C&C Delay Notice from... Valley Games

Wow, do you put the horse out of it's misery now or watch it hobble about a bit longer:

Hello all,

I wanted to send you an email to update you on the C&C dice, there was a problem with our printer that made the dice initially and they have backed out of the reproduction. It wasn't until we received word that they were delaying our project til June, then they just plain old backed out in the last 2 weeks. Fun for us.

So we went looking for other companies to do it and it is proving to be a little painful working them through the quality issues of the new dice. We are confident that we will get these done, it's just going to be a bit longer.

Our production guy Rik is working to get these done quickly but I have advised on the website that November could be the month for completion, just to be sure that we get all of the kinks out. Plus delivery from overseas can take some time too.

I will update you again when we have actual dates that these are shipping to you, and once again, we apologize for our production delays.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I will answer you as quickly as possible.

Regards,

Torben Sherwood

Vice President, Operations
Valley Games Inc.

email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
website: www.valleygames.ca

Aren't chinese printers just the best! After seeing [or being inconvenienced by] the troubles VG and Z-man have had with quality control from their overseas "partners", I'm convinced the only reason there's a cost savings to companies like VG or Z-Man at all is that all the time they're wasting dealing with round after round with the crap printers is that of a 3-person staff, who all have actual day jobs in something other than games.

Dogmatix wrote:

Aren't chinese printers just the best! After seeing [or being inconvenienced by] the troubles VG and Z-man have had with quality control from their overseas "partners", I'm convinced the only reason there's a cost savings to companies like VG or Z-Man at all is that all the time they're wasting dealing with round after round with the crap printers is that of a 3-person staff, who all have actual day jobs in something other than games.

This is fucking crazy! In the long term these "savings" may mean shit if they keep disappointing potential and/or present customers.

I would love to know what the actual saving is per game. I imagine it is a dollar per game or something. I guess it adds up when you print 3000 copies of a game but still. You think with all the quality issues these companies are facing and lead paint and worries about working conditions it wouldn't be worth it.

You would think with all the crap and redo's to get the final product right someone would be losing a bunch of money from the delays and, apparently in this case, a total cancellation of production. But perhaps since these are red Chinese companies the economics might work a bit different. The last couple of years I've actually been checking the origin of products I buy not because of some "Buy American" desire but because I know, although cheaper, the quality of the Chinese products are shit.

I'd love it if more game companies would print in the US. Look at Conflict of Heroes. Printed in Ohio and it looks gorgeous.

-Will

Before you guys get all jingoistic, there are plenty of very well crafted Chinese items. iPods are pretty good I hear. The problem is Quality Control. If you are not completely and thoroughly on the ball, you will get cheap crap. If you are totally and thoroughly on the ball you will get cheap AMAZING STUFF. Some companies recognize that they don't have the internal infrastructure to support Chinese manufacturing, like Wizards of the Coast. It's about a hojillion* times cheaper to print cards in China than in Belgium. But without a QC team on the ground there, speaking Mandarin, it's less expensive to have the Flemish pound those things out. Even the US couldn't print WotC's cards right (see the Alt Fourth Ed debacle ).

These guys got in a little over their head, and have a bad handler. They're working on it. That's the best we can hope for.

*rough estimate

Bulwyf wrote:

I'd love it if more game companies would print in the US. Look at Conflict of Heroes. Printed in Ohio and it looks gorgeous.

-Will

Add Warriors of God as well.

I'm not going to get into the obvious political ramifications of printing in China (but I'm much more concerned about human rights violations than some kind of neo-Cold War anti-China thing). However, I think the issue isn't "printing in China" at all. There's plenty of high quality stuff that comes out of China whether people want to recognize it or not. There's plenty of board games made in China that look great, have high quality components, and have no mold smells or anything like that.

Printing in China is obviously cheaper, but it's also from what I understand a lot harder than dealing with manufacturing firms in the US. You have to go through a kind of broker that acts as a middle man between the publisher and the manufacturer and a lot of times there is a communication issue. There's also the problem that, just like in any business, some companies are just better at what they do than others. And board game publishers, with their thin margins and small capital investments, likely go with low-bid manufacturers more often than not. Going with the cheapest printer in China, I wouldn't expect great results. Working with one of the better companies (like whoever FFG uses) probably costs more overall, but the savings in not having to replace entire games or deal with botched batches probably makes up for it.

Jeb's right on the money here...if you don't have a team there at the printer to QC everything, then it shouldn't be a surprise when what you get back is junk.

As for Valley Games...all this sounds really bad. I gave them the benefit of a doubt back when Kevin did that interview here a couple of months ago and even preordered TITAN, but all this looks pretty grim. Valley Games really needs a full-time business manager and a real staff operating things- you can't run this kind of enterprise as a hobby and I think that's what we're really seeing- this isn't a business, it's a couple of guys who didn't realize exactly what they were getting into.

The best thing they could do would be to sub-license their line (if they can contractually do so) to...Fantasy Flight Games.

Hey, it worked when I said DoW should sell BATTLELORE to them...

