Press Release: Shiver Me Timbers Launches On Kickstarter May 28Th 2019

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Open world pirate game with modular miniatures: 

Shiver Me Timbers launches on Kickstarter May 28th 2019

Erlangen, Germany. On May 28th, German publisher Weltflucht Verlag will be launching the Kickstarter campaign for his strategic, open world pirate game „Shiver Me Timbers". The campaign with a funding goal of 38.000 Euro will be running for 30 days.

Shiver Me Timbers is the first project by game designer and publisher Michal Vitkovsky. The game is designed for 2 to 4 players ages 14+. Depending on player count and play variant, the game takes between 90 and 180 minutes to play. During the campaign, two pledge levels will be available: the standard pledge contains a copy of the game and any unlocked stretch goals. The deluxe pledge also contains 75 metal coins and four large chests in which players can hide their treasures and their gold.

As a true sandbox game, Shiver Me Timbers offers an open world with multiple paths to victory:

players collect victory points by attacking ships at sea, raiding fortresses, trading goods, rescuing lost relatives, raising treasures, fighting sea monsters, fulfilling missions for the governor and more.

The biggest eye catcher of the game are the large modular miniatures: Players start out with a small model which they can upgrade with additional canons, sails or cargo units to increase its strength, its speed or its hull. The game board is fully modular, too. It is set-up strategically by the players after they have chosen their secret victory conditions. Combat against other players and Non Player Characters is decided by fast, tactical card-based duels, granting lots of interaction and minimizing the luck factor of the game.

The artwork and the graphic design of the game were provided by Indonesian artist Unique Litani

Soparie. The 3D models were designed by Australian 3D artist Andy Monks from Trick Monkey Studios. Two times Ennie award nominee Tyler Omichinski from Canada completes the international team as Editor-in-Chief for English in-game content.

In 2018, Shiver Me Timbers was successfully introduced on the Berlin Brettspiel Con and the SPIEL in Essen. Independent reviews in German and English are available via the BGG page (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/239175/shiver-me-timbers) and on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ShiverMeTimbersBoardgame/. In addition, Jonathan Cox from JonGetsGames has provided a detailed three person play through which is available on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51XC0KGzmak).

Prior to the launch of the campaign, Weltflucht Verlag is raffling away a free deluxe pledge once per month. To join the raffle, gamers have simply to enter their name on the notification list available at www.weltflucht-verlag.de/shivermetimbers.



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On May 28th, the German publisher Weltflucht Verlag will be launching the Kickstarter campaign for the strategic, open world pirate game „Shiver Me Timbers". The artwork and the graphic design of the game was provided by Indonesian artist Unique Litani Soparie.

The modular game board is is set-up by the players after they have chosen their secret victory conditions. This allows for interactive and strategic decisions right from the start.

The major eye catcher of the game are the large modular miniatures: Players start out with a small model which they can upgrade with additional canons, sails or cargo units to increase its strength, its speed or its hull.

The deluxe pledge will also contain 75 large metal coins, designed as a homage to the „Pieces of Eight"popular among pirates.

About Weltflucht Verlag
Weltflucht Verlag was founded by Michal Vitkovsky in 2017. As of now, the publisher's only focus is to successfully fund, publish and market the strategic sandbox game Shiver Me Timbers. We have many more ideas, but those have to take a backseat to our first time project for now. More information about Shiver Me Timbers are available on our Boardgamegeek page (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/239175/shiver-me-timbers) and on the Facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/SchreckenDerMeere und https://www.facebook.com/ShiverMeTimbersBoardgame. If you have questions about the game or the company, would like to request a prototype to playtest or review or are interested in an interview, please contact us at SMT@weltflucht-verlag.de.



