Thon - Status Update (?) on Pg. 11!

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**Vaktathi**

Alpharius wrote:
AS much as I'd love to have that much POWER, Thon failed due to:

1) Scale issues out of the gate
2) Unclear/confusing front page
3) Pricing issues

So, it is good to see that he'll come back better focused, with the lessons learned from this one.

Hopefully he'll be properly inoculated against the all the evil users and stat obsessed Internet Denizens out there so they won't be able to drag him down next time!

While many projects do have other issues, there is a point to be made about the kicktraq analyzation/posting negativity. If people see a post that says "it doesn't look like it's gonna make it", then they're not going to pledge, potentially sinking contributions that otherwise would have been made and stalling momentum.

If I were running a kickstarter, I certainly wouldn't want my project coming up on DakkaDakka.

**Piston Honda**

I thought this game was going to get near million dollars months back when I first saw all the concepts.

guess all the other kickstarters drowned it out.

Zombicide, Hell Dorado, WWX, EotD, War Zone.

not to mention the game was on the tail end of other kickstarters that may have tapped people. Rivet Wars, Kingdom Death pledge manager was released.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

cincydooley wrote:
Does anyone thing the long ass time frame the KS was running on had a negative impact as well? If I recall, it was over 30 days, which seems like a solid time frame to me. I'm watching a few projects now that have time frames of 45 days plus, which seems awfully long.

It was 30 day campaign.

March 2 to march 31

came out the same day as zombicide, just a few hours later.

**pretre**

Vaktathi wrote:
If I were running a kickstarter, I certainly wouldn't want my project coming up on DakkaDakka.

I think that's misplaced. You do want as much publicity for your KS as possible. Even if some of that is in reference to how it is tracking, people can't pledge if they don't know about it.

**Alpharius**

pretre wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:
If I were running a kickstarter, I certainly wouldn't want my project coming up on DakkaDakka.

I think that's misplaced. You do want as much publicity for your KS as possible. Even if some of that is in reference to how it is tracking, people can't pledge if they don't know about it.

Exactly.

In fact, it ignores the core of the problem.

Why did the project backslide?

Because there were scale issues, a very high 'suggested' retail price, and an overall somewhat confusing tone to the whole thing.

Look at Arena Rex , and how well that is doing, regardless of the fact that it is 35mm.

Bottom line - as the biggest wargaming forum on the Internet, you absolutely want your game on Dakka Dakka.

But you absolutely want to have all your ducks in a row first - and not to make Dakka Dakka happy. You need that to have a successful Kickstarter campaign.

At this point, there have been more than enough examples of what works on Kickstarter and what doesn't work...

**Vhalan**

When you look at Arena Rex, it has a high price point but because you need 3-8 models for a Ludus, its easier to swallow (so I'm telling myself!). Where with Thon, I never really knew how many models I would need to field a 'Force'. I'm sure it came out later, but out of the gates, you had 'starter forces' in the box and then add ons but how did it all tie back in?

**cincydooley**

Let me toss this idea out: perhaps for small gaming companies, short campaigns are better, whereas with larger or more established companies, they're not as adversely affected by length.

Were Thon shorter (I didn't realize it was 'only' a 30-day) they would have benefitted from the initial excitement and the final push more quickly, with less middle 'down time.'

I think it's an interesting study. With our niche and our online communities, it seems like potential market exposure will really reach it's zenith after about a week. That gives even forum browsers a chance to know about it. Contrarily, I see a lot of 'other' campaigns running for a lot longer without negative effect because many of them 'get around' through non-internet forum type channels.

Thoughts?

**Zweischneid**

cincydooley wrote:
Let me toss this idea out: perhaps for small gaming companies, short campaigns are better, whereas with larger or more established companies, they're not as adversely affected by length.

Were Thon shorter (I didn't realize it was 'only' a 30-day) they would have benefitted from the initial excitement and the final push more quickly, with less middle 'down time.'

I think it's an interesting study. With our niche and our online communities, it seems like potential market exposure will really reach it's zenith after about a week. That gives even forum browsers a chance to know about it. Contrarily, I see a lot of 'other' campaigns running for a lot longer without negative effect because many of them 'get around' through non-internet forum type channels.

Thoughts?

