This is not a blog about a miraculous diet and losing weight - even if I might need that, too. It's not about getting rid of junk and cleaning your closets - even if that is going to happen as a side-effect. It's about doing what you really want to do, living like you think it would be cool to live, experiencing things you have never done.
Our family have now run a company for over a decade. It has been more of an "environment-to-do-cool-stuff" than earning a living. We have had our full time jobs elsewhere. Now, though, we have noticed that people like the "cool-stuff" we do. The amount of time and effort needed to take care of customer service and company paperwork is increasing. So it is time for me to jump to the full-time entrepreneur life. Not for the first time in my life, but hopefully for the rest of my life.
Family games
Our company Dragon Dawn Productions is a Finnish board game publisher. We have published four board games (Zanziar, Phantom League, Black Hat and Perdition's Mouth) and a couple of expansions. Even if board games were a part of my childhood, I hadn't played a real (or really good...) board game until I play-tested an early version of Zanziar, a game my husband had designed. Immediately I fell in love with the challenge and strategy variations a good board game offers.
We truly are a gaming family. Our son’s (now 11 years old) second full sentence was ”My turn to roll the dice”. He has been a part of testing and developing Black Hat and Perdition’s Mouth. At the moment we are working on a new product, a trick-taking game called Darwinning, for which I’m one of the designers.
It’s not my first design. Whilst cleaning our pile of board games I found a damaged board for Uusi finanssi. On the other side of the board was the only version of the game ”Hupaisat rosvonuolet” (Hilarious bandit arrows); I remember inventing it one summer in a tent at a neighbor's yard after my neighbor and I got fed up with the original game. I was about the same age my son is now and certainly had no clue I would be running a board game company in the future.
The grand tour of 2018
Since the very beginning our company’s markets have been outside of Finland. We sell games all over the world and have warehouses in three different continents. Yet there are still a lot of customers to be reached, and there’s a lot to be learned from foreign markets. We have decided to pack our family and games in a caravan and make a tour around Europe in order to participate in game fairs and conventions and to meet both gamers and distributors. We will be on the road for the whole of 2018.
Yes, it’s going to be an interesting and challenging year. We will share it with you in this blog. Following this blog you can also follow our route - perhaps we will meet and play a game.
Do come and meet me next month at the Essen Spiel (26th -29th Oct) at our booth 2F131. You can hear more about this tour and test play Darwinning with me!
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