Cancelled Kickstarters & What Happened with Bloodstone

hey i'm alex radcliffe from board game co and first and most importantly the couch is back for those who don't know there's been a lot of drama around my setting up my studio and my basement studio is a very fancy word and the couch was an unfortunate casualty that many people missed myself included and so i'm still trying to work with it but i'm playing around with how to keep the couch for some some shots while it will not be in most of them just the nature of whatever that is a completely meaningless and useless conversational aside from the fact that this video is about cancelled kickstarters and bloodstone in particular now this is not my first foray into the subject i did a video a while ago uh maybe six seven months i want to say june i think it was june of last year i'll include a link to it down below covering the cancellation of burnt of into deep from burnt island games and it's the same idea every time it's the same conversation every time there are things that are different about this situation potentially more things to add to the conversation or just a general what happened with bloodstone there's a reason i'm willing to have the conversation again and part of it's going to be the fact that sadly and realistically the the internets and youtube and all the the forms of conversation go sprinkling down into an abyss of nothingness and so just because i put out a video in june does not mean many people have seen it and so sometimes i will end up revisiting topics when they are relevant as long as i feel i can bring something new to the conversation before we go into that though just more asides make sure to watch i'll include a link down below make sure to watch the interview from shelf stories from from jason perez with james hudson he did a video of why the campaign canceled covering the reasons the motivations are back and forth asking questions discussing what happened what what were the reasons what's next all that stuff and it's a great interview i highly recommend watching it they will touch upon things that i will not touch upon here and it's a solid interview just impressed in general shelf stories in general is a solid channel with a lot of extra things very different than your typical content creator not just going to be reviews of the same games you hear again and again again but it's really going to be a different part of the conversation and with all that out of the way time stamps down below i have a bad habit of saying timestamps down below after the parts people may have wanted to skip but that is what it is but going straight into it why were people not happy about bloodstone let's take a step back let's move one step and move from that let's just give a quick overview for those who don't know i have this habit of talking about things as if everyone knows about them and that's not always the case and bloodstone is a campaign by jude city games by skybound entertainment by james hudson that was on kickstarter and they they had a i believe is 150 000 goal and they crossed or came close to 300 000 doubling their goal effectively and then they canceled now this is a skirmish game it's a skirmisher magic game that i have the opportunity to play i put out a review on it i have a playthrough on quacklobe's channel i did a full comparison video of like 20 different skirmish games although primarily the two you're going to want to compare against that are going to be super fantasy brawl and arena the contest they're going to have different degrees of overlap in different ways but as familiar as i am with the game as much as i enjoyed the game and i did enjoy the game i'm very much looking forward to coming back at the day they got to roughly 300 000 uh 2600 backers somewhere in that range and then canceled and that can be frustrating it can be frustrating for a variety of reasons it can be frustrating to those who feel that that that a funding goal is something that you set it and you mean it otherwise why have it what is the point of writing down we need a hundred and fifty thousand dollars if you get twice that and you're still willing to cancel it this is the conversation that comes up time and time again every time a notable kickstarter cancels after funding every single time it happens or if it cancels before funding but clearly it was going to fund like i believe into deep cancelled right before funding me was right after but it was like day one or day two they were on a certain sense of linear progression they absolutely would have funded and then they cancelled and people get frustrated by it and they understand why people get frustrated but my own personal opinion is that it's a good thing in general there are exceptions for sure but you don't get charged to be clear for those who don't know when a campaign cancels you do not get charged you know you do not lose your money the biggest reason to be upset is the idea that the creator lied to you that's the biggest reason because although every other reason is immaterial every reason comes down to their belief of what makes sense what's the most sustainable what is the best thing for the company what is the best thing for the game all those things are factors the reason to be frustrated is why do they lie why do they sit there and say that the goal is 150 000 when it clearly oh so clearly was not and we'll get into all that but going back to bloodstone now we have the background out of the way there were a few things that people are unhappy about and keep in mind everything i say in this video is coming from the bias of my own opinion and what i know about the industry about campaigns and all of that it has no knowledge whatsoever from from james hudson from skybound entertainment from jude city games whatsoever past what they've said publicly themselves and so there are things i will say things i will opine on or have an opinion or or what's the word for it i can't think of the war but i will have certain opinions on the matter that are not backed up by anything other than my