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[lemon10]

No wai, that's a satire of Your World?

Its mainly a satire of mythic (aka, the kickstarter fraud attempt), but it is also kind of mocking generic terrible kickstarter attempts too.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

but also the generally awesome "hey i did games decades ago so pay me to do games again"

[Grakelin]

Why do you think Steve Jackson and Steve Jackson Game is a company that is well to do?

Hobbist Gaming industry has very thin margins, and fairly high production cost. The reason why Steve Jackson Games has been around as long as it has is because Steve Jackson & Games have had so far a brilliant ability to read trends and feel the future for the industry.

Munchin, is a very well selling game, but it's not selling like M:tG well. The other source of income that Steve Jackson Games has is it's rpg on line store, which also have low margins.

The Orge game is very very expensive to make, (to physically make, not including the money on RD and prototyping) , expensive to ship, and takes /alot/ of storage space due to its HUGE (relatively speaking to modern hobbist games) size.

It's very expensive product to do anything with. When Steve Jackson said they'd only be able to make 3k for one production run they figure it'd sell in about a year, that should tell  just how expensive, and how low selling they thought this product would be.

Kickstarter is a great place for someone, liken Steve Jackson Games. A company that has a long history on delivering products but doesn't have the easiest time in getting venture capitalism to invest in new product lines.

And with the Kickstarter, it allows Steve Jackson & Game to have pre-orders, and to see just how far they can really take the game, while lessening the damage of Over Production.

Uhm, I don't want to hear any of this silly "It's not real richness bro" stuff about SJG. SJG makes a lot of money off of Munchkin. A lot of money. And it makes enough money that it can afford to stay in business and pay its employees livable wages. They make enough to market and distribute their products. They don't actually need Kickstarter. Especially not to produce and ship an already developed game.

I call this poor Kickstarter usage.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   No, Just No. He is not trying to sell another Munchkin set so whatever they make from it which as you do point out is being used to keep them in business and pay their employees does not correlate to "able to produce other niche games widely". The Kickstarter was specifically to bring back an old games new version beyond a few thousand copies. He has now gotten enough that not only is he planning to hire a full time line editor for Orge but he will be going to at least two major cons specifically for Orge instead of Munchkin.
   Oh and one more thing, I don't know what you consider rich but making enough to stay in business is not really cutting it for me. I know I would not consider myself rich at that point, just well off. Of course this is somewhat moot as there is no definition of "rich" that I know of that puts a real dollar value on it and is widely accepted as its partly a perception thing.

[nenjin]

It is kinda cool that it's bringing back an older game. Lord knows I squee'd when the Shadowrun Kickstarter began and that's a studio already making their own games independent of Kickstarter.

But on the other hand, SJG has published 50+ freaking games so far, some of them large ticket items, many smalls, and then all the CCG. SJG is, by definition, their own publisher. So for SJG not to make something without an upfront offering....I mean, Dork Tower? They've gambled on things in the past. It's cool his interests and Kickstarter aligned and he basically got to see what fans of SJG think in a $ value.

I'm just sort of beginning to wonder if that's what it is, sort of a popularity contest, especially when it comes to well-known companies versus well-known intellectual properties. (Which are both distinct from just plain old good ideas that could succeed.)

SJG in Kickstarter sits in this weird middle ground for me where they've got as much right to kick start an old project.....but they're also independent and successful enough that they could have done it on their own. Now of course, with that much fan support (and money showing) I'm sure they're totally committed. Somehow it just doesn't settle quite right for me. I just don't want Kickstarter being used for speculative ventures. Or as a button to activate fan bases into disgorging money. It's really cool to feel like you're part of some genuine groundswell of support (and I'm not implying Ogre's is anything but.) But it's the kind of thing that swiftly gets taken advantage of.

[Sowelu]

White Worlf was doing LARPS in Seattle

And they were awesome, just for the record.

[Grakelin]

Here's another way of looking at it:

In 2007, SJG had a gross revenue of $2.7 million. They employ 17 people. That is a gross revenue of $158,000 per person. Obviously they aren't all making $158,000 each, but when you compare that to a megacorporation (such as OpenText, which grossed $232,000 per employee in 2011), they're not exactly doing badly.

You might argue that the operating costs eat up most of the $2.7 million in annual revenue, if only that were true.

This is not an impoverished business by any means. The board game industry is not suffering. It is growing and expanding, and companies like SJG, Fantasy Flight, and Rio Grande are all in the black.

[mainiac]

And those 17 people do all the work in house?  They craft all the games from the aether without paying for any inputs?  They do all of this with their hands out of the garages?

