GOOD QUESTIONS, GOOD REPLIES
Steve Cole reports: Things are jumping around the office, and that shows up as various things announced on the website or on the page on Facebook. This often results in people asking questions, and we're here to answer them!
I posted in a recent MY DAY that Leanna had called a meeting and demanded that C3A get done in the next week or ten days. This resulted in one customer worrying that this "surprise deadline" would result in a rushed product.
You really shouldn't worry about Leanna's deadlines producing inferior or rushed products; she won't allow those anyway. What she's doing is telling Steven Petrick and myself to ignore distractions (like submissions of new fiction that might or might not be used in Captain's Log #47, or picky rules arguments on the BBS) and finish C3A (which has been overdue since February).
A customer suggested that we should bundle Romulan Attack and Klingon Attack in order to increase sales. Players are always sending us suggestions (and we use more of them than any other company) and suggestions for bundle deals are very common. However, bundle deals don't work and we rarely if ever do them.
There is really no point to bundling Romulan Attack and Klingon Attack, nor would doing so push sales of those products. Retailers hate bundles of products, as it just complicates things. (A gamer who bought Romulan Attack, then mistakenly bought the Bad Guys Attack bundle and found out he just bought another copy of Romulan Attack, will go back to the store complaining.) Bundling them on the website (when not being sold to the wholesalers who did not want them bundled) would upset the retailers even more. (Retailers hate it when we sell something on the website that they cannot order from wholesalers.) Because of the way the industry works, bundling would have to be at the same price as the two products (no discount, as discounts upset retailers).
Why are we so concerned about upsetting retailers? Because there are not enough retailers in the first place, and not enough of them stock our products. Remember that 95% of the retailers in this industry are "mom and pop" stores (with mom wondering if pop is ever going to turn a profit and bring home a paycheck) and anything which "takes money out of the retailer's pocket" gets retailers VERY upset (which is why we never ever offer discounts anywhere, and why we don't do a lot of other things that customers suggest).
Remember that the game industry is very small, and most companies are run on the basis that the owner gets as a salary whatever is left after the bills are paid. (This is why we don't spend thousands of dollars giving away free posters, ball caps, or other stuff that multi-million dollar corporations in other industries give away.)
The release of the PDF of GURPS Federation on e23 prompted some questions about scheduling, and one player even humorously asked Jean if his hard copy would be "nicely proofread" before it was printed. Well, of course GURPS Federation will, indeed, be nicely proofread! It will be the best-proofread product in the history of ADB, Inc. It was nicely proofread months ago (and we fixed the last four or five things, such as multiple spellings of Malcolm/Malcomb, after the reports from e23 buyers). It's a combination of factors.
FACTOR ONE: We cannot release a new product in this industry unless you tell the wholesalers 60 (preferably 100) days in advance that it is coming, so that they can get stores to pre-order it and avoid having to stock it in their warehouse.
FACTOR TWO: Because of the need for Steve Jackson Games to approve the GURPS Federation manuscript (and with no idea if that process would take two weeks, two months, or two years) we could not schedule the release of GURPS Federation until it had been approved, which meant, we scheduled it for three months from the day we got the email from Steve Jackson green-lighting the project.
Normally (and normal is not good) we announce a product three months in advance, at a time when it's not nearly finished. (Usually, the key parts are in final playtesting at that point, but some things that don't have to be playtested are often not even written when the announcement is made.) So, "normally," Jean calls in the final proofreading corrections about 36 hours before we start printing the product, and sometimes as late as two hours before we start printing the product!
Everything is "nicely proofread" but in the case of GURPS Federation there were two additional (and very rigorous) proofreading steps (Steve Jackson and 60+ players who bought it on e23) that are not the "normal" way of doing things.
We are waiting now to see if pre-sales of PDFs on e23 hurt paper sales or not. (Steve Jackson Games does that with almost every product, says it doesn't hurt paper sales, and takes advantage of the proofreading that results as a byproduct.) If it turns out that it doesn't hurt sales, we may well start releasing PDF copies of a few other products 45 days before the print copies (although that will all but certainly mean releasing the product 45 days later than we normally would!).