own opinion so understand that and it may not be true and entirely just that's the nature of trying to think through what's going on here but going through what we do know and i'm going to ultimately end up leaving things out so by all means in the comments down below let me know what i do but the reasons why people were not happy are as follows and i'm saying this because i've seen a lot of constant people who are like why did they cancel why i have no clue what's going on because something that we forget about those of us who are involved is we forget that there are so many who click back and walk away they click back they back the project they leave and then a week and a half later they get notifications their campaigns cancel and they're like what is going on they're not following in the comments they're not in discord they're not in wherever it is a facebook goose or wherever people are talking and they themselves weren't upset at all and so it's always an interesting question of who was upset how many people are upset what is the actual effect of the population that was affected because something we have to understand with kickstarter in general is the vocal minority is always the vocal minority the people who are who care the most say the most you might see a complaint again and again and again and it might only be from 20 of your 2600 backers and that's something we have to understand and live with so to speak but going back to why people aren't happy taking me way too long to get here it's going to be the price of the game to be start with the general value proposition of bloodstone was a 125 plus shipping entry point to a game that when you waited up against other similar games it certainly fell flat now i do not think it was a bad back all things considered i was gonna go into this and i showed you back if i was specifically holding off because i wanted to see what the daily reveals unlocked but it certainly wasn't a great back just from a pure monetary perspective of looking at the components on the table and and something james himself addressed and i agree with but it still doesn't fix the problem is that sure they can shoehorn you know 16 extra miniatures with two skulls so that you can say hey look we doubled the number of miniatures in the game and it really added nothing to your experience and it's true they could do that and it wouldn't add anything to the experience but the nature of of charging 125 for a game is yes of course the designers time the company's time all the other factors that we can't see that don't have a physical value all those things have to be accounted for in one way or another but there's a reason why miniature heavy kickstarter games do well and others not as much people still need to look at something when they're turning around and saying what will happen with this game sure we brought it to life but can i get a retail can i get it later can i get a second market pricing of components is a thing that we will have to always deal with and the price point of bloodstone was not great for the components that you were getting when you compare them to other notable kickstarters when you compare them to arena of the contest when you compare to super fantasy brawl those would be the two direct comparisons in terms of gameplay comparisons and they had better pricing for the variable components that they got so pricing is going to be number one number two people weren't necessarily sold on the game now this is a larger conversation that is a little harder to fix in general but a lot of people like myself anyone i know who's played that i think i think every single person i know who has played the game who got their hands on the game enjoyed it this is something i can't even say for primer primal which for me i preferred way over bloodstone i think bloodstone is great but i prefer primal to it but primal is a game that i do know a few people who tried it and couldn't get behind it i understand that or isis vanguard had the same problem as well some games have a harder time getting their appeal getting their core audience but bloodstone the biggest problem with bloodstone is that when you look at it you say and you think what is this doing that's so different why is this interesting or entertaining it's rolling dice 20-sided dice sometimes which is insanity the variability of the rng of the the randomness in this game is off the charts and so sure we have some power some abilities and then a whole lot of randomness for what for what to what end what is the real game going on here and yet once you dive into bloodstone it's a very different experience once you dive in it's a lot of fun it manages to be fun in a way that clearly wasn't conveyed to as many people in enough ways as possible and i shared the skepticism people had when i first saw bloodstone before i was wasn't involved in the actual creation of content or whatever it is before i saw it i i saw the game it looked interesting the art looked great i reached out briefly and they said oh you know we're not sure we're valuing our plans whatever and i walked away i wasn't interested in pursuing it because it was while the art looked great there wasn't enough there that i saw that pulled me in that distinguished it from anything else on the market and the only reason i ended up getting involved is because quackle because jesse he played the game and he's like oh my gosh this is this is everything alex likes in the game he has to be involved and so jesse basically dragged me into it because he knew once he played it that it was a good game and one that i would love and he was not wrong but my point is that i share the initial skepticism i shared the idea that it looked great but it certainly didn't look i'm going to pay 125 for the components i'm getting great and so that's going to be a factor as well the daily reveals and lack of stretch goals are going to be another thing lack of stretch goals is something we're seeing more and more in games and when lots of campaigns are just saying hey stretch goals are all fake they're all