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weeble1000 wrote:

I think it is a good idea to have in mind who the project creator is and why the project creator is using Kickstarter, and then base one's expectations accordingly. In the end, that's all I am pushing for.

That, I would agree with. Having not generally paid it much thought, I personally hadn't considered the ramifications of Kickstarter being used as a risk-free retail development/delivery platform by larger companies and it impacting on smaller ones.

Out of curiosity, do you think people are going to be turned off of Kickstarter in the future as a result? I know there's a fair chunk of kickstarter fatigue about the forum as things stand, and if enough people enter into the kickstarter game with different ideas about the function of the place (treating it more as a retail pre-order and suffering delays and losses from smaller companies), I can only see that growing.

weeble wrote: I think Azazelx's opinions are perfectly reasonable.

Certainly, the position mooted was reasonable, and I never said otherwise. I was addressing the language couching it. This is an interesting discussion, and it would be a shame to see it locked because somebody was prioritising being snarky over being polite and friendly.

 Ketara wrote:

Out of curiosity, do you think people are going to be turned off of Kickstarter in the future as a result? I know there's a fair chunk of kickstarter fatigue about the forum as things stand, and if enough people enter into the kickstarter game with different ideas about the function of the place (treating it more as a retail pre-order and suffering delays and losses from smaller companies), I can only see that growing

Just look at Azazelx's post above. He's already pretty well turned off of Kickstarter.

I think it is happening already, and has been happening slowly for the past couple of years. This thread (and others like it) are evidence of that. I think that, in the TTG market at least (and in particular the miniatures segment of that market), consumer perceptions of Kickstarter are going to get continually more sour as more and more backers discover something unsatisfying about the platform, whether it is long wait times for products, products that fail to meet elevated expectations, uncomfortable alterations in buying habits, and so forth.

The pain will come when companies that have grown overly dependent on Kickstarter begin to see a decline in the utility of the platform. Those who can't return to a normal retail format will be in trouble, but that's a problem you can plan for.

As a consumer I can tell you that from my experience it is immensely more satisfying to order a product and receive it within a reasonable time frame than to back a Kickstarter campaign and be surprised when a package shows up at my door eight months later, if I am lucky. I think that sort of experience has already begun to wear on customers, such as Azazelx. The shine has worn off of Kickstarter already, but I think it will continue to tarnish in the coming years. It does not help that Kickstarter is also having some more general consumer perception issues, and this is exacerbated by fact that these issues are particularly salient with respect to the TTG market.

ced1106 wrote:
Still haven't caught up with the thread but say CMON model doesn't always work for their games, specifically Dogs of War, a direct confrontation Eurogame. Sure, they met their funding goal, but when your boardgame project that should appeal to the Eurogamer audience pulls in less money than the niche miniatures base accessory, you've done something wrong. I'm not entirely ready to say that DoW should have been retail-only, but I think it was not a good fit for their "exclusives and mini's and crowdfunding, oh my" model.

I actually won a copy of DoW on BGG. The game looks great but I do wonder if it really fits CMON, or rather if having CMON as a publisher really fit the game.

I completely agree that Dogs of War was a poor fit for CMoN, but they did fund at $66.7k (rounds to "67k").

Dogs of War required the following molds:
- 4 base Captains
- 4 KS-exclusive Captains (Iago, Apollina, Viscount, Alhazred)
- 4 KS-exclusive troops (footman, arquebusier, knight, warmachine)
- 1 KS-exclusive coins (gold/silver)
Over a dozen molds, and the vast bulk of them are KS-exclusive not for retail. The bulk of the cost was for one-and-done KS production.

What is insane is how they designed the unlocks and such so poorly. This is a game that should have upgraded the paper components to plastic early on. Instead of making someone punch out the house and coins, those should have been upgraded to plastic tokens. 6 colored runs of shields, 2 colored runs of coins. The extra tactic cards and battle boards should have also been added in early. The busts are nice, but the concept is wrong. The player should get 1 bust for the general, and a number of simpler tokens for battles, not several busts per player.