Contact for press requests:
Weltflucht Verlag
Michal Vitkovsky
Am Ruhstein 49
91054 Erlangen-Buckenhof
T: 0173 / 385 98 87
SMT@Weltflucht-Verlag.de




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Curse Of Enchantia - Cliffbanger

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

Hello folks, glad to see you back here! Last week in this fantastic adventure game, we finally exited the long cave network and saw the light of day for the first time since… wow, actually it's the first time we have an exterior location in the whole game. Enjoy the sunlight, it might not last…

We find our friend Brad, lost deep in thoughts contemplating
a statue that represents the futility of his existence

With nothing to interact with in this screen, I go north on the path and arrive at a new location… where I'm immediately attacked by a bandit! I don't have time to react though because the bandit trips on a rock and sprawls across the ground, dropping his sword.

I see I'm not the only one having a hard time

I pick up the sword and do what any worth-his-salt adventurer, not to mention a teen lost in a fantasy world would do : I slay the unconscious and defenseless man and proceed to take his money.

I'm not kidding. Notice the thumbs up makes the situation even more troublesome.

I mean, I'm the not the kind to flinch over gratuitous violence. I love myself a good action movie where Arnie slays guys by the dozen and gets out of there with rewards, a medal and the girl. But here it seems a little… I don't know… out of character? What kind of piece of crap would just kill a defenceless fainted guy? OK, I guess he was attacking me earlier but… well whatever. Everything is alright because he disappears in a bunch of little twinkly stars and not in a horrifying gush of blood.

PG murder

Anyway, I get the money and proceed to enter the city we see in the distance. Immediately after me, two guards appear in the path where I come from, rendering impossible any backtracking.

I guess they're looking for a ruthless murderer.

I start exploring the city, entering "Frank's food" which seems appealing. Saying "Hi" to the butcher (Frank probably) shows me that he will sell me meat for money. I buy a roast with my loot.

Blood money

Right next to Frank's place lies an inn, the Red Dragon, where the bouncer sends me back on my way, probably because I'm not dressed classy enough.

First time I'm denied entry from an empty pub. The bartender seems to enjoy the lack of clientele.

Going further in town I find a central fountain which I can't seem to do anything with and three paths. I start by going north of the fountain and find an alley with a magic shop, a derelict "joke shop" and a pack of sheep blocking the way ahead.

Lead by an orc in a dress because why not

Entering the magic shop, I find countless interesting artefacts which I can't interact with in any way and a magician that seems to be willing to give me a spell for money. I kinda start feeling that there is a lot of missed opportunities for interactions in this town. The graphics are nice and colorful but it's only to mask the fact that we're just visiting empty places and giving money to random guys.

I sure would have loved to be able to buy the dice-box or the unicorn statue…

But anyway I pay the magician and he teleports me on a cliff path somewhere. Well that seems a bit harsh, but I guess that's what you get for paying people without asking what for. I'm guessing if there was a sign there telling "teleportation on a barren cliff over a bottomless precipice: 5 dollars" I might have given it a second thought.

Seems like a scam to me…

I'm pretty sure I've missed a lot of things in the city but I can't seem to be able to come back for now. Well I guess I just have to trust the fact that I'm yet to encounter any dead-end so I'll just keep going ahead and we'll see where that leads. The speed of Brad on the path is excruciatingly slow and there is a flock of birds constantly going back and forth in front of us. Thankfully I can't fall by going near the ledge, which is something the old Sierra games would have eagerly implemented. I arrive near a big rock and touch it… and fall down the bottomless pit.

Well Larry… it seems you've plummeted to your death. Restore, restart, quit?

Not being in a Sierra game, Brad is picked up by some kind of giant pigeon? seagull? that brings him back at the beginning of the path. Thank you overgrown poultry!

Let's say he looks like a white howlibird.

I go back to the big rock and, being careful not to go too close to it I push it on the ledge below. It then allows me to use the "jump" option and cross the gap. However I walk ten more steps on the path and get pushed over by a giant boulder that drops from above the cliff.

I think you and me are going to be good friends.

Going back to the big rock, I jump over the gap and pick up what appears to be a red blotch on the path. I pocket something that resembles a pair of red gloves and find myself in front of four switches in the wall. I press a few of them randomly but nothing happens. In a lot of games I would think that I missed a clue of some kind but I'm starting to know my Curse of Enchantia and try all the different combinations (which is not a lot to be honest). It seems that pressing the first, second and fourth switch creates a silver path to the rest of the cliff.