a game anyway so it's going to remove them entirely and they are certainly fake and i talked about this in my last video the 100 they're fake and yet i know they're all fake and i still want them in campaigns they still add a dose of randomness those of something interesting to come back to it doesn't matter how fake they are i know that i want to check in on that campaign i'm invested in it i'm driven by what's going on in this in this thing that i'm putting my money towards and so fake or not i don't just want it all day one i want it teased out over the course of the campaign otherwise why am i paying attention and if i stop paying attention there's a certain point where i remember that it's just a game and i can get games all the time that are available now i have plenty of games myself i'm not playing you have to keep people invested and involved even if it's fake and so there's a few ways people handle this way one is they still have stretch goals i mean look at come on come on stress goes from today to tomorrow and yet suddenly those those those gaps between stress goals start drifting magically to pace with the funding at first is a ten thousand dollar back where the campaign is doing well that back that gap will jump to twenty thirty fifty thousand dollars sometimes and the campaign's doing poorly it manages to stay at ten thousand dollars why is that it's because they're fake they're meant to give you a constant reason to come back to check the page to see what's new to keep you invested even though they're fake even though i know they're fake i want them way number two is they get rid of stress goals entirely we do see campaigns more and more doing this nowadays and i think they do themselves a disservice if you look at the track record on kick track of campaigns that don't have things to keep people invested whether it's optional buys whether it's stretch goals they tend to have a staggering day one and a quick falloff if you look at ruth the marauders currently on kickstarter you look at terrifying mars you look at any of these campaigns that generally just give you temperament is actually a daily reveal we should take one off the table if you look at route if you look at trying to think of other notable campaigns offhand i probably should have thought of some beforehand but if you look at their kick track data if you look at how they progress they don't keep on dragging people in they have a drop-off because there's not enough to keep people invested when you don't give them any reason to keep checking every single day way number three they handle it is going to be through daily reveals daily reveals are always going to be a thing that okay it's a combination you know you sit there and you it's a that's a compromise you sit there and you get rid of stretch goals but we still want people to keep checking in so we do a daily reveal we give them a reason to keep coming back to the campaign to see what's new to see what's been added to that game that they bought it's a it's a hybrid it gives you that investment but it's on a timed release schedule and so it's not random or whatnot and so that that does work to an extent but at the end of the day well first of all takes the steps back it does work to an extent period done but it's not necessarily the same thing as stress goals as well because stretch goals the the non-fixed nature of it they've done studies in this in terms of foods and animals and whatnot in terms of addiction in terms of when you have animals that get their food at intermittent intervals versus fixed time there's a degree of how addictive they become how they check of how going back to that idea of opening the fridge to see what's new opening the fish to see what's new if i know there's a daily reveal every day at 3 p.m eastern standard time i don't keep going back to the campaign to check sure there are notifications sure all that stuff is true but it takes away some of the addiction of being invested and emotionally driven by the campaign experience so daily reveals are only a kind of compromise away from the experience that stretch goals bring but then more importantly more importantly in this case in bloodstone's case i don't think the daily reveals delivered the excitement people wanted i think if anything they would have been better served by not saying their daily reveals at all because i think that they set an expectation for a lot of people especially given their own past history of their own campaigns and it wasn't met here because when you walk into that campaign when you walk into bloodstone or any other campaign and you see no stretch goals daily reveals that's fine at least i know what i'm signing up for that's great thank you for warning me i appreciate it and then day one comes and you get a chapter story which has no reveal the daily reveal in this case was not content for the game it was narrative it didn't give you anything it just showed you something day two comes by again just more story if you look through the daily reveals on bloodstone the amount of actual content given in those daily reveals was minimal to none there were a few things they had the weapon hex or something i can't remember i kind of go through them all to remember what they were but there were a handful of actual content driven reveals most of the reveals were keeping people involved which isn't a reveal that's just an update at that point at that point just say we have an update every day at 4pm and move on with your life don't sit there and call them daily reveals when the reveal is not actually giving anyone new content because it sets an expectation that is worse it's one thing to have the the core pledge here and they're stay static the whole time the problem is when you sit there and you say daily reveals people think it's going to be an upwards progression and every time it doesn't move up the gap between their expectation and the reality keeps widening every single day and that's just not good that's why towards the end of the campaign you're going to see falling numbers people walking