The game went from being an elegant little game with interesting gameplay to a monstrosity of "stuff" that had to be ordered via KS or not at all.

I dropped DOW and am glad to have done so.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

ced1106 wrote:
Still haven't caught up with the thread but say CMON model doesn't always work for their games, specifically Dogs of War, a direct confrontation Eurogame. Sure, they met their funding goal, but when your boardgame project that should appeal to the Eurogamer audience pulls in less money than the niche miniatures base accessory, you've done something wrong. I'm not entirely ready to say that DoW should have been retail-only, but I think it was not a good fit for their "exclusives and mini's and crowdfunding, oh my" model.

I actually won a copy of DoW on BGG. The game looks great but I do wonder if it really fits CMON, or rather if having CMON as a publisher really fit the game.

I completely agree that Dogs of War was a poor fit for CMoN, but they did fund at $66.7k (rounds to "67k").

Dogs of War required the following molds:
- 4 base Captains
- 4 KS-exclusive Captains (Iago, Apollina, Viscount, Alhazred)
- 4 KS-exclusive troops (footman, arquebusier, knight, warmachine)
- 1 KS-exclusive coins (gold/silver)
Over a dozen molds, and the vast bulk of them are KS-exclusive not for retail. The bulk of the cost was for one-and-done KS production.

What is insane is how they designed the unlocks and such so poorly. This is a game that should have upgraded the paper components to plastic early on. Instead of making someone punch out the house and coins, those should have been upgraded to plastic tokens. 6 colored runs of shields, 2 colored runs of coins. The extra tactic cards and battle boards should have also been added in early. The busts are nice, but the concept is wrong. The player should get 1 bust for the general, and a number of simpler tokens for battles, not several busts per player.

The game went from being an elegant little game with interesting gameplay to a monstrosity of "stuff" that had to be ordered via KS or not at all.

I dropped DOW and am glad to have done so.

Yeah, the choices were odd, but I am happy with my copy (got it for free after all!) and the game looks good. It might have been better with another publisher that would have pushed for upgrades of the printed stuff instead of CMON's default mode of MOAR PLAZTICS!!!

KS at fist, seemed like a great way for someone with a good idea to get the funds to make what they want into a reality and "share" in their creation.

At some point there was a measure of success and companies then looked at it as a combination of market research / R&D / extended pre-purchase all rolled in one with the added bonus of relaxed deadlines.

Then various nefarious types looked at it as a quick means to get money while giving little or nothing back.

It is now hard to find those first people which is just some sincere person trying to get a cool idea off the ground: it is lost in all the snake oil salesmen.

I could count myself as one of those who trust very little being offered especially when "burned" many are happy to point out "buyer beware!" when the conditions of the transaction and the kickstarter system itself should be held more accountable.

It may only be an overly cynical viewpoint but why does it seem anything I would be interested in has some nutcase on staff, if not, in charge?

One thing that annoys me the most about Kickstarter, which is really nothing to do with how it works or should work, is the amount of spam you get as a project creator.

In my last campaign, in the first day I had about 30-40 different KS messages from people promising to get my campaign in front of a bajillion people for this or that amount of money. It got real annoying real fast, and I still get "make your next project a success with our help cuz we're awesome" kinds of messages here and there, 6 months later.

Looking back at my list of messages, pretty much all of those old emails say "deleted" next to the username now. Compared to my first campaign for Blachwater Gulch, I don't think I got a single spam message at all.

 Talizvar wrote:
KS at fist, seemed like a great way for someone with a good idea to get the funds to make what they want into a reality and "share" in their creation.

At some point there was a measure of success and companies then looked at it as a combination of market research / R&D / extended pre-purchase all rolled in one with the added bonus of relaxed deadlines.

