Hello everyone,
So this week is special in two ways – first of, I had my birthday on Monday.
Unfortunately, at the age raffle, I drew a “Repeat the Year” card this time, so I didn’t get to be one year older. Too bad.
Still 28-ish-ish.
The other thing that makes this week special is an absolute first for me though, and something I’m quite excited and nervous about… are you ready… drumroll…
I am launching my crowdfunding for the epic
German Verb Card Game and WebApp
Hooray!!
Quite a few of you have checked out the website for the project over the last few months and have subscribed to newsletter there.
And I’ve also described the project on the Kickstarter campaign page, so if you want, you can head right over and check out what we’re planning there :)
Go straight to the Kickstarter
But for those of you who have never heard about this, let me give you a quick primer here as well.
The Project and its journey
A few years ago, I had an idea for a card game for German verbs and their various prefix versions – like gehen, aufgehen, angehen and so on.
The basic idea is to combine base verbs with different prefixes and find out if it has meanings and which meanings it might have.
But the main problem was that such a game needs some sort of reference where you can check whether your ideas and answers are correct. And a normal dictionary is not the best solution because it often lists too many translation options and doesn’t order them by theme. And they don’t give you any insight into why the meanings are the way they are.
And last but not least, they’re just not fun to use.
Originally, I thought I’d do this as a kind of booklet, but there are multiple drawbacks with that – it’s expensive, it’s “big”, it’s hard to extend and it’s kind of a hassle to look something up.
So the only thing that really makes sense is… an app :).
I made a trial version, but then I did some back of the envelope calculation of how many separate entries with examples a basic version of the game would need and that was quite overwhelming. Like… hundreds of combinations, many with several meanings. And they’d all need examples.
Together with the app, this seemed like beyond what I could ever achieve but I never gave up on the idea and slowly slowly started working toward it. And over time, more and more things aligned, and now we’re actually finally at a stage where we can say:
We can actually get this done!!!
By “we” I mean Vítor and me. He’s a young developer from Brasil who’s also helping me with some of the coding for YourDailyGerman.
I’m planning the WebApp together with him and he’ll do all the coding for it, while I’ll focus on the content – so entering all the prefix verbs and their meanings and themes, adding examples and little explanations and so on. And that’s now realistic actually, because I can draw on a lot of work that I did for the YourDailyGerman dictionary :).
The Crowdfunding
So why are we doing a crowdfunding?
Well, two things – the first one is so Vítor can focus on the coding without having to worry about how to pay his bills. He’s still in university and money is tight for his family. He does believe in the project, and wants to be part of it long-term, but if he has to work on the side, he’ll have very little time to actually build it. And I can’t really fund it myself at the moment, at least not without taking a loan.
And the other reason is to get a sense of how many of you are actually interested. The card game is a physical product that we’ll order in bulk and it’s REALLY helpful to have a rough idea of how many we’ll need initially and where you all are, so we can pick a manufacturer that makes sense.
The funding goal we have should be enough to give Vítor enough time to focus on this and also to fund the manufacturing and shipping of the games. If something is left after that … well, that’ll go straight into my beer fund :).
And of course crowdfunding doesn’t mean you just give us money for nothing.
You’ll get the game and the app in return. Actually, we have different tiers of support, each with different rewards, so if you’re just interested in the app, that’s no problem.
You can find out all about the funding and the rewards on our crowdfunding page, so if this project sounds interesting to you and you want to help us make it real, please head right over :)
Head right over to the Kickstarter
So yeah… it’s done. I actually launched a freaking crowdfunding for a really cool project :).
That’s actually a pretty great start into my new year.
Anyway, I really hope you can see the vision and you find it interesting enough to back it. Of course, if you have any questions about any of this, let me know – either here in the comments or over at Kickstarter. And also let me know what you think of the idea as a whole.
Now I’ll withdraw from my beer fund and open a nice IPA.
I wish you a great week and I’ll see you all next time.
