This week

This week we met with our first potential game community event organizer, Café Boardgame.

Deserving his "G", Petri G had somehow noticed and understood what we're trying to do here and reached out for a meeting, without me getting in touch first. I really still have no words to describe how that felt like, but I guess the closest would be: "understood". I guess it says something about me that the feeling is rare.

When meeting him, not only was I a bit starstruck (their venue is freaking awesome), but I also slightly felt for the couple running the show. Running board game venues is not easy. I've always known this. By and large everyone involved in the board game community is doing this out of passion, and monetary success is not the number one thing in their mind. Same thing applies to board game designers and publishers. Same thing applies to us. Money is not the principal motivator. It is not a surprise then, that there are plenty of participants in the ecosystem that don't have a lot of money and are just making enough to make the ends meet.

Making Everyone Win

In order for me to succeed alongside others, it's my job to find ways where every single participant in the ecosystem can win, without taking anything off of their plate. Everyone is stretched thin as it is.

For players the wins are obvious: easier time finding interesting things to do and hopefully make friends. Cheaper games, easier time selling and finding used games, the list goes on.

Publishers: no more struggling through freight, logistics, warehousing, shipping and all the hoops involved. Find a partner (hopefully us) that is dedicated to making indie-game devs lives significantly easier and a bit more profitable.

Venues: easier discoverability, booking systems, merch shops and community building tools. I would like the hubs to be able to focus more on what made them get started (building the community) instead of running the business (which I would describe as trying to avoid injury by a thousand cuts).

Where does this money come from for us all to win? I believe that lots of money is being sunk into the warehousing and logistics of board games. A single game goes through many a hoop before landing in someone's table. We want to cut unnecessary steps, and get the process as close as possible to: "from the creator, to the factory, to the customer".

Second area where we can win is by growing the overall market and the number of participants involved. More of that in the other blog.

The discussion with Petri was refreshing - however it was only the second time in two months that I was as "awe-struck". The first time being with Tuukka from Dungeon Poker.

The People You Meet

Like Tuukka and Petri, everyone I've met in person about this has had some unspoken characteristic that I can't quite put my finger on.

They are like the charismatic, trailblazing hermit characters from some rpg. They remain true to themselves and their values and their strengths and weaknesses throughout the story, and they put their goals before themselves. They dont necessarily seek to be the hero or the main character, but they are there helping you out. They share a goal of somehow helping to community at large.

When encountering such people, one cannot help but feel the urge to help them out.

Vertti
vertti@tableport.gg