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Craig and Russ are extremely excited to be joined by the godfather of miniature war gaming himself: Mr. Rick Priestly in the third chair!

Up first we ask Rick all kinds of questions about his latest project: Beyond the Gates of Antaries! What is the goal of this new miniature war game? How is it like his past works? What's new and different?

Later Craig and Russ dive into Sedition Wars, a brand new hybrid miniature board game.

All that and our other not-too-horrible segments including:
- Total Fan Girl
- Do You Ever Notice
- News
- Listener Resolutions
- & More

Link to the episode:
http://www.thed6generation.com//d6g-ep-120-rick-priestly-beyond-the-gates-of-antares-sedition-wars-detailed-review

Please let us know what you thought of the show?

Wow, I really need to jump on this GoA kickstarter!

oh...wait...

Looking forward to seeing if my phone call makes it to the show.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yeah, the audio issues really hurt. I could barely make out much of what Rick said during the GoA segment. Not looking foward to trying to make it through the rest of the episode, but I'll keep plugging away at it.

Barring the audio issue, great episode..

I hope for the best for the GoA kickstarter. I kind of like the idea of contributor involvement. In fact, come next paycheck I plan to provide some backing and see if I can come up with some ideas or something.

1. Audio Issues: When I first heard Cra.... Geekly McNerdigan after the warning I thought it would be terrible, but as the podcast progressed I was able to adjust to it and it wasn't a problem. You made the right call going ahead. I think it was easier to understand Rick than it was Spartan Neil when he was a guest.

2. Sedition Wars:
a) When I received my box I went on record saying I didn't see any warpage. After listening to this episode I've taken out a board and left it on a table and I can confirm what you've reported. A couple of the corners are slowly warping upwards. So far it's not as bad as you experienced (a model isn't going to slide). Unfortunately, I haven't had an opportunity to get an actual game in yet, so I hadn't noticed this before.
b) From some of Russ' comments during the review it seems like he intended to mention the complexity of the figures, but don't recall him addressing it. Needless to say, the figures are far more complex than what I expect from a board game, but shouldn't be an issue for a miniature wargamer.

3. BGoA / Kickstarter / Did ya ever notice
To me a miniatures game is about the miniatures. Rules are a dime a dozen and honestly: how many wargamers do you know who haven't tried to develop their own rules set, or at least modify an existing set? Rules just aren't something I can get excited about buying. I think that's the fundamental reason BGoA is progressing so differently from Sedition Wars. Sedition Wars was based on miniatures I already knew about. I had actually come very close to buying Morgan and some vanguard individually before the Kickstarter had been announced. Once Battle for Alabaster had been announced it was a no-brainer for me. I didn't have to be convinced of the quality of the models, since I had already wanted to get some. Furthermore, they can fit into a generic hard sci-fi setting, which mean they can be easily used for other games (e.g. rpgs). So the value was there with just the models. The game could have been complete garbage and I wouldn't have felt hard done by.

Rick, on the other hand is trying to sell his miniatures game based principally on the rules. I've seen one green and some concept art. They've also planned for a one year lead time (minimum, all kickstarters are late. Sorry Craig). How do you drum up enthusiasm for something you haven't seen and won't be getting for at least a year. If the miniatures are what people really want then this is disastrous.

Rules are important, but I assert they're important in a particular way. Liking a rule set isn't as important as who's playing it. Sure, we all have rules we'd rather play and we try to convince our friends to play them. But, in the end we all play what everyone else plays. Why else are there so many people who hate GW/40k still playing it? This is shaky ground for a new entrant. Nobody, by definition, is already playing a brand new rule set. Rick's been smart about releasing his alpha version as early as possible and building up a community, but I don't know if this will be enough. In my humble internet opinion if you plan on releasing a full miniature wargame you should follow Mantic's example. Solid miniatures first, then a rules set that fits those miniatures. And just like Mantic and McVey the early miniatures should have multiple uses.