Then various nefarious types looked at it as a quick means to get money while giving little or nothing back.

It is now hard to find those first people which is just some sincere person trying to get a cool idea off the ground: it is lost in all the snake oil salesmen.

I could count myself as one of those who trust very little being offered especially when "burned" many are happy to point out "buyer beware!" when the conditions of the transaction and the kickstarter system itself should be held more accountable.

It may only be an overly cynical viewpoint but why does it seem anything I would be interested in has some nutcase on staff, if not, in charge?

I'm pretty sure CMoN didn't have the money to bankroll not-SDE and not-Relic Knights out of their own pockets, and Zombicide seems to be something of a question mark, due to the variability of just how big the things are getting. I know ND / SPM didn't have the cash to bankroll SDE v2, and it's obvious that Palladium didn't have Robotech baked out of their own "petty cash" drawer.

For the "first people", I'm very satisfied with my DreamForge Games Leviathan. Kingdom Death : Monster and Journey : Wrath of Demons are both boutique projects that I'm happy to have backed. SDE : Forgotten King is another project I'm happy to have backed.

So far, I haven't been burned, but "relaxed deadlines" on KDM, Robotech, Relic Knights and Ogre DE make me glad that I've got other things on the back burner. Actually made a small dent in the Closet of Shame while waiting for new stuff..

In general, KS seems to be more than a little light on professional project management and editing, but that's what happens when you give an artist a lot of money...

Bull

Who the hell finances a new product with "petty cash?" These companies have an established market, loyal customers, years of sales data, and they don't need to use Kickstarter to put out a product. Several companies, such as Mantic, are actually candid about that.

What you are spewing is pure BS.

 Ketara wrote:


If you're going to be snide and generally unpleasant, at least bother to read the other fellow's post. What he's outlining is a perfectly reasonable perspective, and whilst you're free to disagree with it, one can imagine so many more polite ways to do it than the way you did. Panache, manners, and a healthy dose of Rule 1 cost nothing.

You mean snide and unpleasant like this?:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Hey, whatever, if you prefer the idea of a few established companies running endless overlapping KS campaigns so you can get their stuff at a discount because you can afford to continually blow ludicrous sums of money on "sweet spot" pledges, that's great. For you. Kind of sucks for the people with great ideas that would have enriched TTG overall, or for people who can't afford to stay on the sweet-spot treadmill, but as long as the specific subset of the community that likes spending large sums of money on a system that voids their consumer rights are happy that's all that matters hey?

 Dark Severance wrote:
Miniature gamers would scoff at paying $100 for only 10-20 miniatures, expecting to get 30-40 minis, but board gamers would drop $100 easily for a board game that probably only costs about $25 to print and would eventually retail online for $80-90. Now if that board game had miniatures, that is where the line blurs and the heated discussions start up.

This is very much conjecture, and a bit too broad of a brush painting "boardgamers" as unrealistically altruistic. I've read plenty of posts on BGG where people debating joining in on a KS project weighed it up against getting it at retail for 20-30%+ off

With the example of free shipping, I don't believe companies should be offering free shipping because of the added risk. It used to be one cost for shipping, you needed the backer to enter it but that is slowly changing at least. You can set regions for shipping but not all USA, EU, RoW shipping breaks out into 3 costs, there is a large discrepancy. It cost me $25 to send a box that was fairly small, less than 2lbs to London the other day. That same box coming back only cost them $8. It would cost me $25 to send it to Canada (I'm in the US) but I can send it overseas to Guam for $5. I actually believe the safest method is to give estimate of shipping costs, let your backers know, but then charge the actual amount after the KS campaign ends. I've seen too many campaigns get inflated because of 30% of the dollars is just shipping costs from backers but the project looks like they are getting much more money. As a small company when someone asks for free shipping, they should be upfront and honest that they can't but will try to reduce costs as much as they can and meet people half way. It isn't an unreasonable request and I do understand larger companies and some companies 'masking free shipping' into their costs, makes customers not understand that. It shouldn't force a company to make a bad decision and eat unwarranted costs though, potentially putting them in a bad situation. If it means a project didn't fund because of it... then those may not be the target backers a company would really want or would help grow the business in the end.

