Recommend me a board game?

[Tracy_Baker]

Source? Just curious.

It got a couple of threads locked at BoardGameGeek. Sirlin also discussed it at the Sirlin.net forums in threads like this.

Some relevant quotes:

I think there is a really small number of people who will buy from some online retailer but not from sirlingames.com or Amazon.com for the same price. Just to be clear, if there were twice as many people would buy from other stores but not sirlin/amazon at same price, I’d lose money on that. Probably there are like 10 or 20% more, but even at double, I’d lose. How about triple? Still lose. How about 4x? Still lose. That is how bad margins are from their sales. So I pay a ton of money for manufacturing and get to choose if I want to make X back from that or like, I don’t know, 1/5th of X or something.

Those online retailers will be stopped if it’s my last dying breath. The question is when, and how. And by the way, I made it clear to thoughthammer and coolstuff that they should absolutely fill all orders taken, that should go without saying. This is only about future orders…

Not allowing your margins to go to hell is a basic business principle, it’s not like I am unique. Mayfair is doing the same thing, making distributors and retailers sign contracts that restrict online sales to not going much below MSRP. Games Workshop takes it even further by selling only to retailers, and cutting off anyone who sells online at all. And of course Apple knows how to protect margins. They make sure that the thoughthammers of the world cannot sell the ipad for 50% off online or something. That would be way damaging to Apple, who is by the way the most profitable computer manufacturer.

Why other companies have decided to allow their margins to erode…well, one answer is that they see their business as wholesale, and they don’t want to set up direct sales and handle customer support and shipping. Well, I did set it up, I am handling those things, and I think it’s totally worth it if it means cutting out more middlemen. Middlemen are needed to get to retail though, which is fine, except for the part where they destroy your margins for no benefit. (And remember, lower price is not a benefit. If selling Yomi for $70 made sense, then I would make that my price, not thoughthammer, because when they sell for $70, I don’t get 70, I get very little. There is no world in which it makes sense for thoughthammer to sell it for X, rather than me sell it for X.)

It looks like I will have to require contracts from distributors that say they won’t sell to online stores if they want to buy my products (again, similar to what Mayfair does) or to stop supporting brick-and-mortar stores. I will not rest until these games are off thoughthammer and coolstuff, and the like.

I bought my copy before I heard about all this, but as much as I like to support board game developers I didn’t feel too bad about Sirlin losing money on it. If he wanted to price fix he should have figured out a way to do it before selling pallets of his stuff to distributors.

[Damien_Neil]

I don’t get it. Are the retailers selling on commission? I figured they paid fixed wholesale prices, in which case it shouldn’t matter to the publisher what the eventual retail price is.

[malkav11]

I don’t get it. Are the retailers selling on commission? I figured they paid fixed wholesale prices, in which case it shouldn’t matter to the publisher what the eventual retail price is.

I didn’t understand that either, but I suppose if one is also selling the game directly having retailers undercut you would be an issue.

[Damien_Neil]

I didn’t understand that either, but I suppose if one is also selling the game directly having retailers undercut you would be an issue.

So sell it directly at wholesale prices. Or jack up the wholesale price. Either you’re happy selling a copy at the wholesale price or you aren’t.

It sounds like his complaint is that online sellers have better economies of scale than FLGSs, which is…well, amusing coming from him, given his rather vocal contempt of “scrubs”.

[Tracy_Baker]

I don’t get it. Are the retailers selling on commission? I figured they paid fixed wholesale prices, in which case it shouldn’t matter to the publisher what the eventual retail price is.

Long story short, his intention was to support brick-and-mortar stores only, because he feels it was worth making no money to get his games in places where people can actually play it. He specifically didn’t want online discounters to undercut both him and the B&M stores, which they (of course) did.

I can appreciate his stance, but if you sell to a distributor without any extra contracts in place regarding pricing or what businesses may purchase the product, you take your lumps.

[deccan]

Not sure if you guys are aware of this already but there seems to be a legal row brewing between Fantasy Flight and a small company that basically made a BattleLore clone for the Ipad.

http://nohighscores.com/node/565

The question of course being whether or not a company can actually own the rights to a set of game mechanics.

[Damien_Neil]

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

From http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html.

So: In the US, FFG doesn’t have a leg to stand on unless they patented their game mechanics.

[JM1]

I curse you both for not listening to the Three Moves Ahead podcast on this very topic. Go! Now!

[Tracy_Baker]

Knizia is also very aggressive about keeping clones out of the app store. They went after a Schotten-Totten clone recently.

It sucks for developers that their design mechanisms are not protected, but I see it as yet another reason for them to do it faster and better when it comes to app conversions. Words With Friends wouldn’t exist had Hasbro made a similarly slick Scrabble app.

[Hans_Lauring]

I didn’t understand that either, but I suppose if one is also selling the game directly having retailers undercut you would be an issue.

It’s interesting. Price fixing is simply against the law here (and in the rest of the EU afaik)… of course it still happens, because you have to prove it first and corporations like Levis, Apple and the rest aren’t stupid.

[Eduardo_X]

It’s interesting. Price fixing is simply against the law here (and in the rest of the EU afaik)… of course it still happens, because you have to prove it first and corporations like Levis, Apple and the rest aren’t stupid.