Explanation for all the edits: I didn't preview before posting and keep finding stupid typos that I correct one at a time.

I like to think of miniatures games as 1 part concrete and 2 parts abstract.

1 part concrete = the miniatures
2 parts abstract = the rules and the fluff

You also need things to be run by someone with a head for business, but I’m not sure how to add that to my simple equation just yet.

For a mini game to be successful long term it needs all three of those parts to be good (or at least not horrible). As far as kickstarters go, miniatures games need to mainly have good miniatures and everything else is secondary.

Boardgames rely heavily on the miniatures and the rules, so the fluff is really not as important. Rules for boardgames are often released for free as the company is just looking to make money off the physical game and not the IP/rules. These kickstarters can do well if they have good “concrete” aspects and the company is open about the “abstract” elements. The games that seem to do best have already done a TON of work and have a mock-up of the physical game available to show potential backers.

Kickstarters for companies that are just trying to make miniatures can do well if the “concrete” items they have are either really awesome or a good value or a mixture of both. The kickstarters do well if they have good minis already sculpted and good concept art for everything else. Also, if it is a company with proven success prior to kickstarting a project, then that helps.

I think GoA had issues because they were a new company with no track record (the individuals in the company have good track records, but not their gestalt) and no “concrete” items to drive miniatures gamers’ love of…miniatures. The fluff sounded fine and the rules sounded fine, but they didn’t have the total package to drive them to their (way too high) goal.

If they decide to plug away at the project during 2013 and keep developing the rules, fluff and most importantly the miniatures, then if they try another kickstarter much later in the year or even next year with a more reasonable goal, then I think they’ll do a good job.

As I think about miniature games more and reflect back on my 15+ years in the hobby, I feel like with this digital age we are in the rules for mini games should be free and should serve as a device to spur the sales of the miniatures. This is what Rick said Warhammer started out as, and I wish it still was like that. I don’t feel like spending $100 every few years for rules to keep playing a game and have that investment become almost completely worthless in less than 5 years. It’s a bad investment. Whereas if I buy $100 in minis every few years to update an army then I’ll still have them and can use them however I want later on and they will retain much more value than the money spent on rules.




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Also, my call didn't make it this episode! Darn, now another two week wait to see if I win....

I notice GoA has been withdrawn from Kickstarter, which is probably a good thing for the project. Listening to Rick talk about it on the show perked my interest, whereas looking at the Kickstarter page just left me wondering why Rick was prostituting himself with the offer of dinner as a stretch goal.

Craig's comment about the overheard conversation pretty much sums up the problem with Kickstarter.

For some reason there is this idea in gaming that stuff such be cheap, and if it isn't cheap then it should be free. Add to this a certain snobbishness - a bag of 99p plastic army men fulfills this requirement, yet what is demanded is novelty.

The 'successful' Kickstarter's have matched this expectation, but I am left wondering how much profit, for instance, Reaper made on the Bones offering - $3.4million sounds like a lot of money, but when the 10-15% commission to Kickstarter is taken out, maybe not so much.

Going forward if it raised the profile of the company, which in turn leads to an increase in sales, then it is a positive. Though I doubt the companies advertising budget is anywhere near the price they paid to Kickstarter.

I find myself agreeing with Craig's skepticism as to whether Kickstarter is the force for good in gaming that some claim. Particularly in areas in which gaming is focused on the FLGS.


btw...

I find it amusing how the comments above me are telling Craig 'the fluff writer' how his work is meaningless and he should do it for nothing.

Good comments, guys! Very thoughtful.

Interestingly enough, bbb and marielle, no offense taken

Use Spartan Games as an example. Much of their rules are coming out free as PDFs, and pretty much all of the fluff they have is free online. And I'll tell you from experience, they still pay you as the writer, even if they're giving it away for free

One thing is for sure, guys. The next year or so will be very interesting to watch, as far as Kickstarter goes.

But seriously . . . anyone else see those Sci Fi coins? I jumped on that one, baby!

