January 2020 -- STAVE Progress

Welcome to 2020!

Along with a new year, STAVE, my Competitive 2-4 Player Card Game, is almost ready to print its final test run for prototyping and playtest again. 

I thought, for your enlightenment and my memory, I'd go ahead and document my progress and how I'm going about creating these physical cards, what printers I'm using, what methods I'm using to create them, and what all of this ultimately costs.

Most of my Patrons are FNC fans (a mod we made for free) and other Game Devs. So this may help you understand the realities we face getting a game from idea to market, and let you learn from my research if you are making one of your own.

The Idea

STAVE is a Lenticular Card Game, where each card has an up front obvious value, and a more advanced function when used in combination with another card which produces more potent effects.

That's the big idea. 

It was inspired by This Article by Mark Rosewater, which I read after listening to this GDC Talk early in 2019. Which by the way, is one of the best GDC Talks of all time, and should be held as the 20 Pillars of Game Development, I think, be it video games or card games or just about any other fun game-like experience.

I was dolling out these boxes of promotional cards for a company called Bluemark, which required I handle these little square sheets of paper that reminded me of Pokemon or Magic cards -- but it wasn't a "fun" task, it was a job. My mind being what it is, was creatively hungry, and after watching that GDC Talk and helping my girlfriend do this job so we could pay rent, I started daydreaming about this idea.

It was more like a sensation than an idea. I'd always enjoyed the feeling of combining cards in play to produce more potent effects. And Phantasy Star IV way back in the Sega Genesis days always made me feel like those Wat+Nefoi or Foi+Double Slash combining spell casting mechanics gave a sense of emergent player driven creativity and intellectual challenge to combat. It's more than just, "can I do this?" It's also, "If I hold onto this, then later I can produce this."

It really makes you feel like you've exploited the mechanics or found some powerful loophole, while also training your mind to be patient and weigh opportunity vs risk. It's a very rewarding and empowering feeling, to me at least, to know the rules and see the bigger picture.

I'm also on a real kick of aesthetic and design minimalism. I wanted to take some Irreducibly Complex moves and distill them down to their base mechanics. I found that really there are only four major categories of cards you can play -- Offense, Defense, Modifiers, and Elements. The fifth element (ha!) are "gamified" cards which tackle Metagame behavior, like reordering the deck or skipping turns and forcing players to discard their hand. 

Those basic mechanics seem simple, but used in a tapestry they are the Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat of the game developer library of tropes. You may see them as being pretty banal laid out like that, but every game, in all their myriad colors, in some way use those 4 mechanics and then toss that 5th element in for extraneous flavor. 

Poker uses those five mechanics as well. It's the least gamified card game out there, having no "target other player to shuffle their hand back into the deck" metagame mechanics baked in, but cheating at cards is still the "fifth element" in what makes Poker exciting.

Magic is all about metagaming cards, with that sort of behaviour being right there in monster abilities and other elements.

I wanted to make a game that could appeal to both audiences.

I wanted it to be simple enough to appeal to a player of Poker or Bridge right up front, but still have the layers of complexity you expect from Magic the Gathering or Pokemon.

I wanted there to be no Gamified-Metagame type cards muddying the waters. Jut pure, simple, clean mechanics that are irreducibly complex. Every Element having a myriad of functions when combined with offensive Projections an defensive Defense cards, and a set of Modifiers which enhance those effects to grow, cycle, or combine element effects.

It sounds complicated, but tests have repeatedly shown that an 8 year old can understand and win at the game using unexpected strategies after a single 5 minute play session. So can elderly moms who have never played a card game and veteran card and pen and paper RPG players who dabble in the most complex board games the culture can offer.

But is the hook fun enough to make you want to play it instead of Munchkin at your next game night?

That's the challenge to answer in 2020.

The Rules

You start with two players, each with 5 LIFE and 0 PASSION (Passion is the "energy" we use as a currency to pay for cards in play.) These are counted on two dials attached to a Player Counter Card, which also has these rules on the back face.

(Temporary Card Art for Prototype)

Start the game with a DECK and a DISCARD PILE, and an empty table or surface between you. The first player Draws a Card on their first turn. Then the next player Draws a Card. Repeat this until you have A MAXIMUM of 5 cards in your hand, by the end of your turn (you may have 6 or 10 cards in your hand during a turn, but must discard them by the end of your turn so you end with 5.)

To gain Passion, Discard Any Card. Turn your Passion dial up by 1.

In your hand, combine an Element with a Projection or a Defense. 

