Dice Hate Me

I’m Chris. I play games. Lots and lots of games. I created Dice Hate Me as a place where I can talk about and review games, preview upcoming titles, write ridiculous and (sometimes) humorous things, and generally spread some paper and boardgaming love. Dice Hate Me is more than just a title, though – it’s a gaming lifestyle. You see, I have really bad dice karma. I’m pretty lucky in life, but hand me a pair of dice in a game and I’m dead meat. I’m the guy that always lands on Boardwalk when somebody owns it. I’m the guy that never gets a Yahtzee. Yeah, I’m the guy that avoids the craps table in Vegas as if it were a minor demon. Still, even though dice hate me, I love them. The little bastards.

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The State of Games, Episode 19 - The One About The Kickstarter Bubble

Posted by Dice Hate Me

15 Nov 2011

Dice Hate Me

(ckirkman)

United States
Durham
North Carolina

The boardgame blog with worse luck than you! dicehateme.com

In the most ambitiously in-depth State of Games to date, we sit down with board game industry analyst Richard Bliss to talk about the Kickstarter explosion and whether there's a funding bubble that's about to burst. We also talk abundantly on crossing the void between consumer and publisher, the joys of flexibility & foibles of failing, marketing magic, making that emotional connection, and gaming trends among women and youth. All this, plus more of behind-the-scenes experiences with Carnival and the upcoming VivaJava: The Coffee Game.

This podcast is bubblicious:
Link to podcast on BGG: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepodcastepisode/65566/the-o...

External link to podcast on Dice Hate Me, with supplement content:
http://dicehateme.com/2011/11/the-state-of-games-episode-19-...

You can also subscribe to our podcast through iTunes! http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=Smq3RC8yf5I&offe...

NOTE: This podcast is long, and contains quite a bit of discussion on just Kickstarter, the game industry, marketing, and gaming trends. There aren't really any game reviews in this particular episode, so if you're looking for talk about game play, etc., please check out one of our other podcasts!

Notes on podcast content in relation to tagged games
- Carnival - Notes on production, Kickstarter campaign details, marketing and message discussion
- The Road to Canterbury - Discussion of Kickstarter campaign success, quality of game
- Wings of War - Use as a marketing tool, use as a gateway game, world record dogfight tale
- Flash Point: Fire Rescue - Discussion of Kickstarter campaign success, quality of game
- Alien Frontiers - Discussion of Kickstarter campaign success, legacy
- VivaJava: The Coffee Game - minor preview talk

Other games discussed but not tagged
- Sunrise City
- Kings of Air & Steam
- D-Day Dice
- Warparty
- Rise!
- The Crow & The Pitcher
- Zong Shi
- Pizza Theory
- Empires of the Void

5 Comments

Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:50 pm

Post Comment

Raiko Puust

(binraix)

Estonia
Keila
Harju Maakond

Raiko & Agnes Forever! Feel the Love and Feel the Warmth. Happiness is 2 hugs plus 3 kisses every hour...:D (http://mrboardgames.wordpress.com/)

Addicted Estonian gamer with big heart and direct winning attitude. Need any help with something, just ask. Need some GG for something, just ask. Need something to be translated, just ask. Meanwhile, behave! :D (http://mrboardgames.wordpress.com/)

I really now like how you have set up the blog now. Much much better. I actually only searched for Carnival and Flash Point.
Thx.

Posted Tue Nov 15, 2011 9:36 pm
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Dice Hate Me

(ckirkman)

United States
Durham
North Carolina

The boardgame blog with worse luck than you! dicehateme.com

binraix wrote:

I really now like how you have set up the blog now. Much much better. I actually only searched for Carnival and Flash Point.
Thx.

I'm glad you like the new format! I'm very happy that we were all able to talk and figure out a good compromise for all users and listeners.

Posted Tue Nov 15, 2011 9:55 pm
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Robert Mills

(trebormills)

United Kingdom

wales

First show Ive caught...love it. I was interested in finding out more re Kickstarter as it seems to be the new hotness.

I see it as a two edged sword...or should that be three edged?

I was a big fan of Bubble Bobble so digged the tunez

PS
Miska-Tonic thats just tentle-tastic

Edited Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:42 am
Posted Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:19 am
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Oliver Kiley

(Mezmorki)

United States
Ann Arbor
Michigan

Fabulous discussion.

A few points that resonnated with me.

(1) Early on your conversation touched on level of competition in games. A number of people on BGG who have been interested in a better classification scheme for games (the mechanics/categories/families are a mess) talk about level of competition or competitiveness as a possible criterion.

Anway, no one argues or gets upset about Chess being a competitive/aggressive/kill-thy-opponent type game, because its obviously a direct conflict game. Same for wargames or any other game that overtly includes conflict.

Its the indirect conflict games that cause the tension among people. When the point of the game isn't to harass your opponent but you are nonetheless afforded lots of opportunity to do so. There is of course a spectrum there, from stealing resources someone else needs in Agricola even if you don't really need them because it will hurt your opponent more. Or trying to close off someone's city in Carcassone when you could be building your own. Anyway, it was a good observation!

(2) I agree too (from my gut) that there isn't going to a kickstarter bubble that's going to burst. Has there been a pre-order bubble that I haven't heard about? Anyway, KS is a tool. I think how people use it (both the funders and the fundee) will evolve over time, but as you all mentioned, the emmotional hook for supporting something at a "grassroots" level isn't likely to disappear.

(3) I haven't followed a lot of the KS stories in detail, but I found your coverage of the wide blurry line between KS projects for totally unfunded games vs. already published games looking for a possible additional support / marketing to be really interesting.

KS does provide a way to cut through the middlemen for the backers, and actually leverage the revenue "increment" from backers to take in a lot more money than I think a publisher would take in following a traditional production/distribution route. I'm not sure where the numbers land, but if you can fund your production run + other costs by having 10% (or 20% or what %?) of the run backed by Kickstart supporters, that seems incredible. How many copies of Carnival did you ended up producing for the whole run?

What's interesting to me is that with a widly successful kickstarter project, the designer/publisher stands to make a lot more than they might normally do. In a conventional model, the publisher foots the bill upfront for a game, and essentially sells it to the distributer for some amount of money between the printing cost + MSRP. Is that the end of the line for a publisher in a normal scenario? With KS they can capture the MSRP, and often additional funds on top of that. Once backers are given a copy, the remaining stock can be presumable be sold to a distributor as well?

I may be missing something, but anyways, the podcast was great!

Posted Tue Nov 22, 2011 7:15 pm
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YaVerOt YaVerOt

(yaverot)

United States
Arvada
Colorado

Armchair warriors often fail, and we've been poisoned by these fairy tales.

Aoi Aoi toki ga toke dasheta.

I've just noticed this from another of your BGG-blogs, and so I want to listen to the podcasts.
So I click around in various spots to get a link to dicehateme itself.
Then, since I want to listen to the podcasts, I click on that button. Nope! Its an rss feed and doesn't include #1 to start with anyway. Okay, well there's a tag cloud, and it has podcast within it... Yes, these look right. Page to beginning. Arrive at:
http://dicehateme.com/2011/02/the-state-of-games-episode-1-t...

What is the reason why there isn't even a single link to the audio episode on that page?

Posted Sun Nov 27, 2011 3:47 am
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Dice Hate Me

The State of Games, Episode 19 - The One About The Kickstarter Bubble

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