Despite my current record with Kickstarter: JimmyJango didn't fund, I was too late trying to jump on Bones, and . . . well . . . the terrain one . . . let's just see the latest problem I'm having with the guy is that he just announced he's making a bunch of dice towers for Rivet Wars! I mean, great for Rivet Wars, but . . . seriously .. .. . ?

So I'm still very much on the fence about the whole thing . . . while at the same time perhaps hypocritically fixated on one specific one at the moment

~Craig

 marielle wrote:
btw...

I find it amusing how the comments above me are telling Craig 'the fluff writer' how his work is meaningless and he should do it for nothing.

Not what I was saying at all. I think for a miniatures game to have long term success you need a combination of all three elements (miniatures, rules and fluff) and then behind all that you need a good business mind. I think that like boardgames, the rules for miniatures games should be freely available so people can easily learn to play the game and use that information to guide their purchase of more miniatures.

As far as the fluff, I don't think that should be given away for free necessarily, but I think it should be split off from the rules, so that if you just want the rules you don't have to pay for the extra stuff. I completely support the idea of paying for novels or sourcebooks or art books or whatever, as those are fun things that help players dive into the world more, but if you just want to play the game and buy miniatures, then free rules would help with that.

I'd like to see GW move to a model where they release updated versions of army lists digitally at the beginning of every year so that everyone can start off on the same page and have access to the same info. They could still follow their model of releasing new models in waves for each army along with maybe a sourcebook which would have a bunch of fluff and hobby content in it, but that you wouldn't have to buy to get the rules. I doubt it will happen, but I think it would be a cool way to keep the game fresh and accessible to a wider audience.

Great episode guys!

I have to say I agree with craig on some of his observations about KS. I mean its great that some of these companies want to give away a crate of miniatures for little cost, but then when another company comes around and doesnt do that everyone gets up in arms saying they are trying to cheat them

So do tell Russ, how exactly did you record that first segment?

Was that like speaker phone conference call recorded onto an external mic or something? Just wondering!


Craig:

I think you have to take each particular kickstarter individually. I don't think you can lump them all together and say the whole thing is going to collapse upon itself. There certainly would and will be blowback if a high profile gaming KS fails to deliver, but even then I don't think it would completely kill the concept...its just too powerful and useful to simply go away.

You mention that a big company could get taken down by KS...that really isn't likely. Even if they over-extend themselves, they'd simply dip into their existing coffers to finish off the project or (more likely) get additional funding from an outside source. For example, in the video game world, Double-Fine raised 3.3 million for a game they originally were asking like 300,000 for. But once they got that total they decided they wanted to make a really great game, so even with that huge budget surplus they still realized they wouldn't be able to finish the game they now wanted to make. So they've leveraged the fact that they have other assets (other profit streams they can tap into) to allocate some of their own money into finishing the project. I think the same thing would happen if a 'major' gaming company over-extended themselves.

Now, you wonder if this even makes financial success because all the KS sales over-saturate your core market and you have nothing left to sell (such as in your con bathroom experience)...while it is true that your 'core' has now purchased the product, the reality is as GW well knows from its behavior, there is a much larger market out there than those 'alpha' gamers who buy everything at cons and on KS. Once you've got that product made, you're still going to be making sales from that point on from the product. Yes, you may find that at cons the product no longer flies off the shelf, but that is really immaterial, as the much larger audience that doesn't come to cons is still out there potentially waiting to purchase the product (provided it is good).

Gates of Antares failed IMHO, not because gamers were spoiled by other mini-kickstarters, but rather because miniature games are primarily about miniatures...just ask anyone who plays 40k because of the look of the models and not so much because of the rules. So to ask for an extremely huge sum of money but give no real indication of what models people are going to get for their money (no, 3 sculpts do not cut it) is never going to fly, no matter what names are involved. There is literally nobody in the industry that could have pulled that off without showing some work.

