Month: December 2011

Just a short entry today — but a good one. This is another tool for my fellow game designers. Speilmaterial.de is a German supply house for game components, incredibly useful for prototyping designs (for playtests), or even for the creation of artisinal games created from the components. The site sells everything from dice to cards to tokens, as well as packaging material, boxes and labels for customization. The link above is to the English translation of the site — their FAQ states that they do ship foreign orders, but only with pre-payment and you need to contact them first about shipping costs.

One of the cooler things about the site is the number of products they have available which use A4 labels which you can print via your inkjet printer. They’ve got game boxes designed to be customized via an A4 label, game boards of varying sizes, all sized for A4 labels, and even labels cut to standard playing card size to make custom cards. (Although a more attractive option would probably be to just contact them about customized card production, which they offer.)

If you’re a game designer looking to explore options for board and card games, without sinking tens of thousands of dollars into production costs, Spielmaterial is an excellent solution.

Any tool that allows an Insurgent Creative to compete on the same playing field as large gatekeeper companies gets my attention, and I’ve been impressed by this one in particular. Mag+ is a service that offers free software for production of publications for digital tablets, without coding, and fee-based publication of that tablet content as a branded app on the app store of your choice.

In early 2010, the Bonnier Corporation, the publishers of Popular Science, partnered with London-based design firm BERG to create Mag+, a magazine publishing platform for tablets, and launched in April 2010, with version of Popular Science available in the iTunes store the same day the iPad launched. The Mag+ platform offers free plugin software for Adobe InDesign (the industry-standard desktop publishing layout software), as well as a free Preview Reader allowing you to check your work on your own tablet. Once you’re ready to publish, that’s where the fees kick in. Mag+ will publish your magazine app as a single-issue app for $199 (for a single type of tablet — iOS, Android or Kindle Fire starting in 2012), or you can publish unlimited issues from your own in-app storefront for $2500 (with expansion to another tablet OS or another language for $500). There’s also an enterprise-level feature at $3000 per month, which entitles you to hosting, free personal support, etc. — but that’s pretty much the corporate level. The first two levels, though are certainly doable by an Insurgent Creative, given the one-time fee. The pricing and features are detailed here.

Here’s an overview of the service:
 
 

What is Mag+? from Mag+ on Vimeo.

 
 
There have been a lot of digital publishing roll-outs over the past year and a half, and most of them have been solidly aimed at Corporate clients, unfortunately. I was especially disappointed by Adobe’s official Digital Publishing suite, which was priced at such a way as to actively discourage Insurgent Creatives from participating — a move which I felt was antithetical to their previously-established philosophy. I’m very glad to see Mag+ taking up the seemingly-abandoned niche of offering high-quality service to individuals and small businesses as well as larger corporations, with tiered pricing. Any Insurgent Creative can afford $199 in production cost to get onto the largest app stores in the world… and if you’re planning on a project with more than 12 releases, the $2500 level makes economic sense (less than that, you’re better off paying the $199 per release).

You’re not limited to “magazines” either — there’s no reason why an Insurgent Creative couldn’t use Mag+ to release a comic book, or a role-playing game, or even a unique digital story, using the format and tools (embedded HTML5 functions such as video, etc. — again, all achievable via Mag+ without coding) to create an entirely new product category. I find the possibilities of this platform really exciting!

We’ll be back tomorrow with another entry. In the meantime, as always:

Storm the gates!
 
 

In yesterday’s entry, we covered the magazine from Future Publishing for artists, ImagineFX. Today, we cover two more of their publications, devoted to Insurgent Creative musicians: FutureMusic and ComputerMusic.

FutureMusic is devoted to the techniques and technology of making music, whereas ComputerMusic focuses specifically on (not surprisingly) the use of computers to create music. In other words, FutureMusic will cover non-computer tech like mixing gear, synthesizers, mics, etc., whereas ComputerMusic features software synths, Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), etc. To be completely honest, there’s a ton of overlap between the two, but they maintain separate publications — then again, this is a publishing company that produces three different guitar magazines. All of Future’s musician-focused publications (FutureMusic, ComputerMusic, Guitarist, Guitar Techiques, Total Guitar and Rhythm) are all featured on a single website, MusicRadar.com.

Like with ImagineFX, both magazines feature gear reviews, technique tutorials and interviews with professionals. The pricing on both magazines are in the same range as well — because, again, the magazines are packaged with DVD-ROMs with every issue. The DVDs are the real value for musicians — each one features free software (Computer Music, in fact, loads an entire magazine-branded freeware DAW platform, complete with softsynths, samplers, drum machines, in every issue), literally thousands of royalty-free samples, trial versions of commercial software, workshop files for the magazine tutorials, as well as tutorial videos like the one featured below:
 
 

 
 
Over years of buying occasional issues of both magazines, I have a library of dozens of DVD-ROMs, featuring so much freeware and royalty-free samples that I doubt I’ll ever need to purchase any, ever. Making the best use of what you have available is a big part of making it as an Insurgent Creative. Currently, my music production is firmly in the “hobby” category — I haven’t released anything commercially. Given tools like these, however, and sites like BandCamp (which I covered back on Day Eight), I’m pretty sure I’ll make a go of it at some point in the coming year — perhaps connected to one of my other projects (Far West, perhaps). Why not? If you’ve got the tools, and the skill, there’s no reason not to give it a try.

Storm the gates!