First if all, it is that time of the year...BoardGameGeek's Most Anticipated Games 2019 list is open and we would so love to make Top 50..somewhere ;)
To help us just click here and leave a thumbs up next to the game!
It will help us get seen and that would really be great, as we can use a few more buyers :)
As the end of the year draws closer, JA:TBG slowly comes together. Slowly, because as some of you know, we had to do another turn at the manufacturer, due to the quality of print (everything was very dark and not at all like in our samples). We have found the reason for this issue but had to rework every single print file as a consequence...which took some time.
Now we are waiting for the new samples, which we will hopefully see next week. What we did get is a preview of our cool transparent mini inlay (minis are placeholders just to get the form right). There were cheaper ways of doing this (using some foam material), but in my experience this always carries the danger of breaking the more delicate parts like rifles or weapons while inserting the minis, so we went for the best quality.
There is something that struck me during the process and here is a question to all our backers and readers:
With our way of doing things, we always strife for the best possible quality - extra heavy cardboard, proper inlays, thicker paper etc. I noticed that larger Kickstarters tend to give this as stretch goals, (probably assuming they would happen anyway, but calculating their minimum based on cheapest production quality). This way they still charge the same price for the game whether the KS stretch goals are reached or not.
The decision for quality all the way bit us (and unfortunately our backers) in the ass when we got the increased paper prices and shipping cost due to the bigger size and weight and I want to prevent unpleasant surprises like this in the future.
So here is my question:
- Would you prefer to have 'quality' effects like better card stock, proper plastic inlays, heavier boards etc as stretch goals?
This ties the increased cost due to quality to a decreased cost due to amount of backers and makes the estimates for cost and shipping safer, but may result in reduced quality if those goals are not met.
- Or would you like to get the 'always best' option?
This means the base KS goal will be higher to accommodate the quality, but you can be sure to get the best we can do - on the other hand if any increase in cost happens, there is little we can do to reduce it if we don't compromise on quality of material.
I am really not sure where I stand on this - from a KS points quality stretch goals are great and you get the feeling your get something extra, but that simply means up until that point, the creators were ok with giving you a sub-optimal (not bad, could still be decent) quality.
Let me know what you think and don't forget to vote for us on BGG : just click here and leave a thumbs up next to the game!
cheers
jan
