Envelopes of Cash: The College Football Recruiting Game

Box Progress
almost 2 years ago – Wed, May 25, 2022 at 01:38:51 PM

So last week I showed you a draft of the box cover, but I thought it might be fun to show you what  a box actually looks like when you submit it to a printer for their first review -- this is how it gets submitted.

Front:

and Back:

As you may be able to tell, this then will fold into two pieces, a top and bottom rectangle, each with one open side.  it also will feature two blurbs (for which we have permission, of course), one from Mark Bigney of So very Wrong About Games and one from Becca Scott of Good Time Society.  Sadly we had one from [redacted] from an important financial newspaper named for a street on the lower side of Manhattan where there used to be a wall, but that journal told her she could not use her name or the name of that street-named-for-the-wall daily paper on the game, which is a shame.  Their loss, I guess.

Anyway, each step forward we take is exciting for me.  I hope to share some more stuff soon, maybe even later this week!

Always Be Crootin,

Andy

The Bag Has Arrived!
almost 2 years ago – Fri, May 20, 2022 at 10:19:53 AM

Longer update following on last night's art update to say Kickstarter finally delivered the Envelopes of Cash you backers kindly promised to me, minus a "small" Runner fee, of course.  We raised $33,817 and this morning Kickstarter deposited $31,044.39 in the EoC, LLC bank account.  So they took 8.2%, which I have been led to believe is spilt 3% to the credit card processor and the rest to Kickstarter as essentially  their charge as being my retail storefront.

This actually feels rather similar to Action 5 of the nine actions available to you each turn during the game, where Kickstarter, the Runner, receives a cut represented by a Booster Buck and what I get is captured by the Envelopes of Cash:

I suspect many of you will find the inner details of this aspect of crowdfunding as interesting as I do, so I hope my transparency is illuminating.

I want to re-emphasize my gratitude to you all for your support for my project, and emphasize that we have not been waiting for the money to arrive for progress to continue, though things are in that stage where from the outside very little seems to be happening even as the illustration team scribbles away below the surface like artistic, metaphor-mangling ducks.

To that end, I did want to let the Card Adopters know that you should not worry that Rese and Miah have not yet specifically reached out to you.  They have a few more non-card tasks to complete before the illustration team homes in entirely on card art,  but they are chugging through them and will soon enough be left with just the cards to finish.  I thought it might be helpful to let you know all of the thing Team EOC has on our plates.  These are:

1) The Box

You've seen the first draft of the front cover and we have a decent back-of-box draft too but we need to nail that down, get it approved with the manufacturer, etc.    

2) The Board

We are still waiting to get the details of the double-layering setup from Gameland.  This is essentially a token-spec'ing task even though it's a board because the upper layer essentially has tokens cut out of it to create the recesses.  They have not yet made clear to us the tolerances we need to allow for the usual +/-s of manufacturing but once we nail that down, we'll take the existing map and make a second "Swiss Cheese" version with pieces cut out of it.  This will then be what they glue together to make the double-layered board with recesses for where the recruiting tokens.

3) Head Coach Card Design & Portraits

I list this here but this is actually going to be worked on as part of the final card push, since Head Coach cards and regular cards are essentially similar in design.  But for those of you who adopted head Coach cards (and There are 8 or 9 of you at this point, TYVM, only a few "orphans" left!)

4) Recruiting Goal Card Design

This is happening now -- our final stretch goal that was unlocked opened up a very important aspect of the game, Objective cards worth 20 points for getting the exact 5 types of recruits you, and only you, are tasked with at the start of the game.  I hope to share a draft of the look of these soon, but they should be completed before the end of the Pledge Manager phase for sure.  The good news for card work is I'm working with a separate graphics team for these to keep Miah and Rese focuses on the Box, Map, and Cards listed above.

5) Tokens

Psych!  These are actually done.  We submitted these for approval last week.  There will be 4 punchboards of tokens, basically one with booster bucks, 1 with envelopes, 1 with recruits and state value tokens, and then one with all the miscellany, although its not quite as organized as that, as we mixed them up to try to maximize the use of space.

