Days of Wonder Using Kickstarter for Small World 2

Michael Barnes wrote:
Enter Kickstarter. Suddenly, folks that had tightened their pursestrings are pretty much throwing their wallets at some of these projects. Like Kingdom Death, which looks and sounds exactly like a first-time design from a first-time designer. HUNDREDS of dollars, chasing after exclusives for games that buyers MAY NOT EVEN LIKE. Do miniatures with badunkadunk butts really sell like that?

....

My point is that the traditional model of a company risking capital to create a product, proving itself and giving the consumer a compelling reason to want it, and then earning your money is threatened by Kickstarter.

Part of the problem is that there is really little downside to supporters of Kickstarter projects if the producer is just marginally not an idiot. As long as a game is delivered close to on time and has some reasonable amount of "exclusives" it will be easy to sell if you don't like it (case in point, there is a Zombicide Abomination pack going for $250.00 on ebay right now).

If it is a good game, then you have all these exclusives.

The way things are going now I think a publisher would be a fool not to use kickstarter. Especially for a known publisher and/or known property.

Why shoulder a financial risk if you don't have to?

Kickstarter is a MASSIVE risk shifting onto the consumer. The consumers are financing this boom for unproven products with unknown delivery schedules.

Blaming publishers for putting things on kickstarter right now is like blaming consumers in 2005 who took really low interest mortgages when lenders were throwing money at them.

I'll fess up - I've done a few game kickstarters: Ogre and Double Fine adventure. And I don't feel great about either decision. Hopefully the games will be good (at least I've played lots of Ogre), but I don't think it was smart of me to give an interest free loan for a few years to those companies.

Geoff

Interesting point Geoff.

If most off the big publishers routinely used KS, would the indie get drowned out?


Also whilst we are on kickstarter confessions i've backed Moonga Invaders (known design, designer etc, market price point) and Elite Dangerous (i backed this, mostly because i wasn't sure it would succeed and wanted it too, but i know i payed slightly more for it, than i would if i waited until it came out).

I have only backed one Kickstarter so far: the new edition of The Vesuvius Incident. I've got this list of game projects that I would like to complete some day, ranging from finishing the painting of my Space Hulk minis to creating a homebrew boardgame based on the city map for my current D&D campaign. One of the projects on my list was to do an improved version of The Vesuvius Incident, with a larger map, larger tokens, and a re-written rulebook. So when I found that somebody had launched a Kickstarter to do exactly that, I just had to back it. Got a status update a couple of days ago, to the effect that everything is still on track for a February shipping date.

I think Kickstarter is going to change into a utility. It's going to become an outsource P500 service and I wouldn't be surprised to see big names like DoW use it for all products. Having 1500 sales in the can prior to the first review has its advantages.

For a publisher it's a no-brainer.

S.

We're already seeing mainstream game publishing shift to Kickstarter for financing. Queen Games, now Days of Wonder. It won't be long before you can help finance Arkham Horror 2e, with the extra ultimate stretch bonus that flies you to Roseville MN to get an autographed GOO T-shirt and lets you write the new rulebook.

It'll only get worse. It started with "Help us publish this game that we've been working on," moved on to "Help us publish this game and get this exclusive shiny thing," then to "You can get a dozen exclusive shiny things for only three times the MSRP!". Now it's approaching bizarro world where Martin Wallace needs you to spend enough dough on Moongha Invaders so he can be bothered to bless you with a two-player ruleset, and fuck you. It's an exclusive ruleset that will only be available to Kickstarter backers, oh, and fuck you.

I went back and forth on that one for a couple weeks. Two-player means Moongha will get played 5x as much at my place as it otherwise would (if the 2P rules are good). But financing shit like this is a slippery slope. Since when is it acceptable for actual game functionality to be exclusive to a particular group of people. What kind of second-hand market does that create?

Well I backed fucking Moongha because it looks like my type of game and I want to play the damn thing two-player with rules and components that have been properly playtested. I don't feel good about it. But I decided that was the last Kickstarter. Anything worth a damn should make it to retail anyway. Anything that makes it to retail with a bastardized or limited ruleset (or component choices, whatever) deserves its rightful place in the bargain bin.

