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Post Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 1:35 am 
 

Liverpuncher wrote in Kickstarter projects:
Badmike wrote in Kickstarter projects:Has anyone seen this guy's crap bomb yet?

Axes and Anvils by Mike Nystul — Kickstarter

Yikes.  He has two other unfinished kickstarters along with this one, to the tune of about 70k, with nothing to show.  He also recently cancelled a gaming con in Austin, I don't know if he refunded the vendors and attendees.  This guy gives RPG kickstarters a bad name.

Mike B.

This would be same guy responsible for Nystul's Magic Aura, and Whispering Vault....right?


Yes to Whispering Vault, and I think he says Nystul's Magic Aura is named after him, but that's got some kind of shaky standing.  He actually tried to run a Indiegogo kickstarter to fund his OTHER three kickstarters when he ran out of money, but people wised up and apparantly it only garnered him about 100 bucks.  I suspect none of these will ever see the light of day.

Mike B.


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Post Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 1:35 am 
 

Liverpuncher wrote in Kickstarter projects:
Badmike wrote in Kickstarter projects:Has anyone seen this guy's crap bomb yet?

Axes and Anvils by Mike Nystul — Kickstarter

Yikes.  He has two other unfinished kickstarters along with this one, to the tune of about 70k, with nothing to show.  He also recently cancelled a gaming con in Austin, I don't know if he refunded the vendors and attendees.  This guy gives RPG kickstarters a bad name.

Mike B.

This would be same guy responsible for Nystul's Magic Aura, and Whispering Vault....right?


Yes to Whispering Vault, and I think he says Nystul's Magic Aura is named after him, but that's got some kind of shaky standing.  He actually tried to run a Indiegogo kickstarter to fund his OTHER three kickstarters when he ran out of money, but people wised up and apparantly it only garnered him about 100 bucks.  I suspect none of these will ever see the light of day.

Mike B.


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Post Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:09 am 
 

there are certainly some issues with some kickstarters at the moment... here are 3 that have posted quite serious faults in the last 2 weeks.. (I could pull some more examples of how to do a crap kickstarter I'm sure esp)

Brette:)

relevant backer post for Axes and Allies
So here's the thing. I screwed up. I started a game company and proceeded as though the cash flow and production speed would keep pace. They did not. I've tried to keep you informed and up-to-date, but most of all I've tried to deliver on expectations. So far, all you've seen are delays and broken promises. I take this situation very seriously.

The long and the short of it is that Cairn and Axes and Anvils have become troubled projects. We are out of money, due to some poor decisions on my part. People have asked for refunds I can't possibly give them.

Some 40% of RPG Kickstarters fail, their sponsors simply disappearing with the money. Good people don't ever see the projects in which they put their faith, and they don't receive refunds. That number haunts me. That will not happen here.

Cairn could use more work to make it what it should be. I was rushing to get it out and turned in some inferior work. I just wanted to get something out the door and into your hands. Axes and Anvils has suffered because I was thinking like someone running a company and has too much going on at once.

We have discussed ways in which to get something into your hands -- maybe ashcans like the old D&D White Books. It's not the finished project, but it lets you see what we're doing and lets you start playing with it as soon as possible.

I believe in these games. I will move heaven and earth to get it out, and into your hands. Every promise made will be honored -- every tankard and every last stitch on every last plush. This company and it's products will NOT be numbered among the 40%. I and everyone involved in the project are completely committed to that notion. All I can do is be completely honest with you, and ask you all to forgive my my stupidity and bear with me as I make it right.

I tried to salvage the company with my well intentioned, but poorly received, IndieGogo campaign. I see the point of the people who objected - I was not an effective custodian of your investment in the first place. Why invest more? An excellent point. All I can really say is my goal here has nothing at all to do with money.

Case in point - one of my bad decisions was DwarfCon. We didn't have the money or manpower to mount a first year Convention. Based on optimistic projections of where I thought we would be it seemed like a good idea. I shut it down and took a big hit. Because my first priority is the people who supported the idea I'm mounting NonCon instead. For free. A way to try to make good without asking for anything but your moral support.

