Dice Man

In case you missed it - About Time on Dragon's Den

2009-11-18T19:18:00Z

It's on You Tube and brought here to you - myself and Iain getting a going over on the BBC's Dragon's Den. At that time we had not sold any. This is just a snap shot of our thorough grilling by the definitely interested Dragons. Still, Iain's projections were right - and here we are two years later breaking into 3 big markets and growing strongly. Ah well...

About Time "Die Zeit" takes Frankfurt Bookfair and Essen Spiel board game fair by storm

2009-10-26T11:54:00Z

Circa Circa launched its German edition of About Time, produced with the broadsheet Die Zeit, at Frankfurt book fair and at Essen Spiel, Europe's biggest consumer games fair. This has been our first jointly produced game overseas, and follows on from our Guardian edition, which was launched last year and is set to make a return through the paper's Reader Offers very soon.

Iain McGill from Circa Circa attended the Frankfurt launch, while the whole team attended the four day Essen games fair. Frankfurt is very well known in the UK as the biggest event in the book calender in Europe. Essen Spiel is not so well known, and it is a sight to behold: eight halls of board games and thousands of players coming to enjoy their favourite 'Eurogame' . Rather than just a massive market for games, this is a community event. There are an awful lot of independent game publishers with thousands of titles to keep the massive following for boardgames in Europe happy.

There is nothing like Essen Spiel in the UK, (although we do now have an Expo in Birmingham in June). Playing board games in Germany is a way of life, not just something you do at Christmas as a way of getting through the tensions of a family Christmas. There are so many games on display, and so many great designers present, it is humbling for us. Some game inventors have more than 60 games to their name, most of course you would never have heard of because they do not by and large make it to the UK market.

About Time is a quiz, trivia game whereas Eurogames are generally strategy or abstract games. It is not just German games though - it is a global event with Americans, Koreans, Russians, French, in fact most of the developed world, all of whom come with an small army of avid players enjoying tournaments. About Time was sharing hall space with the Finnish contingent, with their distinct red and green punk geek hairstyles. As you would expect, the games community are heavily into a fantasy gothic and heavy metal aesthetic. It's something I remember from my fantasy role playing days back in the murky past. And it is alive and kicking.

We sold a stack of games and enjoyed conversations with a range of distributors, journalists and game inventors. I am still recovering but now we are in full Christmas fair season. Watch out for About Time at Spirit of Christmas from 4th november and a number of other craft and gift fairs over the coming weeks.

Abouttimeboardgame.com goes live

2009-09-16T09:07:00Z

We made it - the new About Time website and e-shop are now live and we hope people like it. Of course we are also working on a viral campaign to create awareness and interest in the game and pull people to the site. The work on that is underway now and should show fruit in a month or so.

The death of Patrick Swayze has brought back memories of his most famous role, in Dirty Dancing. It's no secret that the film was hugely popular with female audiences. I personally remember him most in two other great movies - Point Break, the Kathryn Bigelow directed adrenalin classic in which he starred as the leader of the surfer bank robbers, the ex-Presidents - an ultimately cool role. He also played a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. Then, a dcade later, he appeared in Donnie Darko in a very uncool role, as the motivational speaker who (warning - spoiler coming) is exposed as a paedophile. That was surely a very brave role to take, and in stark contrast to his early heart throb and action hero roles, before he somewhat disappeared while fighting alcoholism and recovering from a serious riding injury.

Optimism about the US game market in 2009 based on 23% bounce last year

2009-09-07T09:40:00Z

For every global recession there is a silver lining. Last year's sales of board games in the US were up by 23% to $808 million according to a Forbes report in July. This is likely because board games are recession proof to the extent that they are a cheaper alternative to other kinds of entertainment, such as the cinema or computer games.

Historically board game and puzzle sales in the US are about ten times sales in the UK, with Germany the world's second biggest boardgames market. And so there is little surprise that we are launching in the US this fall and launching our German 'Die Zeit' edition of About Time at the Frankfurt Bookfair and at the Essen Spiel games fair next month in Germany.

Monopoly teams up with Google to promote 3D game

2009-09-07T09:02:00Z

Christmas is not far away, and in the games sector we are all geared up for the big season. Hasbro has already announced its Christmas Monopoly promotion which is a free online game partnering with no less than Google. Using Google Maps and Google Earth, it allows any player to buy a street or building anywhere in the world. Now that really is impressive, it is as big as you can get with the Monopoly concept. The bar has been set high and I am intrigued to play. Once a property has been 'bought' you can't have it, so a global race is created. This is a brilliant idea for an online game. We are in the process of developing some great online concepts for About Time, although nothing can be revealed as yet. Monopoly has shown that you can take a very 20th century concept - the classic board game - right up to date into 2009.