Prost :)
Oh, and here’s the original project landing page that we set up a while ago, with some more info about the game in particular:
Audio Speed
Dark Mode
Lieber Emanuel, ich mag die Karten-Idee. Ich zögere nur, Dir bei Kickstarter zu unterstützen, weil ich weiß nicht, was für Informationen Kickstarter von mir haben will und ob ich dann irgendwie auch Ziel von Kickstarter Emailnachrichten sein wird, wie “You’ve supported Emanuel’s project: we think that you’d also be interested in this exciting project blah blah blah.” Ich habe Kickstarter nie vorher benutzt. Ich habe mein Leben so eingerichtet, dass ich so wenige unerbeteten Emailnachrichten wie menschenmöglich erhalte. Do any of you other subscribers have experience with supporting a project on Kickstarter? Is one left alone? Or endlessly nagged about other projects? I understand that Emanuel, as a person putting in his own project, received a flood. But what about people who support a project?
PS: One of my biggest problems in German is knowing if a verb or preposition takes the accusative or dative accoding to context. I’d like a card game on that too.
Das ist eine gute Frage!!
So during sign-up, when you create a Kickstarter account (or sign in via Facebook), there are two checkboxes where you can opt-in to their email newsletters. If you don’t check these, you should not get any emails like “Check out these projects”
However, I’d almost bet that they will still send out an occasional email. I’m sure somewhere in your account settings there, you can make it so they keep complete radio-silence. If you want, I can dig around a little.
I myself so far haven’t gotten any “Check out this project” emails. All I got was within Kickstarter from Spam-Accounts that want to “help” me promote my project, and that has subsided now as well.
But yeah, you could always wait till the game and app are officially out and just get them then.
I mean, if everyone does that, we won’t actually succeed with the Kickstarter of course, but so far, things are looking like we’re on track :)
Oh, as for two way prepositions, have you read my article about those?
Thanks to you and to msfeather12. I’m in.
(I found the article about 2-way prepositions :-)
Awesome!! Thanks for the support!
Several years ago, I contributed to a Kickstarter project. I must have opted out of their e-mail options because I can’t remember ever receiving an unwanted email from them. The only emails I remember receiving were directly related to the project to which I had contributed.
Hallo!
If I am for sure the only German-learning-fanatic in my Freundenkreis, is there any benefit for me in buying multiple decks (for example three) – do you have in mind any game modes that would require it?
So the plan is to have some cards being double in one deck anyway, so as to create some repetition within one game.
That’s why there is zero benefit for you to own multiple decks when you only play single player.
If you have friends you can join three decks just so you have more cards to go around and a longer game, but for one person one deck is definitely enough.
I’d say just go with that option :)
Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! And for the card game – how do you say “break a leg” (figuratively) in German? :D Looking forward to it!
“Hals- und Beinbruch”, I believe. (Hey, why just stop at breaking a leg?).
Hahahaha, exactly!! If you do a job, do it properly.
Thanks a lot :)!
And the closest match would be “Hals- und Beinbruch” but you wouldn’t use it in this particular context as there is no actual stakes for me. Like… I’m not really “losing” if it doesn’t work out.
For this, “toi toi toi” is probably the best “wishing luck” phrase.
Hallo!
Happy belated birthday in Berlin, a truly wonderful city ;)
Hope you do get the amount you need, I’ve pledged 15 euros :)
Bis bald!
Danke :)!! Happy to hear you liked it here! You’ll have to tell me some more impressions some time and if Berlin made “the list”
OK, sounds cool, so I finally managed to background my Kickstarter phobia (born of a small handful of failed projects some years ago, as well as that God-awful logo!). Having made a new account, and chosen the 15 euro level(*), we’re almost home and hosed, but –ta da– my bank refuses to feed my money to Kickstarter projects. Seems they too have been bitten too many times by refunds for failed/fraudulent projects, so they just refuse to authorise any such payments.