The GoA guys have said that they were following more of a video game KS format. I get what they're saying to a degree...the Double-fine KS that raised 3 million+ was done completely on pedigree (absolutely no work started on the game until after the KS), but the vast majority of video game KS *do* have a significant amount of pre-conceptualization done before they launch the project. Even Peter Molyneux, who is a legendary name in video games looked like his KS was going to fail so he was desperately scrounging a demo version of the game together as the KS went on to try to get the message out about what the game would actually look and play like.

So I believe that KS, even its purest form will never be, and should never be simply about saying: 'I've got a great idea, give me money'. Those types of projects almost always fail. Instead, the creators need to put time, money and effort into their project FIRST to show that they're committed and to give a better idea of what the finished project will look like, and only then should KS be used essentially to raise completion funds...kind of the same way an inventor traditionally would have spent a ton of his time and money inventing a product before going to the bank or a venture capitalist to get a loan in order to be able to start mass producing his product.

If he just shows up to the meeting with the potential investor with a sketch on a napkin, he gets laughed out of the building. But if he has spent the time and money to make a prototype, then all of a sudden he will be able to secure the funds he needs. GoA essentially came into the room with a napkin sketch and a celebrity endorsement and was asking for a half a million.

I think surely the 'pre-order' KS stretch goals have certainly spoiled certain gamers, but at the end of the day I am really, really confident that quality will always, always succeed. Yeah, a really awesome game that doesn't offer insane stretch goals might not break the 2 million mark that Kingdom Death did, but if it is a GOOD game, showing off good quality concept miniatures, then there will always be a market to succeed on Kickstarter, no matter what.

I have to agree with Yakface. The Kickstarter for games phenomenon will not go away any time fast. As far as GoA not funding, I think the lack of models really hurt the project's chances to fund. I have not played a game of 40K in over a decade, but i still paint the mini's. At the core, models typically sell the systems for tabletop games. A gamer can always use pretty mini's for a different ruleset if they dig the look or vibe of the models.

As far as greed in gaming, I see your point. I backed WWX with just the initial offering. I assume unlocks will be there, but they are not a primary focus. I see the project for what it is, decide if it looks good to me and then either back or avoid it.

I have actual made a point of avoiding Kickstarter forums after the bad taste the Through The Breach Malifaux RPG Kickstarter left in my mouth. I backed that project because I want to see that ruleset. If you looked at the forums, there was a large contingent of complainers on there whinging about how stretch goals were not giving away enough free content or minis, how the backer levels getting freebies were unfair, or how the freebies were not cross compatible enough with the Malifaux skirmish game. Yes, they were actually whining that unlocks for the RPG did not add enough value to a completely different product.

Were these people the majority? No, probably not, but as the internet has shown us all too many times, the vocal minority is often viewing themselves as the majority and "speak for all of us" when they complain and fight for our needs.

Gamers want freebies and added value. That is fine. I just cringe when I see some of the entitlement that we think that engenders.

Oh, and as an aside, I had to run a teacher's conference when I was in grad school. That feeding frenzy for cookies and snacks was a sight to behold. Tyranids have nothing on a teacher with a tote bag.

 marielle wrote:


I find it amusing how the comments above me are telling Craig 'the fluff writer' how his work is meaningless and he should do it for nothing.

That's completely off base. I have in my hands a copy of the Firestorm Armada hardback which I paid good money for. Somewhere I have a copy of the original softcover which I also paid good money for. However, I bought the miniatures before I bought the books. I never argued that rules have no value, or that they should be free. Rules are not the vehicle for developing your playerbase. That doesn't mean they should be neglected. It only means that your initial miniatures line should take priority over the rules if you intend on producing and marketing a comprehensive (miniatures + books) miniature wargame. If Spartan only produced rules none of us would have ever heard of them.

*I notice that Craig isn't listed in the Firestorm book, but the point still stands.

 Specs wrote:
If Spartan only produced rules none of us would have ever heard of them.

Indeed and that says much about the learned helplessness prevalent in wargaming at present.