The ultimate wedding gift for a man who has almost everything

2009-09-04T09:55:00Z

I got married, I bought a house, I moved into said house and started decorating it, well more accurately my wife (that sounds strange and probably will for some time) and James and Andy the decorators did that mostly. I - sorry, we - were given some wonderful wedding gifts, one of them was a cappucino maker, which was all I wanted really. Fancy cutlery is overpriced and I fear for becoming too smug and bourgeois...Still, when I opened the box I fully understood the lyrics to the Talking Heads song "And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife, and you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?" But here I am, with a beautiful coffee machine, which is strange, for someone like me who is at some level anti-materialist or anti-consumerist, and a shopaphobe (is that the opposite of shopaholic, I'm not sure?). Yes, this is a product I am truly excited about, and it is a wonderful distraction from domestic and work tasks. If I could drink 10 cups of my own coffee a day I would. I am the proverbial boy in the sweet shop - except I've moved on through beer to coffee and wine. I suppose the only thing that could be more exciting than being able to make your own half-decent cappucino at home, would be a champagne machine...now that would truly be dangerous. However, I think you might need a vineyard and some French soil and a few barrels. Ah well. I will remain thrilled to know that my cappuccino is only minutes away whenever I want it. I am now at my desk - the same old desk but now in a new sun-filled attic. What more could I ask for - a holiday!

I should add that About Time is definitely in America now, and so, it must be on the shelves of Barnes & Noble anyday now. If you are near one, and you happen to see it there (pine green box, beautiful design), drop us a line.

Maybe the most powerful brand is fear

2009-07-23T19:29:00Z

How to get the consumer's attention? The answer is fear. Yes, if our product could be a cure to swine flu, or an essential tool in the battle against international terrorism, we would be the biggest brand on the shelf right now. If we manufactured Tamiflu, or drone missiles, we would be the essential antidote to the fears of our age. Never mind possible side affects - or collateral damage - these really don't matter when people are scared stupid. It helps of course if the media and governments cannot stop talking about the pandemic or other new global threat. And, of course the taxpayer - who is after all the biggest single consumer on the planet - must reach straight for the wallet. No expense spared, lives are at risk! So I think our next campaign will be based on a fear - grounded or otherwise - that only we and our wonderful product can defeat. This is the magic marketing campaign!

About Time goes to America

2009-07-22T16:50:00Z

It's official - About Time USA Edition is now on a boat to a US port near you (if you live near Savannah, Georgia). It is a Barnes and Noble exclusive and should be on the shelves of the store across the country in a few weeks.

About Time USA Edition is very much the same fantastic board game as the UK edition of About Time, but the content is much more weighted to US history and culture, taking it right up to 2009. It's in a fine looking blue box too!

Meanwhile, our German edition, a special edition produced with Die Zeit newspaper and, of course, entirely in German, is just about ready to go. It's been a busy summer!

I feel like I need new skills or I'm going in the digital dustbin

2009-07-03T14:04:00Z

What does it mean to be a journalist these days, especially a production journalist or subeditor? As the creator of a board game in the age of the Xbox and Twitter, I have set myself against the technological revolution. Not because I'm against new technology - I love the internet. But I mostly use it as a communication and research tool, for which it is fantastic.

But as someone who works in an industry - the media - that is dominated by technological change, I sometimes feel like old craftsmen at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Is it feasible to be a journalist who is not also a search analyst or web designer/developer? Look what happened to the printers who used to work in lead and type. They had to learn how to do it with computers or join the miners and steelworkers on the scrapheap.

There has been some comment about how hard it is for the new generation of journalists. But they at least have the advantage of growing up in the internet age. For them, to learn how to make search, web design or digital marketing part of their skill set makes perfect sense. They don't remember how it was before technology destroyed the cosy world of the journalistic craft. People of my generation came into this industry when it was on the cusp of change. My first news room still had typewriters and ceefax machines. There was even a metal spike for rejected stories! Moving over to desktop publishing programmes was what us subeditors had to do in the 1990s to stay employable. In the 2000s it is learning how to work online. Subediting became content editing. I love working in the digital domain, it makes actual newsprint seem fusty - it's in near real time rather than last week time. But when everything happens on Twitter, and everyone is chasing the same stories and re-spinning them, rather than spending time investigating and talking to contacts - then journalism just becomes content production.

