instance).

At this point in time, multi-language prints are too expensive for me, but it's something I want to explore further down the line.

Your work and dedication is really inspiring! I've been working on a board/card game on and off for about a year now, and would really love to develop it as you have with yours!

What was the biggest change you made to your game mechanics wise that took a lot of revamping?

Thank you!

Over the first year there were a lot of changes, whilst the core game remained the same I had to keep on refining things.

Originally I had a research system where there was a deck of research cards and players could train and learn them. This was fiddly and complicated and meant all characters could be identical so I replaced it with the more natural skill tree system MMOs typically offer.

What was your day job that you quit?

I was originally an 'interface developer' so I did user experience and front end development for big websites.

For the past 2 years I've been running my own small company doing website consultancy and managing interface development. The company was turning over good money and I closed all the relationships with all of my clients to do this.

What did you study in college/what did you major in?

I studied computer science at university, I've been in the web industry for my whole life until recently.

What do your parents think of you quitting your job and focusing all your time and energy on this venture?

My mother was worried, she knew I had finally gotten to a good place with my career and was risking a lot but she was also supportive. When I told her I had to either quit my job and do this full time or give it up, she was on the side of give it everything you have. She's pretty cool.

It's hard though she doesn't really understand video games (let alone board games) but she's been great. During the Kickstarter campaign she has been commenting on the campaign page and everything!

How often do you browse Reddit and what are your favorite subreddits?

I'm a huge fan of Reddit, I regularly check it every day and it's certainly my most visited website.

/r/boardgames is probably the main place but I also read /r/all regularly every day.

I love going through AMA's, Game design and whatever my current interests are. I used to be big on StarCraft so spent a lot of time on /r/starcraft and probably lost a few months of my life to /r/wow back in the day!

Do you plan to go to gaming and toy expos and trade fairs?

I do! This is one of the great things about having raised some funds on Kickstarter. I've been to gaming expos before but now I can exhibit and know there will be people all around the world wanting to try out the game.

I'll be at the UK Games Expo this year along with Essen and hopefully a few others!

How can Redditors help get You the game in production and on shelves and into stores?

The best thing people can do is support the Kickstarter as it's still running for a few more days.

I believe we've done a great job of spreading the word to board game players but we're still trying to get in front of more video gamers.

This game was designed for people who love World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Skyrim, Diablo and more and I just wish I'd found a better way of letting them know about the game!

Frank, how did you take what you learned from college and your previous job and take that and help you design your game?

I don't think I gained much from school that helped with designing the game, but my jobs have helped a lot.

Learning to listen to users and to design around them has been very powerful. I don't get upset when people moan about something in the game or give negative feedback, my jobs have taught me to be open to this and to take what I need in order to improve the end result.

It's made it much easier to iterate and test the game into something that I hope will be great.

Do you have any pets, if so, which kinds, how many and what are their names?

I've grown up with a lot of pets over the years, my mother trains guide dogs (seeing eye dogs) for the blind so I had over 30 puppies during my life time.

Personally right now I have a single, beautiful white cat called Ella.

What are your favorite pizza toppings?

I'm going to be boring and say pepperoni, I'm a big fan of pepperoni passion from Dominos.

What is your favorite candy bar?

I love Dime (Daim) Bars. I'm not sure if they are a global thing though?

How do you plan to market and Advertise your game?

I want to build a community, interact with people and let things spread organically. Whilst I will do the odd paid advert I'd much rather have a one to on conversation with people.

I maintain a regular presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and like to live stream.

So just interacting with people seems to be working well!

Shame I got on so late, hoping you're still replying.

As someone working on making a game more in reverse to you; go through board game test stage then program it to be an actual game, two bug questions:

Motivation. Even on pet projects it can be extremely hard to keep up motivation for several years, especially alone, and hitting writer's block or failing to come up with an appropriate idea has been the death of a lot of people's dreams over the hears. While there's a lot of general advice for dealing with this, how did you go about it?

Art. I can write, program and design if not brilliantly, at least well enough for my purposes. I have never managed to get a hang of making art for any game though. How did you get the artwork for your game done? Did you learn and do it yourself, and if so do you have any good advice? Or did you bring someone else on to help with that side of things, and if so, where do you find these people?

Thanks for any response, and good luck with the game. Its nice seeing one if these big, detailed projects actually getting completed, so my congratulations there as well ^{.^}

Hey, I'll always reply when I can - The orange envelope is far to addictive!

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Motivation

That's a tough one and I wont lie, like many people I went up and down like crazy over the last 2 years. There were certainly times I felt like throwing it all away and other times where I believed I was onto something big. The most important thing i did was to share, I shared everything.

I kept a work in progress diary on Board Game Geek. I posted on my website once a month, I talked on Twitter, I did videos on YouTube, I posted on Facebook and I just tried to interact with the community.

You'll see I posted that WIP thread in August 2015 and in June 2016 a guy called Patrick came along and asked me a question, it took nearly a year but my goodness did that feel good. Patrick stayed with me, he even backed the Kickstarter and comments on things regularly now. We all need our Patrick, once you have one more will come.