An example of which is the people who complain to Warlord that they cannot buy from Warlord figures listed in the Hail Ceasar army lists.

 Master-Terraformer wrote:


So I'm still very much on the fence about the whole thing . . . while at the same time perhaps hypocritically fixated on one specific one at the moment

~Craig

...and, I'd imagine, pretty excited at how it's progressing. I recall your apprehension on a previous episode based upon the relatively low amount of the Blackwater Gulch KS funding total. I'm happy to see how WWX is progressing! I'm trying to figure out a way to jump in w/o my wife killing me!

Longtime listener Juan here, so longtime that I can't remember the login I used back in the day. I always love listening to WHAT'S IN THE NEWS because I think that I helped cement the fact that Wakelin has a high squeaky voice when compared to the NEWS ANNOUNCER. (Your mileage may vary.)

Thanks so much for mentioning the Warzone page. I am a Warzone fan. In fact, back in '96 it moved me from just a card, board, and RPG gamer into a wargamer. We would play a Warzone game, check in with the 40k guys (turn 1; someone lost initiative, looks bad for them), play another Warzone game, check in with 40k (turn 2; the lost initiative guy is still dying slowly, unless he was playing Eldar), and so forth. I loved that game, although we had "understandings" about what we would do for force composition to avoid some of the less balanced elements.

The link that Ru...the News Guy mentioned has converted to a kickstarter page for a Warzone relaunch. I curse myself for making that $500 back when I sold my Warzone armies when I had no fellow players out here in Southern Oregon. Despite my best efforts to resist, I'm backing the project for a book and two starter armies, even though they're shipping from the UK. If the news guy is interested, I'll toss any update information at you the day before you record if there's anything interesting going on. (Out of curiosity, about what day DO you record the news segments?)

So Craig wins this edition of Kickstarter Deathmatch!

Both this episode and the one on adult themed games are exactly what the D6G does best.

I share Craig's scepticism over Kickstarter. The strategy most often used seems to be to sell the Kickstarter at close to break even and then to make your real profit on the items that you sell to retailers or on your own website. This strategy isn't necessarily a bad one, as long as you are sure that there is going to be on-going demand for that product. If there isn't (or even worse people back your miniatures Kickstarter for a few models out of a large selection and then dump the remainder on Ebay) then you have gone through that entire process for very little gain, or even a loss if you haven't got all your costs correct. In an ideal world a couple of Kickstarters should (in my opinion) allow a successful business to raise the capital to go down more traditional routes to market.

All that said, I was very happy with my copy of Sedition Wars. One final point about the ratings of these hybrid mini/board games. I think that you have been very consistent and fair in your (relatively poor) ratings for Dreadfleet, Sedition Wars and Super Dungeon Explore. If they were to be labelled up as miniature games on the box would that help both the ratings and people's expectations?

@Yakface: Recording method... yep, that's pretty much what I ended up doing. The sound board died litterally 5 minutes before go live with Rick, and that was my only option! So basically I played Rick and Craig through my laptop speakers and recorded everthing via the laptop mic, and then did what little I could in post to remove background noice. Ugh. I'm just glad it was reasonably listenable.

@Juan: Happy to mention Warzone, very excited to see what happens with it. Honestly I never was a big fan, but I had a lot of friends who were.

@Holdenstein: Re: Our low ratings for hybrid games. I think both Craig and I ding these hybrid games more because so many great board games are so well packaged and ready to play. It would be very hard to give Sedition Wars or SDE the same rating as a Small World, Lords of Waterdeep, or Descent. Zombicide may be the exception that proves the rule. If these hybrid games CAN make a complete game then I think it would rock. Again good examples might be Descent, the Gears of War board game and Zombicide. Great models, great rules, great package.

Another fine episode, even with audio issues. The audio issues made it sound like it was over a vox system of some sort, so it added versus detracted.

