It’s only about 3 weeks until the Teratozoic Kickstarter launches. The campaign will run from July 21st through August 16th, 2014—technically a “short” campaign at just 26 days. I started sending out review copies about 6 weeks ago, and have been trying to avoid counting down the days, but as the campaign gets closer and closer, it’s harder and harder to avoid. (Not to mention, every time I look at the preview version of the project page (to tweak some wording, update images, obsess over the reward tiers, question every single thing on the page; you know… normal stuff) the countdown is running; this thing has been counting down to August 16th for over 100 days.) Time keeps on ticking.
A couple/few months ago, the plan was to be using this time demoing Teratozoic locally. At Phoenix Comicon, at local game stores, to anyone I could get to try it, spreading the word, sharing the game as far and wide as possible. Except I’m an introvert with situational/social anxiety problems. I sometimes get panic attacks at board game nights when there are too many of my friends in attendance. I’ve got no background or experience with public gaming; I get uncomfortable if there are more than one or two new friends-of-friends at a game night, even if the total population never gets high enough to trigger my anxiety-they’re strangers, it’s uncomfortable.
I tried the Comicon thing. Having never participated in gaming at a convention, I don’t know how it works. Yes, the tense of that sentence is correct; even after a couple of days worth of panic attacks and overcoming anxiety for long enough to approach a few other local game developers & reviewers and get my game into people’s hands, I never could figure out how things were run up there. That’s even after several emails back and forth with the people who run gaming at Phoenix Comicon, before con, to be sure things would go okay. I have no idea how people play games up there-I mean, I saw people gaming, enough people to really freak me out, but the whole thing was too much for me to even ask (a stranger) how it works.
The entire Comicon situation really pushed me over the limit, socially. First of all, I don’t think I’ll ever intentionally go to a convention of that scale as an attendee again. (Well, maybe I’ll try PAX once, if the opportunity arises.) Secondly, I haven’t and don’t expect to make any attempts at demoing Teratozoic at local game stores. Just figuring out how something like that occurs… thinking about it stresses me out a little.
(I recently acquired passes for Maricopacon, a small local gaming convention which I should have several friends at; hopefully I can get them to explain the social conventions of the convention. Maybe I’ll bring a few copies of Teratozoic. Maybe I’ll get through the weekend without a serious panic attack or a retreat home.)
What this means is that Teratozoic’s “marketing” rests almost entirely in the hands of the couple dozen reviewers and game designers I sent/gave copies to. Out of my hands, as discussed previously, even more than I’d been hoping. Sure, I’ll send an email to the ~150 people on my mailing list and I’ll post to Facebook and Twitter when the campaign goes live, or if/when it hits meaningful milestones. Obviously, I’ll keep up with comments and questions as/if they come in to the project; absentee creators serve no one, not their backers & not themselves. Sitting in my office typing, sure, but no marketing that requires me to actually interact face to face with human beings. So there’s not much left to do, as the days count down.
But there is a certain amount of ramping up which needs to happen. Getting the last of my ducks in their rows. Pre-writing FAQ answers (as ridiculous as that seems, prior to anyone asking questions), pre-writing project updates, preparing the email to send to my mailing list, updating the ‘Media’ section of the project page (and the game’s page at modernevil.com) with quotes (maybe graphics) and videos as reviews come in, that sort of thing. Not a lot, but a few things to do as the days drop down.
The anticipation is … toxic. With luck, I won’t self-destruct before August 16th. From there it’s easy: Just producing and delivering the game; none of that marketing mess, and much of the rest of the process will return to my hands instead of relying on the whims and opinions of strangers. With ever more luck I’ll have some art commissions to work on, and a new set of cards to design and draw and test and refine. That kind of work, I enjoy. Heck, assembling and packing dozens/hundreds/thousands of copies of the game is a sort of work I enjoy. This waiting, the marketing, the pretending to like dealing with people; that’s not for me.
But it is my next several weeks.
