They've funded their publishing costs out-of-pocket, and I think they're getting close to breaking even. But it's hard to keep publishing if all you're doing is breaking even. As a result, they're using Kickstarter to fund their next release. The fund drive is mostly set up as a pre-order site; for $35, you get a copy of the game shipped to you when it's ready, and they have other more lavish rewards for higher donation values.
They're looking for $20,000 in funding, which seems like a tall order - that would be nearly 600 games they'd have to pre-sell. It's also a bit odd for an existing company to be fundraising in this manner; it sort of seems like if you already exist, you shouldn't be hitting up friends and fans for startup cash, but I think the pathetic economics of the game publishing industry might justify it in this case.
There's nothing wrong with pre-selling, of course; many companies do that, particularly in the console game industry. It allows the publisher not to have to take as big a bet as they would otherwise, and it allows them to gauge interest in their products. GMT Games does much the same thing with their P500 program, where they don't print a game until it has 500 guaranteed customers.
We'll see how they do; they've given themselves a month for the $20,000, so it shouldn't take long to find out.
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Dave, thanks for covering this. I was hesitant for quite awhile to go to Kickstarter to fund a project, for the exact reason you mention:
ReplyDelete"It's also a bit odd for an existing company to be fundraising in this manner; it sort of seems like if you already exist, you shouldn't be hitting up friends and fans for startup cash"
But in the end my passion for letting the market decide took over. Based on our current schedule Eminent Domain was AT LEAST 1 year away.
So I figure it makes sense to let our customers decided as an aggregate if the game should happen even sooner than that.
Cheers,
Michael Mindes
Just want to let you know seing both you and Michael missed it, I asume it is Michael from Tasty. Tasy actualy have 3 games on the way, Jab, Belfort and Train of thought. =)
ReplyDelete@Dage10 - Good point... I saw it, but I didn't want to point it out on somebody that has been so kind to comment and blog about many things that we have done at Tasty Minstrel Games.
ReplyDeleteFYI, thanks for covering some of my stuff, I really appreciate it.
Happy to do it; I'm thinking of doing the same thing, so I'm learning (I hope) a lot from your experiences.
ReplyDelete