Messaggio di Josh Wielgus (Gillie) a proposito di Riffle:
On Riffle or “WHY WOULD CTG USE FOMO TACTICS!?” or “Why are you doing this to me Chip Theory!?”
Hey gang - we’re looking over the results (and reaction) of the last few days with Riffle’s big reveal and release, and I just wanted to write a super long-winded explanation behind all this madness. This will probably get long. It’d probably be better short. Maybe it will turn into a blog post on our site or something. I don’t know. I’m going to try to give it to you as real as I can without opening up our literal books to you. Let’s see where this goes.
1. Overall, it was an absolutely smashing success. The vast majority of the community were excited and engaged and it was everything we wanted it to be. There was also (and I suspect there will be more in the coming days as people who were not paying attention in the last 48 hours realize what the heck just happened) plenty of dissenters and complaints.
2. We don’t plan to make/release any other product this way. This wasn’t a “FOMO test run.” Again, this was something that was carefully orchestrated and planned over the course of three years to be released this way. In theme. RIFFLE IS NOT GONE FOREVER. Riffle will be released in regular intervals. We have control over these intervals should interest/solving of Shale’s riddle wane in numbers. But Shale puzzle solvers have the opportunity to speed it along faster. Sales of Shale are WAY up since Riffle released two days ago.
3. I can’t stress enough that we desperately need web traffic and organic sales on our web store to sustain the company. The breakdown in the amount of revenue we take in from the web store varies between 30-50% of our total takings in a given year. It’s absolutely *critical*. There are lots of folks who only shop our web store and don’t engage in crowdfunding campaigns. In fact, disengagement from crowdfunding is becoming more and more common across the board as our products are always available later. We’re not in retail. We’re not in distribution. 30-50% of our existence relies on these web store sales. When people shop on the site for something like Riffle, they add other things. This too, is important for us. This is why we created the Curios store. This is why we’re creating a cheaper small box game for this fall’s campaign. This is why the Free Shipping over $200 promotion exists.
4. You probably wouldn’t believe how much shipping and freight we’ve subsidized in the last two years. The average Unbreakable pledge is going to cost us roughly $75 to ship. That’s not a typo. $75. I’ve stated before that CTG are not victims. We’re doing well. You’re all going to get your enormous Unbreakable pledges and it’s going to be great. But let’s do a little bit of math. We charged $10 to ship in the USA. Gamefound takes 5% of our takings. Credit card/PayPal fees take another 3%. We discounted the game (Unbreakable) what ended up being $15 below MSRP. We gave everybody what ended up being a free $30 expansion in 40 Caves in Daelore. Victorum was $95 on Kickstarter + $10 shipping the USA. It’s now a $150 game.
Again, we’re not victims, we’re going to continue to be aggressive like this whenever and wherever we can. We’re happy to do it. However…
5. Sometimes we have to ask folks to pay actual cost on things to continue to be the kind of company you’ve come to expect. Riffle is a prime example of this. Not adding Riffle to any pledge managers or things along those lines allows us to actually cover the freight and shipping of the product. That’s important sometimes. Our Promo Packs around the holidays are the same idea. Call it a FOMO cash grab if you want, but these types of things help sustain us as a business and allow us to keep being aggressive in other areas.
6. Riffle is the most expensive Gearloc in the TMB range to manufacture. They’re almost twice the cost of a typical Gearloc because of the full deck of cards (and these cards are gorgeous, cannot wait for you to see them!). That means the margins are slimmer. Again, this means we can’t necessarily treat it like the norm.
7. While we’ve done crowdfunding forever, we’ve never released any major piece of gameplay content direct to our website. Automaton of Shale is the closest thing of this nature, but obviously that’s a very oddball product that doesn’t fit the norm. Riffle was an important market test for us. Our product roadmap for the next two years is fairly locked in. But we’re not sure if we have room for a few important things that we’d still like to make. Could we close out Cloudspire on the website instead of a crowdfunding campaign? Or would that be a disaster? Could we release a one-off small box game outside of crowdfunding and expect anyone to show up and buy it? Do we actually need crowdfunding at all, or are we to the point where a new IP could launch on our website only? Things like this give us important information about what it looks like to create a sort of event on our website and see if customers actually show up.