Moving forward, I am searching for ways to fix these problems that don't call for anyone to invest further or take a leap of faith. I may try another IndieGoGo but this time for a complete in-hand game. Not a promise. A product. I will be working as hard as I know how to dig myself out of the hole I find myself in. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has been patient and understanding.


Myth & Magic Players Guide
Why? Well, and here comes some brutal truth: The cost of the Player's Handbook Kickstarter was astronomical. Every decision that I made that I thought was a minor decision (like glossy paper in the PG) turned out to be an awfully expensive one. My inexperience and excitement over the success of the campaign collided to turn me into a donkey business man. So, we have officially approached the point where I'm either dipping into GMG funds or self-funding the shipping, printing of the Starter Guides, etc. It's not your problem, and I don't want to make it your problem, but it's the harsh reality of where we are and why things will take so long.

Awful Note: Things have clearly deteriorated. Myth & Magic is likely doomed now because of my mismanagement of the campaigns and the fact that with my new job, I lost a significant amount of time that I used to happily spend on the game. Goodwill may or may not be salvageable.

What can I do? I'm not sure. I plan, regardless of public hate, to finish the Kickstarter campaigns and deliver the product. Hopefully, somewhere along the line, things will go from negative to neutral. They may never be positive, but heck, I'll take neutral.

What I have to do - I have to finish this with blinders on. I may shut down the NHG website and focus solely on the Kickstarter website for communication and updates. That may help. I'm not sure. To be honest, it's all so psychologically screwy for me, that I have to find a way to remove the negative and focus on the positive. I'm getting hate emails and even a quick stop at my site results in anxiety and embarassment - two emotions that make it very difficult to spend the 30 free minutes I have a day on development. So I have to change something.

Can we hit reset? I think that may go a long way in helping me sort this out. What I mean is that we all need to simply stop, breathe, and hit reset on everything - approach the delays and anxiety with a different perspective. We're nearly there with one campaign and with it complete, the second campaign gets full attention. Perhaps, we can then find a sliver of enthusiasm.

What really happened:  Here's another set of brutal truths. When I started the development of M&M, I had an incredibly forgivable schedule. So, I created a game and formed NHG. It was awesome times! When I started the KS campaigns, I had a slightly forgivable schedule, which allowed me to focus on what needed to be done. Then, about several months into it, I had a chance to change my job position. My wife and I discussed it and it seemed to be the best thing for my family. Not really knowing what to expect, I sort of allowed it to happen. Then, the shit hit the fan and my time vanished. With that came not only my neglecting you, but also shitty consequences at home (which is, again, not your problem). The end result was a Tom that couldn't cope. Embarrassed by how different my M&M community felt about me, it all started to crumble. Many people would run away.

But, I won't. Recently, to boot, I got "the talk" about my online activity, which lead to the talk about focusing on my job, which lead to my not updating here or on NHG. They claim they had a network breach which caused them to investigate. Whether or not it's bullshit, I don't care.

What to Expect: I envision the PG KS campaign to fully complete within a few months and all product in your hands. The GMG KS has been neglected, although I did manage to line up the artists and start handing out sketches. I also have the magic items complete and the monster write-ups will start, in full force, when the PG KS is behind me. I actually enjoy writing the GMG stuff because of its segmented content. I also want to go through my KS emails to respond to folks. The GMG KS will take a while, but I'm hoping to post monsters on the regular and sketches just to keep things moving. I also need to take a hard look at the finances and see where sacrifices can be made.

Not a good position to be in, but I find myself here nonetheless.

I do apologize to you. Seriously. I know you don't care. I know you're pissed, but I still apologize. I will do my best to finish everything as quickly as I can.


Tephra: The steampunk RPG
Before I say anything else, first I want to say I'm sorry. I am excrutiatingly sorry. I want nothing more than to be done with this, for everyone to have their rewards, and for Cracked Monocle to be able to move forward and on to our expansion materials that we desparately want to publish and work on. I'm also sorry that I haven't updated y'all. As I've said before, I hate saying "nothing's new," and it's a major fault of mine. I just wanted my next post here to be "International shipping done, and the Adversary Book is done and on it's way!" Unfortunately, that's not true yet.

Prepare yourselves, I'm going to go pretty in-depth here.

