this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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They're making money on it, so that's reason enough for them.
Presumably, the few people that buy it will open and use it.
I highly doubt they are making much money, if any on it. Board game development and manufacturing is expensive in the U.S. especially for a one-off. A game with this many decks and pieces would probably cost an easy $100 in a regular retail environment, which is likely why the run is limited.
$100 is way too steep for punch-out tokens. or maybe games developed in the era of kickstarter have skewed my perception.
It used to be better even 10 years ago, but my understanding is that the demand for time on the manufacturing machines has gone way up due to Kickstarter and the popularity of D&D, and supply of machines has not gone up because it takes engineers and investors literally begging (and sometimes even threatening to sue from the investor-side) for management to even consider buying new machines (Thanks Lean Six Sigma). I'd say the biggest thing creating cost here is the board itself, the packaging, and the (looks like three or four) decks of cards, not the punch tokens.
That said, I could be way off and they are pushing these babies out for 10 bucks a pop.
I have a buddy that just published a game last year, and his set up isn't much more complicated than this, with more plastic counters, and his ran for 80 dollars outside of retail, which wasn't much above cost (according to him).
I think a good comparison would be a game like Dead of Winter which has like at least twice as much papercraft stuff in it as this Storm the Capitol game but at highest I think sold $79.99 retail and was rather profitable.
The difference in your friend's game is the plastic counters, I think. A pair of my friends have been publishing games for almost a decade now and they try to exclusively design papercraft games because of the difference in cost to produce.
I expect a larger, less limited run for a higher price later on if this test run sells well. If this is a loss leader, it's also a marketing gambit.
This is completely possible and a much more realistic analysis. We'll see what they end up doing here.
Might sell decently in the UK as well 😆
Yeah, the TrashFuture audience would love this shit.
well, they're charging money for it. Whether or not they make money sort of depends on whether people buy them
They have 30k members that collectively pay them $100k per month over patreon. Plus the large number of folks like me who listen on bootleg feeds and their public feed. I think that's enough people that they can sell out a limited run of a board game.
It's certainly possible, but it's also not guaranteed