GTG and Dice Hate Me Merger

As you may have already seen, we made a big announcement today about a merger between Greater Than Games and Dice Hate Me Games. We are incredibly excited about this development, and wanted to post here so that we could talk about the merger in more detail with you, our most dedicated fans. Here are the notable effects of the merger:

1. Christopher will remain the “Game Design Director” of Greater Than Games.

2. Chris Kirkman, founder of Dice Hate Me games, is now the “Game Development Director” of Greater Than Games. He will help spot new awesome games to publish, help refine games prior to publication, and help out with game marketing and promotion (among all sorts of other things). He is also on the forums now as an admin with the name “dicehateme”!

3. Darrell Louder, former Marketing & Logistics Coordinator for Dice Hate Me Games, is now a Logistics Consultant for GTG and an Admin on the forum (user name Darrell)! In addition to helping with behind the scenes stuff, he’ll also be taking point on answering questions on the DHM section of the forum. He is a cool guy who is also the designer of the DHM game “Compounded” (which is super fun and will be back in print in a few months), and “Bottom of the Ninth”, which will be on Kickstarter on 1 March!

4. Development of Sentinel Comics games (SotM, Tactics, future cool stuff) will remain constant or speed up slightly due to improved cashflow and better division of labor.

5. Development of new Dice Hate Me games will accelerate due to the dramatically streamlined logistics of GTG (having our own warehouse, relationships with various printers, etc).

6. Development of new thematic scifi/fantasy games will be streamlined and gain focus now that we have the Fabled Nexus imprint. Spirit Island will likely be the first new game released under this imprint.

7. Our engagement with the board game community will increase now that we have both Craig and Chris Kirkman to focus on that aspect of our company.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions!

Congratulations!!!

What does this mean for your presence at Cons? Will you have a booth twice as big or two seperate booths? Will there be cons where it's only DHM peoples or will there be representatives from "both" companies at them?

Aside from that, congrats to both parties, may you have a long and fruitful joining.

Possibly faster stuff? I approve!

Yay!  I've been eyeing Viva Java Dice for a while now and now I can bundle it with my GtG orders.

1. So will the company overall be known as Greater Than Games or will there be a new name for the merged company?

2.  You list Darrell louder as a consultant.  Does that mean he is only staying on board temporarily?

3.  Will this change the labels on the game boxes for the who published it?

Congratulations on the merger.  

I have another question!

What does this mean for playtesters? Are we about to get overworked? (which I am totally fine with)

This is big news! Huge even.

Congrats to all of you guys and I hope we will get to interact with the DHMG folks on these fourms a bunch!

The finally updated the "About Us" page! It's been just the three founders for so long.

Congratulations, folks - this is great news for everyone! Very happy for you. 

If only this had happened before I preordered! Damn it, Greater Than Games and Dice Hate Me Games!

The best bit about that is how I influenced Craig's job title.

It's humorous to see Community Overlord as Craig's official title now.  

Just make Craig fix it all.  It's our job to make sure he has work to do after all.

Also if this is a thing that can happen (adding DHM games) with our preorders for Villains and tactics can we get official word.

I would add some games myself if that is possible.

I got a pretty good laugh when I saw the Community Overlord title on the press release.  Well done.

I'm answering so many questions! Here we go!

What does this mean for your presence at Cons? Will you have a booth twice as big or two seperate booths? Will there be cons where it's only DHM peoples or will there be representatives from "both" companies at them?

At most conventions, we will have a large combined booth space. It will differ from show to show, though. For instance, at PAXs, GTG will have similar space as in previous shows, but with DHMG stuff mixed in. At Origins, DHMG will have a booth, and Craig and I will be there to help out and do other things, but it'll be mostly a DHMG booth. At Gen Con this year, it'll be a huge crazy booth with both companies doing lots of stuff. But there should always be representatives from GTG who can answer questions concerning each imprint.

So will the company overall be known as Greater Than Games or will there be a new name for the merged company?

Greater Than Games is the name of the umbrella company that publishes Sentinel Comics games, Dice Hate Me games, and Fabled Nexus games. The games you've come to think of as Greater Than Games products still are, they're just under the Sentinel Comics imprint. (And, in fact, they have had the Sentinel Comic logo on them since the start!)

You list Darrell louder as a consultant.  Does that mean he is only staying on board temporarily?

Darrell is a consultant, in that he has another job that is his "primary employment" and all that. But he is definitely not just a temporary part of the company. We hope to expand his role in coming years!

Will this change the labels on the game boxes for the who published it?

Sentinel Tactics has the Sentinel Comics logo AND the Greater Than Games logo. So, that's already using the logo convention we'll be sticking with going forward.

What does this mean for playtesters? Are we about to get overworked? 