Setting Some Context

Last January, I needed a little over $1,000 in order to get through the initial book costs for Tephra. That was the base value that I needed to get Tephra to a print-on-demand company. We had a few hundred dollars that we could use, so we figured that the $1,000 plus our $300 would be able to cover our costs. Our goal was to cover the ISBN, barcode, and cover the initial setup fees for the print-on-demand company. In addition, I was hoping to get maybe 10-20 books printed with any extra money we made on the kickstarter. That was it.

Up until that point, we hadn't made a ton of money, and our profit margins were slim. We would often walk away from our larger conventions having made about $200-$300 profits (and that's with every person having paid their own way to the convention, a shared hotel room, and food - expenses Cracked Monocle still can't cover). For me, $1,000 was a lot. It was what we needed, and I would need to save every penny for another year to get to that point.

So now you have a concept of my economics.

When we built our kickstarter, here were our expectations:

â– It would probably cost us about $11 per book to print it, then about $2.50 to ship a book, so $30 for a book was pretty reasonable.
â– If there were any international orders (I expected 1 or 2), we would probably just have to eat that international shipping cost.
â– Dana would have to make a handful of dicebags. We had 10 already, so another 10-20 would be easy.
â– We had 25 finished NPCs for a "Kickstarter Adversary Book." We were hoping that we'd get 2-3 Kickstarter Adversaries that we could do over a weekend, put into the already-complete book, and get printed for about $5 a pop.
These goals all seemed pretty simple for a $1,000 kickstarter. We weren't ready for success. We weren't ready at all.

The Budget

We put up our kickstarter and broke our goal of $1,000 in less than 10 hours. A few days later, we got to $5,000. This was the point that I stopped comprehending our budget, to be honest. After Clockwork Con in Austin, our budget went from $8,000 to $15,000 in what felt like a matter of days. Literally, we were having $3,000 days. As you all know, we finished with nearly $23,000, or 20 grand after Kickstarter and Amazon took their shares.

Naturally, I saw that there was a demand for Tephra, so I immediately went for a larger order. I started working toward making a book order for around 2,000 copies. I made a working budget, a budget that would have been correct if not for some impossibly wrong assumptions. I under-budgeted my shipping, by a long shot. I put $4,000 toward my shipping budget, and I failed to realize that from my nearly 400 backers, 100 of them were internationals. I knew that it was a large number, but I hadn't run the numbers correctly. (After the books arrived, I'd also realize that there were nearly $2,000 in hidden costs from printing and shipping my books to me.)

So, as money does, it went quickly. We got sets of ISBNs and barcodes (which means I'm set for our next nine books), we spruced up our table, got storage, got a good deal of art, and went to some conventions to promote (conventions that certainly didn't make profit). All in all, we went through our disposable income before I realized that our necessary expenses were greater than anticipated.

Shipment Cost Breakdown

I first started to get worried when I mailed out the books to U.S. backers. That shipping was higher than I expected, largely because our books were both larger and heavier than I realized. (Oh inexperience, how I curse you.) Weighing in at nearly 3 lbs per backage, shipping was hard.

As I finished the U.S. backers and started working through international backers, my heart sank. Here are the current shipping rates:

â– 1 book costs (on average) $29 to ship internationally.
â– 1 book and a dicebag costs $31 to ship internationally.
â– 3 books and a dicebag costs $60 to ship internationally (this one varies a lot by location).
Running through my current numbers, and based on the averages above, I'll need around $2,200 to finish my international shipping, which is my first priority.

 
The Kickstarter Adversary Book

My next priority is the Kickstarter Adversary Book. This one is very tough for me; I'm almost afraid to work on it or announce it's complete because I have such a hard time guaranteeing when it will come out, what with the international shipments being my first priority. I'm stuck in an odd catch-22 with this one. If I finish the adversaries right now, the PDF would sit on my desktop waiting for the international shipments to complete. At that point, I'd need another chunk of change to send out those. Just to get the 150 Kickstarter Adversary Books printed, I'll need $850. Those will then arrive and I'll need to ship them, which, unfortunately, is a number I'm having difficulty nailing down right now. Heavens willing, I should be able to ship those domestically for an average of $3 apiece, but I'm not holding my breath.

