Shadowrun: Crossfire Printer Proofs, Part 1

There are so any photos to share, I’m breaking this up into multiple posts across several days.

I’ve mentioned this before, but for those not aware of it, when a game/book is printed, the printer will generate digital proofs and physical proofs for the publisher to sign off on. There’s several reasons for that (I touch on some of those below), but ultimately it’s about protecting the printer as a sign off by the publisher means they saw everything “as is” and “signed off” so errors in the final item are on the publisher not the printer.

First the digital proofs are approved, then physical proofs are generated and shipped to the publisher to review. In the case of books, if you work with a printer a lot and you get say 3 to 5 projects under your belt together and everything works well, then you can move to just approvals on digital proofs and wave the physical proofs stage (which saves on money and time). But for anything with lots of components and cards, it’s unwise to skip the physical stage.

The reason there is a physical stage is multi-faceted. First and most importantly, colors can change from the screen to printed materials. Doesn’t matter how good the software, screen and eyes are…there can be shifts. So you need to verify the colors all turned out correctly. Second, when you’re in the depths of working on something, especially something really complex like Crossfire with so many elements, it’s all too easy to not be able to see the trees from the forest. You’ve seen it all so many times that your brain fills in the little niggles that may be there so that you don’t notice. Physical proofs allow you to have had several weeks away and you come back with a complete set of fresh eyes and you can verify that absolutely everything is as it should be. (Doesn’t mean everything is caught…but it helps to ensure higher fidelity to that goal of “100% correct.”)

With all of that said, here’s the first batch of photos for the printer proofs of Shadowrun: Crossfire (all of it was approved so the game is printing away for its full production run; and no, no release date we can yet release beyond “late Summer” until we get closer to it all getting on a ship).

[Note that the photos encompass 3 items: the Crossfire core box, the Demo Box (which will be given to stores that order sufficient quantities, as well at conventions we attend) and the Character Expansion Pack 1.]