It’s about time to give everyone a glimpse of a top-secret project I’ve been working on: a monstery new board game called Undead Apocalypse!
You can check out the spiffy site HERE, stay tuned for more details!
May 162013
Feb 252011
Tracking the Chupacabra author Benjamin Radford is interviewed by KRQE-TV’s investigative reporter Larry Barker about his book. Video at:
Dec 052008
The gods seem to be smiling, at least for the time being. Orders for games are coming in at the rate of a few a day; I’m doing my best to give excellent customer service. I usually get orders out within a day or two. Sometimes I’ve got a game boxed and shipped off within 2 or 3 hours. The work doesn’t stop, it seems steady. One unintended consequence is the e-mails; again, I do my best to respond to customers right away if they have questions on ordering. A few have e-mailed or called, asking about their order status. I try to be polite as I point out that the Web site states very clearly that orders may take 2 to 3 weeks for delivery– SO WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ASKING ME WHERE YOUR GAME IS, AFTER ONE WEEK? It’s on its way, don’t sweat it, no one’s ripping you off and I’m by far the most conscientious person you could buy from.
Read in the paper yesterday that the CEOs of the Big Three automakers went up to Congress, asking for a bailout loan of billions of taxpayer dollars. After having driven their companies into the toilet with poor decisions and planning, a few have graciously offered to work for one dollar salary next year, if the money is approved. I’m sure the tens of millions of dollars they got over the past few years will tide them over, but it made me think about me as a small business guy. What am I making on this board game?, I stopped to wonder one recent night as I boxed up games on my kitchen table at ten past midnight.
By my count, I’m putting in about four hours of work a day on average on my game. That’s taking orders, filling orders, buying boxes, e-mailing press and distributors, designing flyers, arranging ads, filling out Customs forms, driving into town to pick up more sets of Limited Edition figures, driving to and from the Post Office and FedEx, to and from the storage place, writing blogs now and then(!), and so on. Four hours may not seem like much, but that’s in addition to my regular work. We’re talking nights and weekends, and seven days a week, not five. That’s about 30 hours each week, hours when regular people are watching their favorite TV shows, going out with friends, cracking open a book, or surfing the Web for midget porn, whatever. I’m explaining, not complaining.
But the question becomes, for what? The answer is, literally, for nothing. I have not earned a penny from the game; every cent that comes in goes into the company to pay for shipping charges, ads, bank fees, etc. I, personally, have yet to see a penny of profit; I just hope to earn enough to pay back the people who graciously loaned me money for the game. Last time I ran the numbers I figured I might break even some time late in 2009; unless the game really takes off (and it might), I probably won’t earn more than a few thousand dollars in profit until 2010 or so.
Okay, do the math with me for a second. Let’s say that by 2010 I earn $5,000. Not bad, eh? Five grand is a nice wad of greenbacks. Except that by then, if the game keeps taking up the same amount of my time (and it may or may not), I’ll have worked about 1,800 hours to earn that $5,000. That comes to $2.75 per hour, a wage that a Mexican Chicklet street peddler would sneer at. (I’m not even including the nine months of pre-production work on the game, or the years of development. That would just depress me.)
So I have to laugh when I see some of my critics suggest that I’m exploiting religion to get rich. I’m doing neither. This game is a labor of love, something that started as an idea, and that I somehow found the perseverance to see through. Playing Gods, like most things I do, from writing books to solving mysteries, is not a money-making scheme, it’s a personal achievement, and no one can take that away from me. It is immensely satisfying to see people getting pleasure, laughter, and enjoyment out of something I did.
I’m glad that the head of Ford Motors can work for a dollar a year salary, but I’ve almost got him beat. Lots of people can drive a company into bankruptcy, but not everyone can create the world’s first satirical game of religious warfare.
COMING IN THE NEXT BLOG: Rule changes! A nice plug from a Simpsons producer! And Playing Gods teams with the Church of the SubGenius!
Nov 072008
Friday November 7, 2008
My tradition of late blog entries continues! At least I’m consistent!
