Everybody always goes for the dark blues in Monopoly (Mayfair and Park Lane in the UK edition), but I’m convinced that the cheaper colour groups offer a better return on investment, partly because you can fully develop them quicker, and partly because you can own more squares, thereby giving you more "hits" and a steadier income. But is there any analysis to support (or refute) this view?
I like to think of stretch goals in a couple of categories:
Component upgrades (ex: black core card stock)
Additional game content (ex: playable character unlocks)
Non-game content add-ons (ex: sticker sheets included with the game)
Out of game content (ex: phone wallpapers)
While I understand game content as a stretch goal for content heavy games that are still in development (writing quests costs money), I prefer games that have a strong baseline of component quality and include stretch goals that take a game beyond what would be expected in a retail edition – add-ons like sticker sheets, super-premium stock & finishes, or even a box insert (an expensive component for the publisher).
Are Stretch Goals Powerful?
Qualitatively stretch goals seem to have at least some impact on campaign success – I noticed more activity on our Nut Hunt campaign when we were approaching stretch goals (which increases visibility). However, it is hard to really know how much of an impact stretch goals have.
My gut is that monetary stretch goals are more meaningful for smaller and moderate sized campaigns where backers understand that stretch goals are more of a sharing of economics – and the publisher doesn’t necessarily expect all goals to be hit. In this sense, I expect some backers of big (multi-hundred-thousand dollar) campaigns go into backing with the expectation that all stretch goals will be unlocked (as evidenced by big box publisher behavior of unlocking all goals after the campaign even if they weren’t hit).
In this sense, the power of stretch goals for bigger campaigns is more in the excitement they provide for the community, and the interaction they drive, rather than as an mechanism for component upgrades or additional game content.
Which brings us full circle to Fractured Sky
Starfalls
In forgoing traditional monetary (content & component upgrade) stretch goals, IV Studios has what they call “Starfall Rewards”.
Since I like probability questions, and tttpp brought it up, I figured it might be interesting to calculate how likely you are to lose on the first turn in Forbidden Island, because Fool’s Landing sinks into the abyss. This question is only interested in figuring the odds of losing the game during the first players turn. It would be slightly more difficult to figure the odds of losing during the first round, where each player has taken one turn at most. If this question gets enough attention, I might decide to ask that question and figure out the odds. To figure out the odds of losing, you will need to calculate the following:
What are the odds range of losing on the first turn for a 2-4 Player game? Calculate each individual component separately, and then provide a range of maximum/minimum odds of losing on the first turn based upon the individual components above. Assume the following:
Note: Calculate this if you want, but I am not uninterested in the minimal effect on the result of losing first turn.
A lot goes into making a board game. From design to development, marketing and of course manufacture. In the past I wrote about the distribution pipeline (see our article: Supply Chain A-Z), and decided that it might be helpful to dig a little deeper into the actual process of manufacturing a board game.
It was a frustrating experience – not just because it was money out of our pocket, but also due to the uncertainty over how it would impact our timelines. My update to backers was a no-nonsense look at what was going on, and how it might (but ended up not) impact backers.
You can read the whole update here.
I pride our company on transparency and things like this blog as a behind the curtain look at publishing. And, that update did hit those marks in a pretty neutral tone.
Last week publisher Matthue Ryann had a similar problem with one of his shipments for his game Don’t Get Drunk, and I was impressed by the tack he took. Rather than be negative, or just neutral about the experience, he turned his misfortune into an upbeat and positive moment for his fans.
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At the end of the day publishing board games is about fun. I think Matt’s response is an important lesson to keep in mind, to look to create fun in our communities even around the mundane or negative events for us as publishers.
Mythic Missteps
There are a whole lot of cans of worms to unpack from the disaster that is the 6: Siege post campaign management. Here are some recaps:
There’s a lot that could be said about Mythic’s communication – lack of transparency, apparent dishonestly about why they need more funds (hint: it’s development cost overruns not manufacture overruns), and a Bond villain-esque setting for delivering the bad news to backers.
In Scrabble, each letter is worth a number of points. Typically, the rarer the letter, the more score it has, see Scrabble letter distribution and score.
Does anyone know how these scores are being assigned? (Or modified, if needed.) Is it based on some gut-feeling, or a formula/algorithm?
As I see, the score is proportional to surprisal (from information theory), i.e. \log(1/p), where p is the frequency of a given letter in a given language. Just I am not sure, if such scoring is planned mathematically, or appeared as some emergent behavior (e.g. other scoring seems unfair, unnatural, etc…).
