Criticism and Reflections

I revisited some of the feedback about Another Christmas Romance Movie this week as I was looking for quotes and references to use on the new landing page for the game. I’d mostly put the negative feedback out of mind, so it was like reading/watching it for the first time. So I’d thought I’d write out a few thoughts related to how I process that.

Thanks for the coverage

The first thought that comes to mind from any negative review or feedback is disappointment. Not for myself, or the game, but because the people who spent their time/money with the game didn’t have the experience we’d like them to have. That sucks. Of course, not every game is for everyone, but still… I’d like those folks to spend their time on something they enjoy. And it was clear, that a few people who purchased a copy of the game REALLY did not enjoy it.

In face, the Dice Tower even did us the service of including the game in a bonus “games that aren’t fun video”. Lots of respect for those folks and what they’ve done for the community. No hard feelings whatsoever, simply wish they had enjoyed their time with it. They didn’t. And you know what? That doesn’t surprise me (more on that below). Even still if the game wasn’t fun for them, I appreciate the coverage. Really. Maybe we can make it into some top 10 list of least fun Christmas games of the year or something. =)

Niche games aren’t for everyone

We loved the theme of Another Christmas Romance Movie for years. We even made a really, really, terrible first version of the game and listed it on Amazon to see what would happen. That wasn’t enough for us though, we wanted to make a game that did the theme justice. But we also wanted to make that game for a specific audience, and that was not the heavy board gamer audience (not our friends at the Dice Tower for example). We wanted to make a game that we could enjoy playing with our aging parents, and with our young kids. We wanted to make a game that would appeal to people who really love the source material, but also have good-hearted fun with the formulaic nature of the source material.

Turns out, that’s a really hard combo to do. We play tested so many different versions of it, and we naturally drifted to more complex strategy concepts — and then we’d play it with our target audience and they would hate it. In the end, we felt like we found the right balance that wouldn’t scare our parents away, but would also entertain gamers. And based on feedback, it feels like we really nailed that for some people, and we really missed the mark for others.

And that’s sort of how it should be.

The hobby/industry is growing and is big enough for everyone and all types of games. We knew we were never going to sell a million copies of this game. We knew we would never make it to retail. We even knew we would never turn a profit with it, but we made it because we wanted this game to exist. We wanted to have those moments with our family every holiday season. It’s a great game for that, for us, and maybe for you. Or maybe not.

In general, when you make something that tries to bring together different audiences into one ven diagram, you don’t end up with the two big circles, you only end up with the niche in the middle. We likely won’t pursue this strategy again (we have to make money eventually), but we’re happy we did this time. The positive feedback has dramatically outweighed the negative and we’re thrilled to have been a small part of people’s lives.

Another Christmas Romance Movie isn’t perfect

I don’t want the above to come off as deflecting from sound criticism. The rulebook could be tighter. We messed up with the initial advertising of calling it 2-6. We rushed to try to this to market for Christmas 2023, and maybe we should have waited for Christmas 2024 (partially why the rulebook was trimmed down late). We should have had a few more cards. Definitely should have caught at least one very bad typo. Maybe we should have included another variation that included a few more of the more competitive rules that would have made it appeal to more of the gamer types. If nothing else, we should have gotten more public feedback before placing the order.

Maybe we should have done a lot of things differently. That’s the hard part about this business. On the web, we can always just ship an update and fix things. But once a game hits the manufacture it’s set in stone. We did our best, and delivered something we’re proud of, that our niche audience enjoys.

AI Art

We’ve never really talked about this much, but we didn’t try to hide that fact. We shared the artwork, the entire rules book, cards, play through videos in advance so people would hopefully understand if this was a game for them or not. It turns out, for some folks AI art is a 100% turn off and we can respect that. We weren’t trying to be a part of some global controversy, we were just trying to find a way for our art (the game) to exist.

I’ve mentioned the economics before, but it’s worth mentioning again. We’ve lost a lot of money on this project so far. Revenues are close to $20,000, and expenses are double that. If we sell out all the copies of the game we paid for, we’ll hopefully be able to limit our loss to smaller sum. We’re a new business, and this first game was always going to be about learning the ropes and bringing a specific vision to life. The things we learned from conversations as we prepared to publish the game was that: seasonal games are very difficult to sale, AND it was going to be very financially impractical to get traditional illustration for 96 cards, the cover, and the rules. We’d have to sale way more copies which felt impossible (it’s niche), or we’d have to change our vision.

Our initial solution was to pay for stock photo art and then run photoshop filters on those. This seems to be a less controversial route (in hindsight), but we simply felt like the results from the AI art was a better fit for this game. It’s generic nature is great match for the formulaic source material. It seemed the only, and best, path for the game to exist. We were a bit naive on all the arguments, nuance, and passion on this subject. I still think think the art fits the game really well, and technically we did pay for the stock photos anyway, but this is something I would do different.

Holiday Season 2024

It was really reflecting on the positive feedback, and messages from fans that got things gearing up for this holiday season. We still have a product we love, that we think a certain subset of people will also love. We’re motivated to find those people and get them the game. We’re going to have to learn even more valuable lessons (maybe even expensive lessons). We’ll see how it goes!

If you’re reading this and have more feedback for us, we’d love to hear about it at feedback@another.games