Days of Wonder Using Kickstarter for Small World 2

SaMoKo wrote: Most people don't view kickstarter as passing around the hat, and why should they? Look, these are commodities being sold.

"If you don't pay, we can't afford to make it. Help us make it."

Sounds like passing a hat to me. Pair that with the fact that the guys asking for the money are under absolutely NO OBLIGATION to ever deliver a damned thing. Kickstarter (read the fine print) is a DONATION site, not a pre-order store. While the risk is pretty low, there have been many KS projects that never got completed and the people that donated got a fat goose egg.

wice wrote: ***SIGH***

Don't post when you're tired. The posts become incoherent.

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:

Mike wasn't really pointing to that. Mike was pointing to the people that bitch about GameSalute and high prices, and buy everything from an OLGS versus an FLGS. His point is that people who buy from OLGS do so for a price-point, and complain that FLGS' prices are too high, which is virtually everyone I've ever met.

BUT, those same people (here's where your argument might have merit) are OK with spending full MSRP to get stuff first.

Michael Barnes wrote: Fuck this. I'm a customer, not a financier.

Agreed. Perhaps if my pledge included company stock?

The only KS I've backed was the Reaper one, and that was due to the extreme amount of minis being offered. It was too good to resist, and I was familiar with Reaper. Had it been a new company with no track record, I'd have passed.

SuperflyTNT wrote:

wice wrote: 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:

Mike wasn't really pointing to that. Mike was pointing to the people that bitch about GameSalute and high prices, and buy everything from an OLGS versus an FLGS. His point is that people who buy from OLGS do so for a price-point, and complain that FLGS' prices are too high, which is virtually everyone I've ever met.

BUT, those same people (here's where your argument might have merit) are OK with spending full MSRP to get stuff first.

Michael was very specifially talking about the "good old days" when people were more cautious spending money:

Michael Barnes wrote: What blows my mind is that before Kickstarter, games were going through this thing were people were being extremely cautious about what they were spending...folks were waiting for reviews, sales, and other compelling reasons to purchase. Even here in the microcosm that is F:AT, we read repeatedly that people were being more selective with purchases, pledging to "play what you've got", and generally making saving throws against hype.

Anyway, I don't see any evidence, that those who buy from OLGS's (because it's cheaper and more comfortable) are the very same people who back Kickstarter projects. And even if they are, so what? If I have a chance to get the exact same food cheaper and more comfortably in the supermarket, I won't go to a Friendly Local Grocery Shop, just to support small business (I will go there, if it's much closer to my home, and it save time, though). That doesn't mean that I can never ever go to a fancy restaurant on an anniversary, for example. And it doesn't make me a hypocrite or my behavior inconsistent.

I like Days of Wonder. I like several of their games. Mark Kauffman is a hell of a nice guy.

But when I got this press release for this, it was just...I had to read it three or four times. The only word I could come up with was bizarre. So I just opted not to run it. I knew it would get a (deservedly) negative reaction.

I'll admit I got snared by the Kickstarter hype, primarily because of Alien Frontiers. When I finally got to play it, it was like, damn, this is a freaking good game. And you could not get a copy of it for awhile. I didn't want to miss out, so I waited to see what looked good.

I backed Eaten By Zombies. It ended up being a cute take on the deckbuilding genre by focusing on deck destruction, but it wasn't essential to my life's continuation that I had played it. Plus it was riddled with some seriously awful spelling and grammatical errors.

I also backed D-Day Dice, just because of the swag. That too is an okay-ish dice roller. The swag is nice, I'll admit.

After that, I am sort of done with Kickstarter. The games get there when they get there. If they're good, they'll make more. The part I don't dig is them hanging onto my money for up to a year before I get anything out of the deal.

So I don't hate Kickstarter at all, I just personally don't need it. More power though to the small-time designers and publishers it helps, though. But I don't see a company as large and successful as Days of Wonder having any business there, to be honest.

