I have minions

Each time the executive producer would tap me for a marketing promotion, another crack would open and idea would leak out. These last few days I’ve felt as if a great dam of ideas has burst out of my chest. My day is filled with phone calls and emails trying to coordinate online and print media, negotiating contracts with distributors, working with printers, and tapping the leaders in nitch markets for coverage.

I feel I could do everything if I just had more time, or more people, or more money, always more. I am however happy to have what little I can get from our little startup. I would much rather work with finite resources then deal with infinite red tape at a larger well funded studio. Decisions literally take minutes from conception to reality. As I already wrote, last week I decided we should sell Saga to hobby stores because those players would grok the concept. I walked into the producers’ office and told him about my plan, he said wow that’s cool, and right there the decision to create a retail product was made.

The only remaining detail was to create concept drawings, hire artists for the box and packaging art, secure printing for the packaging, paper and CD, sign distribution deals with national and international distributors, and promote the product. Simple!

Jason, our executive producer is helping out with the art on top of his already overflowing stack of responsibilities, so the rest falls on me.

Most of the Beta postcards for players have already been sent to distributors and will go out to hobby stores next week. In addition I thought it would be beneficial to hire a staff to call every store and speak to the store owners in person to teach them about Saga so that they could better explain it to their customers and become excited about the opportunity to sell a virtual online game.

I put an ad into 2 local online classifieds and received many responses. My requirements were simple. Know more about games then my mom, know how to use a web browser, have an email address, and have a basic understanding of typing information into excel. Half the people I spoke with failed on the first 2 points. One lady failed after she said she was qualified to promote games because her kids played them. She also failed points 3 and 4 in case you think I’m being overly harsh.

I ended up hiring 3 people. One guy who was previously a telemarketer and young enough to play games and use a computer regularly. A girl who seemed intelligent but got sick the next day and has not yet shown up for work. And a guy with a great resume’ who will be starting tomorrow. The last guy is actually overqualified and will be tasked with securing distribution in Japan and Korea in addition to contacting stores, since he not only speaks Japanese but has contacts with a distributor in Asia. I’m not really sure why the last guy applied except he claims he wants to get his foot in the door in hopes of a promotion after we launch. If he is genuine I will take care of him when that happens.

I spent today teaching the telemarketer to not be a telemarketer. He first tried using a script that I had to take away, and then kept rushing through his presentation afraid the store owners would hang up. It took about 2 hours for me to get through to him that game store owners are actually ecstatic that a game company would take the time to personally call them. He got much better before the day was through and now you would not be able to tell that he was once a telemarketer.

I can’t really blame the guy. No one has ever tried anything like this before. Who ever heard of hiring a staff to call people and not try to sell them anything or ask them for anything? You don’t say Hi my name is, instead you say, Hey I’m Slava. These people don’t know you but they want to be your friend. Who the fuck knows? Maybe I’m just crazy, or maybe I’m just crazy enough to sell a virtual collectable product. All I know is, the sooner I get these 3 people set up, the sooner I can work on my next idea that’s so top secret I can’t even blog about it, but it’s already in motion and so far working as predicted.

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the retail product and beta post cards.