It’s illegal in the US too, though I’m not sure how it would work in this case.

[Tracy_Baker]

I’m no legal expert, but I thought the kind of price fixing that was illegal involved collusion between two or more competitors. Manufacturers are free to fix prices for their products either through contracts with distributors/retailers, or through the threat of not supplying them with product if they don’t comply.

[Lizard_King]

I’m no legal expert, but I thought the kind of price fixing that was illegal involved collusion between two or more competitors. Manufacturers are free to fix prices for their products either through contracts with distributors/retailers, or through the threat of not supplying them with product if they don’t comply.

I don’t understand how this counts as price fixing in the legal sense, which is as you describe it. I think Sirlin risks antagonizing boardgamers, who can be tribal about the pettiest bullshit, by speaking less than tactfully about his reasoning. But there’s nothing that seems illegal or even improper about a game designer deciding how his product should be sold. It’s not even the usual evil publisher/good developer binary that gets drawn in video game customer antagonism situations.

I’m glad I got Yomi for a cheaper price (even if it’s still somewhat symbolic), but I simply would not have bought it at the price he wanted on his website (99+20 or so shipping, iirc). No big deal one way or another.

[Lorini]

The market will solve his issue. When his sales are reduced to a trickle, he’ll understand why little publishers like him don’t do what he’s trying to do. He’ll probably go down in flames because he seems like the type who won’t admit when he’s wrong, but oh well.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

I’m really interested in space warfare atm. I think something like Twilight Imperium third edition would be amazing fun, but too much of a time comitment (scenes of 9 hour World of Warcraft board game sessions still haunt me). Is there anything like TI3 but on a smaller/faster paced scale, perhaps? Something where I can battle friends with fleets of war ships and the like, maybe?

[Lorini]

FFG’s Starcraft is pretty good in that vein.

[Tracy_Baker]

I think he just fundamentally misunderstood how capitalism works. He wanted the B&M stores to be able to sell because he didn’t see them as competition for his online sales. Yet he sold stuff to distributors instead of directly to B&M stores. It’s silly to expect people to do what you want them to do without contracts in place once your product is in that channel.

He obviously didn’t have the resources to sell directly to B&M retailers, so if he wanted to demand a particular price he should have sold it exclusively on his website where he has total control. The fact that Yomi is available from online sellers again, even at a higher price, tells me he didn’t learn his lesson, because he’s not making any money at all on those sales. It’s received enough word of mouth at this point that he likely would have been better off letting it go out of stock everywhere and then making his web site the only place where you can get a copy.

[Lizard_King]

I think he just fundamentally misunderstood how capitalism works. He wanted the B&M stores to be able to sell because he didn’t see them as competition for his online sales. Yet he sold stuff to distributors instead of directly to B&M stores. It’s silly to expect people to do what you want them to do without contracts in place once your product is in that channel.

He obviously didn’t have the resources to sell directly to B&M retailers, so if he wanted to demand a particular price he should have sold it exclusively on his website where he has total control. The fact that Yomi is available from online sellers again, even at a higher price, tells me he didn’t learn his lesson, because he’s not making any money at all on those sales. It’s received enough word of mouth at this point that he likely would have been better off letting it go out of stock everywhere and then making his web site the only place where you can get a copy.

I’m sure there were many better ways to pursue his goals. I just don’t think it’s a big deal beyond whether you find his price acceptable or not, and certainly not something worth the sturm und drang on BGG although I understand how his tone might have triggered it. Whether he’s making money on x sale is irrelevant to me as a consumer, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be selling it through a channel on the second go around if it didn’t make him any money.

FFG’s Starcraft is pretty good in that vein.

Lorini is right. In the less FFG but more GMT direction, there’s the upcoming Space Empires: 4x (that’s really the name). In the even more fast paced direction, there’s Ascending Empires, which I’ve pre-ordered for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. And of course if you really want to distill it to pure betrayal and alliance manipulation and hyperaggressive space war based around a few key variables rather than big diverse fleets, there’s always Cosmic Encounter.

[Mike_Cathcart]

I’m really interested in space warfare atm. I think something like Twilight Imperium third edition would be amazing fun, but too much of a time comitment (scenes of 9 hour World of Warcraft board game sessions still haunt me). Is there anything like TI3 but on a smaller/faster paced scale, perhaps? Something where I can battle friends with fleets of war ships and the like, maybe?

If you can wait a while you also might want to check out the unfortunately named and unfortunately not-released-yet Eclipse. It kind of looks like mini-TI3 but maybe with less emphasis on the political stuff. No werewolves.

[Tracy_Baker]

I’m sure there were many better ways to pursue his goals. I just don’t think it’s a big deal beyond whether you find his price acceptable or not, and certainly not something worth the sturm und drang on BGG although I understand how his tone might have triggered it. Whether he’s making money on x sale is irrelevant to me as a consumer, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be selling it through a channel on the second go around if it didn’t make him any money.

I think it’s a big deal, but only because I really like Sirlin’s designs and hope he doesn’t go out of business due to naivety. He has stated repeatedly that he makes virtually nothing from sales outside his website. He has to give the distributors too big a markdown for him to make any profit on it. I just hope that doesn’t bite him in the long term.