About Victory Point Games

Where You Design and We Publish

Most great game ideas begin with an impassioned gamer thinking about a game and saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” That’s how the best game ideas occur – not from bottom-line watching bean counters, not from Sales or Marketing, not through scientific research – it is gamer passion that creates the best games.

Enter Alan Emrich, who was teaching various game-related subjects such as Game Design, Game Prototyping, and Game Project Management at The Art Institute of California: Orange County in 2007. An impassioned gamer himself, while teaching other impassioned gamers about the art, craft, and science of making games, he had one of those “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” moments. Although he had been ‘designing game designers’ among his students for some time, the notion arrived as a culmination of thoughts coalesced.

Just as some genius at Reese’s figured out one day, “Hey, what if put the chocolate and peanut butter together?,” Alan blended the ideas of Desktop Publishing (DTP) with his students’ game projects. The seed of an idea for Victory Point Games was planted.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if,” Alan reasoned, “I could desktop publish a few copies of some of my students’ better course project games? That way, when they graduate and go find jobs in the game industry, they’ll have a published title to their credit and a copy of it in their portfolios. That would certainly be a plus on their resume and at job interviews. What a great graduation gift I could give them!” This became a notion that he had to pursue.

Capitalism and the Little Game Company that Could

The idea further evolved that, in order for these games to be officially ‘published,’ they would have to be available for sale somewhere. This led to the conclusion that a real game company would have to be established (this one) and that their games must be offered for sale to the public. Since opening a brick-and-mortar retail store was out of the question for a full-time college professor, especially when no great volume of product sales could be anticipated, creating a small, online business was the answer. The result is the web site you are currently visiting, Victory Point Games.

After having been down this road before and teaching his students about game company ‘startups,’ Alan put his lessons into practice once again and sought the ingredients of a capitalist venture: land, labor, capital, and the entrepreneur. Stepping into the later role himself to realize this company’s ideals, Alan started gathering the other three ingredients.

The question of Land was easily answered: a virtual store on the internet and using the office space in Alan’s attic. This is how DTP ventures are usually incubated, as a ‘home business.’ The company, it was reasoned, would not need a lot of physical space as each game would be created when ordered, thus there would be no need for a vast warehouse filled with manufactured products. A Victory Point game would be like a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger, “We don’t make it until you order it.”

Labor would be provided by an elite team of volunteers: two students (Brian Newland), computer games; and April Stegall, business manager) and two teachers (Vince DeNardo, marketing and Alan’s long-time game industry associate and regular substitute teacher; also Chad Marciniak and Leland Cope, web guru's and programmer at The Art Institute). They all had several vital qualities in common:

• They are all board game geeks. This is important as the company plan included publishing small board games, and the company meetings generally end in gaming sessions and playtesting.


• They are all willing to work primarily for the fun, and for the experience that working with a game company has to offer. Victory Point Games isn’t set up to be a non-profit venture, but we figured from the outset it wasn’t destined to be a great money-making enterprise. If there are any profits, we have determined to disburse them like pirate treasure (i.e., everyone earning ‘shares’ for their work around the company). We all still laugh about receiving a check for less than a dollar in exchange for six month’s work!


• They all share the passion for the company’s vision: help people learn to design games and get them published – a dream come true for many like themselves.

While products don’t make a company, people do, the matter of Capital showed another thing this team had in common: they all had basically no money to risk starting a new business that was established without any realistic hope of making a return on their investment. Fortunately, just as that vexing matter was being wrestled with, Alan discovered something while cleaning out his attic. It was an envelope full of long-forgotten poker winnings from the 1980s that he had hidden away in one of his old board games during his days of living with a house full of roommates. It was a few thousand dollars, and enough to get the company off the ground. It wasn’t like finding money; it was finding money – a sign that this venture was blessed and that we should proceed.

A Costco-size Can of Worms

The weeks of volunteer work became months as we wrestled to establish our business identity, set up the LLC, open up bank accounts, acquire a federal taxpayer ID number, set up the books, purchase equipment, create initial product samples, write the contract ‘boilerplate’ to establish our terms with game designers, determine how royalties would work and be paid, designing and launching the web site, and so forth. All the while, the Art Institute was kept in the loop since ultimately this business was established to help their students in its game-related programs. They were very clear about our association in working with the students, even allowing Victory Point Games to accept student interns from the school (where they learn first-hand about the design, development, playtesting, manufacturing, shipping, and business processes of a small game company).

Then the notion for this company grew beyond The Art Institute. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we helped out other aspiring (and even established) game designers get some of their works published?” Thus the idea for a DTP ‘game marketing firm’ began and the company’s philosophy was set to help others outside the school find a place to publish their small-format, family-friendly board and computer games. Thus, VPG sees itself as the ‘Farm League’ for new game designers whom we want to work with and help them to establish a corpus of published titles and valuable experience that will allow them to break into the ‘Big Leagues’ of game publishing.

Being related through academia, the VPG team has learned the wisdom in the Latin phrase, Qui docet discit (he who teaches learns). While we have a lot to teach fledgling game designers and entrepreneurs, we’re sure that we’ll learn a lot from all of you in the process of trying to build toward this company’s ideals. It is the people you get to work with that makes the game industry so great, and that is why we’re looking forward to working together with you. If making games is your dream too, then let’s get busy and make all our dreams come true!
VPG