W. Eric Martin: Publisher Profile—Make A Game (MAG) Ltd.

Designer and publisher Simon Hall released his first game, Caveman, at Spiel 2007. Caveman—co-designed with Magdalene Vrijland, Terry Shaw, and Matthew Hall and published by Make A Game, Ltd. (MAG)—has received a decent reception in its first few months, and FRED Distribution picked up the game for release in the U.S.

What inspires someone to launch a game company in a crowded market? In this case, nothing more than a desire to try.

“The idea came from seeing my kids and lots of friends’ kids on computers so much,” says Hall, who admits to being unfamiliar with the publishing side of the game industry before starting this venture. “We really wanted to create some things to get the kids playing face-to-face again and to allow families to have fun together instead of taking turns on the PC.”

While similar sentiments have inspired lots of bad games from amateur designers, Hall isn’t a complete novice when it comes to games. He started playing games as a child, as most people do, but he continued to do so into his adult years, giving him a lot of playing experience to draw on.

We Are the Champions, My Friends
“I played all the usual games—and the most sophisticated ones fairly competitively. Chess and Bridge were big games for me,” says Hall. “However, my biggest interest has always been in military history and wargames. I have played these since I was about ten in various forms, and in 1995 I founded a local club and discovered there was a big competitive circuit in ancient wargames. I gave this a try and loved it.”

“There have been ten International Wargames Federation world championships, and I have won three of them,” Hall continues. “Terry Shaw, my colleague and friend at MAG, has won two, so between us MAG has won half of the IWF world championships ever played. Terry and I have tried most games and therefore have a pretty good understanding of how mechanisms interact to make things work well or badly.”

Aside from a background in wargames, Hall studied Engineering Science and Economics at Oxford and received an MBA from Insead. “I was a strategy consultant and ended up running an office of 60 people, then retiring from that to do something I really enjoyed,” he says.

From Playing to Producing
One of Hall’s efforts to find a new business involved the attempted buyout of Airfix, a manufacturer of plastic airplane kits in the UK, when Humbrol, its parent company, tanked in 2006. “I tried to buy Airfix out of liquidation with a team of people and out of this came ideas for several games as one way to expand its products and turn the company around,” he says. “Terry and Magdalene both felt it would be fun, so we teamed up.”

Caveman came about thanks to the contribution of the final co-designer: Matthew Hall. “We spent a fair bit of time thinking about what sort of topic could give general appeal and narrowed it down to prehistoric; my son came up with the idea of people controlling dinosaurs and cavemen at the same time,” says Simon Hall. “Terry and I liked that idea and went off to design the game, and Magdalene worked with a top artist to come up with the island [for the gameboard] and the box.”

Luckily for MAG, Hall was able to draw on outside experience to pull everything together. “I was introduced to Markus [Welbourne] at JKLM through James Hamilton, who is a wargaming friend and fellow wargaming world champion,” he says. “Markus’ expertise in production was invaluable to us in getting Caveman into production in time for Essen this year. He has also been of great help getting the game listed with FRED in the U.S., and we have managed to get it listed with Esdevium in the UK.”

“Spiel was excellent, although quieter than we expected,” says Hall. “I think a train strike derailed a bit of attendance. We were glad to have local German-speaking helpers at the show. Anyone who goes should take these and not understimate how exhausting it is. My only advice would be to go along and do it for real—there is no point being half-hearted about it. We tried to make an impact, and by the end of the show we heard quite a few people saying ‘We’ll meet you at the T-Rex Caveman stand,’ which was nice.”

As for future releases, Hall now has a better idea of the market and where he wants MAG to be. “The game market really seems to have two levels: one with niche games where one can make a small return, and another with ‘High Street’ games where realistically one has to go with royalty deals with a big name. We are aiming our style of game to be well-suited for the latter and hoping to get interest in the company.” MAG’s next release is likely to be a two-player light strategy game called Colours, which should appear in time for Spiel ‘08. Says Hall, “We are also working on one called Don’t Wake the Dragon.”

As for whether someone can make a go of publishing games in a crowded market, Hall says, “It’s an investment to see if we can build something worthwhile over a few years, but I wouldn’t be staking my life on it. It is very, very hard to even make a living out of board games—but if you don’t try, you never know, do you?”

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