I’ve been getting orders from all over the world: South Africa, Germany, Belgium, Turkey, and of course England. Got one from Wales, or at least I think it was Wales, the place names were in the U.K. and had all sorts of consonants and very few vowels. I keep hoping / expecting to get an order from the Vatican. How cool would that be to get a photo of the Pope at a Playing Gods tournament? I expect he’d be Jesus– after all, the Bible is quite clear about God’s violent nature: “The LORD is a man of WAR,” states Exodus 15:3. Who am I to argue?
Oh, and the Rulebook translations are coming along. So far the Portuguese is done (thanks to my Brazilian friend Kentaro Mori), and the German is coming along. Hopefully I’ll have downloadable PDFs available on the Web site within the next week or two.
Yes, the games are off, distributors are getting their shipments in. I noticed yesterday that there’s now an Amazon.com page for Playing Gods. Whoever created the entry left out the real religious figures (Jesus, Moses, etc.) but that’s okay I guess! The pawns that are included in the game actually turned out better than I expected. They are pretty detailed, and made of a fairly flexible plastic. I had no input into the type of plastic, but at least I won’t have to worry about them breaking, as I do when shipping the Limited Edition figurines.
I sent a free game to state Senator Ernie Chambers, who made the news this year for his lawsuit against God. Chambers wants God held responsible for the acts of destruction He has caused. Latest news is that the suit was thrown out because God couldn’t be served with a summons, having no official home address. Perhaps the Pope could deliver it.
I’m hoping to get some decent holiday sales, despite the recession we’re in. To that end, I’m running ads in the L.A. edition of The Onion, as well as classified ads in The Nation. I’m also running a “Recession Special Offer” on my Web site; buy one game, get the second one at half price. The special will run until December.
Oh, and be sure to check out the Playing Gods mini-video featuring everybody’s favorite pissed-off spiritual heavyweight, Badass Buddha! We’ll have it on the Web page soon, but before it’s up, you can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7umA3xfd-ZQ.
By the way, I *think* I finally figured out how to keep the formatting from getting screwy when I post to the blog. Thanks to Dr. Atlantis for his techyhelp.
Aug 182008
Good news from Atlanta: it seems that all the packages of pawns arrived. Good news from the board game folks: My 250 games should be arriving in Atlanta any day now. I’m skeptical and I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m cautiously optimistic: “expecting the worst but hoping for the best.” I honestly don’t know if I will have everything together for my big premiere. It’s looking like I’ve done stuff right (at least in terms of preparations and getting things done early), but I have a continuing uneasy fear that I will have forgotten something really important, something I knew about at one point and scribbled on one of my dozens of “To Do” lists, but soon forgot about. So many little things must come together… Along with the good news about the games (allegedly) being in, there was an attached invoice for somewhat over $20,000. I barely have enough to cover that, but I also have about $4,000 in various expenses I need to come up with in the next few weeks. I’m trying not to make too big a deal of it, but Dragon*Con will really make or break it, I’m thinking. My goal is to sell 200 of the 250 games. If I can do that, I’ll come home from Atlanta not only confident that the game has potential, but also able to pay some bills right away. If I can’t sell the games, or if I’m shipping 200 games back home, I’ll… well, I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.
Aug 132008
Finally got a response back from two foreign game distributors, one in Germany and one on England. (I had previously e-mailed each of them twice before, I guess persistence finally paid off. They want to know what terms I’m offering, and what shipping will be. I know the terms, but had no idea what shipping a case to Europe will cost. Set about finding that out, then interrupted by a reporter from the Kansas City Star, wanting to interview me about a supposed Bigfoot body that was found in Georgia. Gave half-hour interview, then back to work. Arranged for a gaming tournament at a Santa Fe game store called GameCo; basically, I’ll provide some promo materials (posters, stickers, etc.) and some prizes (T-shirts, figurines), and in return they do a little publicity and set aside a table for people to play the game for a few hours. Gets people in, becomes an event. Got a call from the ad guy from The Onion, confirming that I’m running the quarter-page ad in the August 21 (back to school) issue of the L.A. edition. I said yes—the one with the Buddha and the chain gun. I promised him an extra-special holiday ad, but I wouldn’t tell him what the tagline is. I don’t think they will object, but it might be controversial… So far I have 30 pre-orders, I was getting one or two a day for a while there, it seems to have stopped.