My Kickstarter/IndieGogo haul:

CARNIVAL -- crappy game, but well made. My kids liked it, but I traded it away for fear of having to to play it a lot.
FEALTY -- good game, well made, but practically gave me a stroke from analysis paralysis every time I played. It's like Chess++. Traded away.
REAPER MINIS -- Not delivered yet, on sched, looks fucking great.
GLORY TO ROME -- Great game, well made, fucked up delivery.
HOWLER MAGAZINE -- Great magazine, delivered ontime, all's well.
ACE DETECTIVE -- Not delivered yet, looking good so far.
ZOMBIES, RUN -- Great app, but I am shitty person and don't use it enough.
DICE AGE -- Not delivered yet, complete fiasco.
WEIGHTHACKING -- Not delivered yet, but PDFs and other items already put to use.
TITAN -- Great game, well made, delivery was a fiasco

I advocated for the BugASalt as well, which I hope has worked out for others.

Lots of ups and downs there. But I am happy all in all, I like supporting these kinds of things. I am not as big a fan of supporting Days of Wonder and other corporate success stories in their "needs."

From my perspective, Sirlin, Smallbox, something like Lautipelet.fi using KS? Fine. Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight, Rio Grande using Kickstarter? Dick move.

I've never *hated* Kickstarter. Quite the contrary - I envy them for creating a business model that, for relatively little investment, probably is extremely profitable. Compare their costs ( or lack thereof ) vs those who try to make a living in the multi tier game distribution model. KS/Amazon gets 5-8% profit, yet never has to finance an actual physical product nor take a risk on said product. They basically skim off profit . Distributors and stores get that same net profit margin, probably less, and they have to finance that inventory .

And the way that its structured is very clever, with Stretch Rewards ensuring that the momentum actually seems to increase the closer the project gets to a goal.

I also don't hate game companies for taking advantage of it . Why WOULDN'T they take a potentially long term interest free loan. And in the process, garner more profitable direct sales ? Its a no brainer . The only pitfall is that their business model is flawed and they underestimate their production costs . I can see this happening on some of the stretch goal stuff esp, that's tossed into the mix once a campaign goes off the charts .

Until people stop funding stuff that well financed companies would have financed themselves 5 years ago, its gonna keep happening.

I've funded one project - UP FRONT. And to be honest, while I think the assclowns running Valley are pretty shitty business people in many ways, I looked at it more like a pure gamble than an investment. IF they pull it off, the cumulative pile of stretch rewards is an exceptional value for what you're paying. When you compare what you get for your money at even the base level ( like $40 for the base game and three nationality decks IIRC ) vs what the CGF dipshits gave in their $40 box, its a pretty big difference. And for all the extras they're throwing into the $125 level, even once the game inevitably goes on Tanga, $125 is still a good deal. And if it doesn't happen - I can live with it, but I ( and a lot of others ) will hound them to the ends of the earth. But that's the only project I've funded and no others have remotely tempted me. Partially because most of what I play are wargames, which aren't as well suited to the KS model for various reasons. And for Euros, I can wait til it hits the street.

Their WBC booth will be a shit show if they haven't delivered by then, which I think is a real possibility . I think all those extras are going to increase the amount of time it takes to produce all those cards - like 2000 of them IIRC.

One of the other many clever ways KS works is that the lemmings who throw money at these things think they are getting a deal not because it actually IS a good deal, but because often there is no point of comparison. There often is no OLGS selling the same thing for 30% less. Once the game gets close and those same OLGS start taking prepubs, the smarter gamers might bring it up. But the cult of the new lemming on BGG ? Getting it first is top of mind, not the price .

SuperflyTNT wrote:

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.

I'm actually right with you on Clowdus being the model KS guy. I also dig his games and generally trust his sense when it comes to publishing [and he's even stepped away from the 3-player minimum, clearly in an effort to get my money]. But I don't have a problem with KS. I have a problem with people who have the hubris to "hold up a mirror to the community" without looking in the fucker first.

His non-reprints are basic vaporware promoted by hucksters and shills. He's exactly sort of guy who, should he screw up a KS, will likely not be "harmed" in any material way other than the end of his 1-man company that was allegedly living on monthly pre-orders to begin with. (To be fair, I really think Clowdus is small enough yet professional enough to completely cock-up 2 of them very badly before he becomes the first notable HMS Titanic in the KS boardgaming category. However, IMO he may have rather inadvertently danced right along the knife edge of that with the current one.) He's pretty much the picture of everything Utterly Horrifying about KS according to any number of arguments made 'round here.

