Spreadsheets are my other hobby
Spreadsheets are the best! As a new game co-creator my penchant for creating and using spreadsheets has been a useful asset. We have used spreadsheets from the beginning, planning our crowdfunding campaign, organizing component lists, summarizing manufacturer and fulfillment quotes, and determining detailed budgets and timelines. I’m also making spreadsheets of game reviewers, media outlets to send the press release, and digital advertising costs. I really enjoy being able to put everything in nice neat rows with consistent formatting and highlighting the best options with everything visible on one page, heck I’m getting chills just thinking about it.
What you might not expect is how useful spreadsheets are for rock climbing. I have lists of climbing areas I want to explore, the distance from home, the time of year that is best, the type of climbing, creating timelines for trips, and planning out our schedules. One of the most elegant climbing trip budget spreadsheets was used to determine whether we should drive from Nantes to the Verdon Gorge in France or take a train. We compared the cost of train tickets and a cab to the expense of renting a car and calculated how much money it would cost in tolls and gas by dividing the driving distance by the average fuel economy of a small car times the cost of gas in Euros/liter and converting Euros to USD. We drove and it was worth it because the lilac fields were in full bloom!
See more of Kate’s illustrations @Kateohhtay
Spreadsheets aren’t for everyone, but for us, they are sanity and beauty. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to start with a template and I prefer to start organizing spreadsheets in the way that I think and prioritize. It can be helpful to start by just making a list of things you know you’ll need to address at some point in a column of a spreadsheet. When I do this I inevitably start thinking about what I want to know about each item listed, for example if I start listing potential manufacturers, I will be curious about the price they quoted for each game, that can become the second column. I wonder if they have a minimum order quantity, that’s the third column. Have I reached to them for a quote yet? That’s the fourth column and so on. I hope this can be a useful way of thinking about how to start a spreadsheet. If you don’t want to start from scratch or find examples useful, there is a helpful budget example on Jamey Stegmaier’s blog post about ”The Funding Goal”.
-Garrett Gibbons