Puzzles, CMON, El Dorado, and Grey Gnome: Talking Points from Recent News – Stonemaier Games

Puzzles, CMON, El Dorado, and Grey Gnome: Talking Points from Recent News

Before I jump into some hot topics today, just a quick reminder that the first session of our live, virtual book club for A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide is today (Thursday) at 2:00 Central on the Stonemaier Games Facebook page. I’m looking forward to it! You can sign up to be notified about future sessions here.

Wingspan Jigsaw Puzzles

Yesterday we announced that we’ve secretly been working on jigsaw puzzles for Wingspan…and they’re here! As with many things we do, this is an experiment for us–we’re very much not looking to become a puzzle company, but enough people have asked for Wingspan puzzles that we thought we’d give it a try.

We made three different difficulty levels with a completely different array of birds on each; so far, sales of each have been nearly identical (which is a little surprising to me–conventional wisdom is that 1000-piece puzzles are the way to go). I look forward to seeing what people think of the puzzles when they start receiving them next week.

CMON

CMON, a game publisher perhaps best known for its Zombicide series of games, recently surprised backers of its $9 million Marvel Zombies campaign with some shipping prices that were significantly higher than the estimates provided on the project page (which was only a few months ago).

For example, as noted by BoardGameCo in a detailed video, a backer expecting an estimate of around $35 to ship the base pledge in a single wave would find the pledge manager requesting $58 instead. Higher pledge levels resulted in even higher increases–as reported by Pine Island Games, nearly $100 higher than the estimate.

There are three reasons why I think this is…interesting. One, freight shipping prices are very similar now (May 2022) as they were when the campaign launched (January 2022). In fact, the highest freight shipping prices we’ve faced were during that period leading up to the Chinese New Year. I’m not entirely sure if CMON is attributing the price increase to freight shipping–more on that in a second–but if so, based on the information we all had in January about the state of freight shipping, there’s no reasons the estimated costs on the project page couldn’t have been more accurate.

Two, fulfillment pricing hasn’t changed significantly over the last few months. I think we’re seeing costs of all goods and services increase across the world, but mostly by around 5-10%, not 65%. So if freight costs haven’t changed much since January and fulfillment costs haven’t changed much since January, why weren’t the estimates on the project page more accurate?

Three, perhaps most importantly, I would say that it is definitely not standard practice to include freight shipping costs in the shipping fee charged to backers. Yes, creators absolutely need to account for the landed cost–manufacturing plus freight–but those costs are used to create the price of the product itself, not the final parcel shipping cost (i.e., fulfillment center labor, packaging, and postage). In those regards, the parcel shipping cost for Tapestry is averages around $24 in the US. I can’t imagine that the base pledge box (Undead, $130) is that much bigger or heavier than Tapestry, but backers are being asked to pay more than double that cost.

I’m not a backer, so I’m not affected by any of this, but it’s all just so odd to me. If there’s information I’m missing, feel free to constructively mention it in the comments. I do think, though, that this is an outlier–while you might see slightly higher parcel shipping costs on pledge managers than the original estimates, I highly doubt any others will be this big. As BoardGameCo predicts, this may also result in more backers choosing the $1 pledge level to wait and see what actual shipping costs are.

El Dorado Games

In a very transparent video, Daniel from El Dorado Games shares some struggles the company has had with production and freight shipping for the three crowdfunding campaigns they ran during the pandemic (including The Age of Atlantis, which I backed, Windward, and Legend Academy). He includes a lot of data in the video, including a detailed comparison of their estimates vs reality.

I couldn’t quite tell from the video if “shipping” includes freight and parcel or just freight, but either way, it’s a big number! Daniel notes in the video that they’ve had the funds for each project set aside, waiting for the final shipping cost reveal, so it isn’t a case of them not having the funds to fulfill pledges. Rather than tapping into those funds and risking the ability to fulfill the rewards, both El Dorado employees found full-time positions elsewhere, and they’re working on these games as a hobby.