Shipping is an interesting one. While I perfectly understand the need for creators, especially smaller companies to cover their costs, with larger companies who regularly offer free worldwide shipping for retail purchases of $xx.xx+ or £xx.xx it gets pretty interesting. Especially when their products can be bought for equal or less than the KS price down the line anyway (including from retailers who offer free shipping). There's something going on there, and I'm not sure what it is exactly. Obviously UK companies like Mantic use the 20% VAT regment of their RRP to cover much of the postage costs, but you also see it with creator/retailers like SWM and Flying Frog.

weeble1000 wrote:

I think there's still a lot of good that comes from Kickstarter. What disappoints me is the combination of companies that do not want to use Kickstarter feeling as though they have to use Kickstarter in order to survive and startup companies that want to use Kickstarter declining to do so because they feel like they can't survive if they use the platform.

I think it is perfectly fair for Azazelx to demand a discount over MSRP in exchange for the loss of guarantee that comes with Kickstarter. That's an informed opinion. And if Azazelx doesn't want to float his money out to companies that may not deliver, that's also a perfectly reasonable opinion.

But what I do not like is when folks apply Azazelx's very reasonable MSRP discount expectations to a project that would otherwise not see retail release. (Note I am not saying Azazelx does this)

I think it is a good idea to have in mind who the project creator is and why the project creator is using Kickstarter, and then base one's expectations accordingly. In the end, that's all I am pushing for. I think Azazelx's opinions are perfectly reasonable.

It all depends on the project and the creators for something like this. I'm not willing to pay boutique pricing levels for KS projects because of the risk and usual endless delays, but for "regular" items I do expect a price break if the creator also sells items to other retailers. If "Creator" already sells their product(s) to distributors and retailers to then be sold at RRP, than I see it as a fair enough expectation that I'm not asked to pay retail, or even retail-10% for their KSed items. In these cases, I would like - as a backer giving significant amounts of money (a long time) upfront, I think paying wholesale for product (whatever the exact product) is a fair enough expectation if those same products are also going to be sold wholesale to merchants resulting in a profit for the creator. This is pretty much where Mantic and CMoN seem to still charge close enough to retail, but offset it with "value added" extra figures - with those figures again valued at RRP.

With smaller units like Stonehaven Miniatures, I'm personally much less picky on "value" since they are a startup with very little in the way of reach - though if I go for the "big" pledge I still expect a price break of some kind, since I probably won't use all of their models/widgets/whatever - this is their trade-off for getting people to pledge more money - less profit per unit.

Still, since CMoN and Mantic choose to use the platform in this way - as proxy-preorders, (and in CMoN's case - the only way to get a huge proportion of product that are exclusives that have a very meaningful effect on gameplay) when I back their projects, I do have rather different expectations to a Stonehaven Miniatures.

Hwang's little quote here actually sums up the CMoN pattern rather succinctly.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

The game went from being an elegant little game with interesting gameplay to a monstrosity of "stuff" that had to be ordered via KS or not at all.

 Ketara wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

I think Azazelx's opinions are perfectly reasonable.

Certainly, the position mooted was reasonable, and I never said otherwise. I was addressing the language couching it. This is an interesting discussion, and it would be a shame to see it locked because somebody was prioritising being snarky over being polite and friendly.

To be frank, I found Yodhrin's language and tone to be unnessecarily unpleasant and combative, as well as rather ad hominem - so my reply was combative in reply. Hopefully we're past that now.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
and Zombicide seems to be something of a question mark, due to the variability of just how big the things are getting

Zombicide is fine out of the box. If you play with a base game you still get and spawn plenty of zombies, and each game adds a bunch of a new zombie type, plus the season boxes add more normal zombies.

