Introducing Atikin Games

Ed “Duke of BAzlandia”

One of the things we do on this blog is feature our fellow hobbyist and gaming peers in a guest post. Today we are introducing Nikita from Atikin Games. She is truly an inspiration. When it comes to Indie Board Game Design and Publishing, she is who I immediately think of. If you haven’t followed her on Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) or seen what she is up to, you are missing out. She has already run two successful Kickstarter campaigns and started an Indie Board Game Newsletter. She is always busy doing something and apparently is living out her dreams of turning her home into a board game warehouse. At this time in the United States, where B.A. Games is located, it is traditional to give thanks this week. I just wanted to say I am grateful and give thanks to Nikita, she has been kind, helpful, and always willing to answer all the stupid questions I have asked her, even though when I first contacted her I was just some random “Duke” on the Internet. Without further adieu, I give you Nikita of Atikin Games discussing her Newsletter.

The Indie Tabletop Newsletter from Nikita Sullivan of Atikin Games

As I work towards the 6th edition of The Indie Tabletop Newsletter, I thought I’d take a look back at how it started and how far its come in the last 6 months. Atiken Games is reaching its one-year anniversary this week and this last year working to create my own games I’ve launched myself into the online board gaming community and I couldn’t be happier with what I found. 

The community is full of wonderfully open, pleasant, and fun people, and I started to meet more and more Indie board game designers along the way. I noticed tons of creative projects going on from relatively new designers with relatively small followings, many of which were trying to create email lists by gathering newsletter subscriptions, all entirely the right thing to do, especially when gearing up for a Kickstarter campaign. I looked around and I thought: “Hey, what if we added all of our audiences together?!” 

And so, The Indie Tabletop Newsletter was born. The idea is simple: if we create one big newsletter with news from many Indie designers and everyone involved retweets and shares then we all reach more readers then we possibly could on our own. I started by asking designers I had already chatted with; I thought that if I could get maybe 10 designers to agree to take part in the first edition that would at least be a good proof of concept. To my surprise, almost everyone I asked said yes and 16 designers created content for the first edition of the newsletter in July 2020. 

Fast forward 6 months and I now have a list of 40 designers – both seasoned and new to game design – that have all created and shared their content on the newsletter and 14 others who would like to take part sometime in the future when they feel ready. Our audience is gradually growing and I’m the lucky person who gets to read all the news first as I go editing and curating the newsletter each month. 

It’s an awful lot of work I must admit, I quickly stopped reaching out to new designers as a few get in contact with me each month asking how they can get involved and that’s a nice steady way for the content creators list to grow. As much work as it is to get all the content together and looking beautiful, it’s also incredibly rewarding. I’m now good friends with many designers on that list and checking up with them on at least a monthly basis is a great way to see them and their projects grow. 

I’m working towards making some changes in the new year to make the additional pages the newsletter links to (Free Print-n-Plays, Self-Published Games, and Kickstarter Calendar) a little more elegant and easier to navigate. Stay tuned and subscribe here.

If you’re an independent tabletop game designer and would like to get involved with the newsletter feel free to email me: nikita@atikingames.com.