Only the penitent man passes.

I'm starting to guess that maybe the wizard wanted to see if I was worthy of something, and has sent me to a path of trials in order to check if I really was the chosen one… but then again I paid the guy and the pigeon saves me everytime I'm in peril so maybe it's just a cheap Disneyland knockoff. Visit Cliff Land! Its rocks! Its boulders! Its neverending flock of squeaking birds!

And now what appears to be a bored employee in a costume… makes sense

After the silver path I found a length of rope on the ground and met a strange blue guy with sparkles erupting out of him. I'm guessing you have to use the red gloves on him so I approach the guy...

… a little too much.

After a pigeon trip (my feathered friend always takes me aaaaaaall the way back to the beginning of the path which makes it increasingly painful to go back to where I was before falling down), I go LESS near the sparkling guy and attack him with the rubber gloves.

Because what's one more death on my conscience?

Right after that, the path is blocked by another falling rocks rain (which makes it the third time since the beginning of the game… what a nice display of imagination). This one comes back and forth though so I'm able to cross with good timing. You know what bad timing means : another pigeon flight. In one of two alcoves that allow me to get shelter from the falling rocks I find… another rock! Yay. A blue-greyish one too. What a pretty blue-greyish rock. I know it seems like nothing but after having seen a ton of rocks of all shapes and sizes, a blue one makes for a nice change of scenery.

That's a damn fine looking rock you got there, missy…

Going on on the path, I find another gap, with a huge rock above it. I try throwing my rock (and everything else in my inventory) but to no avail. I try everything on everything because the obvious thing I could do would be to make a grappling hook of some kind with the rope and the rock for example, or with the rope and the money bag… but no. Something is weird there though, because there is a specific spot on the path where a rock is falling again and again just above my head. I'm trying to catch it or to interact with it in any way but I can't get the timing right or there is nothing to do with it. And that's it : the case I was afraid of is upon me. I'm stuck here with no obvious way of making any progress.

So close and yet so far…

I go back on the path to check if I've missed anything trying to look for every nook and cranny I could have missed but it doesn't seem to be the case. I spend long minutes trying to do everything I think of with this stupid little rock falling over and over again, but nothing happens. Then, the cold hand of fear squeezes my heart : what if I was in a walking dead scenario? After all, the impromptu teleportation from the wizard didn't leave me enough time to search for everything in the city… OK, that's a reload for me.

So tell the girls that I'm back in town…

Exploring the rest of the city, the west path leads to a shack called "Sally See All" where crystal ball readings is given by a seal (which is a pretty funny pun I admit). The seal gives me three visual clues in exchange for money.

So I'm guessing I was right with the Magic Shop being the first place to go to. The second thing would be that I have to dress with a pig costume to pass the beetle guard blocking the street west. Then I'm supposed to find the costume shop. Seems the latter two are not in the correct order but let's assume the seal is right.

Going east from the fountain, I find the costume shop, with the street going east blocked by two mexicans sleeping (don't look at me like that, the game is making stereotypical jokes, not me).

Aye caramba!

The costume shop is of course empty with nothing to interact with but I can enter the changing room in the back. There is a closed door there which I can't open in any way (I'm guessing the door is paperclip-proof). And that's it! I didn't find any hook for my grappling hook, nothing much to interact with and except a few nice looking screens, I don't have any more clue on how to proceed.

I did see something kind of reassuring though, which is that the seal's predictions put the magic shop first. And so far, the game hasn't put me in any walking dead situation so I guess I'm missing something on the cliff… aaaand this is where I realize that I haven't kept any saves from the place I was on the cliff so it's back to the rock and fall ordeal just to get back to the spot I was… I'd love to tell you that I didn't fall down too much but it would be lying.

On the plus side, killing that poor bloke one more times relaxes me a little.