For me, the Kickstarter Adversary Book is about $4,000 away from being finished. That's how I see it.

If you're interested in knowing how deep we are in the work of it, we basically have all but about 10% of the adversaries in what I'm calling the "Ugly Format." The bulk of our adversaries are unedited and untested, but the writing is mostly done.

The Plans

I have struggled a lot with Tephra over the last year. This financial pit has been depressing. In case you were wondering, I've already taken out and basically maxed two credit cards to get several of the international orders out, and as money rolls into Cracked Monocle, I put that toward getting a few shipments out. Unfortunately, the numbers aren't pretty. If I can sell one book directly to the customer, I can ship one book to an international. If I sell two books through retail, I can ship one book to an international. For my larger packages, I have to sell 2 books directly to a customer, or 4 books through retail. That's a tough order for a small publisher just getting started.

The winter months are always tough on us. We don't have many conventions, and we've been a lot more stingy with conventions this year. Thankfully, we'll be attending Comicpalooza, A-kon, Space City Con, and San Japan over the next months (through August). We typically do well at those conventions, and if we do as well as I cautiously expect, we should be able to finish off almost everything. Unfortunately, we won't be vending directly at A-kon or Comicpalooza (two of our biggest conventions), but rather through other retailers, so I have no way of guessing what we'll make. That scares me. Comicpalooza and A-kon cost too much not to do well.

The next part of the plan is more exciting to me. We've been bringing in more and more people to write adventures and supplements for us, and we've created a pretty good system for it (one that doesn't bottleneck at me as much). It doesn't really show yet, but we're hoping to start getting a more steady stream of adventures and supplements out in PDF form soon. Those PDFs won't pull in a ton of money alone (at a dollar or two profit per PDF, it's hard to get $4,000), but I'm hoping that they can help encourage people to play Tephra, share Tephra with friends, and get more people interested in the game.

I wish I could put more money into products, such as things I could sell through retailers or provide for better profits, but I can't consciously put money into anything until I get everyone their kickstarter rewards.

Meanwhile, there are some people who have really stepped up to the plate in support of us, pushing local retailers to carry Tephra and getting the word out there. To them, you have no idea how thankful I am. And to those who have been understanding and supportive, I thank you as well. And to my international backers who are upset that you don't have your books, as weird as this might sound, I'm thankful for you too. Whenever I read something about y'all not having your books, it really depresses me because of how helpless I feel right now. But there's another way to look at it - over a year later, y'all are still actively waiting and wanting these books. I mean, I would certainly want my backer reward, no doubt, but I'm so surprised by how actively y'all want them. It really makes me want to get them to you.

In Conclusion

This is what's going on in Cracked Monocle, and I wish it were happier news right now. I wish that I were smarter with our initial finances, and I wish I had a better, more optimistic plan to get everyone their deserved rewards sooner. But I do have a plan, and we are working toward it. You aren't abandoned, not by a long shot. (I almost wish I could morally do that.)

But I do appreciate how much I've learned. At 25 years, I've learned a great deal about budgeting, running a business, and myself. I talk to a lot of people about how to run a successful kickstarter now-a-days, and I have plenty of warnings to give. I hope to gain enough trust to do another kickstarter in the future, but I will be approaching it differently. My biggest thing is that, if you want to do a kickstarter, you should write up your financial plan and share it on the front page. Let people see the financials so they understand it, but also so that it's there for you. It's something I wish I had done myself.

We had a very successful kickstarter, way more than we expected. Dana certainly didn't expect to be making over 200 hand-sewn dicebags by herself. And we didn't really have the processes in place to do the 53 custom adversaries we've been given. But we're working through it, we're on the home stretch, and after all is said and done, we'll still have quite a few beautiful books to sell.

For all of y'all who have your rewards, are at home playing Tephra and enjoying yourselves, please keep doing so. Check out our site (Home | Cracked Monocle), go to our forums, see us on facebook, and share with your friends. Despite our best attempts, our social media has been oddly quiet over the last few weeks, and that's after a rather large surge. Personally, I blame spring break. But by getting a great community behind us, Tephra will grow and we'll be able to do more exciting things in the future (such as getting out of debt)!