away from bloodstone because they were already a bit wary of the price point and then you throw in the fact that the daily reveals aren't actually giving them the content that gap between reality and expectations got wider every single day this is something i talked about with dead reckoning as well a long time ago that aspect of when you sit there and you say we have daily reveals and then that daily reveal is a live stream it's great it's not bad to have a live stream just don't call them daily reveals when they're not going to be revealing new content just at that point they're just an update and so i think that's another aspect and the last aspect with bloodborne is going to be bloodborne very bloodstone should get that right bloodstone was very much selling the narrative from those daily reveals to that trailer that they spent who knows how much time and money on getting that trailer going it didn't tell you a thing about the gameplay but sold you the story and the fact that they had a book involved in the campaign you can buy this book that was part of the experience that sold you on the story the narrative of bloodstone i think that's great for a certain kind of person but i don't think that kind of person was as much looking for a hack and slash rolling dice attacking each other i think there's a difference of dichotomy between the the narrative aspect and the gameplay aspect that was being sold here and i don't think there was a huge overlap based on the comments at least there didn't seem to be a huge overlap in the market that wanted the narrative and the market that wanted the hack and slash roll dice attack each other gameplay and so i think bloodstone again through the daily reveals and the general campaign sold a lot of narrative as a selling point that i think for many people it wasn't necessarily a bad thing but i don't think it was a selling point and they have a link to the poll so they canceled they cancelled and they have a link to the poll of your own feedback what did you want to see in the campaign what else is there that you want to see and they're going to be coming back in the summer they might have other campaigns first they have a schedule so they might have other stuff happening but they will be coming back in the summer with the campaign and trust me i want them to come back bloodstone is an excellent game this to me is my perception of what happened with the kickstarter but the game itself was excellent and i absolutely wanted my collection to the point that if they said hey whenever publishing that i would try to hunt down that prototype to get that prototype because it was a good game it was a fun experience it's the kind of thing you can pull out when you have 45 minutes and just knock out an arena battle where you smash up your friends from today's tomorrow or play a cooperative game bloodstone was a good experience is a good experience and i'm looking forward to the campaign and so with that i have three questions that i want to dive into we're already getting fairly into the videos this is longer than i intended to be but welcome to board game co this is what we do here number one was the funding goal fake because this is a big one was their funding goal an absolute blatant lie why set a hundred and fifty thousand dollars as your funding goal if it clearly wasn't if you're clearly going to cancel at three hundred thousand dollars and to that let me three questions let's go through the questions first i'll come to the answers question two should they have canceled in my opinion should they have canceled the campaign in my opinion is meaningless it's just my opinion but let's go through it anyway number three what could they or should they have done differently in terms of if they relaunch or doing the campaign or all of that and start with those number one was the funding goal fake i don't know for sure it's hard to sell but but the idea that they cancelled the campaign and therefore the funding goal is fake that i don't believe is true at all and i'll tell you why because funding goals to a certain extent need to be flexible to a certain extent because there's two different numbers on the table the first number is what do we actually need to make this project work that's a just what do we need what is the minimum viable amount that we need to make this project worth that number might have been 150 000 by all accounts and production costs that would have made sense probably it would have worked right the second number is what do we want to make this project work and kickstarter doesn't allow for the possibility of accommodating both those numbers which is a big problem unfortunately kickstarter only allows you to have one number what we need and what we want sorry i just said it wrong kickstarter only allows you to have one number what we need that is the only thing you have everything else is involves counseling and so i think in the case of bloodstone this is again pure conjecture pure hypothesis or whatever i think in the case of bloodstone 150 000 likely was what they need the question along the way becomes if we cancel could we get more and not purely from a profit thing certainly from a profit thing i mean the whole interview the shelf stories where where james hudson goes into well you know we want service to the backers the community we want the campaign better i think all those things are true and also they're running a business i don't know what james can say what he's not comfortable saying whatever it is but of course they should try to make more money they're running a business if they can turn around and cancel a campaign come back in the summer and double the amount of money raised why shouldn't they how what did you lose as a backer of the game you lost what four months of time not playing your game but for them this is the project this is the the livelihood and salaries of multiple people this could be the entire games division we're just seeing idw games division shutting down companies shut down projects divisions games when they don't do well it is