Generally, I think there is a danger in running a campaign too long. There's a reason Kickstarter got rid entirely of 90-days campaigns in 2011. They just weren't worth it.

That said, what is "too long" can differ. And there are exceptions.

Kingdom Death is the obvious odd-one-out. It's essentially a "single-man-operation", ran a stupendously long Kickstarter and came out of it breaking all records (as well as possibly breaking ice for quite a few other "premium-resin" Kickstarters).

Of course, Adam Poots was working like a maniac for 3+ years to prepare, if rumours are correct.

On the other hand, ShadowSea is arguably a small-company Kickstarter that was too short. They started badly. They listened and re-made their Kickstarter and managed a respectable come-back towards the end. A few days more would've likely made them succeed.

**catharsix**

Alpharius wrote:
At the risk of sounding overly negative, there does seem to be a new trend towards the 45 day Kickstarter vs. a 30 day campaign, and I'm not so sure that is always a good thing...

I suppose the theory is that a longer KS means more money, but you might be on to something there cincy, and it may just mean more time for a negative pledge situation?

I haven't been following this closely, so I find the cancellation a bit surprising. But I think that any KS over 30 days might be pushing it. Monster was over 30, but they really managed to massage the long period with constant updates and upgrades. Unless you're ready to do what they did, I think 30 days is more than enough.

Hopefully we'll see this back, 30 day KS, and more focused.

-C6

**Vaktathi**

pretre wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:
If I were running a kickstarter, I certainly wouldn't want my project coming up on DakkaDakka.

I think that's misplaced. You do want as much publicity for your KS as possible. Even if some of that is in reference to how it is tracking, people can't pledge if they don't know about it.

Alpharius wrote:
pretre wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:
If I were running a kickstarter, I certainly wouldn't want my project coming up on DakkaDakka.

I think that's misplaced. You do want as much publicity for your KS as possible. Even if some of that is in reference to how it is tracking, people can't pledge if they don't know about it.

Exactly.

In fact, it ignores the core of the problem.

Why did the project backslide?

Because there were scale issues, a very high 'suggested' retail price, and an overall somewhat confusing tone to the whole thing.

Look at Arena Rex , and how well that is doing, regardless of the fact that it is 35mm.

Bottom line - as the biggest wargaming forum on the Internet, you absolutely want your game on Dakka Dakka.

But you absolutely want to have all your ducks in a row first - and not to make Dakka Dakka happy. You need that to have a successful Kickstarter campaign.

At this point, there have been more than enough examples of what works on Kickstarter and what doesn't work...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying some of these projects haven't had issues that may have sunk them anyway regardless, but I also feel (as my own personal subjective arbiter here) that much of the commentary (not necessarily directed directly at either of you guys, just in general) has exacerbated and/or exaggerated many of the issues and "poisoned the well" so to speak in some instances, with a couple instances of threads devolving into either harbingers of doom before a project is even halfway through or veritable online lynchings for a couple pages, really dissuading people from hopping on who might otherwise have done so, and I have not seen the level of vitriol present in some project threads on other sites typically discussing kickstarter projects.

**Alpharius**

I still think you're missing the overall point - this project had problems to begin with first - the 'harbingers of doom' came out a bit later on.

**plastictrees**

Alpharius wrote:
I still think you're missing the overall point - this project had problems to begin with first - the 'harbingers of doom' came out a bit later on.

That sounds like the sort of thing one of those filthy harbingers would say.

**Alpharius**

It does, doesn't it?

All kidding aside - I wanted this one to succeed!

And for a good week or so, it certainly looked like it would.

But when it started losing traction, well, the only person who reasonably could have stopped it seemed to have not reacted quickly or resoundingly enough?

Still, lessons learned and all that, and when he re-launches later on, I think he'll do quite well.

I know I'll be wishing him all the best!

**kenshin620**

Hmm there was a post on April 2nd

Update #30 · Apr 2, 2013
We have a few things in the works to make Thon better and more expansive than ever, some I can share and some I cannot currently. You will love what we have in store, and stay tuned here and on facebook to keep up to date.

Why did I cancel?

There were several reasons, primarily though was that Thon had dropped enough where I was no longer comfortable with how much it would cost me out of pocket, and I know Thon can and will perform much better in a future release. I am dedicated to providing the best possible product, and to rush it would only do us all a disservice.

