I like the idea of that smaller version of Spirit Island. And I love Spirit Island. Probably one of my most played games. Capping the player count at three is just the correct decision for that game, even for the original kickstarted version. Playing Spirit Island with four people, in my opinion, makes a fun, complex, but fast moving puzzle of a game into a massive slog.
Definitely agree with you about kickstart, collecting, and shopping. I think many people, especially at first, fall into the collecting trap (happened to me!) as well as the shopping habit (kinda sorta happened to me).
One thing, too, that kickstarters have led to is filling a game with expansions before it's been properly playtested as a base game. It's rare for a design to be 100% finished when a kickstarter goes live, which is why backers sometimes fill their collective diapers over the smallest possible changes to the game they backed. But because the core design isn't completed, every promised expansion just doubles down on a foundational problem. But because shoppers expect their kickstarter to be full of expansions and exclusives, you have games that ship in fifteen boxes where, a year later, players come to the conclusion that 5 of the 7 expansions are best left on the shelf.
For all the complaints within the hobby about Jamey Stegmeier (I like him! though he's never made one of my favorite games, I do enjoy playing most Stonemeier games), I do think he does a good job of incrementally adding to his games. To use Tapestry as an example, he could have promised to ship it with 4 expansions right off the bat, but instead he gathered tons of data from players as basically a massive playtest to drive the development of the next expansions.
Spot on, and the reason I don't buy as many games as I used to. Give me a well-made game (not cheaply but also not overproduced), with plenty of replay value, for $50-60, and I'm a happy man. It feels like market forces are pushing that sort of game out, which sucks. Don't know how we correct for that without voting with our wallets. It's the reason I don't Kickstart, despite how tempting it is at times.
Cracking piece Klaus. As someone who is much deeper into this particular world, it's always brilliant to get the perspective of a thoughtful observer who is a huge tabletop fan but is more outside the hardcore BGG or Kickstarter audiences. There are very few people *not* in those groups who'd write in this level of detail on this.
There's definitely an early adopter problem. The people you can reliably sell to as a publisher are collectors - especially as an indie business (basically not Hasbro or Asmodee companies). They'll buy so many new games, you can always get to them relatively easily and convince them to buy your new, relatively niche thing.
Getting to the relative 'normie' boardgamers is so much more expensive from a marketing POV and requires extensive distribution relationships in place (except perhaps for a couple of very interesting companies like Underdog Games - check them out!). These relationships are hard to build until you have several successes under your belt. Even worse, margins at distro are *terrible* anyway. You get 40% of the MSRP as a publisher. If your manufacturing costs are 20% (which these days can be hard to achieve), you make 20% MSRP per unit. Compare that to KS where the product might be offered as 90% of MSRP for the same manufacturing cost. Essentially each KS sale is worth 3x each direct sale.
Add this altogether and the niche collector market - the kind of person that will spend a lot of money on a deluxeified game 18 months ahead of actually getting it - looks like the much tastier target. Consequently all games move in this direction. If the game gets successful beyond this initial launch audience, it'll tend to stay at least somewhat deluxe - unless a specific "basic" version is launched.
I like the idea of that smaller version of Spirit Island. And I love Spirit Island. Probably one of my most played games. Capping the player count at three is just the correct decision for that game, even for the original kickstarted version. Playing Spirit Island with four people, in my opinion, makes a fun, complex, but fast moving puzzle of a game into a massive slog.
Definitely agree with you about kickstart, collecting, and shopping. I think many people, especially at first, fall into the collecting trap (happened to me!) as well as the shopping habit (kinda sorta happened to me).
One thing, too, that kickstarters have led to is filling a game with expansions before it's been properly playtested as a base game. It's rare for a design to be 100% finished when a kickstarter goes live, which is why backers sometimes fill their collective diapers over the smallest possible changes to the game they backed. But because the core design isn't completed, every promised expansion just doubles down on a foundational problem. But because shoppers expect their kickstarter to be full of expansions and exclusives, you have games that ship in fifteen boxes where, a year later, players come to the conclusion that 5 of the 7 expansions are best left on the shelf.
For all the complaints within the hobby about Jamey Stegmeier (I like him! though he's never made one of my favorite games, I do enjoy playing most Stonemeier games), I do think he does a good job of incrementally adding to his games. To use Tapestry as an example, he could have promised to ship it with 4 expansions right off the bat, but instead he gathered tons of data from players as basically a massive playtest to drive the development of the next expansions.
It's like Cones of Dunshire. "Punishingly intricate."
Spot on, and the reason I don't buy as many games as I used to. Give me a well-made game (not cheaply but also not overproduced), with plenty of replay value, for $50-60, and I'm a happy man. It feels like market forces are pushing that sort of game out, which sucks. Don't know how we correct for that without voting with our wallets. It's the reason I don't Kickstart, despite how tempting it is at times.
Cracking piece Klaus. As someone who is much deeper into this particular world, it's always brilliant to get the perspective of a thoughtful observer who is a huge tabletop fan but is more outside the hardcore BGG or Kickstarter audiences. There are very few people *not* in those groups who'd write in this level of detail on this.
There's definitely an early adopter problem. The people you can reliably sell to as a publisher are collectors - especially as an indie business (basically not Hasbro or Asmodee companies). They'll buy so many new games, you can always get to them relatively easily and convince them to buy your new, relatively niche thing.
Getting to the relative 'normie' boardgamers is so much more expensive from a marketing POV and requires extensive distribution relationships in place (except perhaps for a couple of very interesting companies like Underdog Games - check them out!). These relationships are hard to build until you have several successes under your belt. Even worse, margins at distro are *terrible* anyway. You get 40% of the MSRP as a publisher. If your manufacturing costs are 20% (which these days can be hard to achieve), you make 20% MSRP per unit. Compare that to KS where the product might be offered as 90% of MSRP for the same manufacturing cost. Essentially each KS sale is worth 3x each direct sale.
Add this altogether and the niche collector market - the kind of person that will spend a lot of money on a deluxeified game 18 months ahead of actually getting it - looks like the much tastier target. Consequently all games move in this direction. If the game gets successful beyond this initial launch audience, it'll tend to stay at least somewhat deluxe - unless a specific "basic" version is launched.