In this episode:
We chat with Perth-based game designer and man of many talents Wesley Lamont about his upcoming board game, COGZ. There’s also some talk about game jams, Kickstarter and the challenges of board game publishing in Australia.
Download link below or on iTunes, and feel free to send us any feedback at theactionpointspodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter as @action_points, and on Facebook and Google+
Episode 50 – Turning COGZ with Wesley Lamont
Music: Theme for Harold (var. 2) by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a CC Attribution 3.0.
Links for the things we talked about:
Check out COGZ on Board Game Geek, and look out for the Kickstarter once it launches!
I also previously wrote briefly about COGZ here, as part of my session report of WABA’s Decembacon 2013.
Go play Rabbit Rush!
An Incubator meetup session will be held at Games Lab in Melbourne on 12th September 2014.
Check out the “All Power Grid Maps” event at PAX Australia 2014.
Ingenious and Tigris & Euphrates by Reiner Knizia
I wrote about Dream Quest here, and you should also try that out.
Check out the results of a poll on how potential backers view a Kickstarter page.
Francis Drake was designed by Peter Hawes, though Phil Walker-Harding (of Adventureland Games)did design Sushi Go! and Pack of Heroes.
San Guo Sha – The Chinese Bang!-alike. Ew. That came out wrong.
You can also find a video of the Indie Board Games Design Panel from PAX Australia 2013, which Wesley was a part of.
Action Points! 
Hey Aaron. Nice episode. It’s great to hear some interviews from the Aussie scene. Tokyo Game Market is the big one, by the way. I believe there’s 3 markets throughout the year, with Tokyo being the big one. I think there’s actually a fairly big indie scene there, with people producing 100 copies and selling them at the market. Aza Chen, who made Cat Tower and Kaiju, has to fold his own boxes. I believe he’s got 900 in his house. It would appear Kickstarter’s not the first thought for game makers in Asia. I’m on a waiting list for a service that ships out Japanese games from the markets and Japan in general, but you won’t get anymore details out of me.
My Taiwanese friends aren’t too confident about the Chinese market, since counterfeiting is pretty rampant (according to them). I believe Jamey Stagmaier is making routes into the Chinese market, some big deals is part of the reason he was able to quit his day job.
Haha damn, that’s a terrific tease. Oh well, looking forward to hearing about the cool Japanese designs on your podcast ;)
The counterfeiting issue would be a big hurdle, which is a shame. However, I’m still hoping we see interesting designs coming out of China. I’m curious what the reasons are for the lack of Kickstarter usage. I would suspect accessibility as the main issue since it’s not really available there, but I wonder if there’s a cultural element to it too. The internet in Asia is pretty different after all.
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