I will now jump in time a little bit to avoid telling you about all the things I've tried here. I spent several long minutes going back and forth this path, tried about everything that made sense to pass this gap. I cursed a lot. And then…I found it. The worst thing about trying everything out of desperation in an adventure game is that when you finally stumble upon the solution, you feel relief. You're grateful for the game to finally allow you to make some progress. You're glad you can keep on playing. So all these feelings blind you from the truth : you didn't solve the puzzle, you just brute-forced it by doing everything you could. And that is not good. Sometimes you feel stupid because you could have found the solution by yourself and sometimes not.

So let me catch my breath here and tell you the solution. You have to WEAR the blue rock.

That's correct. You have to use the option WEAR and select the fraking BLUE ROCK just while you're below the little falling rock on the edge of the path.

What?

WHAT? I mean… excuse me… WHAT? Yes because when you ask Brad to wear the blue rock, he puts it on his head, which allows him to have the OTHER rock fall directly on his head so he can grab it.

WHAT? Yes even telling you this way it makes little sense. I have a theory though, maybe the blue rock is not a blue rock. Maybe it's glue of some kind. Maybe it's some kind of very badly drawn iron helmet… But even in this case, it means the little rock was falling on Brad's head the whole time. Maybe if he said "ouch" or if he fell down when receiving the rock on his head it would have made me think "hey, I need something to soften the blow". But no, the animation let you think that the rock bounces on the cliff above Brad's head so in no way can you think you need to put something on your head to catch the rock.

And then you can throw your new rock in the boulder to make it fall and complete the path.

Which is what I was trying to do one hour ago

I'm sorry but I have to ramble some more. WHY OH WHY DIDN'T YOU USE THE FRAKING BLUE ROCK TO MAKE THE FRAKING BOULDER FALL YOU LITTLE PIECE OF… sorry. Deep breaths. I'm letting myself carried away there. I have only one thing nice to say about this puzzle : it makes the computer/counterweight puzzle in the last section almost seem like a nice clever puzzle. This part of "wearing the rock to catch another rock to throw at a big rock" might be the STUPIDEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN IN A VIDEO GAME. This is the kind of things that would have made me rage quit if it weren't for the blog. This is the kind of things I can only talk about in caps lock.

But anyway, let's move on, my friends, to the rest of this fantastic cliff challenge.

I walk a little bit more and find a place where several blobs, slimes or whatever drop down from the ledge above and jump to their death, lemmings-style.

Weird but at least I don't have to wear a frying pan to catch one.

I try to do a lot of things with the little blobs, including using the rope because I thought I could lasso one. Using the rope makes Brad throw it above the gap and allows me to cross it. What were the little blobs and why were they here, tirelessly jumping to their death again and again? We will never know. And honestly I don't even care anymore. I'm guessing they were trying to escape this horrendous universe in the only way they found.

The RNG generator that makes the birds appear seems to have gone overboard on this screenshot.

I cross the gap with the rope, take a few steps and… get hit by another falling boulder. The pigeon takes me all the way back to the beginning of the path. I started my timer : it takes three minutes when you fall here just to go back to where you were a second before. THREE MINUTES. If it doesn't seem much, you have to imagine the ordeal with this god-forsaken music and the fact that you have to be careful to avoid falling rocks, etc etc… Three minutes can be a long time, friends.

JUST LET ME DIE YOU STUPID BIRD! I HATE YOU! LET ME GOOOO!

Finally arriving at the end of the path, there is a sign written "Open Sesame", which adds to my list of talk option (after Hi! And Help!) a third option saying "Open Sesame". Brad's digitized voice says something sounding like "Apinsmami" (but it's 1992 so let's be kind to digitized voice samples) and a cave opens in the cliff. I enter the cave and find myself in front of a nicely-drawn overgrown parrot with a guy on its shoulder.

This joke would have been funnier if the guy was a pirate, in my humble opinion.

The parrot then asks me for some kind of fire extinguisher, what looks like a fan and then changes me into a frog. The frog jumps out of frame and comes back in the center of the city. To prove to you that I'm not on any drug, I took a few screenshots:

And boom. After all of this, it seems that I was lacking the items the parrot needed in the first place. Before becoming crazy, I went back to the seal, once again giving it money (which I hope is not in a finite quantity and I won't run out eventually) and the seal only shows me the two last visions : the pig mask one and the costume shop one. I guess it means I actually made some progress and that the whole cliff part was not useless. Color me grateful.

