Hi! I hope you're doing well. I have a few things to share via our usual mid-month update for Stonemaier Ambassadors. The content in this update is for ambassador eyes only.
Stonemaier Future Release Idea
I'd like your opinion on an idea I've been brainstorming. If you have thoughts to share, please put them on the form at the end of this section (don't reply directly to this e-mail). Thank you!
You may have read Monday’s blog post about how Stonemaier is doing in regards to simulating the positives of Kickstarter without using Kickstarter (and not suffering from the negatives of direct-order campaigns). It resulted in an interesting discussion in regards to how we’re missing out on a certain element of Kickstarter: urgency.
Urgency manifests in several ways in Kickstarter campaigns. There’s the urgency to get something before it’s gone (or before the price goes up). Urgency results in an immediate call to action—you see a new project, and you act on it right away. Urgency also inspires a special type of community, a fleeting hub of excitement and passion.
Does Stonemaier Games need urgency to survive? No. But can it make us better, more successful, and ignite people in a way that we haven’t been able to replicate since Kickstarter? Yes.
So I have an idea I’d like to share. It’s my best attempt to use urgency to create a better experience for our fans without sacrificing our principles, profits, or sanity. It's called the Stonemaier Spectacle.
The idea is that for our next new game, we print exactly 10,000 English copies and allocate them fairly among distributors (domestic and international). We don’t gauge demand, we don’t announce it in advance, we just make it and ship it. All of these copies would be individually numbered.
We then devote 4 weeks for heavy marketing. E-newsletter, early reviews, teaser trailer, rulebook reveal, links to retailers for pre-orders, cat photos, BGG page launch and ads, Facebook group posts and interactions, live chats, podcast appearances, exciting updates and reveals through a segmented e-newsletter, polls, etc. We'll emphasize that the first print run includes exactly 10k units. At the end of the 4 weeks, the game releases.
The entire Spectacle is catered around urgency. In some ways it’s even better than Kickstarter, because instead of adding months and months between the end of the campaign and the release of the game, the game releases at the end of the Spectacle. It’s limited during that time period, but of course we’ll make more if there’s demand.
This also mitigates risk. We’re not at the whim of reviewers because only 10k games are at stake (10k is still a LOT of games to make--it's well above industry average). Also, if we made any mistakes in the first print run that we somehow missed despite aggressive proofreading and playtesting, we fix them for the second print run, which is hopefully bigger. Ideally the impact of scarcity is that it increases anticipation and demand for more…and if there’s no demand, we simply don’t make more. We’re testing the market without risking everything.
We’ll also still work with international publishers to localize games, but we’ll separate the English schedule from the international schedule so we’re not waiting around for translations.
The only problem I see with this method is that we risk angering customers, retailers, and distributors if we don’t make “enough” games, and by the time the second print run is ready, the demand might be gone. However, I would contend that there’s always a risk that we don’t make enough games, and if a game leaves such a weak impression on the market that there’s no interest a few months later, we probably shouldn’t be reprinting that game anyway. When the reprint is ready, we’ll focus on next-level marketing (play-and-wins at conventions, more review copies, more BGG ads, etc). I think it’s more likely that if the game is great, people will be itching to get the second printing—the anticipation will drive interest and demand, not diminish it.
I think it's important to emphasize that this isn't intended to be a gimmick or a ploy. I genuinely want to continue to improve the experiences we offer to old and new fans, and I think this idea has potential.