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Now for its upcoming Kickstarter project for a new edition of Croc's Claustrophobia, Monolith is going even further. Here's an excerpt from an article on Facebook:
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At the moment we are using our cash flow to not only develop, but also to produce and deliver boxes of Claustrophobia 1643 to our hubs (5000 to our US hub and 5000 to our European hub), without any backer or distributer having previously ordered them (so without the guarantee of selling them as is usually the case in a classic circuit or on Kickstarter). Obviously we have met with the Kickstarter officials to make sure that this is not a problem for the platform. As such, our pledgers will neither have to advance cash nor wait a long time before being delivered, or even fear that there will be a difference between what is being shown during the campaign and what they will get once they are delivered… because all the games will already be waiting for their future owners in the warehouses of our local partners. Many of our supporters will be able to play and manipulate the final product even before the campaign and all will be delivered within the six weeks that follow. There will be no post-campaign pledge manager and we will just use a KS online survey to collect pledger details.
You might recall that in September 2012 Kickstarter posted its "Kickstarter Is Not a Store" decree that didn't stop anyone from thinking that Kickstarter is indeed a store, just one in which you preorder products that don't yet exist and might never be delivered. This latest move by Monolith puts the lie to that statement even further, and with no post-campaign pledge manager, people have an additional incentive to lay the money out early. Get it now, or miss out!Don't get me wrong — I understand why Monolith wants to do this. You don't have to mess around with distribution, but instead simply (or rather "simply") deliver product directly to individuals, then be done with the whole thing. This change from distribution to direct sales also provides a selling hook for buyers that rings true: "Today, in the traditional market, more than 60% of the value of a game is retained by intermediation (distributors + stores). We simply propose to our pledgers to equitably distribute this value between them and us. By doing so, we will be able to consolidate our margins, control our prices and ensure that we can continue to invest heavily in the development of our projects. At the same time, without having to wait or take any risk, you will get, each time, a much better bargain than anything you would get in a store."
Monolith notes in the comments that if more than five thousand people want the game in the U.S. or Europe, or more than ten thousand overall, then it will run a traditional KS campaign later.
• I haven't posted a crowdfunding round-up in a couple of months as I have plenty of material on hand related to games that are more immediately pending, but I did want to highlight this interesting and unexpected item on KS right now: Edible Games Cookbook, by Jenn Sandercock. (KS link)
This book contains recipes for a dozen games in which you create the pieces, game board, and whatever else you need to play, then you eat everything while you play. From the KS description: "You might be required to crack a secret code that's baked into cream puffs; keep a straight face while eating something gross; conjure up a delectable morsel from a mishmash of ingredients; perform "sacred", food-related rituals; test your memory and taste buds; or even eat your vegetables!"
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Goal (or goals), restrictions, and agency, but no lack of real-world of relevance
I refer to this as life. Let's take packing suitcases for a plane trip. Most airlines will charge you per suitcase and will charge you extra if the bag weighs more than 50 pounds (a little under 23 kilograms). There is a goal: pack everything you need for the trip. There are restrictions: use the fewest pieces of luggage while making sure no one piece weighs more than 50 pounds. There is agency: you have total control of what you do and don't pack and what piece of luggage each item goes into. But you don't lack real-world relevance. This is not being done for entertainment or education, it's being done because you have to do it.
Candy Land doesn't qualify as a game under Rosewater's definition since it lacks agency, and I've seen plenty of other complaints about his definition on Twitter, but it's fun to try to square your perspective of what a game is with others so that everything you think is a game fits inside the borders you establish.I refer to this as life. Let's take packing suitcases for a plane trip. Most airlines will charge you per suitcase and will charge you extra if the bag weighs more than 50 pounds (a little under 23 kilograms). There is a goal: pack everything you need for the trip. There are restrictions: use the fewest pieces of luggage while making sure no one piece weighs more than 50 pounds. There is agency: you have total control of what you do and don't pack and what piece of luggage each item goes into. But you don't lack real-world relevance. This is not being done for entertainment or education, it's being done because you have to do it.
• On his blog, designer Daniel Solis riffs on a design lesson from Paul Peterson: "Don't stop players from playing the game." In Rosewater's terms, don't remove agency from the game because then you have only an event that's taking place in front of you.
• Designer Adam Porter, whose trick-taking game Pikoko from Brain Games debuted at UK Games Expo and the Origins Game Fair in mid-2018, created an informative video that explores ten types of trick-taking games, including short overviews of more than a dozen games along the way:
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