it is in my opinion selfish to be worried about the three months that you didn't get the game when you're and you say that while the business can't make money how dare they they lie to me they should just follow through on their promises regardless of the consequence i think that is a narrow-minded viewpoint of looking at things don't get me wrong the problem is kickstarter again does not give you the creator the tools to properly communicate to the backers to the community what they are actually signing up for they give you that one number and so that one number 150 thousand dollars let's say let's say people have just not backed the game to the extent that jude city games that skype entertainment had wanted maybe they maybe they just didn't but there was no feedback as to what was wrong there wasn't feedback from the community as to the fact that the price was too much there wasn't feedback because the fact that we want more we want more heroes we don't like the daily reveals what if it literally just came down to the fact that the pool of people who could have and back this game were just smaller than they anticipated in that case i think the funding goal might well have been real again pure conjecture here i think it might have been real i think the reason for the cancellation is not because it was a fake funding goal but rather because of the fact that they could do better they could come back and re-polish and re-haul the experience and take into account the feedback that was given by the community and deliver a better board game but had that feedback not been there the campaign may well have hit 300 dollars closed up shop called it a day and moved on i think that the kickstarter does not allow for a possibility of rehauling based on what's going on it's purely binary either have a funding goal you don't it doesn't allow for the nuance around that funding goal as far as funding goes by the way this whole separate problem i tackled this in the other video my last video so i won't heavily go into it but fake funding goals are an inherent problem because of the way they motivate creators to have small funding goals rather than realistic we've seen this with not mythic the other company i always forget monolith monolith games when they tried doing their beyond the monolith and they gave a real funding goal and the whole thing just didn't work out at the end of the day when people or campaigns or companies try real funding goals more often than not it causes them more problems than when they don't and as as backers as people we seem to only care about the lie when the project gets canceled the rest of the time we're cool with it it's not that the lie bothers us that the lie bothers us when the project gets canceled but again i tackle that more in the other videos i'm not heavily going to go into that here which means question two should they have cancelled and in my opinion absolutely i thought they should have cancelled four days in because they had a two-day funding goal where they clearly expected and hoped to have 5 000 backers within two days and that was very clear at the end of day one that that was not happening it simply was not happening it was clear i think 10 hours in it was clear it wasn't happening there's a progression to the way kickstarter works you can look at the numbers and and it follows a fairly standard curve there are exceptions but the exceptions are rare it was pretty clear you know six ten hours into the campaign that while it was doing well it certainly was doing well it wasn't doing 5000 backers in two days well and i thought they should have cancelled fairly early on all things considered not two days in but by the time they started releasing their narrative reveals their daily updates their their their daily reveals it became clear that people were already not thrilled with the the premise of what this kickstarter was offering people still invested people are still backing don't get me wrong but there were those who obviously hit back and walked away and don't care at all there were those who didn't back because of the value proposition the narrative reveals all that and those that backed but kept an eye on the campaign hoping for change that wasn't coming i thought they should have canceled four days in but i was like hey they didn't so good i don't know what's gonna happen what's gonna whatever but when i finally saw them cancel when i got that notification i was happy not happy to be clear not happy that the project failed but i was happy because i believe it could be so much more and i know that if they hit cancel there's no chance on earth the project was going away i knew for sure that if they canceled it was to pivot and to come back better to take into account that feedback to deliver a better project a better experience for everyone who seemed to care so as far as should they have canceled in my opinion absolutely yes as far as what could they or should they do differently this could be a whole bunch of things so first of all just from an economic stance lowering the price point and and lowering the price point is a complicated conversation you either have to lower the price point or give more value if you are trying to address that crowd now i don't think they necessarily have to i think there are different ways you can try to sell bloodstone there are different ways and things you can do some things they've talked about is potentially making it no longer kickstarter exclusive having a retail option with standees i'm okay with that i don't particularly care it changes the reason for people to back it on kickstarter unfortunately unfortunately you now give people a reason to wait for retail which changes the conversation but you might open the gates water to who can experience the game so as a product line investment it might be the better move as a as a kickstarter focused investment i don't think that's the right move in terms of doubling up on in terms of betting offering a better value proposition you either do that by adding more content or by lowering the price