I was recently inspired by Jamey Stegmaier’s recent post: “The 5-Year Plan for Stonemaier Games” and thought something similar would be a fitting topic for the first post on our new website. I’m already looking forward to an end-of-year wrap-up post to measure how we’ve done!
If you’re not familiar with Fink & Fink games, here’s a quick recap: Eight years ago, we launched our first game, Marital Bliss. Shortly after our Kickstarter in 2014 we welcomed a child into the world, and then we had another… and life got busy.
The years ticked by, and even though we didn’t have capacity to launch new games, amazingly, Marital Bliss continued to sell. Most importantly, the dream of making more games never went away. Late last year, we finally decided it was time for a change, so I (Nick) quit my job to spend this year (and hopefully more) working full-time at Fink and Fink Games!
Now that you know the clock’s tickin’ and the stakes are high, let’s take a look at…
Fink & Fink in 2022
It’s gonna be a big year! At least it had better (or else I’ll be polishing up my resume).
Launch a new game!
For this full-time experiment to work, we need to diversify and get a new game out this year. Releasing a game from scratch in under a year is a tall order! Developing, designing, marketing, funding, printing & distributing by the end of 2022 might be impossible (especially with printing & shipping costs and times being insane right now) but we’re going to take a run at it.
I’m super passionate about games that you don’t sit down to play. Games that are designed to be integrated into your daily life (as you can tell from Marital Bliss). I think there’s so much that can be done with that space, but there just aren’t that many examples of these games out there… so the development curve on a game like that is steep. It’s something I’ll be discussing more on the blog this year.
Reinvigorate Marital Bliss.
Assuming everything goes well, we won’t just be printing one game this year, but two. Eight years after launch, and with little to no support from us, the game lost some momentum. Now that I’m working on things full-time, there’s a lot of updates we will be making to to modernize Marital Bliss. It’s past time for a reprint and re-release featuring updated, more inclusive imagery and language. Amazon sales are also a big focus area right now, and I have multiple posts planned to discuss that strategy.
Build a community.
We had so much great momentum after our Kickstarter campaign, and we met so many great couples at Origins and Gencon, but maintaining that community and presence takes a lot of time, and we didn’t have capacity for it in the past.
Fortunately, (hopefully!) our friends and customers and fans are still out there. This year, I’ll be posting on the blog at least once a week and will be evaluating and utilizing complimentary channels as needed.
Diversify revenue streams.
There’s going to be a lot of learning this year, and a lot of investments, and it’s probably not going to be very profitable for us. But, one of my longer-term plans is to hit a cadence where we release one new, high quality game each year.
In order to do that, I plan to do some market assessments on two new game ideas, and to have started development on one new game by the end of the year. We’ll continue to branch out after that!
That’s all folks!
That about sums up our primary goals for 2022. Let me know what you think, and if you have any comments down below!
It’s going to be the best year yet!