For example, if you have Ignition and a Projection, those two cards deal 1 damage when played, and cost you 1 Passion to deploy. Lower your Passion dial by 1, and lower your opponent's Life by 1. 

The first person to take their opponent's Life to 0 wins the game.

To Defend against your opponent's attacks, play a Defense with an Element and play them face down for 1 Passion. The next time you are attacked by your opponent with that matching Element, and they have to be the same element or one that your defending elements protects against, then you reveal that defense, it deals no damage, and discard the defense and element. 

Modifiers can then be played on your Projections and Defenses, such as Growth, which doubles your damage, Cycle, which repeats your play again at the end of your opponent's next turn, and Combine, which all you to stack 2 or 3 element cards together as if they were one card.

That's the basics. 

Combining these cards, such as the intimidating Dual Projection + Hydration + Electrify + Combine + Electrify + Cycle, can deal 6 damage for 2 turns (12 damage total) and cost 5 Passion to deploy. 

A Mirror Defense + Electrify + Growth can bounce half of that back at the sender to deal 6 Damage and potentially save the defending player's life while ending the attacker's.

That's where the game gets very exciting in later matches. 

Is it better to defend now and wait to attack later? Is it better to feint then attack? Is it always better to attack up front? Is it always better to defend?

These kinds of questions arise every game you play and it really unfolds an intricate and diverse world to explore. 

Production Costs

STAVE has three components: The Card Deck (52 Poker Card sized cards), The 2 Player Counter Cards (4 wheels, four grommets, and 2 folded and glued heavy card stock pieces), and a Tuck Box. 

The instructions are printed on the back of the player cards. Both players have a reference copy -- awesome. Totally eliminates any complicated folded papers and the need to share that paper. All the rules are legible on the cards in the player's hands. This is good for beginners and veterans alike. no need for QR codes or web addresses or an internet connection to learn how to use (though more is available on the website). Awesome solution.

But it is complicated logistics wise to produce.

There are three online Card Game Printing companies that I am aware of which take orders from the general public online and ship in small quantities or in bulk orders:

TheGameCrafter.com 

PrintPlayGames.com 

BoardGamesMaker.com  

The Game Crafter can produce a 52 Poker Card sized Deck and Box for around $6.17. Bulk orders it goes down to $4.37.

I've so far ordered 4 decks from them for various prototypes after doing the classic home printer and Kinkos self-cut scratch decks. This has cost me with shipping about $18.00 both times. 

Which is pretty reasonable. The free business advice is also much appreciated, as is the easy to use interface.

The decks looked good, were pretty well centered, felt very cheap (the lowest quality option is just this card stock, no UV Coating, no Lenin business card style stock,) but for prototyping it is reasonable and usable, especially since you probably plan to draw on these or write on them to take notes while playing, which we did. 

The only major hurdle here would be the Player Counter Cards.

The Counter Cards have moving parts (yikes!) and that always causes manufacturing to skyrocket. 

The Game Crafter offers a "Dual Dial" counter that is affordable at just $1.50, but it is intended for big boxed games, not a small form factor Poker Deck sized box.

It is shaped like this and is small, and wouldn't accommodate our budget nor our form factor in a poker sized box. In this format, it's just another part that might get lost on a playground or friend's house as opposed to a part of the deck that's obviously part of the deck and belongs in the box, packed neatly so it won't rattle.

Theirs has a neat laser-cut template:

Ours is shaped like this:

The Game Crafter does offer a Custom Game Piece design service, but it's a 200$ down payment for 4 hours of work, and 50$/hr after that, plus the costs of proofing printing and materials. Which is only calculable after it's R&D'd. It could only be 500$ or over 1200$, you just don't know until you have the final delivery, hopefully for their sake and yours in a bulk order. 

I've been producing mine on Card Stock from Kinkos, which only costs to print 4 at a time for 87 cents, plus a pair of small grommets which cost just a fraction of a cent each in a box of 200 for 3$ from Michael's. 

This does require I manually cut these out with scissors (tedious!) and from cutting to assembling, hole punching, grommet placement, grommet riveting (just enough to form an axle, not enough to crimp it shut, using a grommeting tool,) then finally folding and gluing the card shut, this takes about 4 or 5 minutes per card plus 20 minutes on a drying rack. 

Obviously, we won't be processing bulk orders this way. 

The Card Stock is nice, but, the edges get damaged over repeated use. Some of these we have played with for hours at a time over many weeks, maybe 100+ play sessions. If you treat them nice, they're remarkably durable. Hard to rip, but, they do fray at the edges and they pick up a lot of dirt and hand oils, and that starts to show over time. Heavier Card Board or Laminated Card Stock would improve this, but that shoots up to 3$ per sheet at Kinkos, and cutting it becomes very difficult.