Yes. Ok, no, not really. I'm going to keep throwing everything I design at you guys. I love you all. Chris Kirkman and I will talk about whether he wants to have you all feast on DHMG designs as he's working on them, but you will at the very least be working on everything I am. And probably more!

If only this had happened before I preordered!

As phantaskippy mentioned, if there's anything that's now in the GTG Store that you want to add to your order, just e-mail Craig at Craig@greaterthangames.com and he'll help you make that happen!

Whew! Questions: answered!

First: Congratulations, i want to wish you all the best and I;m looking forward to all this greatness.

Second: I have a quetsion about the point "development of new Dice Hate Me games will accelerate due to the dramatically streamlined logistics of GTG (having our own warehouse, relationships with various printers, etc).".

What does this mean shipping and handling for various items? Will items now come in faster and not cost us International folk a lot of money?

What will the label/icon/logo (whatever you want to call it) be for Fabled Nexus?  Will that logo show up on future prints of GSF or will it maintain what it had?

We're still shipping from the same warehouse, with the same people. It will accelerate development, but shipping is not really going to be affected by this development.

You're going to be at Origins? I might be at Origins too! Time to get my questions ready.

What will the label/icon/logo (whatever you want to call it) be for Fabled Nexus?

https://greaterthangames.com/store

Wow that's awesome, you guys are going to be better together! The three imprint thing sounds like the way to go for branding each product and letting people know what to expect. This is a smart move.

what goes under the dragon sized games under the dice hate me games tab.

Also does anyone who has played any of the dice hate me stuff have any suggestions. Compounded actually looks like a good game for a bunch of my friends I will have to check out but anything else?

Before gen con begins will volunteers have ample time to familiarize themselves with the dice hate me’s line up?

Strongly recomend Brew Crafters if you like worker placement games. And beer.

The are currently no Dragons published. But there will be…

Brew Crafters is my current favourite DHMG game. But VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game is also a huge winner for me, since I love dice games with a passion.

ok I probably should ask what are the different size games then represent.

Likely the size of the game/box

We have a winner!

a cool idea for the store since a lot of these games from dice hate me are new to me is maybe create a quick 2-3 minute video for each game that explains what the game is and how it works. Even if it just means grabing one from youtube thats already been done (with permission of the person who created it of course). This way I dont have to hunt around to see if I am going to like something. I will know right then and there.

The question was asked so let me say that we love compounded. It is a themed game that is very different than Sentinels, but hugely fun. I missed the expansion kickstarter and am TOTALLY bummed about it. My family also likes Belle of the Ball as good warm up to a night of serious gaming. 

So that is one vote for two thumbs up on compounded!

PS - Any chance you would open Gieger to a pre-order for those who missed the kickstarter?

Hooray for business!

I'd prefer if the store had DHM games all on the same page rather than split up by box size. I have no idea where to find things because I haven't memorised all the box sizes.

With the addition of the additional personnel, is >G/DHMG looking at accepting submissions for designs at any point in the future?

I have a few prototypes that I'd be willing to pitch, which I think >G would do a fantastic job with production.

@Silverleaf

We are actually working in that direction, and are also working to add a store search feature for looking for products. The web site redesign will be in progress for the next couple of months, at which point it will be much better

@PlatinumWarlock

Sure! Chris Kirkman is the guy to talk to now about game submission.

I agree, I found that a weird way to group their games.  How am I supposed to know how big the box is when I'm looking for a fun game to buy?

I'm also confused by the fact that rooster-sized games appear to be larger than monkey-sized games. Unless we are talking about a pygmy marmoset or Foghorn Leghorn, I think it should probably be the other way around.

Congratulations!

Awesome–that's great to hear.  I'll be in touch with him this month, definitely.  

All I have to say about this is, um...

dammit, now I'm missing a whole bunch of >G games.  And I had a complete collection, too...

At least I've got about half of DHM's output so far...

I'm fairly pleased by what I've seen of the announcement so far - I didn't know anything about DHMG beyond occasionally hearing their name on the DiceTower podcasts, but I'm very intrigued by their product line so far. They seem like Euro-mechanics with fairly unique themes and since I like an escapist element to my games, they're going to appeal to me much more than the standard farming ones!

OMG, mouse over the images on the About Us page.

Oh wow, thanks for that!  Though I can't believe the Omnitron symbol wasn't still on the laptop on mouseover… ;D

Can someone clue in those of us who are on iPad and therefore can't mouse over?

The image changes to a very-similar photograph of the person. It's fairly cool.

That is really cool.

Very exciting!  Congratulations!

Rapidly move your mouse on and off of Chris Kirkman's portrait to watch him do a sassy dance for you.

Ha ha ha! Dance for me, Chris Kirkman! Dance!