You raise a more interesting complaint about capitalized companies "passing the hat," but I think it's kind of off the mark. For SJG, Queen, DOW and the like, it's really not "we can't produce this game if you don't pay." It's much more "we *won't* do it without this utterly free market research on the viability of the product." I don't see those as the same thing. Clowdus allegedly can't produce the game (bullshit, of course, since he managed to publish them just fine under his previous cash-up-front, which again, people didn't piss and moan about even though it was a sales model that the uncharitable could call "vaporware financing" with all risk dumped directly on the consumer). DOW simply won't take on the risk without knowing that they've got a critical mass of sales.

I think the Ogre Kickstarter was a perfect example of this. While I don't believe the Ogre reprint was set up purely as a joke, I do believe there was a huge element of "see, I told you this game won't sell so stop fucking bugging me about it." THAT had been SJG's party line about an Ogre reprint for years. The Old Man himself had become convinced that a wargame that could have been published by Avalon Hill as "Titanium Tanks & Ceramite Men" in 1972 would never sell outside a tiny number of nostalgistic neck-beards. Thus the long-running reluctance to even look at the project and then the shelving when the "little plastic tanks edition" came back with huge costs. The Kickstarter campaign proved him so absolutely wrong that they struggled like mad just to keep pace with the outpouring of pent-up consumer demand.

That's the value to the capitalized companies. Money in hand is, of course, pure gravy. That's at the heart of why I think that the non-Hasbro publisher who isn't on KS (or some custom form of it, like Lock-n-Load's self-run "Guffless" system) within the next 18-24 months will be the exception, not the rule.

What will be really unfortunate is that I suspect it will be used for every non-flagship/core product project [DOW isn't using it to print a new Small World title; that "deluxe" edition can't really be considered a "mainstream" offering in any sense]. I understand it when it comes to titles on the edge--Zev's concerns (expressed in these forums) about reprinting Capes & Cowls after someone provided a more detailed description of gameplay are a good case in point--make sense as KS projects. The newest Arkham Horror expansion, on the other hand, will not. I believe that bigger publishers, once they get a taste of KS, will try to use it for everything new. I think FRED is either already there or closing in on it quickly. Others will undoubtedly follow suit soon as this is nothing if not an industry in which a little innovation will be followed by massive replication throughout.

The Pxxx model has become firmly established in the wargaming world, but with the trade-off for no cash up front being that you're almost certainly going to wait multiple years to see the product (MMP was "many" years, but it's almost always a 2+ year wait no matter what). The non-consim publishers have struggled to find a model that reduces their risks but satisfies the much shorter attention spans/demand cycles in their segment of the hobby. A quick look at BGG will reveal a huge level of ignorance and/or fear of GMT's low-risk/long-wait approach to prepubs as well as a general impatience with wanting the product NOW. There's no way the average hobby gamer would put up with the "well the game is ready to go to print but it's nowhere near its pre-pub viability numbers, so we're moving on to another project for a while" notices that every wargame publisher has posted from time to time. Kickstarter solves both problems for publishers as the promise of exclusive stuff (yet another way in which Cambridge fucked up the Glory to Rome KS) seems to offset the impatience factor enough to get through the production cycle.

Random thoughts:

DoW using Kickstarter for this just gets me pissed off at them and makes me hope that there would be some sort of backlash which would cause other larger established companies from going this route.

Is it logical to think there is a "soft" cap on the amount of Kickstarter money available for projects? It feels like DoW just took a giant shit on all the small guys who do have a good design/business plan and need Kickstarter to get the funding. I know, I know, Capitalism.

Is it a double standard to give Reaper a pass since 1) they were up front that they needed the money to invest in molds for the new line to ramp up production and roll out new models faster (anyone have any idea how big an outfit reaper is - they've always seemed small despite their range of models)? 2) they were asking for 30K for new molds and things just got crazy?

Fuck you Steve Jackson Games. Fuck you and your inability to deliver anything but Munchkin on time. Fuck You and your signed certificates of support and your shitty cardboard Ogres. I feel bad for anyone that supported this Kickstarter. SJG's fuck ups reflect poorly on everyone else using KS that are busting their ass to actually deliver on time and deliver a product worth the money people have pledged and make it harder for future projects.