Looking at the KS issue, I have to think about my personal habits and how others might be like-minded. I bought in at a level for two different KS's where I get two of the starting faction. Both have amazing stretch goals figures. When they are delivered, I may find myself wanting more of the different factions. I can affirm that I really want one of the other factions for one of them (yeah, I want three factions...I hoard models.) already without knowing how effective they play. While this may not help in the storefronts just as a KS gets going, it may be something that adds to longevity. I am fairly certain that no one starts a KS as their one and done.

Really enjoyed the show, all very interesting.

I'm begining to wonder just how all the 'big' kickstarter projects (Relic Knights etc) are actually going to fair once they actually ship?

In the real world they are going to have to fight for shelf space in your FLGS with all the other games already there. The store owner is going to be taking a bit of a risk if they decided to stock the game, sure all the people in the kick starter will have models to play with, but they probably won't be buying more, so only people that missed the KS will be picking up starters etc...

Will be interesting to see what happens as the year progresses.

In recent episode of the D6 Generation Podcast (ep120 Do you ever notice) we heard Craig Gallant talking about the rise of Kickstarter in boardgaming and the number of components being offered for seemingly little cost.

It would seem that companies might be making very little money sending us all those lovely components as stretch goals. After all, injection molds cost squidzillions of dollars.
Perhaps, though, things aren't that grim. Lets compare the current kickstarter trend with an established "high production" boardgame:
Fantasy Flight Starcraft
This was published in 2007 with an RRP of $79.95
well it is 2013 now so I'll add 50% to that (to well and truly factor in inflation) and call it $120

for you $120 you get:

• Rulebook
• 180 Plastic Units
• 12 Planet Tiles
• 15 Normal Navigation Routes
• 12 Z-axis Navigation Routes
• 1 Conquest Point Track
• 6 Conquest Point Markers
• 6 Faction Sheets
• 6 Reference Sheets
• 1 First Player Token
• 54 Order Tokens
• 36 Base Tokens
• 90 Worker Tokens
• 42 Transport Tokens
• 40 Building Tokens
• 38 Module Tokens
• 12 Starting Planet Tokens
• 20 Depletion Tokens
• 26 Resource Cards
• 108 Combat Cards
• 126 Technology Cards
• 22 for each Zerg Faction
• 20 for each Protoss Faction
• 21 for each Terran Faction
• 70 Event Cards
• 25 Stage I
• 25 Stage II
• 20 Stage III
Now bear in mind that FF don't get $120, they wholesale the game and probably charge 50-60% of the RRP lets call it $72.00

Now if you were offered a kickstarter on this game it might start off with 50 figures and be $80
with stretch goals this figure might be in the $120 range
The point here is that the game can be manufactured and sold for $72 and still turn a profit (providing enough units are sold)

Lets assume (sorry we are using that word a bit but I'm espousing a theory here) that our kickstarter manufacturer always intended to manufacture (and costed) 180 plastic units. They can happily trot these out as stretch goals, building excitement for the higher price point and guaranteeing sales units and income.

When it come to the economics of the beast, we can see that a kickstarter seller might be doing better than a traditional sales model too:

Traditional sales model: (RRP $120)
Wholesale price ($72)
- Manufacturing *
- shipping (from manufacturing)*
- taxes*
- Shipping to distributors

Kickstarter sales model:
Kickstarter price ($120)
- Kickstarter fees (5%)
- amazon payments fee (or similar)
- manufacturing*
- Shipping (from manufacturing)*
- taxes*
- shipping to customers
+ (possibly shipping charge on kickstarter)
- Distribution charges

the starred item are constants in both cases

As a bonus the kickstarter encourages you to buy extra "shiny" models at the same time (and often offing dubious value) increasing profitabilty and decreasing the shipping/income ratio.

To my eye it would seem that the Kickstarter board games do not offer extreme value for money. Sure we are offered lots of models as "Stretch Goals" but I'm sure that those items have already been costed into the product before they are offered. Any stretch goals that are not met simply increase the profit of the game.