The most motivating thing for creating a game? Knowing people are interested in what you're doing and want to see more and know more. So you need to give enough people enough information to get your fans.

The hardest thing? Waiting nearly a year to get that person, you have to be strong because look where I am now:

I run a games development company, 2 years ago I was alone, 1 year ago I had Patrick, now I have thousands of people who can't wait to know more.

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Art

I'm afraid I can't help too much with this one, a lot of the design work I did myself, the art direction I had a good idea for and I found an artist to work with me full time on bring the world to life. I found him in a coffee shop looking for an opportunity to make art his career. There are plenty of talented people out there looking for an opportunity but I believe paying them is the best way to get the best results.

I hope that helps and thank you!

Wow, designing a whole board game complete with its own world and mechanics, actually putting it to life and making it look absolutely amazing, that's seriously impressive! I'm really happy to see your dream come to life! How does it feel to accomplish something most of us could only dream about? (of course, anything is possible) :)

Thank you!

It feels incredible, like many people I've spent a lot of my life wanting to make games and try to turn it into my career. When the Kickstarter ends on Thursday I'm going to be able to go home and say 'I did it'.

Of course, there's still a lot to do but now, for the first time in my life, I know my career is designing games. It's amazing.

Hi :) What was your job before making the game full-tume?

Hey there,

I worked with the web doing user experience and front end development, creating the interfaces for websites.

Ah, interesting. Do you think it helped in developing the game in any way? :)

The user experience side of it did for sure, perhaps not so much the development.

One of the toughest things about making a good game is learning that you can't do it alone. You need to playtest the game and listen to others, evaluate their feedback and decide when to act on it. They aren't always right but they also aren't always wrong.

Working in UX certainly prepared me for putting my ideas in front of people!

Is it all about the cones?

I'm afraid there are no cones :(

yet...

How will Brexit affect your distribution of the game? Have your shipper/distributors mentioned anything about that to you?

edit: spelling

Honestly, Brexit is a big unknown which could help or it could make things worse.

Based on the current exchange rates I could have made the game for about £9,000 less if I had paid for it a year ago. That's a huge amount of difference for a small guy like me.

I've worked on a plan with some contingency in place but really it's impossible to know how the markets will shift.

With all that said, the only impact of Brexit (so far) is the currency exchange rates so it's not making things difficult, it's just adding some risk.

What are the most common misconseptions about designing games, building worlds and running Kickstarters?

Hey there, I love this question.

Designing Games

I think the biggest misconception is people think games are designing for everyone, and they really aren't. I know there are huge amounts of people out there who wouldn't enjoy playing The City of Kings - It's just not their thing.

I also know huge amounts of people would love it, the trick is to work out who you audience is and how to listen to them. Let people from outside your audience be involved, try and bring them on board but don't worry so much if they don't like what they see as it was never for them anyway.

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Building Worlds

I think a lot of people get stuck with what rules to follow and which to break. I jumped into the fantasy world and I had to ask myself, what is an elf in my world? Are there elves in my world? How do they look? What's their purpose? And so on.

Many people believe an elf is an elf and it has to follow set rules, others think having elves means you're not being original. Personally I believe you can do whatever you want as long as you find a way to make it believable and you can turn any old concept into something fresh.

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Running Kickstarters

Speaking specifically for board game Kickstarters (which is a huge market), many people believe first time creators can't successfully fund a big game on their first run. Many people believe first time creators can't manage a campaign properly and lack the experience to go through with it.

Whilst this can often be true, I believe it's simply a case of learning and researching, if you put enough time into it you can do as well as anyone else. Throughout my campaign I've had countless people say it's been as good as any campaign they've seen and you wouldn't know I'm a first time guy. It just comes down to doing your homework.

What do you think about the current stage of MMORPG? In my opinion it fated out a lot with rise of mobas and now survivor games.

I started playing MMORPGs a long time ago, I was there when WoW was launched and I've seen many other games come and go.

I believe for many people their first MMORPG will always hold a special place because it introduces them to this amazing new concept.

I believe for many people WoW will be the last MMORPG they enjoy because it brought so much and created something special.

New MMORPG's struggle because they have to innovate in an incredibly expensive market place and they can only succeed if they gain enough momentum from a player base. You could even ask, what's the point in trying when it would be easier to take on a different type of game?

Perhaps the next MMORPG will need to be fully based on virtual reality to be unique enough? But I hate to think how long it will take to achieve that.

I do think another big MMORPG will come out and take over one day, I'm just not sure how long it's going to be.

Frank, what are your twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat pages?

You can find us on the following:

Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram

Where do you see yourself in five years time?

I actually did a Big Picture video a few days ago where I talked about the next 10 years a bit.

I want to keep building the world, making more games within it and growing the brand. Similar to how Blizzard grow Warcraft.

I hope to keep releasing expansions, comics, and other games that tell stories within the same world.

In 5 years time? I'd love to have a few games, several people full time in the team and be looking at organising our own first 'blizcon' or well, The City of Kings con. I might need to think of a catchier name for that...!