Earlier this year, I had a great chat with a publisher friend about their new game, which was poised to be a smash hit (based on preorders, reviews, and distributor orders). They wanted to best position their company to handle the massive demand and avoid any pitfalls they might encounter for the release and the months/years that followed.
Part of the conversation focused on Wingspan, the top-selling brand from Stonemaier Games (game design by Elizabeth Hargrave). Wingspan got off to a rocky start due to me vastly underestimating demand, not delaying the retail release date while we made more copies to catch up, and learning quite a bit about how distributors allocate games to retailers. Fortunately, people still wanted Wingspan after our initial shortcomings, and 4+ years later, we’ve sold over 2.5 million units of Wingspan and its expansions.
I understand that this is a niche topic, but I feel that it’s an important one. If anyone has the good fortune of having a product like this, the potential for failure is just as high as the potential for success, so the more information you have to navigate these decisions, the better.
Overall Strategy: In the world of tabletop games, we’ve seen companies handle their smash hits in various ways. Some companies hone in on that one brand, making it their focus (e.g., the Gloomhaven brand by Cephalofair Games). Other companies continue to support and print the special brand while still creating completely independent products too (e.g., the Brass brand by Roxley and Terraforming Mars by Stronghold). I think both methods are viable; obviously with Stonemaier Games and Wingspan we continue to pursue a variety of games, not just Wingspan products. One creator said it really well here, speaking to the pitfall of ignoring everything but your smash hit brand: “We let the success determine the direction of the company vs us using the success to execute the best plan possible.”
Initial Release: In all likelihood, even if you use crowdfunding to gauge early adopter demand, you probably won’t know until close to its release if a game is really going to take off. The sooner you can get commitments from distributors to either expand the first printing or start a reprint, the better–taking on the entire risk yourself could sink your company. To avoid retailer allocation (i.e., when a retailer asks for 10 copies of a game and their distributors only supply 1 copy), I highly recommend two things: One, delay the retail release date until distributors fully collect retailer preorders and you can have the inventory to cover those orders. Two, work with a distributor–like GTS with their Fortress program–who is willing to guarantee specific quantities to participating friendly local game stores (FLGS).
Resources: While a smash hit game can generate significant revenue, it also requires significant resources (money and time). For example, say that you make 15,000 units of a game following a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign. As you get closer and closer to the release, you begin to realize that you could easily sell another 25,000 units. For a $50 game, that’s at least another $250,000 in manufacturing costs and another $50,000 for freight shipping. It’s also 25,000 more customers, some of whom will have questions, replacement parts requests, etc. There’s a tough balance of capitalizing on momentum vs giving yourself the time to receive distributor payments, scale up, and have a more accurate gauge on the actual demand.
Wingspan brand extension strategies: For sake of example, I’ll share what we’ve done with the Wingspan brand (followed by a list of what we haven’t done). There’s a more detailed article about the topic of brand extensions here.
- reprints: We’ve tried to keep Wingspan and its in-demand products in print through regular investments and forecasting for reprints.
- expansions: Wingspan has a 6-expansion plan (1 per continent, with North America covered by the core game). With designer Elizabeth Hargrave at the helm of all expansions, our schedule is her schedule, which organically spaces out the expansions every 2 years or so.
- puzzles: Wingspan is known for its detailed bird art from illustrators Natalia and Ana, and we experimented with jigsaw puzzles featuring various birds. The puzzles sold fine (some are still available) and puzzle enthusiasts seemed to enjoy them, but I don’t think it’s something worth pursuing in the future.
- vision-friendly cards: While we try our best to make all products vision friendly, it’s a learning process, and we heard from enough people who wanted to play Wingspan but couldn’t read the text that we decided to make standalone sets of cards specifically for vision friendliness.
- donations and eco-friendliness: Given the ecological theme of Wingspan, we’ve tried to give back to nature by making charitable donations upon each expansion release and by making the components in Wingspan more eco-friendly. For the upcoming Wingspan Fan Art Pack, we’re donating $25,000 to various bird-related charities.
fan projects: Having such a visible brand can lead to community-motivated endeavors like the Wingspan Fan Art Pack, which will be available on our webstore on October 4. We also make the template for Wingspan bird cards publicly available for those who want to create their own cards to share digitally for free with “fan made” on the card.- organizer box: There are quite a few people who own the Wingspan core game and nothing else. But there are also people who own everything Wingspan related, and it’s for them that we made the Wingspan Nesting Box, designed to hold all past, present, and future Wingspan components.