I appreciate everything about this video, but in addition to the value of this transparency, the one other takeaway I’d suggest to other creators is: In such uncertain times, maybe it isn’t a great idea to launch a new campaign (or two new campaigns) if you haven’t yet fulfilled your previous campaign. On a creative level, I know it’s really hard to wait to launch something that you’re excited to share with the world, but the risk is that the costs will really pile up and you’ll encounter huge hurdles to share the final version of either final product with anyone.

Grey Gnome Games

Last, I really enjoyed reading a recent article from Jason of Grey Gnome Games about his transition from Kickstarter to Crowd Sale. Here’s how Jason describes Crowd Sale: “What makes the Crowd Sale unique is that the entire process is handled by a single company, the Game Crafter. They host the actual crowd-funding platform, they manufacture the entire game here in the United States, and the fulfill all the orders! All I have to do is upload the files and build the page and launch.” He also notes that there are no stretch goals on Crowd Sale–he can just design a complete game and put it on the platform.

In addition to sharing some excellent numbers for small-box games created and sold this way (including $40,880 for his most recent campaign), I really like what Jason said about how removing the business side of running a Kickstarter helped his wellbeing and creativity:

“This new-found free time was the real payout for me. I felt like I had moved through a storm (Kickstarter) and into a wide open meadow full of sunshine. Sorry, I know that sounded cheesy, but it was an awakening for me. My creative juices started flowing. I was no longer hindered by thoughts of overseas manufacturing, or having to fill my car up with packages to take to the post office, or worrying about backers canceling their pledges in the last few hours. I could just design.”

I’m glad to hear Jason found his sweet spot with The Game Crafter’s Crowd Sale, and I’m curious if other creators have had similar experiences with it.

***

I look forward to hearing your constructive thoughts about today’s topics!

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content!

32 Comments on “Puzzles, CMON, El Dorado, and Grey Gnome: Talking Points from Recent News

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  1. Unfortunately, I and many, many other backers have never received our games from El Dorado Games. There have been no updates, emails, or answers as to why so many of us never received our games. This has left me not wanting to back things again except with known companies. Sure C’MON has its issues, but I have always received my product and the size of the boxes you get sent will always be a lot of shipping costs. I know nothing about Grey Gnome Games so I will not comment about them.

    I am, and always have been very happy with the games I purchase from Stonemaier. You are really how any kind of business should be run and I use you as a model when someone asks me about things about how businesses should be transparent with their customers. I look forward to continuing to do business with your company and hope that the El Dorado situation gets ironed out.

    The FunAgain situation maybe is a subject of one of your posts, I unfortunately do not have time to look. So much to read in a day, but I felt this needed to be added here since the fulfillment of two games that I backed has not happened and evidently it is affecting more than those two games from what I have seen in the comments sections for their other games.

    1. I’m really sorry to hear that, Dina. I was fortunate to receive my copy of Age of Atlantis, but only after I emailed them to check on the status of my order.

      I don’t know much about the Funagain situation, just that they’re shutting down fulfillment, and a lot of publishers relied on them and are trying to get their games to other fulfillment centers.

  2. […] Also read: Puzzles, CMON, El Dorado, and Grey Gnome: Talking Points from Recent News […]

  3. […] Puzzles, CMON, El Dorado, and Grey Gnome […]

  4. […] past, so now lurk around their new projects, just waiting for an opportunity to stick the knife in. Jamie Stegmaier put out a blog article on it, and The Dice Tower did a video interview with staff from two other board gaming companies, and […]

  5. CMON has been springing changes in shipping on the ROTW for years. I backed Zombicide: Black Plague years ago and their “estimate” of $35USD shipping to me here in Australia blew out to $79.

    Everyone told me that it was “because they didn’t know all the heavy stretch goals that would be included” – but CMON knows exactly what will be in their games, if you ask me. They have a fair idea how much they will unlock.

    I think we’re just seeing this practice move over to the US backers as well.