[quote="Michael Barnes" post=141657
No, games were not quite as "traditionally marketed" as you're implying, but they were still developed, sourced, distributed, and sold like most consumer products. Now you pay a smiling, self-aggrandizing carpetbagger to POSSIBLY make the game that you THINK you want. That's not progress, it's hucksterism. Carnival barking.[/quote]

No, we've just traded one shill for another. Before we had bloggers and "videographers" who wrote about games to get free games, and don't like to write reviews about stinkers "because they don't have time to play bad games enough to review them" (read: piss of publishers and derail the gravy train) now we have the Bernays principle: Be part of something big. Be charitable, and you get a door prize to boot. It may be a mouldering bundt cake, but at least you were PART of something. It made you FEEL smart and FEEL good.

Part of the problem is that there is really little downside to supporters of Kickstarter projects if the producer is just marginally not an idiot. As long as a game is delivered close to on time and has some reasonable amount of "exclusives" it will be easy to sell if you don't like it (case in point, there is a Zombicide Abomination pack going for $250.00 on ebay right now).

If it is a good game, then you have all these exclusives.

This CANNOT be overstated. This has become an opportunistic, for-profit endeavor, and if anything, this is the upside, in my opinion. The ability to sell for profit a very shiny turd is not to be overlooked.

The way things are going now I think a publisher would be a fool not to use kickstarter. Especially for a known publisher and/or known property.

Why shoulder a financial risk if you don't have to?

Kickstarter is a MASSIVE risk shifting onto the consumer. The consumers are financing this boom for unproven products with unknown delivery schedules.

Careful. I said this and it, in part, is why I don't bother writing anymore. The backlash faced by holding a mirror to the masses is violent and overtly disingenuous.

I think Kickstarter is going to change into a utility. It's going to become an outsource P500 service and I wouldn't be surprised to see big names like DoW use it for all products. Having 1500 sales in the can prior to the first review has its advantages.

For a publisher it's a no-brainer

I think that the captured revenue of selling at MSRP+ with no middle man pretty much crushes any negatives. Like you said, it's a no brainer. The only way to turn the tide on this is for distributors to tell companies that go direct-to-market to fuck themselves. The people that get killed by Kickstarter are them and the OLGSs because you have to consider that in this hobby, the early adopters are probably 60% of the overall 1-year market. Think about it - if a game goes through distribution, it releases to everyone at the same time. If it goes through the Game Salute program, it's in-house only and they control price. Thus, the initial wave of sales comes as direct-to-buyer sales and distribution is killed because they may not get availability AND they get the ass-end of the sales cycle. Everyone really jazzed about a product gets it before retailers and distributors, so they're left with the late adopters (read: dregs) and therefore have to hold inventory longer and sell at a lower price to attract customers.

I think I'm going to start a project on KS just to rip off as many fools as possible.

In other news, please check out my new game on KS (link coming) called PT Barnum's Flying Circus. It took the best parts from (insert top 5 bgg games here) and made a truly elegant ruleset. Pledge enough and you can get an exclusive lollipop I will only send to backers.

Sagrilarus wrote: I think Kickstarter is going to change into a utility. It's going to become an outsource P500 service and I wouldn't be surprised to see big names like DoW use it for all products. Having 1500 sales in the can prior to the first review has its advantages.

For a publisher it's a no-brainer.

S.

Yea, that was my take the first time this discussion came around with SJG and Ogre. I still can't see how the established publishing houses WOULDN'T go this route. Thing is, DOW has a lot more to lose than "Some Guy You've Never Heard Of Publishing."

And this is where Barnes' argument, which we've also heard before in toto, kind of falls apart. Yes, there's an element of carnival barker--that's also called "marketing" in a lot of quarters, and ESPECIALLY in boardgames, which aren't "not really traditionally marketed"--they're not marketed at all. They almost ALL rely on carnival barkers to play their review copies or consumers mostly blind-buying ("my e-friend gave it an 8!" isn't all that far from straight blind-buying) and shilling their product free of charge online or by word-of-mouth [like traditional barking].