But what if we could afford our own Print and Cut?

The Silver Bullet

In the world of Print and Cut machines, which are basically inkjet printers with a razor blade attached, The Silver Bullet is the Mercedes model of choice among professionals. It's heavy, reliable, and it's over 800$. 

Spending $849.99 isn't that bad if you honestly are going into production as a professional and doing your own bulk orders. You need to also invest in more of these ink cartridges, and now also razor blades.

Only now it can stab you to death. 

The Versastudio bn-20

This bad boy clocks in a just under $5000USD. Marketed at the clothing printing indie market, it also does vinyl decals for rice burner car windows and racists who need that White Jeeps Matter logo on their back to really tell you they aren't fun at Thanksgiving Dinner. 

Roland is also the hero of epic French and Norwegian history, which at that price point for even the small model, good gods, he'd better slay the Moores for you with that little 5mm razor of his! 

Graphtec PLUS CE6000-60

It's big and will take up a lot of space, and for every of its 24 inches it takes about $74, as it costs $1795. This is aimed at Vinyl printing in large sheets. Things like shop windows and signage, really. But it can just as easily print on card stock and then begin cutting out our Counter Cards with reasonable speed and accuracy. 

They seem to sell through Amazon with a 2 Year Warranty. 

GCC Professional Expert II LX Vinyl Cutter

This one concerns me, since it's in Bumblebee's colors from Transformers, and I don't want my appliances to remind me that it can transform into a semi-autonomous knife wielding death machine when the stars align just right. 

It also only has software plugins for Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator, which advertises as being compatible with Windows XP and above. For $769.99 I'd like to see a proprietary or better vectorized pathing program I can use with it. 

Silhouette CAMEO 4

Now we're heading into a price range we can contemplate. You can tell it's a consumer model because it comes in colors like Blue, Pink, White, and Black. Checkout price is  $299.99 (Or 3 interest-free payments of $100.) 

I have not used this device, but Amazon reviews and YouTube both say that while this device does in fact work as intended most of the time, you can expect to regularly send it back to the manufacturer for repairs. So don't grab one off Craigslist or Ebay, you want to get the extra 20$ one year warranty (or 39$ for three years, because diminishing returns.) 

Brother CM350E ScanNCut2 (with ScanNCut Online Activation Card)

This one makes me uncomfortable just because I'm averted by the Brother conspiracy theories. It also appears to have more problems, and the software to run it is totally online (ouch!) That's a Hard No from me, even if it is only $304 as of this posting during a sale. 

Cricut Maker

Closer in price to adopting a puppy with a decent breeding record, the Cricut Maker is from a developer more closely related to your grandmother's scrap booking hobby than a professional printing and design company. 

The software isn't online, you can still run it on your PC, but it lack features of the big brothers above, and you can still get the most out of it if you apply yourself. It is strong enough to chew through balsa wood, but not leather. So scrap those ambitions if you were looking into it for this, and the printer is a little less high end than those above as well. 

But at 349$ right now on sale, it's something we could afford with that Patreon money.

Cricut Explore Air 2

The last stop on our print and cut mix tape, this little guy can tackle paper only, and I'm not sure of it's lifetime. It it aimed at small scale projects, so for us that would be prototyping cards and such. I can tackle card stock, which is our medium of choice, and do it well by the testimonies. 

It only costs $199.00 as of this posting on sale, and is something we could get away with without sweating it too much. But I'm not going to risk a bulk order on this guy.

Conclusion

I would personally enjoy hand manufacturing these cards myself, and have fun doing it. Repetitious hand tasks are something I enjoy. A first print run of 1,200 STAVE decks with 2,600 hand made Player Counters, selling these decks at $12.99 at conventions and local stores, would net me $23,988 before taxes and shipping costs. More than enough to justify having done this little experiment. ($24,000 would be my target in a year, and I could afford to lower it for bulk orders of 12 decks to just $9.50 for stores and make 2,556 of the STAVE Decks {5112 Player Counter Cards made by hand.})

But if we could build a machine of our own and save all that money? And manufacture these cards with a press? That's something we've done before, so we could try it again. It's a very simple design process. 

But if we are going the route of having The Game Crafter make these on commission, I'd like to know that there is a quick repayment in place for doing it. That is something we could partner with them on, but it's 200$ down (and 50$/hr thereafter) -- a large part of the way to doing it ourselves and saving money in the long haul, and opening up options for other projects to come.

I'll think on it the rest of January.