  6. I think it *is* becoming standard practice to include freight costs in crowdfunding campaigns as “shipping” now and I do find the psychology around this quite interesting.
    Part of it is that everyone knows freight costs have gone up lots, so an increase in “shipping” makes more sense to them than an increase in the core game price.
    Secondly, “shipping” is often charged later and as consumers we accept a certain amount of variation on the original estimate. Plus it varies from location to location – if freight increases costs hit China-US much more than China-Poland, should everyone still be charged the same base game price cost?
    And the last point is retail. I’m seeing it on campaigns now: “I’ll be able to get this expansion cheaper in retail” Will you? How do you know that? “Well it’s the same size as the current expansion and I can buy that for $40 at my local store”.
    Well yeah, that expansion was shipped over before the price increases. People are comparing pledge prices with current retail prices, as opposed to retail prices in 12-18 months time when the campaign will actually deliver. They’re not realising there’s a huge delayed impact in the retail sector to these increases in freight costs. Retail games have been creeping up in price, but when it’s becoming clear freight costs are not going back down to 2019 levels in the next few years, there’s going to a spike in new games/printings costs.

    1. Dean, are creators being transparent about that? Perhaps I’m just missing it, but I haven’t seen a creator clearly say, “freight and parcel shipping will be charged after the campaign”. I’d be fine with it if they did, but I haven’t seen it.

      I wouldn’t say that freight shipping is all that different whether you’re shipping to the US, Europe, Canada, or Australia.

      1. If the goal of the shipping increase is to reflect the costs of freight, wouldn’t they charge shipping later in the process, closer to when the project is ready to be transported to shipping hubs?

        1. Thomas: The goal of parcel shipping is to reflect the cost of shipping a parcel from a fulfillment center to a customer. The goal of calculating landed costs–which are traditionally included in the reward level–is to include all costs required to make the product and get it to the fulfillment center.

          With freight shipping costs more in flux than in the past, it isn’t entirely unreasonable for publishers to charge those costs in the pledge manager, but if they do, (a) reward prices should decrease, as they’re only accounting for manufacturing costs and profit and (b) the publisher should be entirely transparent about this in the shipping section.

  7. Thanks Jamey for mentioning my article about switching from Kickstarters to Crowd Sales. I think our hobby is amazing in that we can all sort of find our own path to what consider success. For some that is a million dollar Kickstarter campaign, for another it seeing their game on a store shelf, for Jason Tagmire it is corning the market on wallet games and hand building them all, and for me it is focusing on design and illustration and connecting with my fans. I am glad you have have found your own success and keep up the amazing work!

    1. Thanks for dropping by! I appreciate you writing such a detailed article, and I agree that we can all find our own path as creators in this hobby.

  8. I appreciate the candor in your take and hitting on some touchy subjects. Really good insight.

  9. Jamey, this is an incredible post. Thanks for sharing your insight into the real costs of shipping! This is what we need from creators, not whiny nonsense like the embarrassing interview on Dice Tower today.

    1. I watched that video, and I didn’t find it to be whiny nonsense. Everything they shared is true, especially the observation that most publishers made their way through 2021 on little margins in the hopes that freight shipping would improve in 2022, which it has not done. I think the key point missing from the video was that CMON’s campaign was in early 2022, and nothing substantial related to freight or parcel shipping prices have changed since then. Perhaps Nathan is right that they used older numbers by accident when posting their estimates.

      1. I mean, they did go on for a bit about how all this “logistical” stuff was harshing their creative buzz, as though it wasn’t part and parcel of…you know…running a business. Also kind of jarring to have Tom Vasel admit in the first minute of the video that he himself is dealing with this stuff and getting a ton of emails about it…almost like he was putting the video out to get people to stop bothering him. But I’m a glass half empty kinda guy so maybe it’s just me :-)

        1. I agree with that first part too, honestly. I’m designing a game now that won’t be ready for at least a year, and seeing the world of logistics, production, and shipping changing so much (for the worst) can be discouraging even though I just want to be excited about the creative process. In those moments, I try not to think about it. :)

          1. Well hang in there, I’m sure it isn’t the most enjoyable part of the process but it’s worth doing right to treat your customers with respect and avoid the crap storm that has been unleashed onto CMON 😀

  10. ” I can’t imagine that the base pledge box (Undead, $130) is that much bigger or heavier than Tapestry”

    The base Zombicide box size (12x12x4) is minimally larger than Tapestry but you seem to have completely discounted the amount of extra the campaign generated which will conservatively require two more boxes of similar size. So in terms of size its at least twice, more realistically thrice the size of Tapestry.

