Surranó wrote:
Well maybe also mentioned here but still, two points:
1) virtual cards (and free at that) vs real "hardware". I don't think THunt's high quality standards would digest such a "solution".
That's what's worrying me. Virtual distribution does not mean worse quality, and neither does "free" -- as any webcomic artist should know very well. Quality for a card game resides in the art and the rules, not in custom dice and laminated playmats. But if he gets the bee in his bonnet that he'd somehow be compromising quality by doing it a sensible way, it could be the very devil to get it out again.
Surranó wrote:
2) Assuming the higher the production count the lower the loss (or: higher the profit... just daydreaming...) maybe it would be nice if we could preorder directly at THunt. Just pledge, not pay, to avoid the pressure on his shoulders even more. I, as one, would probably pledge and auto-pay when the product'll be released, and I was not one of the original backers so it's basically extra income for THunt.
Reality check:
Read SeeAMoose's cost estimate earlier in this thread. Bare minimum:
Bulk-printing the cards alone on regular cardstock: $40,250 (or $30,000 on the lowest quality stock)
Box and other components: $20,000 (or maybe $15,000?)
Shipping to backers: a minimum of $18,000, but probably more because not all the backers were in the USA and Canada.
Shield of Wonder add-on: $8,000-$10,000 to print, an additional $4,000-$5,000 shipping.
Adding up those numbers, we get an absolute minimum cost to Thunt of $75,000. That estimate is based on many rosy assumptions which won't all turn out to be true. The actual cost is pretty much guaranteed to be higher than that, perhaps as much as $100,000 or $120,000.
He's got this crazy notion of not charging any of the Kickstarter backers because they already paid, even though they didn't pay him. There's no money to be had from Evertide. The people like you who missed the kickstarter and would order and pay for the leftovers in the print run might bring in... okay, let's say there are as many as 200 like you (that's wildly optimistic), and suppose he charges $60 each. That gets him $12,000. (The unsold leftover 180 games would be occupying space in his house for years, as a depressing reminder.)
Where's at least $63,000 US going to come from? Bear in mind that the Canadian dollar is currently hovering around 85 cents US, so he'd have to come up with more than $74,000 Canadian. What's he going to do, re-mortgage his house? Stop eating? Stop feeding his kids?
Do we want him to have to do that??
My answer is hell, no!
The whole point of Kickstarter is that a lot of individual backers each risk a small sum that they can well afford to lose. When you pledge, you're not buying from a store, you're being a miniature version of a venture capitalist. Some ventures will go sour. This one did. Sucks, but that's the nature of venture capital.
If he wants to finish the game and publish it as print-and-play, I'll be happy to download it. But only if it makes him happy for the game to exist and be in the hands of players who are having fun with it.
If he ruins himself financially trying to send me a physical boxed game that he does not owe me, that will make me a very unhappy person indeed.
Statistics: Posted by Sessine — Mon Jan 12, 2015 4:55 pm