When the subject turns to manufacturing things people tend to be biased into thinking it's wildly cheaper then it is.  Manufacturing is super duper expensive when you can't take advantage of vast economies of scale and cheap foreign labor.  I used to work in a small shop that made among other things custom bolts.  The premium we charged for these bolts was like 1 dollar over a bolt of similar dimensions.  And this was a shop that was saving huge money on capital expenses due to using refurbished equipment picked up for a song and super cheap real estate.

[lemon10]

They are obviously all demi-godlings, they envision the game as a pure concept, and create it with their willpower.
They then fly to the games stores in their trusty flying chariots and drop the games off.

[nenjin]

On the other hand, when you've just offloaded the cost of manufacturing to your first 10,000 customers....

[JanusTwoface]

On the other hand, when you've just offloaded the cost of manufacturing to your first 10,000 customers....

Who exactly do you think generally pays for the cost of manufacturing?

I mean, most people will have to use their own funds or funding from a third party, but they're fully expecting to get paid back.

And look how many of the backers are at the $100/$150 level. About 3000 out of the 4000 total. That's basically just people per-ordering the game. And they're paying just what people would have paid anyways, except a chunk of them may never have noticed the game and missed the 3000 order run otherwise. Or if they all did, no one else could have bought one.

Also the larger rewards that people have actually gone for. I doubt they would have been offered or gone for had they not done the Kickstarter thing and some of them are pretty cool.

So really, it looks like the people backing the project are happy, SJG is happy, and Kickstarter is happy. Heck, I can't confirm it, but I bet super high profile, overfunded projects like this end up pulling in money to other projects as well. Once you've already dropped $100 on a game, $5 here or there doesn't seem so bad. So how is it a bad Kickstarter project exactly?

(also partially in reply to previous comments)

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   It, by my understanding of how such things work, does cause people to help fund other projects. Now most of my knowledge comes from stuff like steam and other online marketplaces so may not be mirror in the Kickstarter type of places but numbers have shown that once you pay for something in an online market place the easier it is to do it again. If you never funded a kickstarter before, even if you knew about it once you fund one you will probably happen across another that looks nice, and then another, and then another. The first purchase is always the hardest.

[nenjin]

Heck, I can't confirm it, but I bet super high profile, overfunded projects like this end up pulling in money to other projects as well. Once you've already dropped $100 on a game, $5 here or there doesn't seem so bad. So how is it a bad Kickstarter project exactly?

I don't think I agree with that assessment. Donating to your favorite game =/= donating to other games in smaller amounts. Fan loyalty drives these projects but I don't think that automatically includes a trickledown effect to things they're not fans of. I've seen at least 4 other games on Kickstarter I might have donated to, but my $125 backing of Shadowrun didn't make me go "Oh I've spent money. Now let me spend some more!"

To put it another way, yes after I bought my first game I on Steam I bought many more. But I didn't do that based on the fact it was on Steam. I did it based on the fact it was a game I wanted to play. So I don't think donating to Kickstarter means you'll donate to Kickstarter because it's donating to Kickstarter.

Who exactly do you think generally pays for the cost of manufacturing?

If the cost of manufacturing was $100,000 for x runs, and you've made 5 times that off your customer base, then you have essentially passed off all costs to them and are now dealing in pure profit. There's zero cost to the producer, even assumed cost at that point.

Which should be turned around into more content (which it has in Ogre's case.) But if manufacturing is completely paid for already, they can effectively charge whatever they want on the product because there's no risk on their end. They don't have to manage a price point beyond customer willingness to buy. They could plot another z runs at y cost out to the point where they're no longer making profit. Or they just reduce the number of runs they make, and collect all the rest as profit. So while you could have a $10 game and do 1 million runs of it.....you instead end up with a $60 game at 200,000 runs.

If everyone is happy, then everyone is happy. I just think it's setting a bad precedent where investors become consumers without ever actually being part of the profit sharing. People throw money at Kickstarters like they're buying stock, but really they're just paying up front (sometimes with proper incentives, sometimes not) for a product and all the "extra" just turns into someone's else's profit. In an ideal world, profit margins would be reasonable and excess would be funneled directly back into the product. But when the fan base goes insane and loads Kickstarters up with money...it'd take an incredibly moral businessperson to not exploit that for all its worth.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

...

   You do realize that if 100 or so dollars is what its basically started pre-selling for that with all they have added, while they will make profit they are not going to make fistsfulls of money. Do you realize how much it costs to setup manufacturing for something like this? Its not just another run of cards for Munchkin. This is a whole new manufacturing line with new dies and stuff. They can't even offset prices by using generic things like for instance generic game box or anything as its all uniquely sized for this game.

[nenjin]

Being that SJG has done, what, probably close to 20 production lines solely for board games, I'm pretty sure they've found a way to make it cost effective for them. Which is why funding goals were for stuff like "making the board bigger." They already know and manage their production costs down to a T.