lowering the price means one of two things you either find ways to make the game cheaper find different people you can get quotes from cut out components that you feel unnecessary lower this the size of miniatures you can find ways to compromise on the experience to lower your price point or or okay or find other manufacturers or you can sit there and say which is going to make less money per game which is a complicated conversation depending on what your margins are you can actually hurt yourself way too much you can increase your backer size but hurt the amount of money coming to the company if you slash your price point too much that's a whole cost of goods and margins and all that it's a very it comes down to math ultimately but there's only so much a company should lower their price point because they still have to pay the bills there are people who are getting paid there are salaries going to be paid there's there's artists designers all these things need to be paid in a game and there are a factor it's one thing to say hey you should just sell your game and not make any money in it but this it's again skype entertainment is a company with with real deadlines to hit with real p ls and all those things you need and expectations and whatever that they need to meet uh there's a word for it there's a there's a word when you predict things i'm totally forgetting what the word is uh quarterly projections they prepare projections they need to hit that's the word i'm looking for but they can double up in content that's the other way so you can the other way you can manage that value proposition is by giving people more of a more content to back the game and that can be done through a variety of ways that can be done through through doubling up on the content in terms of of giving a one versus many experience which they don't currently have have someone control the boss give a different set of rules keep most of the content don't add that much in terms of physical components it adds design time but if you have enough backers that will help in the long run you could take all the monsters from the cooperative experience and turn them into playable characters you'll add a dashboard if everyone you'll add more components but you might be able to get more out of less in that sense now it might hurt the narrative aspect because why are these monsters in the arena so if you care and you're invested in the narrative you have to craft narrative as to why this stuff makes sense but speaking i'm just giving this opinion for someone who doesn't care about narrative so i don't mind that stuff but there are other ways other examples you can come up with in terms of doubling up on the con the components you have and giving you more content without overdoing the amount of components there are daily reveals daily reveals i think that they need to either completely scratch daily reveals or set a clear expectation as to what is going to be coming in daily reveals clear collection doesn't have to be that much it could be every day will release one small thing think about the arena and the way they have that spinning blade of death and different things like that they can come up with a narrative update every single day that each day releases one small piece of cardboard that changes the gameplay up that wouldn't require much it requires a card and some guard cardboard you can basically have a 10 card pack and then a a full punch board sheet that represents the full daily reveals across the campaign and gives you a ton more arena experience a ton more arena gameplay there are small things you can do daily reveals do not have to be big wonderland's war proved this to us wonderland's war from skybound entertainment they gave you daily reveals every single day that didn't really give you a ton of extra content they just gave you small extra things every single day but they wore extra things every single day as opposed to purely narrative they can give you tts available from day one they i think they're already doing this i think they've actually already done this that they can unlock the play in the game online like i said already most people who have played the game have enjoyed the game they've been invested they've liked the experience and so making it available to people that's a big deal they can lower the campaign timeline especially if they're not going to be doing daily reveals in a long way they can lower the gap in how long the campaign is don't drag it up for so long have a seven day campaign if you're not gonna be giving much there have a 14 day campaign if you're giving something but you don't want to do every single day for 20 days or whatever it is there are ways to balance the timeline we are seeing more and more shorter campaign timelines and especially in the case of a relaunch kickstarter it won't hurt them as much that seven day timeline that some campaign c that's that's pushing it you're not you're giving people one weekend to jump into the game but it's not as bad if you're a relaunch when you're already pulling in 14 days of prior stuff that and this way you don't have to worry about doing campaign timelines for you know 20 days of daily reveals and all of that the design challenges i like the idea of keeping the community invested something we see from a lot of companies including awaken realms but i think the way they did it was too open-ended in a way that did not invest others in the game the way they had you had to come up with ideas if you look i mean the campaign had 2700 backers and if you look at the first design challenge it's 39 posts and no i'm not excluding unique people so 39 posts maybe 20 people commenting in the design challenge the second design challenge is 80 posts okay great that's what 40 people 45 people how many unique people from those 2 700 pool of potential people are actually contributing to the design challenge and that's because the way they did it involved you really crafting your idea you're asking people to invest their time and energy and thought process into something that may never