Anyway, that’s all incredibly boring and dispiriting, and hopefully there’ll be a way around it. Other than that, I’m in the same boat as coleussanctus regarding the physical cards: how’s that meant to work? Am I dealt 3 verbs and 3 prefixes and I have to fuse one from each group and state the meaning of the composite? And if there are no such verbs from my cards do I trade a certain number of my cards in for new ones? Is the online version also meant to mimic the meatware version, as well as being the source of solutions and definitions? Questions, questions, questions…
(*) International shipping is an expensive hell-hole in my experience, and I can see myself using the online version, but maybe not the physical cards, so…
My Kickstarter experience hasn’t been exactly stellar either thus far.
From the minute I clicked “launch”, I was BOMBARDED with spam emails ON KICKSTARTER. Hoards of accounts are offering “consulting” or “want to discuss how they can support”.
I feel like Kickstarter just doesn’t really care. They surely could do better than this.
Anyway, about the game:
There are many option how you can play, but the core idea is always that you combine a prefix and a verb and you say one or several meanings, either because you know them, or you venture a guess.
I have yet to write down the rules or modes.
The webapp will NOT be a game for now. If it’s successful, then we might have the budget to actually get a game made, but for now the webapp is “just” a lookup. A very very user friendly lookup where it’s fun to dig around and explore verb families.
It’ll have a lot of similarities with the YDG dictionary and share content, but it has a unique display and navigation taylored to prefix verbs.
Oh and yes… international shipping is crazy expensive for normal people.
Luckily, there is a whole “fulfilment” industry that handles these things in bulk. Still a lot to research, like where to manufacture, where to store, who does the fulfilment and so on. But I am not planning on sending 100 packages to the US and Down Under from a Berlin post office.
Oh and thanks for making an effort despite Kickstarter trauma :)
How do you play the game? I could picture maybe there are two piles, and everyone takes so many cards from the prefix pile and so many from the base verb pile. Then you take turns putting down cards to try to make a verb? And I guess you use the core themes on the cards to get ideas for a possible meaning.
I don’t know if it’s doable, but I think I would play the game in the app if there was a way to do that.
Maybe prefix verbs could be something for the calendar. Like you give us a sentence with a verb and there are multiple choice options to guess what it means.
Edit: and happy belated birthday! I’ve been stuck around 29 for a while too. It’s not so bad.
Yeah, you described one of the options pretty much. My main mode is that each player gets like 5 prefixes and then a verb gets turned and if you think you can form an existing prefix verb, you lay the prefix and say the meaning you think it has. If it’s correct, you have one card less, if it doesn’t exist you take a new prefix. Whoever gets rid of their cards first, wins.
But there are other modes I have explored including two player poker style mode and single player.
The app won’t be a game, at least for now. It’s a reference that’s tailor made for looking up prefix verbs, and the translations and themes are “hand crafted” by me (like in the dictionary, but with an extra little descrioption and better UX.
Happy birthday, sorry you didn’t get to advance a year! Maybe next time!
Schoen… a truly modular realization of the delightful modularity of Deutsch!
Before I found your blog I was REALLY clambering around for a dictionary app like this. I’ve been building my vocab from the Goethe A2 list, which lists everything alphabetically, so you get a long list of ab-verbs, then later a long list of aus-verbs… how nonsensical would it be to learn all the ab-verbs in a row, at the beginning of your study?
Anyway, the app itself is going to be extremely useful.
As for distributing cards internationally, if it turns out to be prohibitively expensive, maybe there’s a possibility of sending a printable pdf? Much less elegant, of course… but the process of cutting out the cards could be quite meditative… eh.
I can’t quite imagine what playing games with the deck would be like. I think maybe some concrete examples of games could be helpful. However, I *can* imagine sitting in my house and darüber grübeln. It would be like the ultimate YDG fan merch
I think the app has more appeal, but the game could be a fun way to learn once you actually try and play around with it. Even by yourself :).
There’s just something different to shuffling actual cards and turning two and then guessing if the combo has a meaning, than just have an app give you a random prefix verb.