Going to war at Dice Tower CON

    I mentioned Dice Tower Convention a few times before, but I am really proud to announce that we are 100% in a booth. We may even run a Siege tournament while we are there (waiting to hear from the admin). This is a small game convention but its is local to Jesters Hand Publishing, it has a turn out of about 600 people and they are all Alpha gamer s.  Siege should launch its kickstarter directly after the show (hopefully we will get to meet a few of you and get some good contact info.
    We will be supporting our facebook group "Consortium of Game Developers" and a few other indi-publishers and a local gaming bar (Cloak and Blaster). So we will have plenty of company at the booth.  It's time to really gear up and build a nice booth and displays.  Wish is luck, and come by and play a game with us! We will be demoing:

Manhattan Project on Wed July 2nd at 1pm.
Siege of Verdan on Friday July 4th at 11am
Siege of Verdan on Saturday July 5th at 11am.

We are excited to teach you to crush your enemy!

Patrick Siebert  

Taste tool to test: A play-testers survey

Working with the consortium of game developers I put together a quick play testers survey.  This survey does not cover all the needs of every game designer but I think its a good starting point.  I will post it here, please feel free to use it, or change it how you need.   Just another perk from Jester's Hand Publishing, and Siege of Verdan.

Here are some links to the communities i mentioned above.
www.facebook.com/groups/Consortiumofgamedevelopers/]https://www.facebook.com/groups/Consortiumofgamedevelopers/

https://www.facebook.com/SiegeOfVerdan?ref=hl]https://www.facebook.com/SiegeOfVerdan?re

A link to the Survey (and explanation of the survey).
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Consortiumofgamedevelopers/626701810718712/

www.facebook.com/groups/Consortiumofgamedevelopers/626701810718712/]

We have established the Consortium

  I (Patrick Siebert the Jester of Jesters hand) met with some fellow game developers.  We decided that in order to make the most efficient use of our time we would host a monthly meet-up for several different independent publishers we would attempt to pool our resources and host a play test convention of sorts.  The publisher Swarm of Dice has joined hands with the developers of Siege of Verdan to create a consortium of games where play testers can come and play our games and ask the developers questions.  I am really excited about this. We formed a facebook page we called the "consortium of game developers" and are actively looking for players and developers to join our group.  This will allow us to more rapidly develop quality products.  This can often be the most challenging aspect of game development.


We have Established the Consortium.

Rulers, Ruling, and Rules...and shout outs!

    Last week we published the instructions to Siege of Verdan on the blog, and on Facebook.  We have had some great feedback. Mostly, positive which is unusual for this industry.  We have also made a few local contacts that are interested in making a play tests group. Which is even more good news!
    I can not stress how valuable a good group of play-testers is.  In fact, you will spend more time testing a game then you will in design. It requires a huge amount of tuning and testing.  You have to weight out the feedback and functionality.  Most players want to win, and that can often skew the judgment of play test feedback.
    Jesters Hand will be present at Dice Tower Con this year as an exhibitor. We may be doing some exhibition for James Mathe products.  We feel its the least we can do to help support someone that does so much to help the gaming community.
    If you are around the Orlando area around July 4th. Please come see us and play a few games.


We like to play!

DICE TOWER CON 2014

While we are giving a little plug...

We are really excited about Cloak and Blaster coming to Orlando Soon

http://www.cloakandblaster.com/