Now, enter Kickstarter. Yea, there's a lemming factor, but SJG, DOW, and Queen have WAY too much to lose if they fail to deliver. And now, after the huge buy-in on their projects, so does CoolMiniOrNot, who was a nothing entity in boardgaming before Kickstarter. When discussing KS, an awful lot of these arguments seem to be predicated on the idea that Joe Blow Publishing and FFG (the same goes with things like the Ogre reprint--an existing product with eons of history and play behind it and "I just made this shit up yesterday and...Check it OUT! Now on KS!") if they're identical in terms of design, development, and production experience. It's disingenuous to the point of being intellectually dishonest.

Now, based on that history, did anyone here think SJG actually WOULD deliver on time? I backed big but I was quite sure I wouldn't see the game before summer 2013. They've got a 4-decade history of missing pub dates. Now, do I have any fear of SJG NOT delivering the game at all? Short of Steve Jackson's untimely death, no (and now I believe they're far enough along in production that the man COULD die and they'd still deliver). I have no fear of that at all. Failing to deliver a highly hyped, pre-paid version of one of their historic flagship products be apocalyptic for SJG. For all the bitching people do about Munchkin, plenty of gamers BUY that game. The backlash on a Queen, SJG or DOW within their target audience would be enormous and immediate. I suspect it would also be long-lasting enough to completely crush the smaller companies.

Even Valley Games or even JKLM, which was in bankruptcy and had been COMPLETELY dissolved after taking people's money for the 1861 reprint, managed to deliver on their promises and meet their commitments before KS. Assuming no one at the company has a huge addiction to blow, whores, and the dog track, KS generally means you won't be hear a steady stream of excuses about everything EXCEPT the real problem of free cash-flow (see, e.g., GRD's famed 10-year-and-still-ongoing "our printing slot got moved" blogs--they finally had to burn their own offices down to get around not being able to publish Total War; cf. anything to do with L2 Design Group's Mega-edition games)

Joe Blow Publishing has nothing to lose if they fail to deliver. THAT is who you have to fear. It's the indie, not the established publisher, that is likely going to screw you completely.

I know it's all kinds of "punk fucking rock" to support the "DIY ethos" but here's a secret: punk is dead in general and I'm not sure it was ever alive in boardgaming to begin with. Indie development is, at best, for shitty-looking videogames that may or may not live up to their cache when it comes to gameplay (FTL does; lots and lots of others simply don't and aren't even worth the $10)

Edit: And, on an unrelated note, the "industry is dying" argument? You can mostly shove that one. That article has been published in wargaming magazines every 8 years since 1975. Expansion and contraction seems to follow that same cycle. Miniature-, roleplay- and board-gaming are, by and large, hobbies dominated by the educated middle- to upper-middle class income brackets. I don't have any experience in CCGs but I'd bet it's mostly the same there. There's always a sort of ebb and flow of interest in "tactile" gaming: 30 years ago [yea, it's been that fucking long], PC gaming was going to be the death of boardgames; 20 years ago, it was console gaming that would end it [though they did succeed in nearly killing PC gaming, it seems]. Now it's a combo of "the economy" and "smart-whatever-device gaming" that will be the cataclysmic end of Gaming as We Know It. If you're unemployed, then, yea, the economy fucked you and you're probably not going to be buying new games--then again, the most enduring family boardgames were developed DURING the worst economic periods because folks couldn't afford other entertainment. As for the other bit, I believe we'll see the next big wave of "put down the [whatever] and spend more time with your friends and family around the table" articles starting around October [just in time for Xmas sales season] 2016...

Edit2: And then there's John Clowdus and Small Box Games. With all the outrage about hucksterism and risk shifting and all the other pissing and moaning, why isn't his Kickstarter-only--even though there was no compelling reason for the move to it--front and center in your arguments? He seems to get, not just a free pass, but full-on man-crush from an awful lot of y'all. (Cambridge, well, I always thought that their 4th grader with Photoshop art was an indicator that they didn't think their games weren't worth much effort and attention. That they fucked up their KS like Valley Games did with their preorders way back when surprised me not at all. I'm biased to the point of believing that they've always thought their audience were morons who would buy anything...)

