Victory Pointers 010 – Kickstarting Publishing with Allen Chang and Alistair Kearney

We are joined by Allen Chang and Alistair Kearney from Rule & Make to discuss collaborating on designs, focusing on the core of games, Kickstarting a publishing company, communicating with backers, taking backer suggestions, ideal player counts and building relationships.

Rule & Make – @ruleandmake / ruleandmake.com

Aaron Lim – @ehronlime / theactionpointspodcast.com

Sye Robertson – @syelon / syelon.com

What we talked about

2:37 – Collaborating on making games in Rule & Make

4:55 – Craziest things Alistair has said yes or no to when designing with Allen

9:00 – Major changes late in design for Rise to Power and Burger Up

14:10 – Reassessing the core of a game

16:14 – What makes a “Rule & Make game”

19:10 – Focusing on core mechanics in a game

20:43 – Kickstarting a publishing company

25:05 – Designing games vs publishing games

28:53 – Lifestyle games and competition

36:00 – Communication with backers post-Kickstarter, maintaining a record through regular updates

42:48 – Taking on backer suggestions and getting backer involvement

49:07 – Balancing backer suggestions with the core of the game

56:34 – Ideal player counts

1:02:35 – Looking beyond Australia with publishing and finding designers

1:05:56 – Building relationships with publishers and designers

1:10:06 – Choosing to be a designer or a publisher

Links to what we talked about

• GAMA – The Game Manufacturers Association


• Australian Toy Hobby and Licensing Fair


• Grail Games


• Previous interview with Allen and Alistair on the Action Points Podcast


• Games Laboratory Incubator


• Czech Games Edition


• Portal Games

 Games we mentioned

• Entropy


• Rise to Power


• Ninja Dojo Fight


• Burger Up


• Robots & Rockets


• Elevenses


• One Zero One


• Munchkin


• Android: Netrunner


• Dominion


• Android


• Android: Infiltration


• Steam Works


• After the Flood


• Too Many Cinderellas

Music: Something Small (Instrumental) by Minden is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. Based on a work at http://needledrop.co