There were also a number of concerns (msrp, scale, etc.) which I had mostly dismissed. Being an avid gamer, I couldn't imagine producing a game that was incompatible with or not competitively priced with current games. I am a firm believer in showing rather than telling, but a few instances during the campaign led people to doubts, and due to the time pressures, I expected you all to 'trust me' rather than doing what I had been doing over the last year and actually showing you.

I will be better about continuing to address concerns and showing rather than telling.

Thanks,

J.R.

**PsychoticStorm**

I think he learned and gears up for a great reboot.

**warboss**

Unfortuantely, his figs were neither compatible in scale nor competitively priced at his stated MSRPs despite the "trust me" claims. He's got some great ideas and I do hope he addresses those issues as his core ideas and design for the figs seemed like a big breath of fresh air in the scifi minis industry.

**warboss**

While following the AVP kickstarter, this one popped into my head again for the first time in months and I decided to do a quick search. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the development has continued despite the failed kickstarter. Hopefully the creator will address the issues brought up during the campaign (scale and cost to name two) and this will either come to the market via the ever rarer traditional route or have another kickstarter. I'm not sure if this qualifies as "news" so I'll preemptively hit the yield sign to see if mods think it belongs in N&R or misc scifi.

http://www.thonthegame.com/

**Alpharius**

Seems to qualify as "News" for me!

Glad to see this one on the Road to Returning!

**highlord tamburlaine**

There's actually been quite a bit in way of renders besides those two.

Not sure where I saw them now, but I know they're out there.

I honestly hope this one comes back. I'm not super into the scifi stuff usually, but this one had definitely got my attention. Hopefully they get all the scale issues sorted for those that want to use the figures as proxies.

**warboss**

Maybe there is life yet for the moustached 70's porn star butt-plate rockin' Gates of Anteres guy as well!

Ok... that one might be a stretch but I do hope something eventually comes of this game.

**Barzam**

I was very surprised to find an official KS update from them in my inbox this morning. I guess they're looking for a 2014 KS campaign. Hopefully this time it won't backslide. And hopefully I'll still have funds to go at it again.

**Alpharius**

You don't say!

Update #31

Nov 26, 2013
>> THON Update 11/26/2013
2 comments
5 likes

Hey all,

I wanted to give a little update here in case you have not been following us on our webpage www.thonthegame.com or on FB www.facebook.com/thonthegame.

We have been moving forward every day all summer long with huge strides on all fronts. We have tons of new content, the ruleset has been and is currently being tested and tweaked, and will continue to be until we are finished. The extra time afforded to us this summer has only served to strengthen the project and the game overall. We are super excited to show off what's new and what is improved in the coming months.

What's Next?

We still fully intend to offer the game on Kickstarter. We have made some significant changes to the box contents and are currently drafting the revised stretch goals to offer the Highborn earlier, since they proved to be very popular during our first go.

Newsletter

We started sending out our Newsletter, The Knowledge Vault a couple of months ago. Check it out and sign up for monthly updates including new concepts, renders and detailed posts about changes and testing to the game modes; Versus, RPG and SCOMA Battle Arena .

Release Date

We do not have an official launch date yet, but are shooting for next year. We are currently casting some models to get painted up for photos and promo materials for the main book. The painted minis will be the last bit of polish before the re-launch, so keep your eyes on the official site for updates.

Core Book

The main book is just about finished with a few WIP illustrations and concepts that are ready to be dropped in as soon as they are done. It sits at 260 pages currently full-color with tons of background, quickstart rules, skills, game modes, and most importantly, weapons and equipment!

There is a full NPC and mission generator as well as rules for Forging Core Encrypted weapons, some of the most sought after Equipment in the THON universe.

Thanks all who backed us the first time, and stick with us through the holidays and into next year for info on the re-release.

Thanks again, and Stay Connected.

-J.R.

**warboss**

I apparently have mystical powers as I swear that I didn't get any update as I didn't ever pledge on the campaign.

**Alpharius**

You should use some of your powers for good (or maybe evil?) over on that Robotech Kickstarter...

**warboss**

If only... Palladium is immune to my powers of persuasion and imperious to all forms of common sense!