I don't mind the push to KS from the big houses because, as Space Ghost points out, the exclusives *can* be a real bonus. Now, specifically, CMoN has really established the "holy shit" bar in terms of both game additions and money grabs. I'm also OK with paying above MSRP for games I really want to see. Collins Games was almost certainly no-way no-how going to publish the Frontline General expansion, a game I really like and wanted to see continue, without the $8k from a KS project. My $100 made a visible impact in that KS, I got the expansion and 2nd base game, which I've passed along as a gift [and creating a fan of that game], along with a promise of 1 copy of anything published in the product line in the future. Now, in my heart of hearts, I doubt I'll see another item in this product line based on Collins' history [I'm kind of curious how many of the "lifetime" backers there were--if there were too many, his next KS project for Frontline will probably stall because we have no incentive to back the next one], but it was a risk I was willing to take. If they publish just 1 more $30 expansion, I'll be "in the black" in terms of MSRP value.

Collins' experience is kind of informative on the value of stretch goal items to gamers though. They really limped along and looked like they might not even squeak over their basic "get it done" line , which I think was $6,500 [which seems so quaint when you look at, say, Mantic Games or CMoN, which both had $5,000+ pledge levels--and which sold out almost immediately for their projects. Made sense there since it was "get a huge army pre-painted by actual professionals. If I was still the hardcore minis gamer I was 25 years ago with my current income levels, I would have thought long and hard about going for one of the Dreadball pro-paint levels. As it stands these days, if I glue enough of the models together in time for WBC next year to be able to bring it up and play with some other drunken idiots, I'll be most pleased.]. They made it in the last 96 hours--and then as soon as they hit that mark, they shot past their 1 stretch goal [6 additional all-new tiles added to the set based on a backers-only poll]--they picked up nearly a third in additional pledge $ within the last 48 hours or so to get over the stretch-goal mark. It struck me that people were waiting to see if they'd hit their mark to publish at all; once that hit, then they jumped in to ensure they could land copies [as Collins wasn't looking at a big print-run beyond the backers] and score the additional goodies. Queen has been the odd-duck here in that their only "promo" seems to be "get it a couple of months early." I guess that's important to the "latest hotness" crowd. Given the scheduling involved, I rarely get to play a new purchase within 2 months of purchase anyway, so I could give a shit about that, personally. Guess that matters to some though.

Edit 12: "Why would people be so militant about discounted prices but willing to pay above MSRP for KS projects" really isn't all that interesting a question when the answer, in most cases, is "to get the additional shit that you can't get anywhere else." Cambridge fucked up the Glory to Rome KS in every way imaginable by being late and making the KS cards available for sale afterwards. Shame that was Barnes' one experience with it, but I'd like to see how that can be considered in anyway to be the "norm".

dragonstout wrote:

Dogmatix wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: I don't know about you, but "deluxe tokens" sounds pretty damn expensive.

Yea, that would be $400 for the "full megilleh" package. It also looks like it weighs about 40 lbs. I like the game a heck of a lot, but I'm not so sure it's $400 a lot... (Although that puts it right in the same ballpark with the deluxe Settlers set and half the price of the Deluxe WoTR.]

Originally, deluxe WotR was $400, actually $300 at online retailers. Y'all were saying "who would pay such an exorbitant price for a board game", fools.

I stand corrected on the WotR price. I had no interest in that one as I don't play it enough and, now, it certainly appears to be a pain in the ass to keep up to date. I expect the same problem, actually, with the DOW set as you know there are a billion expansions yet to come. That said, it's probably worth $400 if you're a big fan of the game, much like the Settlers and WotR sets were to the diehard fanboys.

To clarify - when I say "risk shifting", especially in the boardgame realm, I don't mean complete non-delivery of product. I think that basically every boardgame that is funded will publish in some form, whether on time or not.

But the risk you're taking is that you're paying full-out retail for something that turns out to be, well, a piece of crap. I'm a big Martin Wallace fan - was thrilled to have him on Ludology - but if he had done a Kickstarter way back in the day for "Tempus", people would have been falling over each other to throw money at his feet. And it ended up being a huge stinker. (Yes, back in the day we said 'stinker'.) You young'uns probably don't remember that fiasco.

That's the risk - you pay full retail, and perhaps more, are out of the money for a year, and have a better-than-50/50 chance of getting a mediocre game at best. Way more than 50% of games published are mediocre, I would posit.