6) Rules

While the game's rules have been set now for a while, I continue to tinker with the expression of the rules, aiming for clarity and succinctness which tend to work against each other.  I will probably pay a freelancer for one more passthrough to help remove any egregious examples of over-loquaciousness, but I do generally prefer the rules to be overly explicit but unambiguous to elegantly phrased but open to ambiguity, since ultimately the point of rules is to explain what happens when two people disagree on what's next.  Ambiguity defeats that purpose.  But since I can't help much on the art, I figure I might as well hone the words.  I keep the most current version of my evolving efforts online here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iXIMMsiIPGcv91i1qxJYtFHe4CysyoUI/view?usp=sharing.  But this also is not delaying the cards, because the graphics team that is helping me with the Recruiting Goal cards is also the rulebook team, so the tweaks here don't impede work on box/map/cards.

7) CARDS!!!!

There is a ton to be done to finalize these and I will leave all that for another post.  Rese (who has been in school the past few months) is soon to emerge into one of her school break explosions of output, so I do expect we'll be making progress here very soon -- look for lots of art on the social media feeds....

8) Marketing

Speaking of which, I decided to spend a little bit more time doing my day job as an economist and so Heather May joined the team as a freelancer marketer.  If you follow our twitter or Instagram accounts, you've probably seen her posting there.  She's been working to get us a bit more exposure on the board game side of things, since my efforts worked well on the college sports side of my marketing efforts but hit a wall when trying to convince most board gamers qua board gamers to give the game a try independent of a love of Croots.  (With the very nice exception of Mark Bigney,  whose kind review last week definitely did help some gamers find their way to us.  if you've not yet listened, it's at 35:19 of this podcast on boardgames: 

I may be forgetting an element of the game that needs work still, but assuming I have not, that's pretty much the work order.  I'll let you all know when the Adopted Cards begin to be worked on in earnest, and then Rese or Miah will reach out with some initial concepts, and we'll get that process going.

For those of you still considering getting into the Adoption business, or if you just have friends still interested in the game, We have just about one month left before I will close the Late Pledge shops. There are two options, with identical pricing (slightly higher than the Kickstarter pricing that you all paid) and they can be accessed at https://bit.ly/LATE-EoC and  https://bit.ly/GoGo-EOC.   

Thanks again and Always Be Crootin!

Andy

The long awaited reveal of the draft box cover
almost 2 years ago – Thu, May 19, 2022 at 09:39:14 PM

In the version of earth in which I write a book about the Envelopes of Cash experience, the saga of the box cover would merit an entire chapter.  I will not bore you will that.  Instead, here is the first draft of what we're thinking of using, the idea being that this cover captures the moment that you -- potential purchaser of the game and also stand-in for the potential recruit -- are tempted into the system by the booster with his Envelope of Cash.

There is still work to be done, and time for some feedback [within the context of THIS image, please don't send me your ideas for an entire different design the game needs to come out in 2022], so feel free to send in constructive critiques.  But I hope you generally like the look of the cover as it is heading in this direction.

More soon!  Always be Crootin!

Andy

An update with some logistics and some marketing
almost 2 years ago – Sun, May 15, 2022 at 08:37:00 PM

Hello everyone.  The Pledge Manager phase has been moving along well without much need for me to intervene.  I wanted to share two categories of info today.  First, logistics of delivery.

Local Pickup

If you live near Medford, Oregon or in Northern California within proximity of the East Bay/Oakland (where Andy lives and works), I have confirmed that you can ask for Local Pickup and get a refund on your shipping payment for the board game (not for Posters!).  It will be a little kludgy in terms of the paper work, so if you'd rather just leave thing as they are and not worry about it, that's fine.   But if you do want to get your $15 back,  read the rest of this section  (for everyone else, skip down to the cool marketing news).  When asked for your address, please don't put in your street address; instead  write down LOCAL PICKUP IN BAY AREA or LOCAL PICKUP in MEDFORD, OREGON.  Do the rest of your address though, with your city and state and phone number.  You have to be clear which one or else you won't get your game.