I'd say the biggest problem with the game is that it lacks a variety of survivors, but that's limited to if you only buy one box. Once you've bought a couple of the seasons and/or expansions, you have a lot of survivors (and the next season comes with a whopping 12).

What they do on kickstarter is overload people on zombies with a couple of unique squlpts, which is good if you want games spawning dozens of them (and these get released at retail anyway, some of the unique sculpts included), and add a bunch of one off pop culture reference survivors (like the entire cast of Big Bang Theory). The games themselves don't need what they're doing extra in the kickstarters.

@Loki - I agree with what you wrote about Zombicide being fine OOTB. I have the basic boxes for S2 and S3:
- 18 Survivors
- 3 types of Zombies (regular, Berzerker & Skinner)
With the other 12 Zombivors coming, along with the remaining dashboards, that will be plenty "enough" to play for the foreseeable future, with or without the homage characters.

FYI, my comment was really more with the backer count growing.from 5,200 to 8,900 to 12,000 - the growth is hard to predict and plan for. They don't want to undersell and leave money on the table. But flooding with too many copies is even worse.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
@Loki - I agree with what you wrote about Zombicide being fine OOTB. I have the basic boxes for S2 and S3:
- 18 Survivors
- 3 types of Zombies (regular, Berzerker & Skinner)
With the other 12 Zombivors coming, along with the remaining dashboards, that will be plenty "enough" to play for the foreseeable future, with or without the homage characters.

FYI, my comment was really more with the backer count growing.from 5,200 to 8,900 to 12,000 - the growth is hard to predict and plan for. They don't want to undersell and leave money on the table. But flooding with too many copies is even worse.

No, no it isn't "hard" to predict or account for. Companies have to do this all of the time, and Zombicide is a product that has always been intended for widespread, long-term retail distribution and ongoing product support (this is a good thing). You think CMoN is biting their nails trying to decide whether to order 5K or 10K units of Zombicide? That's absurd. Maybe with the initial release of Season 1 this was something of an issue, but CMoN has warehouse space, does direct online retailing, and has established relationships with distributors.

It isn't a guy in his living room trying to decide where he is going to store 1,000 surplus units and biting his nails about whether he can afford to pay for warehouse space while trying to offload the remainder via retail. So please, don't act like Kickstarter is somehow necessary for a mature company with plenty of retail experience to make informed decisions about manufacturing. Companies have to take risks all of the time.

Mature companies like CMoN love Kickstarter because you take on the risks. Let's at least be honest about that.

weeble1000 wrote:
These companies have an established market, loyal customers, years of sales data, and they don't need to use Kickstarter to put out a product. Several companies, such as Mantic, are actually candid about that.

At best you're mostly mistaken about what Mantic have said.

weeble1000 wrote:
<snip>...It isn't a guy in his living room trying to decide where he is going to store 1,000 surplus units and biting his nails about whether he can afford to pay for warehouse space while trying to offload the remainder via retail. So please, don't act like Kickstarter is somehow necessary for a mature company with plenty of retail experience to make informed decisions about manufacturing. Companies have to take risks all of the time.
Mature companies like CMoN love Kickstarter because you take on the risks. Let's at least be honest about that.

This I agree with, maybe not so much the aggressive wording.
I am afraid that companies will use Kickstarter as their main product launch platform and will bury the average joe offerings.
From my corporate viewpoint, it seems like the perfect platform: "You want to see this product hit the shelves? Buy now! You will get it for sure some year...".
There have been some interesting failures in Kickstarter but the main ones I have been involved in all had timeline issues and general project management / communication fumbling.
It feels like KS has grown beyond it's system capabilities (ie. loopholes, exploits, abuse showing up more) so may need further updates to address weaknesses.

I AM glad people are getting things they are happy with, it means the original intent of the system is being met and in our case as gamers these are good times.