Yep, if tomorrow I put on sale a game of global grand strategy for the Pacific, and gave it a serious type name like Warfare in the Pacific Theatre (just to illustrate), and I priced it at 30 bucks (and made the store agree to leave it that price for a minimum 6 months), and I had it in stock (ie minimum stock of 5 articles on the shelf required)in every Walmart and Toys R Us while also simultaenously releasing it as a digital download (for 25 bucks not 30) as well as making the full game available for purchase through the mail (exact same item as on shelf). And if I had that same item pre stocked ina European location as well as key cities in say Canada and Australia.
It might well make a major big time splash.
And when you consider, that 5 items in several hundred Walmarts and Toys R Us outlets means quite a large sum of established actual sales (and no, I would not be indulging in any return concept, buy it and keep it).
Add to that, some reasonable online sales, and some reasonable digital download sales, and you might even move out the door a nice volume.
And if the game was total garbage, you likely could then close up shop and accept no one would ever be dumb enough to buy your next game.
Marketing does a lot to sell a product.
I would not release a demo 6 months before game day, I would release a demo (if even possible) on opening day maybe. I would make it on sale everywhere the SAME day.
A fancy colour manual plus a fancy coolourful illustrated box means printers of course and packaging expenses.
Just because a person can design software, doesn't mean they can automatically afford the cost to print a manual or the expense of a fancy box.
Companies like Hasbro, they make dozens of titles and they make thousands and thousands of each title and they have them in stock in hundreds of hundreds of stores.
The cost of a manual is nothing to them.
Matrix Games is not Hasbro I have noticed.
Nor are any of the other wargame makes like Hasbro.
When you walk into Walmart or Toys R Us, if you are like me, you DON'T expect to see wargames stocked like parlour games though.
Why is that?
I can only assume it's a matter of choice somewhere.
I never see Monopoly advertised on tv. I never see it advertised in magazines. Yet you see it stacked on shelves dozens of copies deep.
Why is that?
I never see Monopoly advertised online either. Nor any other Monopoly type game.
It is not the price tag that is the key, it is market awareness.
Market awareness is not free though.
There is risk involved in some things. I guess it is a case of how much risk is to much risk.
I make furniture (or did), and I am sure, if I had made 10,000 tables all at a decent price, and then sold them all off to places like Sears, I could make a nice profit.
But, 10,000 tables worth of wood is a lot of wood.
Say I make the tables, and then just let them sit in the warehouse and hope word of mouth gets them sold.
Odds are when the bill arrives I become quite bankrupt.
Say I make a bad idea of a table, and then try to sell it to Sears, who then says sorry not interersted.
Bankrupt again.
The key, is to make sure you are making what the market wants, then make enough to make it worth it, then sell enough to pay off the cost to make it.
Otherwise, you go bankrupt.
I see businesses fold up and die all the time.
Commonsense was not part of the course when I was learning business eh.
It seems that life expects you to already know that part.
It really does not matter in the end what "I" want where my hobby is concerned, as it is not my money at risk.
Sure I can buy a game, and it might suck, so I am out a few bucks.
The next day, life goes on, and I am not bankrupt because I bought a poorly done game.
If company A goes a does a lame job of making a wargame, it won't prevent company B from trying the same game later.
And no matter how crummy wargame company A's game was, it won't kill off the hobby or rin the interest in the subject.
It will just ensure, that people talk about company A, and how lousy their game was.
Who loses when a company makes a lousy game? Just the company.
I fully expect to buy the occasional lousy wargame in my life. It is just inevitable.
I also expect to have no trouble telling people that company A made game X, and it proved that company A didn't have clue one how to be a successful business.
Nor is there any one secret to success.
But failing is not complicated.
I buy almost all my games on impulse. I am in demographic terms an impulse buyer. I am the reason store aisles are designed the way they are. I am the reason thosusands of dollars is spent each year on careful surveys.
It is just my nature.
I know people that have no trouble buying stuff online. I just don't inherently take to it.
I am not saying buying online is bad wrong or the poor choice. It is just not an efective way to sell to me.
If 9 out of 10 of your customers are guys like me though, no argument in favour of online sales is likely to mean much. Especially if we refuse to change.
If 9 out of 10 of your market wants something a specific way, then doing it that way is the cost of being in the market.
Thus, the cost being a burden falls under the heading of "to bad".
I had planned to sell my tables at a massive reduction in proce (simply because I could). But, I learned while going through the business course, that the buyer instinctively expects an item to cost a certain dollar sum.
Priced to low, the customer suspects something is wrong.
The moment the customer thinks something is wrong, they lose faith in the item having the same worth as an equal item priced at the assumed "proper" price.
So, it doesn't always matter what company A wants where price is concerned. Because your customer might need reason to feel otherwise.
Thus, selling a wargame at 20 bucks is potentially no better than 80 bucks. At 20 the buyer might think it is just junk being unloaded. At 80 the customer might think it is not worth that much.
Sometimes the opinion of the business is not relevant. Might seem oddly unfair, but who said business was supposed to be fair?
They don't call it competition for nothing. In business you have winners and losers.
I would not feel bad if tomorrow I sold 50 thousand units of my game at 30 bucks (my notional Pacific game), and totally crushed sales of War in the Pacific.
Business is business.
If my game was hohum, it would just mean, people might fail to line up for the next one.
Maybe I take the money from the 50,000 units sold at 30 bucks and quit after that though.
There is nothing saying I have to ever again sell another wargame.
It is the selling the next game that is tricky.
I could make dozens of suggestions to Matrix Games, about how to build a better game, sold more effectively, in larger amounts, in more methods with greater sums of locations.
Some might even be good ideas.
At the end of the day though, it's not my neck at risk.
Advice is free, making wargames isn't.
That's why this entire post is only a free opinion, and 5 seconds after I post it, I will not have sustained any risk.
My hat is off to Matrix Games for being there and taking the risk. It is indeed a risk just being online and doing what they do.
5 years from now, Matrix Games might be an industry leader, or just another name discussed as having once made some cool games, and is now gone.
It's David's head ache though