- ala carte components: It’s logistically complicated to sell ala carte components (e.g., scorepads or extra wooden tokens), but sometimes we receive enough interest in such a component that it justifies the extra effort.
- 2-player version: Many successful games are followed up by a 2-player version. Stonemaier Games only makes games that cover at least a 1-5 player range, though we found a nice loophole with Wingspan Asia, which is both an expansion for Wingspan and a standalone 2-player game.
- digital versions: We’ve had a great partnership with Monster Couch for Wingspan Digital, which has Oceania on the way!
- localization: We had a dozen core localization partners before Wingspan, and many more reached out to us when they saw how wide-reaching the game was. This has brought the game to tabletops around the world much more than our English-language version did, even with worldwide fulfillment centers and distributors.
- accessories: We haven’t actually made all that many accessories to enhance Wingspan; pretty much just the speckled eggs and the playmats. Instead, most enhancement accessories come from independent third-party creators who follow these guidelines and don’t pay any royalties to us. If you have a brand like Wingspan, I’d recommend figuring out which accessories you want to officially make/sell and which you’re happy for others to pursue.
Other brand extension strategies:
- promos: After making so many scattered promos for previous games–including Scythe–we’ve intentionally tried to not do this for Wingspan. However, at some point I think it’s likely we’ll publish a small promo pack of extinct birds.
- spinoff/sequels: So far, we haven’t made any sequels or spinoffs for Wingspan, though we have done this for Scythe in Expeditions (a completely new game in the same 1920+ alternate universe). I think sequels and spinoffs are a way to engage fans and expand the brand without bloating the core experience of the original game.
- “my little/first” versions: We’ve also done this for Scythe (My Little Scythe) but not Wingspan. It’s a tricky approach to take, as I see very little buzz for these types of games, but some of them seem to have done well and brought joy to people. In general, though, I prefer to make games that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.
- new editions: Many publishers publish deluxe, anniversary, or big box versions of their games. I’d prefer to just reprint the game we already have, though, keeping the spotlight on it with review copies and community building, as new editions can create redundancy dilemmas for those who already have the game. Sometimes a game–even popular games–can benefit from a big revamp at some point, though.
Most of these endeavors take time, money, people, and risk. I’ve tried to be intentional and deliberate, experimenting instead of going all-in on any given approach. We can always make more of a product (and we will, if there’s demand), but we can’t undo a massive overstock. I recommend the same cautiously optimistic approach to others.
Also, having a tentpole brand like Wingspan can raise the tide for other Stonemaier brands (and even games from other companies, as a popular game may bring newcomers deeper into the hobby). Honestly, that’s one area I’m still navigating, as I want customers to feel appreciated and valued for what they’ve chosen to buy, not what they could also buy. At the same time, if someone loves Wingspan, there are other games (from us and others) that they might enjoy, hence why I make a video like this for each of our games.
From your experiences and observations, what would you recommend to those who have a smash hit product?
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16 Comments on “The Next Big Thing: How to Handle a Product’s Runaway Success”
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Do you think $4.48 production cost for 158 card game, tuck box, and rule sheet is too much, or pretty good for China? Bear in mind this does not include shipping costs and road transport costs for 500 sets.
I think that’s pretty good (somewhere in the $4-$5 range, aiming for a $20-$30 game).
[…] The Next Big Thing: How to Handle a Product’s Runaway Success […]
Jamey, I’d had a question that had been on my mind for a bit and while it’s not 100% related to this article, it seems somewhat close.
What’s the comparison between copies of the base game sold and expansions sold? How many people seem to be playing w/any expansion vs. just plain Wingspan? Is it vastly different than, say, Scythe which has a smaller fanbase? Is this something that has changed over time?
Being in the facebook group, I sort of take it for granted that most people always play with the expansions but I’ve wondered how much that’s actually the case…
Typically we sell around 1/3 the number of expansions per game than the core game itself. I wish I knew how many people played with the expansions, but that would be purely anecdotal.