I then proceed to the costume shop, hoping that something different would happen and that I would find a pig mask. Sure enough, a merchant now appears and asks money for a dress.

The item "money" has now been used on five different occasions. That's game design for you.

Overlooking the fact that the merchant looks like another stereotypical joke, I buy the dress, a bit disappointed it's not a pig mask and of course go directly to the back room to try it out.

Cross-dressing: the basis of 80's and 90's humour.

And then, the door in the back room opens wide probably just because I wore a dress because why not. And then, entering it brings me to an ice wasteland with a yeti on a frozen lake. And then it's time for me to quit this game before it sends me to the loony bin.

Nice closet you got here.

Session time : 1h 45 minutes
Total time : 4 long hours

Inventory : Paperclip, Magnet on a string, Bag of money, Piece of meat
Score : 229
Percentage complete : 47% (my god, not even half!)

People Gotta And Three Ring Circuses (Tradecraft)

What is a successful product? It's about opportunity cost. A successful product is one where you make the most money compared to other product opportunities. This is why GMROI, Gross Margin Return on Investment is a superior tool to turn rate analysis. Given your gold pieces, what inventory you sold to the adventurers brought you the most return?

There is a caveat that says this product enables you to continue what you're doing. Sometimes a product line is slow, but it enables you to continue selling something fast. Right now I would love to drop my Magic singles. Lacking any meaningful tools for performance analysis, it appears to be an area I would normally give the axe. I find it unbelievable the IT leaders in this field can't provide the most basic tools for this analysis. When was that card added to my database? That's enough to begin providing me data. I continue to sell Magic singles because it's a major part of my Magic Industrial Complex. There are singles, sealed packs, card supplies, events, and at the rate of player involvement, even snacks play a major role in the MIC. Cutting Magic singles imperils my ability to continue doing what I'm doing.

I was at a store in Alaska many years ago that sold games, weapons and porn. That store is still there, dominating the landscape. They understand their target market, and apparently there's no worry that weapons and porn turn off a particular segment of their customer base (they are a culturally resilient crowd). It does not imperil their ability to continue doing what they're doing. Meanwhile, there are stores in the Midwest that are regularly harassed for carrying Dungeons & Dragons. Myself? We just received these really cool Frank Frazetta puzzles that I had neglected to inspect very closely. Barbarians on piles of dead bodies is perfectly acceptable in American culture, but there's a bare breast I hadn't noticed. I sighed, said something about art and a different time, and put them on the top shelf of our puzzle section, setting the item not to re-order. That puzzle imperils my ability to continue doing what I'm doing.


That continuation assumes I have a personal focus. My business partner once compared selling game to widgets, as in "games, women's shoes, it's all the same." For me, that's not true. Well, not entirely. One concern many of us have is losing passion for what we do. I just finished writing a 300 page D&D campaign, so I love that this stuff permeates every part of my life. I have no passion for selling women's shoes. It might personally make me wealthy, but I would dread going to work in the morning. Selling a 13 year old girl a starter box of D&D gets me out of bed in the morning. Explaining which of the six monster books we carry is best for what you're doing puts a twinkle in my eye.  I mention girl, because I love the fact this game, that has been such a big part of my life, is branching out into so many demographics. Plus girls are more likely to ask for directions, while the guys are hesitant to look ignorant. That this puzzle box is next to this paragraph tells you of my plight in this field.

So we worry about the focus of our store. When I had golden handcuffs from selling Yugioh, in which my duel terminal investment required me to put up with a loss of focus and really poor behavior, I was counting the days until we had freedom to ask them to leave. We didn't hesitate when the time came, it was days after we sold the terminals. Likewise, I see the future of retail being one of two things, somehow, laser focusing on your one thing, using every trick in the book, every promotion, every three ring circus trick to eek out a living before Amazon and local government regulates you out of business. That's one option, and I know a group of top retailers doing that thing. It requires boundless passion to continue doing your thing.

