CraigM
4927
Certainly, and I’m making very generous assumptions of cost. Smart planning and multiple jobs utilizing similar assets could bring that number down thousands. Probably not below $5k though, for a bare bones box with minimal components. The honest truth is the cost difference between producing 250 and 750 units is going to be measured in the hundreds of dollars. Likely about 3-500.
Brooski
4928
Great info, @CraigM - the print runs are closer to 5k. What GMT says is that the cost of the whole run is paid for if they can sell 750 copies at their retail price. That’s where the 750 number comes from.
Yeah, thanks Craig! I think the original point that Cannedmarsupial was getting at (Brooski saying it was cheap from GMT’s standpoint) has more to do with the PC Game being cheap from their standpoint. They just licensed the title.
CraigM
4930
Yeah, if they’re running at Chinese printers, I can see that. They probably also combo off units together to get that price. It really makes a huge difference if you can do that. And GMT seems to be producing enough that doing 2-3 at a time is possible.
Brooski
4931
Yeah, very often they’re sending three games to the printer at a time. It must be hard to coordinate multiple proofs and print runs.
You think GMT paid to have it made?
I suspect a similar arrangement but along the lines of a royalty payment. Hence the apparent lack of a “final cut”. Note I am a suspector as well.
Thanks for your answers and info @CraigM, @Brooski, @Navaronegun.
I have a good handle on the costs for a small team to make cheap (not necessarily) bad software, but no idea about board games.
GMT/Playdek did a good job with Twilight Struggle, shame GMT couldn’t repeat that with C&C:A.
Brooski
4937
Playdek is doing Labyrinth. I suspect it will be better than this hash-up.
I was thinking about this though… who else would there be to make it that GMT would be able to talk to?
Playdek, sure, and perhaps now that the partnership is renewed they’ll be only using them, but those guys will have a limited bandwidth.
Maybe Slitherine/Matrix but it depends which dev team it gets given too.
I don’t see Lock’n Load taking on someone else’s license when they have their own table-top and digital stuff they work on.
Nomad Games just got the Quartermaster General license, and have a proven track record with table-top ports but I don’t think they’ve made any wargames before, and I’m not sure if GMT would necessarily know of them to get in touch.
I’m probably forgetting some people but if you’re not going with Playdek or HexWar, who do you got to from there?
I think Slitherine is the best bet. Another outlier I could think of think of is Battle Factory. Having said that though, every game doesn’t have to be licensed as a PC game. But trash like this HexWar title could damage your brand, which has been excellent so far due to the success of the Playdek partnership. HexWar did do an acceptable job on the Academy Games titles, and those did have a very bare bones multiplayer option, on PC and iOS. So I wonder if this is just a failure on this title specifically. Command and Colors isn’t my jam, so I can’t speak to whether this was a pure error in the development of the Sofware specifically, or if the devs ignored the boardgame and just did their own thing and/or slammed a round peg hard into a square hole.
I really wished that whoever did Battlelore:Command, as @JoshL mentionned, had done all those other ports. Sigh…
GOING PRO: A SNAPSHOT OF DEFENCE INDUSTRY WARGAMING AT CONNECTIONS UK
Yeah, it’s Wargaming.com, but there is a shout out to the intrepid @Brooski, and it’s a topic I have of late been curious about.
Brooski
4942
My research has been cited!
There’s a site called Academia, where you can check to see who has cited you and where, etc. For some reason I get emails from them all the time, probably because I went there once for something now long forgotten. Anyhow, there’s this dude in Russia, a chemist I think, who is a prolific publisher of academic papers on, well, chemistry. He happens to have the same name I do, and so every few days I get an email saying “You’ve been cited in 12 papers!” or something. I checked out this dude’s Facebook page, and I doubt I could even comprehend a tiny portion of the stuff he writes about, even in English.
So, usually, my citations are by guys with flashing blue lights.
Brooski
4944
Yeah, I get notifications from Academia as well. It’s a pretty crude system: there seems to be a guy with my name in Slovakia, and we both publish medical research papers, so sometimes I find out that “I” have been published in some Slovak obstetrics journal. But it’s all good.
I recommend using Google Scholar, it is very good at verifying the identity of authors of papers.
I just saw on my feeds Wargamer’s take on the game
the writer has obviously gone the way of @Navaronegun
To be fair, I go that way when I basically don’t want to make anyone cry.
“You don"t scare me, work on it.”
“Sir! Yes Sir!”
