Yesterday the preorder for Viticulture World and the Wine Crate went live on the Stonemaier Games webstore. We were flooded with orders and enthusiasm, which meant a lot to me personally, as it was at this same time 9 years ago that Viticulture–my first published game–released to retailers.
Due to some special circumstances, the announcement and release process for Viticulture World and the Wine Crate ended up being quite different than what I originally imagined. However, due to the consistently inconsistent world of freight shipping, the preorder date was pushed back and remained uncertain until just a few days ago when the last few bits arrived at our fulfillment center in Canada (Hubtrotter).
This ended up being a great exercise in keeping the spotlight on Viticulture World for much longer than usual (i.e., stalling). I had already revealed everything about the expansion by the end of April, leaving me at least a full month to sporadically share content about the cooperative expansion. By the end of that time, over 5600 people had signed up for the launch notification, so today I thought I’d look back at the content I created and shared along the way to keep the spotlight bright.
Articles
I don’t use this blog to promote Stonemaier Games content; rather, the goal is to add value to my fellow creators. But if I can add something of value while talking about an upcoming product that’s on my mind, it’s a win-win.
I have a few articles related to Viticulture World; several in April (here and here) and one in May about all-in bundles vs an ala carte strategy. The latter resulted in us starting to implement a hybrid of the two strategies–soon with a single click you’ll be able to buy all products we offer for each of our brands.
Early Reviews
We sent advance review copies many months ago and featured those reviews during the April reveal. Normally I would wait closer to the preorder to send out additional review copies, but with a month to fill, I proceeded to send out a batch of around 40 early review copies.