Still got good feelings towards Kickstarter. Thanks to KS I'm playing SMERSH, Shadowfist has been resurrected (Combat in Kowloon any day now, and on fucking time!), I've got Champions Villains vol. 3 in print form, and a bunch of other niche products to look forward to that wouldn't have made it without KS. Of course as soon as someone fails to deliver on a project and Kickstarter stands there shrugging their shoulders (with sacks of cash behind them) I'll be frothing with Nerd Rage, but that can wait.

I like how DoW is acting like they're being generous by not making 3-5 player maps and online multiplayer as in-app purchases, or including them at all. The original 2-player version is shit because of it. The Cyclades app is shit because of it. It's not an option. I'm fine with just AI if there's no multiplayer, but they can't seriously have considered restricting the number of players.

Disgustipater wrote: I like how DoW is acting like they're being generous by not making 3-5 player maps and online multiplayer as in-app purchases, or including them at all. The original 2-player version is shit because of it. The Cyclades app is shit because of it. It's not an option. I'm fine with just AI if there's no multiplayer, but they can't seriously have considered restricting the number of players.

Yea, for this specific KS, I was a little surprised there wasn't more outrage on this point. The original app was needlessly crippled in most folks' eyes (I didn't give a shit as I've only ever played the boardgame with 2; more than that doesn't much interest me) and this is an update, not a new app. I felt like this project was really mostly about the deluxe set, not the iPad 2 app but they didn't want to eat fees out of 2 different projects. Just a guess, though....

"Stretch Goals" for software are kind of like the image above. Or even more like the one below:



When a software company tells you they're going to intentionally hobble their software unless you come up with money in advance it's kind of stupid. You can choose to believe what you want I suppose.


Here's how I'm looking at this. I have not "backed" (i.e., "preordered") anything on Kickstarter. I've "preordered" (i.e., "backed") more than a few things on GMT and MMP because:

a) It was something that seriously caught my attention, and
b) I had faith in the guy bringing the goods.

Fundamentally the choice to put your money on the table for a preorder is about faith. Now, I'll be honest with you, I don't think Kickstarter does much for any of these designers besides renting them disk space and billing them. They're not involved in the transaction at all as best I can tell, maybe as a bag man for the credit card purchase. So as far as I'm concerned Kickstarter just isn't in the equation. It's like getting pissed at the two ladies in Multiman's office that put the pieces in the boxes.

Here's where this particular Kickstarter project just doesn't add up. They're delivering software with it (at least that seems to be its primary purpose from what they sent me but you can judge for yourself) but how the heck do you put a stretch goal on software? Do you release maps only to the people that Kickstarted it, and if so how do you deliver that? Technically I imagine it's possible, but in the world of apps the idea of an exclusive part that can't be purchased ever is pretty foreign. So I think Days of Wonder punted, falling back on their traditional market to get them across the finish line in their new market. The "deluxe" version of the boardgame looks like a judas goat to me.

As far as I'm concerned Kickstarter has that magical "everyone's attention" for the moment as only web companies can do, so it makes sense to get your products there. If I was in the business I'd be all over it. Hell, I've got games on prepub right now I'd like to see get on it.

By the way, here's my real prediction -- the day one of the big boys decides to step into this line of business Kickstarter is roadkill. If they have half a brain they'll sell before that happens, because I'd wager Amazon could do this with a configuration of their existing software. There's no sense at pointing perfectly good anger at someone living on borrowed time.

S.

Small World 2 is my 19th backed Kickstarter. Surprisingly, the sun continues to come up every morning.

Beyond that, this thread is impossible to take seriously or put much stock in. Ninety percent of it, when boiled down, is simply, "Kickstarter does not conform exactly to my own personal worldview, therefore I fear and loathe it. Oh, and it's 'unprofessional,' too!"

This place used to have better conversations; it's all just dogma now. But I suppose that's a discussion for a different day and a taller beer.

TheDukester wrote: Small World 2 is my 19th backed Kickstarter. Surprisingly, the sun continues to come up every morning.

It's my 53rd. Does that make my Internet penis larger than yours?

Dogmatix wrote:

TheDukester wrote: Small World 2 is my 19th backed Kickstarter. Surprisingly, the sun continues to come up every morning.

It's my 53rd. Does that make my Internet penis larger than yours?

Yes, but just in girth--not length.

It's like a Pringles can now.