8. Constant community engagement. If you’ve been following along for years, you know that we try to stay engaged with y’all. Our April Fool’s stuff is one way we’ve done this, but outside of crowdfunding campaigns, we are constantly looking for ways to get your attention, surprise, delight, etc all of you. We hide hints and clues in videos and photos all the time. We want you on your toes, always wondering what we’re up to. This is perhaps the ultimate expression of that ethos.
9. We’re building a new website. Hopefully it will be launching in the next 2-3 months. I had a meeting on it today and it’s looking great. Right now the counter for Riffle only exists at the end of the puzzle deck. In the future, we are working to put it in a very public area of the website. Again, while obviously we’re not naive or dishonest enough to say the limited windows of Riffle’s release don’t create a bit of FOMO for folks, that is not the ultimate goal. At all. We’re trying to find ways to engage you, bring you to our website, and stay top of mind in an industry that has a new shiny thing to stare at somewhere else on a daily basis. We had hoped this might be in place by the time Riffle released, as we’re obviously putting the bare minimum of effort into the existing site in these short months before we launch something much better. It didn’t happen - so I apologize if the whole Riffle counter thing has been confusing.
10. The puzzle deck, love it or hate it, was really expensive to make because of the web elements involved. Like…really…expensive. You’re welcome to tell us we’re stupid for spending that money that way. You might even be right! But it cost what it cost. And, Riffle would not exist without it. As we’ve stated in other places around the internet before when people complain about “gatekeeping content” via our riddles - it’s a chicken or the egg situation. This content wouldn’t exist to be gatekept without the “gate” existing. But now that it exists, people want us to subsequently destroy the gate.
11. For our part, as you’ve likely caught onto by now, we *love* this kind of thing, and sorry not sorry, we’re not going to stop doing things outside of the box. Our goal when we show up to work each day is to make something cool and interesting that engages our imagination. This entire thing, front to back, was *so much fun* to make. That doesn’t mean we’ll ever release something in this same way again in the future, but as a unique and one-off thematic tie in, we honestly couldn’t be more pleased.
12. Finally - let’s normalize not feeling compelled to own every single thing in this world. Chip Theory’s quantity of content is going to continue to escalate in the coming years. You might not be able to buy everything we put out anymore. We’re growing. It’s okay. Honestly, it’s okay. I promise. If you don’t like something we make, don’t like how it’s released, can’t afford it, what have you - it’s okay if you don’t buy it. This is something I’ve personally had to come to terms with with a number of companies I support the last couple years. There’s too much entertainment content in the world at this point to watch, play, buy, and engage with it all.
None of that may make you feel better or happy or excited about the way we’ve released this Riffle. You may be sitting behind your screen with steam still coming out of your ears angry that you’re not sure when the next time Riffle will be available is. And that’s okay too. It’s obviously the most unconventionally released thing anyone’s seen maybe ever as it relates to board games. But for all the reasons outlined above - we did it, this is the way Riffle will stay, and The Automaton of Shale + Riffle will forever be (in)famous for being the weirdest thing ever created for possibly the strangest underdog story in all of board games. A thing that shouldn’t exist for a game full of dad jokes, tactical combat, and weird gnomes that succeeded far beyond anyone’s reasonable expectations.
We hope, should you be frustrated or annoyed by this entire endeavor, you’ll forgive us for entertaining ourselves by creating this entire mystery for you to unravel over the course of the last three years - whether you actively participated in it’s unraveling, or got unexpectedly punched in the face by it 48 hours ago.
And again, Riffle will be back. We promise. You won’t need to be on edge year round to get a copy of this amazing character if you missed out. Promise. Scout’s (get it, I’m Ghillie) honor!
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