see the light of day because it may not be picked i think instead the better way to handle community involvement in the progression and design of the game is through voting because it takes one second to vote oh i like that scope oh and necromancer versus that this version of that i like that give people ideas and ask them to vote people will be far more involved because they're not asking them to give up a lot of energy or time even then people still don't because like what what are my vote matt doesn't mean hundreds of people voting my vote matters people generally are feel a little less invested in the outcome of something that they feel they won't affect the change they won't affect any change in and so when you ask them to really dive into design you're going to have a lot of passion that's not true you're going to have a handful of passionate people but most people are going to check out entirely and the last thing and this thing is definitely my own bias take with a grain of salt but it's i like optional buys i don't like spending money on optional buys to be clear but optional buys is another way to keep people invested another way to add new content to the game without even taking away from your own price point from your own profit margins you know if you're doing a 14 day campaign you can have three optional buys you get two optional buys across the campaign you can have a hero pack four extra heroes for thirty dollars whatever it is giving you extra content for the game beautiful miniatures more and doubling up in their arena thing if you're having a gameplay experience with a four player gameplay the amount of combinations you have in a four-player arena game when you have eight heroes versus when you have 12 heroes it is a huge gap and if you're actually playing it eight players then you need that variation to actually in any way have a different combination of arenas of heroes in the arena so having you know two hero packs that are 30 bucks each and then a boss pack you know three bosses for 30 bucks whatever it is you can add new content to the game in terms of optional buys that will add to people's desire to jump into that you have cool skills people are always they're always upset about it i mean myself too but you're like you're like okay sitting there like look at the coolest scopes are behind the optional buy why aren't the coolest scopes in the game but you keep people invested in the conversation and the process and the journey it can push people away if you do it too much so it has to be balanced when you're talking to optional buys but if you do it well if you keep it reasonable if you keep it in check you can get a lot more people invested in an ongoing basis as far as the campaign and that's that's everything bloodstone i guess the last thing not to put and by the way james uh if you're watching any of this uh apologies for my armchair analysis that may or may not be completely and totally wrong i specifically didn't want to do this as an interview because i didn't want to handle this from the stance of skybound entertainment issuing a statement we already have them doing that via shelf stories which again excellent recommendation i excellent video i recommend watching it lastly uh speaking of apologizing people so i'm going to pause this to awaken realms now because now i'm going to put that on the spot because i think awakened realms is primed for the opportunity to potentially fix this fake funding goal problem like i said already kickstarter doesn't really give you any variability they give you a firm here's your funding goal you either cancel you don't and done i think awaken realms and the fact that they are building out game found as another as a new tool and they're setting they're taking away the things that we expect to see and they're adjusting the the space we are in i think they are primed to potentially tackle this problem and do it and put out solutions that might improve the experience and those solutions can be anything those solutions could be you could have a funding goal a funding goal could be off the bat you could have a funding goal in place but then there could be a tag saying you know commitment to not cancel or however you want to phrase it effectively you can give a creator a binary choice here's my funding goal and i'm committing to not canceling it once it's launched once once it hits that or you can have a flexible funding you can't call a flexible funding goal because gofundme has not has that and flexible funding goals and gofundme just means all the money is collected no matter what you have to find different terminology but what if a creator could sit there and say yeah i have 150 funding goal but hey i'm keeping my options open i might just or cancel whatever it is and done versus a creator who is willing to commit that they won't do that or alternatively having two different funding goals having a funding goal which is this is what we need and the funding goals this will be what we won't cancel after or perhaps just a tag showing this creator has cancelled a funded project in the past there are many tools at their disposal i mean theoretically kickstarter has these tools as well but kickstarter has not shown the same desire to innovate the way awakened realms and game found has so i could see awakened realms i could see game found tackling this project i could see them jumping into this problem that we see and providing solutions that may not perfectly solve the the problem on the table but certainly might make it a little more transparent and a little better for everyone involved and that's everything until next time i'm alex radcliffe from boardroom co i welcome any feedback down below what did i miss what did i get wrong what did i forget about entirely all that stuff just let me know and as always until next time have a good one

Channel: BoardGameCo

Views: 11,833

Rating: 4.8323355 out of 5

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Id: _UKn_8gBzcc

Length: 33min 21sec (2001 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021