This can easily become just another facet of marketing. Why should you spend ages getting a genuine scoop, when what your editors and owners really need is quantity - of unoriginal content? Ultimately, you might as well go the whole hog and become an expert in click through and meta data. Who's got time to read an in depth article anyway? There's so much to read, in depth becomes a 10-second scan, about 140 characters long.

So all of this proves that I am a Luddite. Except I am not. I am just experiencing the discomfort of a technological revolution. I work with digital marketers to put About Time into the digital space. Reality in a digital media age is constant change, total measurability and a general feeling that there is nothing solid now that will still be solid in a year's time.

I guess I'll sign up to learn some new skills - I just hope they don't become redundant before I've finished learning them.

One degree of separation

2009-06-23T16:08:00Z

The terrible images of the last moments of Iranian Neda Soltan after she was shot, apparently by a state assassin, once again shows the power of social media to bring political events to the attention of millions. Within hours of her death, Neda became a martyr to the protest movement in Iran. She has become a symbol of the tragic events currently unfolding in that country. Her death may even affect diplomatic relations, such as they are, between Iran and the West.

Meanwhile, and almost as affecting in a different way, was the police video of their own brutal treatment of two environmental campaigners at the Kingsnorth power station, broadcast on last night's news. The campaigners provocation was to film the police unit that was filming the protesters and to demand to know their police numbers, which the officers involved apparently were not displaying. The same pattern of police brutality and unlawful anonymity was on display during the G20 protests earlier this year.

Camera phones, Facebook and Twitter all appear to be equalising the battle between the Big Brother state and those opposing it. Of course, it remains an unequal contest. In Iran, some reports suggest that the reason Neda Soltan was shot was because she was holding a phone - one of the main weapons of the Iranian opposition.

While in the past it has been a truism of political theory that the modern state seeks to maintain a monopoly of violence, in the 21st century the battle appears to be over the monopoly of surveillance. Thanks to technology, just as they can watch us, we can watch them, and if they are not careful - and apparently they appear to be recklessly careless, Abu Ghraib anyone? - what they do, and what they film, will end up being broadcast for the whole world to see.

It was only three years ago in the Lebanon war that Israel appeared to suffer its biggest setback in the field of digital media. Gruesome images of the children killed in its onslaught were posted on websites and into the inboxes of thousands, part of a successful media campaign by Hizbollah that led to worldwide revulsion against Israel. If Israel and Iran have anything in common these days, it is the way in which digital media in the hands of activists is revealing the impact of their actions to the world. It may not be balanced or objective, if such things remain possible when anyone can place their unique view into the court of public opinion, but it is the way the world is now seen by millions of people. And compared to what we see as news, it sometimes feels that the activists and amateur observers are better able to expose the truth.

Of course, there are still places where the digital camera and the blogger activist do not seem to be able to reach. If you are the perpetrator or victim of violence in conflict zones such as Somalia or Sri Lanka, it appears that very little of the bloodshed will be broadcast into the blogosphere and, later, in the mass media of the rich world. The world is definitely getting smaller, but it is still divided into the seen and the unseen.

Test yourself on Iconic brands minigame

2009-06-11T16:56:00Z

Try this minigame on iconic ads and brands. Just guess when you think the brand or ad came out - the closer you are the higher your score.

Strange days

2009-06-01T23:56:00Z

I have to apologise for my absence - so much has been happening in my life and in the development of About Time, that I have hardly been able to pause for breath. A death in the family. That is enough to cope with. But I am moving home, planning a major event in my life and, um, getting ready for fatherhood.

On top of all this, Circa Circa (our company) has been producing new versions of About Time for America and Germany. This is very exciting indeed - these are the biggest game markets in the world. And we are doing this with real contracts rather than a wing and a prayer.

All these things and more have kept me away from posting. This is not what you would call real-time web. But it is very much real life, intervening. I suppose sometimes life speeds up and intensifies. It is difficult to know how to define this change, other than to say, we have stepped off the bus and got on the rollercoaster. Of course, some things we can do nothing about, like mortality. But it does put life in perspective, giving you a sense of what matters, and what might be possible. Even how to act and not to hesitate. I suppose this is what you do when you lose a loved one - you can perhaps see clearly and make decisions, act.

We've been building to this point, and there are hopeful signs that important things are afoot. If I am writing in non-specific metaphysical terms, sorry. It's late - or early - and there's so much to do!