Thank you all,



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Post Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 2:46 am 
 

Wow, stupidity and mis-management.  Underestimating shipping costs is one of the biggest tells of someone who doesn't know what they are doing.  People really need to do a little research before promising the moon.  

Mike B.


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Post Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 3:04 pm 
 

I imagine some people forget to account for taxes too.


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Post Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 3:56 pm 
 

Sadly, the tradition of weak business and project management skills among game designers continues.  Sometimes it seems like there are only two options:  someone can be a creative game designer who can't execute, or have a good head for business but want to crush the life out of the game.

I've put money into (I first wrote "invested," but that really isn't the right term) twenty Kickstarters.  Six have fully produced the product they promised, though nearly all were beyond the original schedule.  Out of the rest, I expect all but two or three will come through in the end.  Those other two or three -- including Nystul's Infinite Dungeon -- hard to say, but we'll see.  

Now, if this were venture capital financing, that ratio of performance would be a home run.  The problem is, that's not how Kickstarters are perceived, nor how they are presented; both the creators and the buyers think of it really as a pre-sale, rather than a speculative investment.

All in all, if I end up with 17 or 18 of the 20 coming through, I'll be reasonably satisfied.  But it's been a while since I put any money into a Kickstarter, and at this point would probably only back something where I already know the creator or their product, and they have a history of performance; or if it looked really, really awesome, and I was willing to risk a complete loss of the money.


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Post Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 4:15 pm 
 

Great points, Bracton.  It's because of the speculative nature of the kickstarters that I've only backed one to date -- the Reapermini kickstarter.  With that said I've thought about backing the Arena Rex Kickstarter (ends in 5 hours!) - and one for Robotech which launcher recently (Robotech® RPG Tacticsâ„¢ by Palladium Books — Kickstarter).

  

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Post Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 10:50 am 
 

I've actually developed two separate Kickstarters for my own products (Throwigames.com) but each time I break down the base and rewards costs, it turns out to be a negative ROI.  I've toyed with the idea of taking a loss to get the products more exposure, but the magnitude of the loss becomes too great if more than a few hundred sign up; losing a few hundred dollars is one thing but thousands would surely hurt long term.  With the entire product line being free, I've already taken a loss on art and illustration (all out of my own pocket) and spent much of my free time without making a cent - because I love developing games.  I'm hoping the slow, organic growth method eventually works out.

Kickstarters seem like a good idea but like someone previously said, the only companies that are really pulling them off are the large, established businesses.  It's interesting to watch the evolution of crowd-sourcing...

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Post Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 11:18 am 
 

throwi wrote in Kickstarter projects:I've actually developed two separate Kickstarters for my own products (Throwigames.com) but each time I break down the base and rewards costs, it turns out to be a negative ROI.  I've toyed with the idea of taking a loss to get the products more exposure, but the magnitude of the loss becomes too great if more than a few hundred sign up; losing a few hundred dollars is one thing but thousands would surely hurt long term.  With the entire product line being free, I've already taken a loss on art and illustration (all out of my own pocket) and spent much of my free time without making a cent - because I love developing games.  I'm hoping the slow, organic growth method eventually works out.

Kickstarters seem like a good idea but like someone previously said, the only companies that are really pulling them off are the large, established businesses.  It's interesting to watch the evolution of crowd-sourcing...

~throwi



You are a smart man, then.  I think too many of these guys enter the KS arena without having any idea that the MORE popular an idea is, the more money they stand to LOSE should they actually complete the project.  Plus, too many KS programs start with a cool idea and nothing more, and when the money starts rolling in, the amount of work being called for goes way behind the expectations or abilities of the person who usually has no business skills at all.  I do believe in the free market, though, so should someone willing to throw money against the wall and hope it sticks meets with nothing, I really don't have a lot of sympathy.    I do think with many recently high profile failures, backers have started to be much more cautious about where their money is going.

Mike B.


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Post Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 11:32 am 
 

Unless there is some awesome product I can't wait to get I am not supporting Kick-starter at all.  I have supported 4 of them; received product on one and it was not impressive at all (minimal work, marginal quality).   The other 3 still have my money in hostage.