Now, on video games or hardware projects, I think you have a much greater chance of getting absolutely nothing, or have a much greater chance of getting a big piece of crap.

Geoff

Dogmatix wrote: Edit2: And then there's John Clowdus and Small Box Games. With all the outrage about hucksterism and risk shifting and all the other pissing and moaning, why isn't his Kickstarter-only--even though there was no compelling reason for the move to it--front and center in your arguments? He seems to get, not just a free pass, but full-on man-crush from an awful lot of y'all.

Because John is a one man show with his wife and daughter packing boxes and hand-shipping every order. Before KS he was taking preorders and printing/boxing THAT MONTH'S ORDERS.

He is the MODEL Kickstarter guy...a bridge between the little and big leagues. There's a huge difference between a capitalized , established leader like DOW passing aroundthe hat and a one-man show.

Most people don't view kickstarter as passing around the hat, and why should they? Look, these are commodities being sold. The value is entirely from perception, and the greatest value that can be given is something ~exclusive~ or early. If you want a direct parallel, take a look at movies: for $50 a family can go out and watch a movie at the theater. If they wait a few months, they can own it for half of that. Objectively speaking, the theater is a rip-off, but more people will complain about the prices of Blu-Ray disks than theater prices. This is especially bizarre considering that the gap between theater release and home release has narrowed.

People will flock to be at the groundfloor for just about anything - new cars, tech, entertainment, and even food. Why kickstarter succeeded isn't a big surprise at all, it's just common sense marketing from the perception of the big companies. Of course the big companies will get on board, why wouldn't they? It may have been a platform for the small guy, but that's not what it is anymore, and the market is always right. The only surprise for me is it took them this long to realize they can jack the price.

The problem isn't the jacked prices for being first in line, it's that some companies are failing to deliver on that. That devalues the product from customer perception, and it's killing the platform. How many people would flock to a theater to watch a movie that was released on Blu-Ray a few weeks ago? It would have to have a helluva good gimmick to not flop.

I don't see how someone can hate KS itself, it's just another channel, if people WANT to be dumb and pay more for an inferior product, so be it, let them.

I've backep only two projects, Reaper's miniatures was the best KS project I've seen. Very well planned, awesome rewards and great bang for the buck, the other one was the Horror on the Orient Express reprint, although Chaosium's recent history is not that great, the product itself is, the price was more than fair and it hit several stretch goals.

So, all in all, Kickstarter has been very good to me, I think it was stupid of you, Michael, to pay $45 for the new edition of Glory to Rome, you did exactly the petty thing, back a new version of an already great game so you can get rid of the silly design and have it before the masses?

Well deserved.

***SIGH***

Ok, let me explain how it is possible that the very same people, who were previously so cautious spending money, and waited for millions of reviews before deciding on the purchase of a new game even from a well respected company and designer, now throw money at unknown designers and companies, for games nobody played yet, and that are probably not even in the beta stage. It's fairly simple, really:

1. They are most likely not the very same fucking people.

It's a very common mistake seeing a bunch of people (who have something in common) do one thing, then seeing a bunch of people (who have the same thing in common) do another thing, and assuming that the two groups are the same.

There were always gamers who blindly bought almost every new game that came out and gained some buzz previously. I remember you bitching about them long before Kickstarter was created, blaming the "cult of the new" and collector-mentality (buy a game, play it a couple of times, rate it a 10, then put it on the shelf) for shitty games taking the place on BGG's top list from your cherished old classics. I bet my underpants that the vast majority of Kickstarter supporters come from this very circle.

2. Even those gamers who are more conservative and cautious can have a theme/mechanic/whatever that they would absolutely love to see in a game. Just because they are usually very cautious to buy any new game before they are absolutely sure that they will like it, it doesn't mean they wouldn't buy a game in a heartbeat, if it had the exact theme/mechanism/whatever they were waiting for since forever.

I'm happy that Kickstarter exists, because of the second group. On the other hand, I'm just as worried as you are, because of the first group. The first group creates a huge financial bubble around Kickstarter-backed games, and I'm sure that in the long run they will cause its demise.