Publishing lessons

It’s November 10^th 2021 and an email arrives, how would you feel about us featuring The Isle of Cats in our game?

It’s not the first time I’ve received such an email, but this time it was a little different as they wanted to create a standalone product which would feature The Isle of Cats name and be effectively sold as “The Isle of Cats pack” for their game.

It was an interesting proposition, especially as the game was one I already owned and enjoyed, and the publisher was one that I admired.

Here are all the things I considered in making my decision:

Would they respect my brand and have a positive impact on it?

I knew they enjoyed The Isle of Cats and wanted to include it due to their enjoyment of the game, which made me confident they would treat the name with respect.

Would they create a high-quality product?

All of their existing products have been high quality so I believed the answer would be yes.

Do I want to be associated with their company?

I admire this publisher a great deal and view their company in a very positive way, so being associated with them would be a good thing.

Would the final product feel familiar to fans of The Isle of Cats, or were they just going to use the name?

In this case I was able to design the initial concept and capture some key gameplay elements from The Isle of Cats, transferring them into their games system. While they then developed the idea and balanced it accordingly, it left me confident the final product would feel familiar to The Isle of Cats fans and not just be using the name.

How much effort was required from me?

They did a great job in explaining what would be required upfront (very little) and took on all the work.

Would the product conflict with the story I am telling within The City of Kings universe?

The promo would use the games name and some mechanisms, but contains no story elements which would conflict with the world I am building.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the financial side of things such as whether I would make money or how it might impact the sales of The Isle of Cats weren’t a factor. After reaching positive conclusions for the above questions, I was left with just one final thought:

Is this something I would like to do?

When it comes to promotional items like this, I think it is important to enjoy the experience and make a decision based on whether you would enjoy it. In this case the answer to that was yes and I am glad we moved forward with the idea.

The Isle of Cats realm for Rolling Realms from Stonemaier Games has just released on their online store and will be shipping soon (you require a copy of Rolling Realms in order to play it).

It was a pleasure working with Jamey Stegmaier on this and I am excited to be able to add this new realm to my own copy of Rolling Realms.