But, Sigil didn’t start with me. It wasn’t my brain child, and while I helped tighten the game up around the edges, the design fully belongs to Andy Voellmer.
15 Years in the Making
If you were near Montreal’s Parc LaFontaine in summer 2009, you might have seen a couple of college aged kids playing a game with maple leaf pennies.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of those first plays – and I’m not sure that those first iterations would even be recognizable to someone introduced to the game as it stands today. The rules were a bit different, spells weren’t even modular, and that’s not even getting into how the game looks.
But, the spark of it was there.
That spark stayed with Andy through a PHD, from Canada to California, and to New York City where we met.
While I don’t have pictures of those first plays, I do have a picture of one of my early plays with Andy.
My left hand opponent dealt and bid one diamond. Partner passed. My right hand opponent bid one spade. I wanted to double one diamond, but not one spade, with the following hand: ♠KQT5 ♡K92 ♢2 ♣ KT653.
So I passed. Left hand opponent rebid two diamonds. Partner and right hand opponent passed. Now I doubled, because the last opposing bid was diamonds.
Partner’s distribution was 4-3-4-2, with xxx in hearts and Qx in clubs. She passed because she had four cards each and her remaining seven honor points in suits bid by the opponents, and she thought she was "playing defense." She didn’t want to bid one of her short "round" suits (clubs or hearts)to take out my double.
I told her, "I had four spades to support a spade bid, and a only a singleton diamond opposite your four diamonds. We were not strong enough to defend, but we were strong enough to play two spades" (RHO opponent had five little ones for his bid).
Partner thought that my double showed shortness in both the opponents suits. I say that my bidding pattern showed shortness only in diamonds and suggested strength in spades. Are either of these interpretations more nearly correct than the other? Or do some world class partnerships use one, and some the other?
Go With the Flow
No two demos are going to be the same, so it’s important to make sure everyone knows your games inside and out, and to stay flexible in a teach.
Some gamers like to skip around and ask a bunch of questions, some gamers are hands on with components, some are content to let you monologue.
And all those approaches are ok.
Converting a Sale
The ultimate goal of demoing at a convention is to show off your games and get them into the hands of people who will love and play them.
This means that you need a call to action to convert those would be fans into consumers. At Gen Con we ran a special price on Nut Hunt (since we didn’t have to pay for shipping). This was a strong incentive to buy the game now, rather than wait and mull it over, and maybe let it slip their mind on their flight home.
Sigil was a harder sale since we don’t have physical copies to sell (we wrapped up the Kickstarter in June and were taking late pledges at the con).
What I found worked for Sigil was to be frank about where in the process we were, and to appeal to consumers who the game really clicked with.
This is roughly the closing script I settled on by the end of the weekend.
“Sigil is our second game. It’s not even out yet. For context, we Kickstarted Nut Hunt last June and delivered it over two months ahead of schedule in January. We Kickstarted Sigil this June, and like Nut Hunt are targeting a March delivery. We can’t promise it will be early because obviously some things are out of our hands, but from our perspective we are on schedule.
“So, what we’re asking people to do today is to go on our website and join the mailing list, and you’ll get notified when we open it up to late pledges next month.
“And, what’s been pretty incredible is that a lot of people know they want the game today. They either demo it or sit down and play it. And, this is one of those games where if this is in your genre – if you like GO, Hive, Onitama – if this is your kind of game, then once you play this you’ll love it.
“If you know already that you want the game, then what we can do today is ring you up and charge you for the base game, and we’ll get your email and when we open up the pledge manager next month you’ll already be in there with all of the Kickstarter backers and have access to the add-ons and all the Kickstarter components.
I think the script I settled on did a couple of things really well.
It gave context around where we are in the process and set expectations.
It didn’t pressure people to buy now – but gave them a few ways to engage with us.
It normalized late pledging in person at the convention.
People like being part of a crowd, and by highlighting that a lot of people were taking the late pledge in person option, I normalized for our con goers that it was a good route to go.
Stay Hydrated
Cons are long, you’ll be talking a lot and your voice will start to go. So, stay hydrated. Take breaks when you need them. Treat yourself well and you’ll keep up that energy to have a successful con full of memorable demos with amazing people.
What are your favorite demo experiences?
I was looking at Contingency Plan and found the effect surprisingly similar to the keyword Surveil. To compare, first the wording of Contingency Plan and then the wording of the Surveil keyword:
Look at the top five cards of your library. Put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest back on top of your library in any order.
And
701.41a To “surveil N” means to look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest on top of your library in any order.
They quite clearly are the same, so can I assume the card states “Surveil 5” instead? And if so, does it trigger abilities which state “Whenever you surveil …”?