With Leanna's thunderous "Where are the new products?" meeting last Monday, I had to actually do a schedule instead of just muddling through.
Marines was delayed to fall (the second round of playtesting showed that the first round botched the combat tables), as was Federation Admiral (the outside writer's manuscript just didn't match the SFU knowledge base, so major parts had to be done over).
Starship Aldo (a sixteen page booklet) has to start printing on Friday to make it to Free RPG Day on time. It won't be released on e23 or hard copy until around Origins, because of the rules on products done for Free RPG Day. This will be a fun product (done for both GURPS and PD20M). A post-war salvage ship finds a wrecked freighter. Burned paint on the side includes the letters "aldo" but nobody knows (without going on board) if the ship is the freighter Geraldo Rivera, the military auxiliary Aguinaldo, or the luxury liner Waldorf Astoria.
Next, GURPS Federation (already finished) will be released (probably 16 May) along with C3A Andromedan Threat File (which should be done by early next week).
Then, Captain's Log #43 will be done. With the fiction already finished, this is just two weeks of really intense writing and editing by the Steves and long sleepless nights of proofreading for Jean.
At Origins, we expect to have three major products: Federation Commander Transports Attacked (the ship cards are already in final proofreading), ISC War (the counters will have to be done next week, we are sure, but Chuck Strong has already finished most of the work on the rules, SIT, and scenarios), and Distant Armada (another of Daniel Kast's Starmada products, and he's pretty reliable on getting those done on time). We might also have the E-module on Borak Star League, but real world issues for the guy creating it may or may not allow that to happen. (He is a Navy officer, and if the Pentagon says he has to go smack somebody with a cruise missile, the Borak will have to wait.)
This fall is still a sort of vague misty watercolor vision, but it will include Fed Admiral, Star Fleet Marines Assault, and Captain's Log #44. We might also get another product or two out, but I don't want to speculate on those at this time. We'll have to tune that misty vision into crystal clarity in time for Captain's Log #43.
I posted in a recent MY DAY that Leanna had called a meeting and demanded that C3A get done in the next week or ten days. This resulted in one customer worrying that this "surprise deadline" would result in a rushed product.
You really shouldn't worry about Leanna's deadlines producing inferior or rushed products; she won't allow those anyway. What she's doing is telling Steven Petrick and myself to ignore distractions (like submissions of new fiction that might or might not be used in Captain's Log #47, or picky rules arguments on the BBS) and finish C3A (which has been overdue since February).
A customer suggested that we should bundle Romulan Attack and Klingon Attack in order to increase sales. Players are always sending us suggestions (and we use more of them than any other company) and suggestions for bundle deals are very common. However, bundle deals don't work and we rarely if ever do them.
There is really no point to bundling Romulan Attack and Klingon Attack, nor would doing so push sales of those products. Retailers hate bundles of products, as it just complicates things. (A gamer who bought Romulan Attack, then mistakenly bought the Bad Guys Attack bundle and found out he just bought another copy of Romulan Attack, will go back to the store complaining.) Bundling them on the website (when not being sold to the wholesalers who did not want them bundled) would upset the retailers even more. (Retailers hate it when we sell something on the website that they cannot order from wholesalers.) Because of the way the industry works, bundling would have to be at the same price as the two products (no discount, as discounts upset retailers).
Why are we so concerned about upsetting retailers? Because there are not enough retailers in the first place, and not enough of them stock our products. Remember that 95% of the retailers in this industry are "mom and pop" stores (with mom wondering if pop is ever going to turn a profit and bring home a paycheck) and anything which "takes money out of the retailer's pocket" gets retailers VERY upset (which is why we never ever offer discounts anywhere, and why we don't do a lot of other things that customers suggest).
Remember that the game industry is very small, and most companies are run on the basis that the owner gets as a salary whatever is left after the bills are paid. (This is why we don't spend thousands of dollars giving away free posters, ball caps, or other stuff that multi-million dollar corporations in other industries give away.)