Outstanding article. Thanks for sharing!
Let’s say a company decides to narrow their focus to their most successful brand. Do you have an opinion on whether or when they should sell their other brands to other game companies?
> However, at some point I think it’s likely we’ll publish a small promo pack of extinct birds.
DINOSAURS! THERE’S A DINOSAURS EXPANSION!
Thanks for your question, Jonathan. If a company decides to make a single brand their sole focus, I think it’s a reasonable strategy to try to sell their other brands.
Off-topic, but your mention of Stronghold and TM made me think of a discussion I had on FB a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it might make a good blog post – do you think there’s a point when a company is “too big” for Kickstarter?
Thanks Craig! I think creators of all shapes and sizes can benefit from crowdfunding, with the key question to ask themselves being: Is this the best way to serve our customers?
Fantastic post as always. It is always difficult to find the sweet spot with a new production as one does not want to overstock. At the same time, I actually l could not keep up with unexpected demand from areas I would normally not expect; souvenir shops. Our small thematic games got unexpected demand from souvenir shops and museums, it emptied our stock. In the end, we had a 60/40 ratio, FLGS vs souvenir shops for the first prints. But we had more printed now, but we are still cautious.
That’s really interesting! Congrats on the success in souvenir shops.
With a smash hit product I think the follow up also depends on the product. For example Gloomhaven was received very well and is clearly for a specific type of players since it’s a game that requires quite a money and time investment. That playerbase is large enough to warrant the creation of Frosthaven which has the same core but is basically “More of what people enjoyed.”
But they also tried a sort of reprint of Gloomhaven with adjustments to the original characters, this version has been received pretty bad by players of the original with quotes like “why change something that works”, “Is this the ‘real’ gloomhaven now?”, “why was my favorite character nerfed?” etc.. You could argue this version was never made for people who already played the original Gloomhaven, but for those who were interested in the game but hadn’t purchased it (yet). However, it seemed to just be made… without really checking if people wanted it, revisions obviously cost time and money, so why not just reprint the original?
There’s also a shift going on with D&D, their current edition (5e) is very popular, but they’re working on a new one and the process has been a bit of a mess. It seems like at first they wanted to try to make a new edition which had 5e at its core but also a lot of new directions, but due to feedback now it seems like their new edition will be more like a revised version of 5e, which makes you wonder if they perhaps should’ve spend more time seeing what people wanted in addition to what they themselves want to do with the future of their product.
I supose that brings up another thing, how much value should you put into player feedback when it comes to follow up products of a smash hit? Especially with something like a tabletop RPG, which can have a very varied player base, there seems to be a fine line between giving people what they want while at the same time innovating (and perhaps in certain aspects, fixing) your product.
These are great observations and questions, Gerben. Personally, I highly value player feedback, particularly in deciding which accessories to make (i.e., the Nesting Box wouldn’t exist if so many people had not requested it) and potentially shaping certain elements of expansions. I agree that it isn’t a matter of trying to appease every customer; rather, it’s a matter of listening and then filtering the feedback into what’s best for the product.
In the spinoff/sequel strategy concept… I was listening to the Salt & Sass podcast yesterday, and Suzanne and Mandi did a list of “The Dice Game” games, i.e. dice versions of larger games. It occurred to me that Stonemaier hasn’t really stepped into this arena with any of its titles – would that be something to consider in the future?
I think I’d love to see Viticulture: The Dice Game, for example, assuming someone can make it work.
I mean, I guess Rolling Realms is basically “All our Games and many others: The Roll & Write”, but it’d still be cool to get smaller dice or card versions of some of the bigger Stonemaier titles.
You’re right that we haven’t done it. A while ago I polled people in the Scythe group about what they wanted to see next in the Scythe world (some form of a sequel), and by far the top two requests were “a deckbuilding game” and “a 2-player duel game”. “A dice game” was much lower on the list. That data–plus my general perception of how dice versions of popular games are received by gamers–made me think it isn’t a strategy worth spending time on (opposed to spending time on a completely new game where dice are part of the game from the ground up).