Apprentices in the global economy

2009-05-07T16:06:00Z

I watched The Apprentice with our sales supremo Iain last night. He is an avid fan. I hardly watch it but just as I was itching to go the pub, he explained to me that 'this is the sort of dull stuff me and Matt go and do' - that is pick up the phone and try to get a buyer to meet him, go and meet the buyer with some unlikely products and get them to make an order. Of course on The Apprentice, there is also the threat of being fired to spur people into all kinds of backstabbing and crazy pitches - but it also shows what can be done in a short space of time with the right approach. Iain said that he actually learnt quite a bit from watching the show. I guess I should start watching so I can see what he does when I'm at home blogging on BR. I kind of know actually because I saw him pitch in front of the mighty Dragons not that long ago, and I know he does not take No for an answer.

On a slightly different theme, I don't know how typical our experience is of a small creative company, but it wasn't long into last year's financial crisis that we realised how everything that was in the news affects us. A banking crisis affected our ability to borrow; falling consumer confidence affected retailers' willingness to try our wonderful new product; and, when you manufacture abroad, currencies can seriously trip you up - one minute the pound is high and dollars are cheap, next minute the reverse is true. We had to learn the hard way that when you manufacture abroad you better be aware that all your calculations can go out the window if you don't keep an eye on the currency markets.

We are a small company and we launched a single product in the UK, yet our supply chain is global, and now as we launch in two major new markets, we are buying and selling in four currencies across three continents. Our communications are global and our customers are also international. It's an exhilarating and surprising discovery - even if globalisation is a cliche now. It's definitely not dead.

Silliest thing to spend money on - customised number plates

2009-04-28T14:53:00Z

I have been driving a lot lately - using Streetcar rather than my own car as car ownership is something I long ago gave up, like smoking and vodka. For some reason I have become aware of the prevalence of customised number plates on the roads of Britain. Once upon a time you would see the odd wideboy in a expensive model car and go , 'Ah, a banker / rock star / gangster' and just raise your eyebrows and move on. Now they are everywhere. Perhaps it's just a hangover from the boom times but every time I see one it gets me - what happened to the recession? Do people in this country really just have much more money than sense? Why would you spend your money on that? Does it make you feel good, or clever, or is it, as I suspect, just a way of showing 'normal' people that you can afford to waste your money?

I did a quick search online for a suitable number plate for someone who would like this kind of thing. I found the closest thing I could get for 'wan**r' was W777 KER, for a mere £1194. What is brilliant is that the website did not reject my desired plate name. However on regtransfer.com a search for 'Road Nazi' came up with nothing useful - ORG 45M for £150,000 or 'MO57 WTD' came in at a bargain £125,000.

I see James Caan, who was ever so nice to us on Dragon's Den, is on the front of Regtransfers.co.uk's free magazine with a Rolls plate '28 JC' - that must have set him back. Of course, he is none of the things I searched for above.

Perhaps when I am rich it will all make sense and I will eat these words. I admit to having dabbled in customising my ringtone, by recording stuff I liked and using it, but that was free.

So I suppose the lesson is you can sell anything really, if it reflects the vanity of the buyer. Now I didn't say that of course, because we all know that the buyer is always right.

Retailers play it close to their chest, let's just ignore the forecasts!

2009-04-15T15:37:00Z

It's the time of year we go and talk to our retailers about how we are going to work together for the rest of the year. And this being 2009 the conversations are bound to be interesting. If we are talking it is better than if we are not. The worst thing for a small supplier is when that buyer you were counting on just stops replying to your emails and is never in the office when you call.

We have retailer relationships that range from major high street down and online resellers to the single shop owner in Chipping Norton. Obviously the big accounts matter and we learnt last year that whatever a buyer says in May or June may change in October or November when a global recession takes a huge chunk out of their sales forecast. On top of the general downturn we have to deal with the fact that board games are now dwarfed by computer games. Ho hum, we like a challenge...

One retailer we spoke to said that they'd had some market research indicating that the board game market would shrink 27% this year as a result of Nintendo Wii and DS. As a consequence they were looking to shrink the range of board games available to ones they were sure would sell. Fortunately for us, this included About Time!

Another 'top drawer' retailer, whose gilt edged clients consider themselves above the economic fray, had no similar concerns and bought every new game we offered them, whilst another said that they couldn't understand the downturn of 27% figure, as they couldn't get board games onto the shop floor fast enough.

So the story is mixed. And we have some very major developments going on outside the UK, which we are not currently at liberty to discuss.

2009 will without doubt be difficult. I had a call from a game inventor who has 2 or 3 years on us, and was doing well up until last year. Now her buyers do not take her calls. We agreed to chat again in a couple of months.