It seems the only reliable companies using kick-starter are established and using it as a promotional tool!  It bypasses the stores for the initial release of product (which is the time that the FLGS needs to help promote the line and make initial profit) and encourages substandard releases (hey they already have the money, time to start cuttings costs and quality to make a better profit).  I think the more people and established companies use kick-starter, the worse off the gaming community will be.

I for one want to hold the product in my hand before purchase.  This encourages creators and established companies to produce a better quality product.  Also then I don't have to shell out money for some crap I may receive in a year or two.


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Post Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 6:45 pm 
 

throwi wrote in Kickstarter projects:I've actually developed two separate Kickstarters for my own products (Throwigames.com) but each time I break down the base and rewards costs, it turns out to be a negative ROI.  I've toyed with the idea of taking a loss to get the products more exposure, but the magnitude of the loss becomes too great if more than a few hundred sign up
~throwi


You can do this, all you have to do is limit the rewards..

Badmike wrote in Kickstarter projects:
You are a smart man, then.  I think too many of these guys enter the KS arena without having any idea that the MORE popular an idea is, the more money they stand to LOSE should they actually complete the project.  Plus, too many KS programs start with a cool idea and nothing more, and when the money starts rolling in, the amount of work being called for goes way behind the expectations or abilities of the person who usually has no business skills at all.

Mike B.


Agreeded.. but there are a couple of reason people can lose money on kickstarters.. 1) intentional- this is going into a product not expecting to make any money or even a loss (like throwi's potention kickstarters above). Obviously the risk can be magnified...  2) unintentional- this seems to be the case with kickstarters.. have no idea on final costs, costs blow out they when they become too sussessful.. THEY HAVE TOO MANY ADD-ONS! and this compounds things as well.. while I like the "idea" of add-ons I 'm not a fan.. the whole idea is to help publish your game, once you make funding people start doing patches, dice, minis, shirts etc etc.. there seems to be an opinion you have to give more and get more and more for more people to jump on board.. I think things should be kept nice and simple (some do)..

of couse loosing money now is short term, generally you have a product you can sell the pdf/ sell hardcopies (lulu) and such with little to nil more $$, so you can start making $$ out of the finished product (hopefully)

Brette:)


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Post Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 7:42 pm 
 

sorry.. just have to share this...

RPGs are Evil - Dark Dungeons: The Movie! by JR Ralls — Kickstarter

Brette:)


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Post Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 9:40 pm 
 

well.. I've decided to do a bit of a wrap up of the kickstarters I've backed.. hav to pull my finger out anyway and follow some of these up.. a LOT of these are late.. my latest is Far west wich is currently 18 mths behind, but it looks almost at completion.. backed 200 odd of them so lets see how they went;)

edit: Hmm.. a lot of these are running 6+ months late (seems to be the norm)

Brette:)


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Last edited by beasterbrook on Mon Apr 22, 2013 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 10:39 pm 
 

TheHistorian wrote in Kickstarter projects:Brett will have the most useful response, as I know he has backed tons!


beasterbrook wrote in Kickstarter projects:backed 200 odd of them so lets see how they went;)



I got that one right...   8O


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Post Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:52 am 
 

beasterbrook wrote in Kickstarter projects:
throwi wrote in Kickstarter projects:I've actually developed two separate Kickstarters for my own products (Throwigames.com) but each time I break down the base and rewards costs, it turns out to be a negative ROI.  I've toyed with the idea of taking a loss to get the products more exposure, but the magnitude of the loss becomes too great if more than a few hundred sign up
~throwi


You can do this, all you have to do is limit the rewards..

[ throwi - Even built in rewards to the product itself (glossy pages, hardcover, additional illustrations, color inside, etc.) gets dicey.  Most people think that the more you sell, the more you make.  That is not always the case!  One of the CBAs I developed basically demonstrated that as long as only 50 people signed up, I'd be okay but after that the profit margin dropped off to a point where break-even was barely a possibility.

Perhaps the secret is to just provide the basic item with only a few extra rewards that are one time costs only (illustrations, for example).  I still want to put out my Guidelines in a single hardcover but I'm afraid that it'll cost me too much to do.  More to think about I suppose. ]

Badmike wrote in Kickstarter projects:
You are a smart man, then.  I think too many of these guys enter the KS arena without having any idea that the MORE popular an idea is, the more money they stand to LOSE should they actually complete the project.  Plus, too many KS programs start with a cool idea and nothing more, and when the money starts rolling in, the amount of work being called for goes way behind the expectations or abilities of the person who usually has no business skills at all.