I have backed plenty of Kickstarters myself:
Sedition Wars, Dreadball, Kingdom Death, Reaper Bones, Rivet wars and spent lots of dollars, but I'm forced to ask myself: If I saw that board game sitting on a shelf with 180 figures and a price tag of $300 (which I have easily paid for some of these games) would I buy it? No way! As it is I have spent more than $300 on a Kickstarter game that has (so far) less than 100 figures.

Is there a danger of a large company losing its shirt over one of these kickstarters? maybe. The biggest risk I can see here is that many kickstarters fund at a low dollar figure. If the funds topped out at just over, say $10,000 then I think the company would be taking a big loss.

Great episode ! Great interview with Mr Preistly . Always great to hear from the designers , the mans a legend

I had a similar epiphany to Craig about Kickstarter after I had to click "View All" on the kickstarter dropdown because it couldn't show all my backed projects anymore. I've just backed Rivet Wars and Ream Works and am currently backing Wild West Exodus, Superfight and The Longest Journey and was also looking at the new Zombicide season. They seem to be happening more and more and I can see why companies would want to do it.

As I was thinking about it, I realized that miniature/board games have a sort of unique situation. If you're making a video game or a documentary, the number of backers doesn't really affect your production cost much. It's just another mailed envelope with a DVD in it, which is negligible compared with the cost they're putting in for backing. You can hire more engineers, film more content and the cost doesn't really go up based on the number of products you have to produce. It's not like that for hobby games. If you want to add another model to the game, that jacks up the cost of every backer's reward.

There's also another issue I'm seeing which worries me a little bit and that is companies using Kickstarter as a pre-order system. This is how I felt when I saw the new Zombicide Kickstarter. The pledge costs are basically MSRP. Coolmini doesn't seem to be using this to get a project started that wouldn't have happened otherwise, they're just getting pre-orders way in advance. I could see why they would want to do that, but it makes it a little harder to tell one project from another.

Pre-orders with bonuses have been around for a long time, they just used to be done through newsletters. This might be the new form they take.

Gates of Antares was trying to fund a new company and all the costs associated with it. Sculptors, writers and who knows if also included office space and whatnot. That's not a problem, but it makes it hard to compare apples to apples with something like Coolmini doing Rivet Wars or Zombicide 2 who clearly have nearly all the sculpting done by the time they get to the Kickstarter phase.

For whatever reason, I feel like Kickstarter's purpose is for people to help fund a new project. It puts me off a little bit when it feels like an obvious cash grab. Some seem like they are trying to hit as much of the target market in the initial wave before reviews can come out. This also cuts out the FLGS. Both Zombicide 2 and WWX felt a little like this to me. WWX initially had some add-ons for ~80% of MSRP. I thought, wait a minute, they're going to sell that to gaming stores for even cheaper than that and still make a profit when they're done. Something about that rubs me the wrong way when I'm putting up cash up front. I wrote them a message to that affect and they have since added a discount, but it still leaves a bad taste.

It will be interesting to see how these factors contribute to the gaming industry going forward, but I can tell that it will be a huge trap for those who don't plan properly. Someone's going to promise add-ons that they didn't calculate properly and then who knows what will happen.

My friend Erin Robinson who is an independent video game developer was on the show on Nicole's segment. She really hates Kickstarter. I thought that was odd for an indie game developer since I thought that they would love any funding they can get but she really hates that it can give people access to money so easily without much effort and when they fail, it makes the whole industry look bad. She says that board games have a much more tightly knit community to keep people honest, but I hope the same thing doesn't happen to us.

Guys, I would just like to say a big thank you! Your podcast keeps me going whilst serving in the armed forces. It's a great way to get my wargaming kicks :-)

However, I can't help feeling jealous everytime I hear you guys talk about zombicide I've managed to jump on season 2, but I'm desperate to get a hold of Dave and frank from season 1. So if you guys know of anyone who bought a couple of them, I'd be eternally greatful if you pointed them my way

Cheers guys (hope that didn't come across too rude or blunt)

Hey, guys. Sorry I missed all the great discussion! Vacation, and the rush up to same, kept me away.