As for Valley Games...all this sounds really bad. I gave them the benefit of a doubt back when Kevin did that interview here a couple of months ago and even preordered TITAN, but all this looks pretty grim. Valley Games really needs a full-time business manager and a real staff operating things- you can't run this kind of enterprise as a hobby and I think that's what we're really seeing- this isn't a business, it's a couple of guys who didn't realize exactly what they were getting into.

Exactly. My ultimate fear with all these set backs is that it could lead to the demise of VG.

You know, it's funny but back when Dollar Bill and I were talking about ways to get into the board gaming business we talked about doing almost exactly what Valley Games wound up doing- getting the reprint rights to these extremely in-demand, high-profile games and doing 1:1 reprints with upgraded components and up-to-date presentation. But Dollar Bill, having experience with manufacturing and the logistics involved with it, realized that it wasn't something we could just kind of do on the side. It was either do it totally and commit financially and professionally to it or not do it at all. So we didn't.

It's easy to look at the laziness, sloppy business practices, and "permanent vacation" attitude of a lot of people in the industry and think that anybody can do it, that it's not that much work, or that you can just sort of dabble around in it...it's still cold, hard business regardless. I think it's one of the things that makes FFG so successful- I don't think Christian has ever regarded it as anything other than his livelihood, his life's work, and a professional business with professional business practices.

This half-assing shit does not work. Maybe it works for the dude that puts out GLORY TO ROME or other micro-publishers working just over DIY capacity, but not for a company trying to release things like TITAN.

I also believe they expected to bankroll the almost inevitable financial success of HANNIBAL into these later productions and maybe it didn't pan out quite the way they anticipated...I'd be interested to see what the difference in sales between HANNIBAL and CONTAINER or MORDRED are and what the ROI was on those titles. I think there'd be a huge disparity and I wouldn't be surprised to see that they took a loss on the latter two titles. Not to mention all the lost sales, cancellations, and replacements that have almost certainly incurred financial losses.

I bought both Mordred and Container and found the quality to be excellent.
(My pre-order bonus containers have just arrived in the UK, so I'm a happy customer.)

I believe it's three of them, all working part-time to build the business up. They've had more set backs than most, and have been more ambitious. I think they're getting there, albeit more slowly than they'd like. It's better to have another game manufacturer in the field and I think they'll weather the problems and make a go of it.

EDIT- Actually Mordred is from Warfrog; I should have checked before replying.

I bought my copy of Mordred through Eagle; had no idea VG was involved with that one. Remember, they did manage to sell through their print run of Hannibal. It's Die Macher that I find surprising as still being on the shelves everywhere....

To digress into historical politics for a moment, Barnes, I think it's a little funny that you'd be concerned about "human rights abuses" versus a "neo-cold war" stance when a huge part of the popular movement against the Soviets during the cold war was over their state system and human rights record. You can argue that it was all just part of the western gov't propaganda machines at the time [as opposed to the modern NGO propaganda machine when it comes to China these days], but they're inseparable issues at the heart of the Cold War...

To digress into historical politics for a moment, Barnes, I think it's a little funny that you'd be concerned about "human rights abuses" versus a "neo-cold war" stance when a huge part of the popular movement against the Soviets during the cold war was over their state system and human rights record. You can argue that it was all just part of the western gov't propaganda machines at the time [as opposed to the modern NGO propaganda machine when it comes to China these days], but they're inseparable issues at the heart of the Cold War...

Well, fundamentally you're right and there's definitely no arguing the point because it is what it is- but what I'm saying is that I'm much more concerned about people than politics. You see people all the time pulling out these bizarre jingoistic statements about Chinese manufacturing, Chinese politics, and so on but it comes down to how people are treated- whether it's a communist state or not.

But the Cold War wasn't just about who was treating who badly...there were a lot of other factors involved, and yes, propaganda and competition are among them.

I hope VG pulls out of this...they have such promise, and I hate to see people with heart and ambition flop. But it is still a professional business, and there are expectation sthey simply have to meet.

jeb wrote:

Before you guys get all jingoistic, there are plenty of very well crafted Chinese items. iPods are pretty good I hear. The problem is Quality Control. If you are not completely and thoroughly on the ball, you will get cheap crap. If you are totally and thoroughly on the ball you will get cheap AMAZING STUFF. Some companies recognize that they don't have the internal infrastructure to support Chinese manufacturing, like Wizards of the Coast. It's about a hojillion* times cheaper to print cards in China than in Belgium. But without a QC team on the ground there, speaking Mandarin, it's less expensive to have the Flemish pound those things out. Even the US couldn't print WotC's cards right (see the Alt Fourth Ed debacle ).

These guys got in a little over their head, and have a bad handler. They're working on it. That's the best we can hope for.

*rough estimate

I don't doubt the potential to produce good stuff with the proper quality control in place. It's just that from personal experiences QA/QC is spotty across the spectrum of production. And there are some obvious quality issues that a contracting company shouldn't have to worry about overseeing in detail, like the tip of a screw driver that bends out of shape when turning a screw with modest hand force. That's just poor production at a basic level. But to be fair cheap crap can be found the world over. And remember that the Japanese once had a poor reputation back just after WWII.

I hope that VG can get these demons excorcised and move on to better things.