The release of the PDF of GURPS Federation on e23 prompted some questions about scheduling, and one player even humorously asked Jean if his hard copy would be "nicely proofread" before it was printed. Well, of course GURPS Federation will, indeed, be nicely proofread! It will be the best-proofread product in the history of ADB, Inc. It was nicely proofread months ago (and we fixed the last four or five things, such as multiple spellings of Malcolm/Malcomb, after the reports from e23 buyers). It's a combination of factors.
FACTOR ONE: We cannot release a new product in this industry unless you tell the wholesalers 60 (preferably 100) days in advance that it is coming, so that they can get stores to pre-order it and avoid having to stock it in their warehouse.
FACTOR TWO: Because of the need for Steve Jackson Games to approve the GURPS Federation manuscript (and with no idea if that process would take two weeks, two months, or two years) we could not schedule the release of GURPS Federation until it had been approved, which meant, we scheduled it for three months from the day we got the email from Steve Jackson green-lighting the project.
Normally (and normal is not good) we announce a product three months in advance, at a time when it's not nearly finished. (Usually, the key parts are in final playtesting at that point, but some things that don't have to be playtested are often not even written when the announcement is made.) So, "normally," Jean calls in the final proofreading corrections about 36 hours before we start printing the product, and sometimes as late as two hours before we start printing the product!
Everything is "nicely proofread" but in the case of GURPS Federation there were two additional (and very rigorous) proofreading steps (Steve Jackson and 60+ players who bought it on e23) that are not the "normal" way of doing things.
We are waiting now to see if pre-sales of PDFs on e23 hurt paper sales or not. (Steve Jackson Games does that with almost every product, says it doesn't hurt paper sales, and takes advantage of the proofreading that results as a byproduct.) If it turns out that it doesn't hurt sales, we may well start releasing PDF copies of a few other products 45 days before the print copies (although that will all but certainly mean releasing the product 45 days later than we normally would!).
With Leanna's thunderous "Where are the new products?" meeting last Monday, I had to actually do a schedule instead of just muddling through.
Marines was delayed to fall (the second round of playtesting showed that the first round botched the combat tables), as was Federation Admiral (the outside writer's manuscript just didn't match the SFU knowledge base, so major parts had to be done over).
Starship Aldo (a sixteen page booklet) has to start printing on Friday to make it to Free RPG Day on time. It won't be released on e23 or hard copy until around Origins, because of the rules on products done for Free RPG Day. This will be a fun product (done for both GURPS and PD20M). A post-war salvage ship finds a wrecked freighter. Burned paint on the side includes the letters "aldo" but nobody knows (without going on board) if the ship is the freighter Geraldo Rivera, the military auxiliary Aguinaldo, or the luxury liner Waldorf Astoria.
Next, GURPS Federation (already finished) will be released (probably 16 May) along with C3A Andromedan Threat File (which should be done by early next week).
Then, Captain's Log #43 will be done. With the fiction already finished, this is just two weeks of really intense writing and editing by the Steves and long sleepless nights of proofreading for Jean.
At Origins, we expect to have three major products: Federation Commander Transports Attacked (the ship cards are already in final proofreading), ISC War (the counters will have to be done next week, we are sure, but Chuck Strong has already finished most of the work on the rules, SIT, and scenarios), and Distant Armada (another of Daniel Kast's Starmada products, and he's pretty reliable on getting those done on time). We might also have the E-module on Borak Star League, but real world issues for the guy creating it may or may not allow that to happen. (He is a Navy officer, and if the Pentagon says he has to go smack somebody with a cruise missile, the Borak will have to wait.)
This fall is still a sort of vague misty watercolor vision, but it will include Fed Admiral, Star Fleet Marines Assault, and Captain's Log #44. We might also get another product or two out, but I don't want to speculate on those at this time. We'll have to tune that misty vision into crystal clarity in time for Captain's Log #43.
posted by Federation Commander at 8:44 AM
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