Mike B.


Agreeded.. but there are a couple of reason people can lose money on kickstarters.. 1) intentional- this is going into a product not expecting to make any money or even a loss (like throwi's potention kickstarters above). Obviously the risk can be magnified...  2) unintentional- this seems to be the case with kickstarters.. have no idea on final costs, costs blow out they when they become too sussessful.. THEY HAVE TOO MANY ADD-ONS! and this compounds things as well.. while I like the "idea" of add-ons I 'm not a fan.. the whole idea is to help publish your game, once you make funding people start doing patches, dice, minis, shirts etc etc.. there seems to be an opinion you have to give more and get more and more for more people to jump on board.. I think things should be kept nice and simple (some do)..

of couse loosing money now is short term, generally you have a product you can sell the pdf/ sell hardcopies (lulu) and such with little to nil more $$, so you can start making $$ out of the finished product (hopefully)

Brette:)


I avoided the crazy rewards of shirts, mugs, patches, etc. as, like you said, it moves the KS away from the core idea:  the RPG item itself.  Even with the rewards built in to the product, there seems to be a point of diminishing returns.  It's hard to find that bullseye area of the KS - the combination of product, rewards, backers and cost.  My spreadsheet CBAs were so complicated in design when trying to find those exact costs/profits.  I just couldn't quite get the numbers the right way without it being too expensive for the backers.

~throwi

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Post Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2013 3:00 pm 
 

The problem is that everyone seems to want a HUGE pledge total.

The average person should spend some real time doing math, figuring out all the costs, what they need to bring in to make it work, and then get a Kickstarter going.  If there are to be any sort of stretch goals, then those should be planned before launch as well, so all those costs can be factored in.

If you have a relatively modest goal, let's say $10k, and you raise $12k, then congratulations, you can do your project and hopefully get people what they wanted in a timely manner.  If instead you raise $100k, you might still be able to achieve the same fulfillment, but only if you're scaling just the number of packages you need to send out.  If you have to account for all sorts other manufacturing or dealing with other creators, something is something is almost certainly going to slip.

Personally, I'd rather have a single quality item instead of thirty different stretch goals and add-ons.  It's confusing and can't possibly be kept track of easily (for creators and pledgers).

Another thought just occurred to me.  I wonder if anyone is purposefully using the stretch goals to extend their timelines?  That is, setting a delivery date of four months, then because of all the extras, moving the completion date to ten months instead... which is how much time was actually needed in the first place.  There doesn't seem to be that much penalty for being late anyway, but this could change the perception, so it seems more like something is on time.


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Post Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2013 6:41 pm 
 

TheHistorian wrote in Kickstarter projects:
Personally, I'd rather have a single quality item instead of thirty different stretch goals and add-ons.  It's confusing and can't possibly be kept track of easily (for creators and pledgers).

Another thought just occurred to me.  I wonder if anyone is purposefully using the stretch goals to extend their timelines?  That is, setting a delivery date of four months, then because of all the extras, moving the completion date to ten months instead... which is how much time was actually needed in the first place.  There doesn't seem to be that much penalty for being late anyway, but this could change the perception, so it seems more like something is on time.


agree and agree..

Everyone wants to be successful, and why not be very successful? I don't think the stretch goals are used in that way, I suppose some are.. I think they just don't realise how long things take.. the writing, the playtesting (hopefully), the editing, layout, artists etc..  there is really no penalty for being late, none for not delivering as well (sure kickstarter has been promoting that they have in their terms that the person MUST complete the project etc, but thats just crap, trying to give the people that pledge a fulse sense of "security" of their money thats all).. just going through the kickstarters I have been very surprised that there are very few people angry or even annoyed about a project being late (at least on the comments and the kickstarter udates pages.. there own web site might be a different story?) and in fact a lot of people are quiet encouraging to the creators even when a long time late..

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Post Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2013 9:01 pm 
 

As long as there are reasonable updates, I don't usually worry about lateness.


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