Aug 122008
I e-mailed the game folks asking for an update on the 250 games. The latest info (this shit seems to change by the hour) is that the pawns are being finished and should be on a boat sailing August 24, with an ETA of September 25. That’s 10 days later than last time I asked, but what are you gonna do? The stuff will be ready when they are ready. Actually I saw on the news that China shut down a bunch of polluting factories around Beijing for the Olympics, to help make the air cleaner. I wonder if one of those factories is making my games or pieces… if so, it’s possible that someone who won a gold medal did so with a tiny particle of soot from my plastic Midget Jesus. How cool would that be?
I borrowed dad’s truck and mailed off two final boxes of pawns. My friend in Atlanta wrote that he’d gotten the first two boxes of pawns I sent, and asked, “I hope you’ve thought about the return trip for some or all of this treasure?” I replied, “Yes, it has occurred to me that I may end up just shipping the boxes back here, but I don’t really have a choice. The 250 games are already on their way there (due in the 21st or so, last I heard), and I dunno if I’ll sell 5, 10, or 250 games, but in any event, I can’t sell the games without the pawns. I might as well have enough pawns to match the games. I’m hoping that the numbers will be on my side: if there are 30,000 people at Dragon*Con, and if just one person out of every hundred buys a game, I’ll sell out. Or, hell, I dunno, I could end up a few thousand dollars in the hole. But with a name like Balls Out, I gotta take a risk!” Saw that Russia stopped bombing Georgia, hope Lasha’s okay.
Aug 112008
Opened up today’s newspaper to see that Russian tanks are attacking the Republic of Georgia. Lasha, the guy who sculpted the figures for my game, lives in Georgia, I think in the capital of T’bilisi. I e-mailed Jim at Firewheel Casting (who created the Ltd. Ed idols) to see if he’s heard from Lasha, if he’s okay. No word yet. I also realized, with a bit of panic, that I forgot to find and order envelopes or packaging for the Expansion Set. Shit shit shit. I took more boxes of Ltd. Edition idols to mail to Atlanta; all was going well until I tried to jam the 2 foot cubed box in my Toyota. Well, look at that. Won’t quite fit. Exasperated, I left it next to the front door and took the one that would fit, mailed it off. I’ll fill up a second huge box and borrow my dad’s truck to get it there. Thought of a new item for my Balls-Out.net site: “Balls Out knows the exact date that Axl is going to release Chinese Democracy.” Thought it was kinda clever, Blake agreed, so we put it up.
Aug 102008
My friend Patty and my next door neighbor came over and helped me pack figurines into boxes for 3 hours. It would have taken me five hours, that’s what friends are for. I’m feeling relieved to finally have the pieces in boxes and ready to go. 17 days until D-Day, gotta get this stuff in transit. Finished reading / skimming Blasphemy (I skipped over 1600 to about 1880), a few interesting nuggets: In 1942, the Supreme Court ruled that profanity is not protected speech (Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire); it seems a Jehovah’s Witness named Chaplinsky called all religion a “racket. ” A cop confronted him, and he called the cop a “God damned racketeer” and a “damned Fascist.” Chaplinsky was convicted because of his profanity, and the Supreme Court upheld it. In 1941, the Supreme Court ruled that an Oklahoma City law that made it unlawful to “reproach or ridicule God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, or the Christian or any other religion” was indeed constitutional. So much for freedom of speech, goddamn it. Interesting. The book concludes by saying that though blasphemy laws are rarely enforced these days, they are still on the books in many places, and are legally speaking enforceable.
Aug 092008
Began reading a book called Blasphemy: Verbal Offenses Against the Sacred, From Moses to Salman Rushdie, by Leonard Levy. It’s been on my shelf for years, but I figured it was time to bone up on it, as it’s possible I’ll be called a blasphemer at some point soon, so I might as well know what I’m being accused of. I won’t bother to summarize it, but I learned a few interesting facts about the history of insulting gods: 1) “For most of history, blasphemers have been devout Christians” — it’s usually different sects of a religion that consider each others blasphemers; only rarely and recently are non-believers considered blasphemers. 2) Many sacred texts including the Hebrew Bible, declares that blasphemy, like idolatry, cannot be endured; 3) In fact, in strict Jewish tradition, merely saying God’s name is considered blasphemy (hence they use the letters “YHVH” instead).