All made great points. We'll see what happens with Kickstarter . . . I'm not sure I said it would go away, or fail . . . and I'm not sure I agree with myself if I said some major company WOULD fail (I still think they COULD . . . God knows Kickstarter gives you enough rope) . . . but I do think it could be dangerous for a new or mid-sized company.
On the other hand, the unmentionable running that terrain kickstarter I did should be shunned . . . and yet is getting contracts with CMON, is on a PAX-East discussion panel on terrain, etc . . . so although he SHOULD be strung up . . . instead, he's getting all the lauds he desired.

Which reminds me of something totally off topic, but sort of relevant: I was speaking with a very well known author a LONG time ago (WEB Griffon, ie William Butterworth . . . he was a trustee for my college), and he warned us all that there was a world of difference between someone who wanted to write . . . and someone who wanted to be a writer. People who want to write write, and they do whatever they have to do to do so, and they do it as often and as much as they can. People who want to be a writer spend all their time thinking about how great it would be to make money at it, or be a celeb at a con, signing books etc, and . . . generally don't write. This guy REALLY wants to be a 'Gaming Industry Insider' . . . he just apparently doesn't want to do the WORK of a Gaming Industry Insider . . .

Anyway, thanks for all the great comments, guys!

~Craig

I want to focus on the Kickstarter bathroom conversation. I have spent a bit of time thinking about gaming kickstarters and how they make me feel both when I am a backer and when I choose not to be and also when I completely miss one that now has publicly available product I've heard postive things about.

When sent a survey from Frog God Games in response to my backing of Razor Coast, they asked what I felt about the ways they might do future products and whether kickstarter was the way to go. I described my feeling as Kickstarter-fatigue. I'm tired of it and have negative reactions to it for the most part now. If I do back something nowadays it is with a sigh and lack of excitement. It's a matter of making a purchase and hedging my bet as for me, if I wait I fear regret.

You see, if I miss a kickstarter, I generally don't want the product no matter the good press and glowing reviews. I feel like I missed out already and just wished they had published the thing in a traditional way so I could evaluate it in a traditional way and make my purchase decision in my standard way. It's a different feeling than when I discover a game that I want that is now hard to find or out of print. Sure, I wish I had discovered it earlier and it was more readily available, but oh well.

I know it is different, but in a similar vein, I might see some readily available game and it gets glowing reviews and looks to have high production values and so on. But, it was a kickstarter, and come to find out there are all sorts of exclusive bits you can't get unless you spend some outrageous amount on the secondary market. I don't want to buy it, and I don't even want to play it if someone offered. The game does not exist to me.

And that's the rub. Publisher's need to know that kickstarter is getting it off the gound, but also might be the end of the run also. The only way I might look past this is if the Kickstarter simply offered the game at a discounted price, but the entire game and all bits for the game are readily available at retail. If the exclusives are hats or t-shirts and other stuff that isn't a part of the game or a game enhancement, that is fine. Put in exclusive figs, custom cool dice, new decks of cards, exclusive expansions/scenarios, and I want nothing to do with it as a retail consumer after the kickstarter.

And now, I don't even want to back any games that use this kickstarter marketing technique. I hate exclusivity. Why do people need to have something someone else doesn't and brag all about it and feel superior. I don't want to be in either group, the early kickstarter "haves", nor the late-adopting "have nots." And those stupid limited early-bird discount specials! Talk about making potential customer's not want to back your project?

It all seemed fun and kinda cool at first, but like many things it has grown and been exploited and had the boundaries pushed and been molded into something unsavory, at least for me. The only point of sale for me is the kickstarter. I make my decision to back it or never purchase it during that brief period of accepting backers. Even if I never saw it during that original period, I don't even want to consider it. Too many projects are so full of unsavory stuff that even though I might find a nice, clean offering, they are now seen with a negative bent due to association through kickstarter.