    1. As I note in the post, there might be information I don’t know–I was simply going by the information I could find on the project page, which indicated that the base pledge was a single box. There’s no discounting of anything here.

      I appreciate you sharing this information, though this still really doesn’t explain the core point: There has been at most a minimal change in parcel shipping rates between January and May of this year, so, regardless of the size of the box(es), why did the estimated rate for fulfilling the core pledge increase by $21?

      1. Oh I absolutely agree, there’s no reason an experienced company like CMON could be so wildly wrong on an estimate given three months ago. It was just on that particular comparison the base pledge is basically two boxes (based on their prior Zombicide and/or Marvel United campaigns, which were listed as one box but had a box of extras comparable to that box or two to three times bigger in MU’s case)

          1. I would also add that CMoN runs a really tight campaign… meaning they probably knew ahead of time what all the stretch goals were, and they adjusted the intervals accordingly.

            So, they PROBABLY knew how many boxes (and weight) their core pledge was going to be. I agree that they should have been much closer on their estimates.

  11. Hi Jamie! Thanks so much for this post. I’m currently running a kickstarter campaign (Through Ice and Snow) and after reading it we decided to make a little update to our shipping section and in our latest Update. Basically, we are making it clear that our rates are good because we took the decision before the campaign launched to: Cover all costs of shipping from factory to fulfilment centres ourselves – which is quite standard but nicer for potential and current backers to have that info. Plus, that we are subsidising the fulfilment cost of each pledge to a certain amount.

    1. Alex: I think it’s great that you added that extra layer of transparency to your shipping chart!

  12. When I first started backing, shipping was included in the Kickstarter price and there was no state tax or VAT.
    I remember the first time tax was added separate, and I felt a little sore about it. The price was now $6 higher than I was expecting. Still, seemed reasonable.
    Then “tax and shipping to be collected later” lead me to reserve copies through my FLGS. That lasted until I realized it was a lot harder to guarantee they’d follow through with the pledge manager, or be able to get me specific items. So back to “if I wanted it, I’ll back through the specific Kickstarter direct.”
    Then companies started waiting on shipping and taxes until later, which led me to $1 pledges whenever possible.
    Finally, the lack of transparency on how shipping prices are determined (are they including freight shipping in that shipping cost? Most likely) is leading me to avoid crowdfunding altogether. I don’t want to miss a few games I really want, but I don’t want to get stuck with shipping prices I can’t justify.

  13. Some publishers do not even estimate shipping costs anymore. Portal Games just launched their pledge manager for 51st state. I have to pay €40 on a €48 pledge for an expansion. I moved to $1 pledges now, or just skip.

  14. I personally only do 1000-piece puzzles, but they were all so pretty, I couldn’t pick just one! I’m very happy you’re doing these, and it’s a nice touch that they’ll fit with the game box. These convinced me to become a Champion!

      1. I had a lot of fun doing the 500-piece one and now am thinking I bit more than I could chew with the 1500 one 😅 I’m really impressed with the quality – no puzzle dust! no plastic bag inside! pieces are easy to distinguish! And they look beautiful on the shelf – Wingspan is taking over the bookcase! I hope you make a lot more.

        1. I’m glad that you enjoyed the puzzle! The 1500-piece puzzle is definitely quite a challenge. :)

  15. I love Grey Gnome Games! All of Jason’s games I’ve played have been a big hit with me. Three from Kickstarter runs and one from Game Crafter. It was actually GGG that got me to start watching The Game Crafter for new games and to take it seriously.
    When I read Jason’s article a week or so ago about his experience the Stonemaier blog was one of the first things that came to mind. Kind of a cool geeky moment when I get to see some of my favorite publishers crossing paths.

    The struggles of the last couple years have been hard on backers. The transparency by publishers like El Dorado Games, Grey Gnome, and the gradually growing list has been very refreshing. Seeing the numbers come in when it’s time to pay the shipping bill is a lot easier to swallow after having the publisher and creator talk through the issues and keep their backers updated.

    I would be curious to see statistics on how crowdfunding has been impacted by the state of shipping. Trends in backers on similar campaigns, game prices, shipping estimates at pledge time vs actual shipping post-pledge, and profit margin impacts.

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