The other option is selling women's shoes. You stop focusing on that one thing, stop trying to up your value proposition in this one area, and shift to something else. People gotta eat. People gotta get their hair cut. People gotta get gas. It's the people gottta strategy. You find that thing that's immune to the persistent pounding against value employed by the publishers, distributors and retailers in the game trade and you instead find something else, your women's shoes. Retailers stocked up like mad on Amazon on D&D books this month because Wizards of the Coast cares nothing about brand value protection. Wizard's allowed their partners to dump. Distributors likewise dumped. Retailers are hoping to sell the dumped product in the first quarter. I shake my head and look closer at the people gotta strategy.

The problem with people gotta is it's not continuing to do what you do. Most game store owners can't employ the people gotta strategy because they are not retailers, they are game store owners, a subset of gamer, a value seeking creature that employs short term satisfaction with rampant consumerism. Bless them all. Just as I balk from women's shoes, game store owners would be unenthused and pretty terrible at running a cafe, or whatever other people gotta business they fell into. But most are also incapable of maintaining the three ring circus of the one thing. Most will fail either way. I want to both help them and encourage them to fail faster.

Which perhaps brings up a third strategy, of waiting for the retail apocalypse when the crowded marketplace of 7-10 times the retail space needed, finally gets reduced to a manageable level. But knowing I get little benefit when competitors close, I wouldn't hold my breath for that. I'll continue with the three ring circus, get the occasional thrill of turning on a kid to my favorite game, and fantasize about what people gotta do. Until then, please ignore that puzzle on the top shelf. It's art and it was a different time.

A Word About The Polish Gaming Market

Last January, I was travelling in the European east. The main purpose of this trip was to finish my post-doctorate research about "Advergames: games as marketing tools" that I developed with Paneurópska vysoká škola at Bratislava (Slovakia). I presented the results and it was great (one more trophy achieved on the academic game).

After some days in Bratislava, I travelled to Kiev (Ukraine) and then to Krakow (Poland). In the last part of this trip, in Poland, I visited one awesome gaming studio named Moonlit. Knowing that the Polish land is a great market for games, I sent some e-mails trying to contact people from the local industry to share some ideas and discover new points of view. I talked to Mateusz Wanatowicz, PR and marketing specialist in Moonlit Games. Below, I surmised our conversation, sharing highlights of the polish gaming industry, Moonlit projects and an overview of polish gaming market.

1.Why do we need to pay attention to the Polish gaming market?

Well, it's one very important market in the central Europe. According to the last Newzoo gaming research, the country (with a population of 34 million people) has profited around 500 million dollars with gaming products. In comparison to Brazil - a country with 210 million people and a profit of 1.3 billion dollars in the gaming market - it's a very interesting emergent market to pay attention to.





2. About Moonlit Games studio

Moonlit is a gaming studio and a software house. In 2018, the company started to produce two authorial projects: Playerless - an arcade game where you need to fix bugs and the NPCs to run it correctly (PC); and Ignis - a battle arena game with wizards, sorcery and combats (PC and Xbox). Below, you can check some trailers and contents from both games.








3. Some aspects of the Polish gaming industry 

It is a promising industry as we saw in the first topic. According to Wanatowicz, the government of Poland sees this industry as a profitable area to invest money in and an entry door for many startups and small initiatives for new business. Wanatowicz highlighted that big events, games jams and young talents are receiving support from the government; and, another important point: careers in gaming area (coding, game designing, 3D art etc.) are also prominent in the academic area.

Another important thing to mention is the fact that the games from the series "The Witcher" were a way to present the Polish gaming industry to the whole world.

It is important to say that board games and card games have a main role in this context too. Local production of analogic games is growing year by year.

4.Polish gamers

Wanatowicz also said that Polish gamers, in a general way, support the local industry and they are proud of the national industry and gaming production.

5.A final message to the Gaming Conceptz audience

Mateusz Wanatowicz emphasizes that part of the success of a gaming industry is about how government, gamer community, studios/companies and universities can join powers to create a fertile ecosystem for different kinds of projects. Big initiatives as "The Witcher" series are fundamental, but supporting indie studios, small startups, events and clear marketing rules are also a key for a good gaming market.