Then shoot me a note so I can see you did it right and I'll issue you a $15 credit so that when I run the charges in mid-June you'll get $15 refunded to you.  I suspect things may go askew and you may be asked at that point to put it a CC, or it may balk and I may have to PayPal or Venmo you the money, but 'll be happy to do so.

(if you already entered your info, it's not to late to go back in and change it)

Exciting Marketing

I send review copies of the game to a few people who said they would consider writing about or discussing the game on their podcasts or video chats.  So far the only reviewers to do so are the folks at "So Very Wrong About Games" who have a very ironically named podcast.  In the most recent episode, which you can listen to here: https://www.sowronggames.com/212-omnibus-questions-charlie-alpha, one of the hosts, Mark Bigney, spends about five minutes discussing his assessment of Envelopes of Cash.  That review starts at 35:19.  I would encourage all of you to share this with any of your friends who are perhaps on the fence as to whether they should purchase this game.  Mark said very kind things about the game.  While I would push back on his assessment that EoC is essentially a re-theme of Macao, I have in no way hidden that Macao was a major source of the game's initial inspiration.  I'd mostly say it's more like a 60% overlap than the 95% implied in the review.  Nevertheless, otherwise, I think Mark's review is great and I was really excited he understood the game on so many levels ad that he enjoyed it so much.

Even the one critique Mark leveled, that our rules ought to acknowledge Macao's role in the game's development, was already addressed prior to my hearing this review, with the new copy in the printer's hands, and has been updated online.  So we were really thrilled with this review and over 20 people purchased from the Late Pledge site right after this review went live.

More info soon, but we're closing in on 400 copies sold and almost all of the Head Coach cards have been snapped up as well.  We still have a few dozen regular cards available for adoption, but the list is shrinking.  Spread the word, that this game is on the cusp of becoming a hard-to-find cult classic!

Thanks so much and always be crootin.

Andy

More clarity on how this whole survey thing works
almost 2 years ago – Mon, May 09, 2022 at 04:43:02 PM

A little more clarity on how this whole survey thing works.

So, as a mea culpa, let me apologize to everyone for having impulsively clicked on the Kickstarter button to send a survey, knowing full well I was going to be seeking the exact same info from Backerkit soon thereafter. It definitely caused confusion, and that’s on me. Hopefully, though, it’s been ok for most of you, and I think the address data you entered on Kickstarter (but maybe not the phone number?) does move over to Backerkit so it ought to save you some typing, at least.

But, and this is important, while you can skip the Kickstarter survey if you want, YOU HAVE TO DO the Backerkit one, or else we can’t send you the game. And for shipping purposes that means Backerkit needs a phone number, so even if you see your address got ported over, you do need to add a phone number.

So, you should have gotten an email asking you to fill out a Backerkit survey. If you didn’t, feel free to ping me (through Kickstarter or at [email protected]) and I will have Backerkit send you one and/or email you a custom link just for you. Plus, tomorrow there should be a re-sent link to everyone who still hasn’t finished their surveys. But if you haven’t finished, please follow the link and click through until you get to a page that looks like this

Note – if you added something new to your order (not stuff you pledged on Kickstarter but actually additional purchases) you will show a balance due (it'll be red/negative I think)  and be asked for credit card info. But if you added nothing new, you should show a credit remaining of zero (or for a few of you a small positive balance that represents a glitch-driven discount). Even though the price shows zero, you still have to click PLACE MY ORDER to finalize things. Without that, the Backerkit system will continue to think you’re not sure whether to add more stuff or not. So please do try to get to this screen and push the green button as soon as you can, although feel free to add dozens of new purchases if you wish!

Once you’ve pushed the green button, you should get an email from Backerkit confirming that you’re all set. It will look something like this

At that point, you’ll all set and while you will get updates from me as the process continues, and those of you who adopted cards will start hearing from the art team eventually, the ordering process, per se, will be done with. 

If ANYTHING goes wonky in this process, or you have any concerns, I can be reached via [email protected].  Please reach out as I have been able to troubleshoot several issues over the weekend and probably can help solve your issues too.  Maybe.  I hope.

Many thanks for helping get through this red tape, and always be crootin!

Andy