Note: check Moonlit works in the official site and social media by clicking in the links!

#GoGamers

New Year Of Value Seeking (Tradecraft)

Wizards of the Coast has deeply screwed game stores with their margin reduction. New distributor prices, distributors being the only way to get their product now, reflects this in the new year. Many Magic centric stores will fail from this move. Of course, we've deeply screwed ourselves by relying on this one company to play such a prominent role in our businesses. Heck, I built my game center with the idea we needed a much larger space for Magic events. The L2 judge was still unhappy with my 121 proposed seats, as it wasn't big enough for large events (that no longer exist). Since construction completed, Magic events have yet to exceed 75 seats and I need an L2 judge like I need a war games coordinator. I fill my space with many other events, so I have no regrets, but if I wasn't diversified I would be in serious trouble.

I've spent the last 14 years not quite oblivious to margin at distributors, but pretty close. There had to be some significant margin differences before this was on my radar, and even WOTC direct sales discounts were often not worth the hassle. Now that I'm more established and I'm not seeing double digit sales growth every year (13% on average but far slower nowadays), the difference in margin between 2018 and 2019 is enough to sink my business outright. That's right, not hurt it a little like minimum wage increases of 9% this year, but rather a huge margin hit on a third of my sales.

That's not something a responsible business owner sits back and just watches happen, nor is it something easy to fix. Our rent and labor both went up 4% last year and that money came from reducing our marketing budget. This margin difference blows those increases out of the water and requires a behavior change. Most game stores (Magic shops) won't even know what happened, they'll just be unable to pay the bills and not be sure why.

There are a couple ways to fix this problem, the first being getting the best price up front.  For Magic I started looking at second tier distributors for better value. The best prices came from Magazine Exchange. My primary, ACD, had second best prices. There was a 5% difference between the lowest distributor and my highest. If you're one of those people who only have one or two accounts, it's really because you're lazy. Get off your butt and fill out a damn form.

Getting the best price is important, but with Magic it's far more important to look at how you sell it. Perform a GMROI, analysis, Gross Margin Return on Investment. Does Magic look soft? Are your events low priced as a loss leader? Are your box sales bottom of the market? Are you discounting at the pack level? Are you buying a bunch of crap singles for event formats nobody plays? Is store credit and single sales hiding your view of your true margin? Tighten up your game.

Singles are really hard to perform an inventory analysis on, but you should at least be getting solid turns equal to your store average. Selling singles poorly is far worse than not selling them at all. We're in this boat, I think. Raise your prices by at least your new margin difference (6%?). The back end problem of margin reduction can be solved with a front end price increase. Let customers complain, you're in business to make money, not to go down with the Magic ship. If Magic sales slow, let them and shore up your business elsewhere.

Next, pivot to safe harbors. This 500 pound gorilla got this big by steady feeding. Diversify away from CCGs and Dungeons & Dragons. Still sell them of course, we're not stupid, but look for alternatives. The new Pathfinder is out this year, and it may be the cleanest shirt on the floor. I don't believe it will ever have that number one position, but it should easily sit at number two. Board games is a thorny area, but there's room for best sellers. We've had good success with the core line from Asmodee (another 500 pounder in the making).

WOTC will measure your existence with butts in seats. If those butts aren't always making you money, stop chasing those meaningless statistics and use your event space for games from companies that won't cause harm. Drop slow attendance Magic events and make sure the D&D crowd isn't taking up a disproportionate amount of event space. D&D kept me afloat last year, so I'm happy with my ... what .. THREE nights a week of events? Jeebus.

Finally, if your lease is up or you're just starting out, understand there's a right size of event space and it's no longer as big as it once was. There are no giant PPTQs and pre-releases can be managed with more events, rather than bigger ones. Shrink your space, give up butts in seats, for an overall more profitable store. This country has 7-10 times the retail square footage as other industrialized countries and that unnecessary extra space applies to game stores too. If you were expecting giant Magic events with Magic being your core product line, I suggest you don't rely on that gorilla to lift you up.