Tag: kickstarter

A New Place and Time for Cows

You might have noticed that the expected launch date for our Cows crowdfunding campaign has moved.  It was always a tentative placeholder, but we’ve had to make more adjustments than we expected, which was a pretty high bar.

A Good Place to Start

Cows crowdfunding banner image

First, we want to thank all of the people who previewed the crowdfunding page and gave us feedback.  Looking at it now compared to how it started, all of that feedback really helped us improve it dramatically.  We even got to make animations, which is something that we hadn’t done before!

If you haven’t had the chance to check out the campaign page yet, there’s still time!  Head over to Kickstarter and give us your thoughts.

So What Happened?

Remember when we talked so foolishly about how the game was relatively inexpensive to produce?  Ah, we were so young.

Our production quote expired.  We expected it to expire, and we built a potential cost increase into our financial plan.  We radically underestimated how much the costs would increase though. There wasn’t room in the new cost structure for us to keep the price of the game down where we wanted it.   Even if we raised the price, though, it would have been tough to finance both production and delivery.  It was an unpleasant surprise.

So we’ve spent the last couple of weeks exploring our options. At times it’s been harrowing.  We’ve waffled between frustration and hope so many times that we developed a new emotion entirely, although we haven’t decided whether to call it “frope” or “hopestration.”  The process is still ongoing, but we’ve found some good leads.  The game will get made and we should still be able to pass on low prices.  Our frope/hopestration is trending  hopeward.  We ought to have a clearer picture by the end of this week, or by next week if our luck continues apace.  (We’re trending hopeward, but there’s some drag.)

And What’s Next?

While we pursue a new and more practical production quote, we also want to take this opportunity to try to expand the reach of our small community.   Our expectations have always been modest, but  we enjoy the idea of being able to share our whimsical little game with more folk.  

We’ve created the option to sign up for email updates.  We’ve reached out to some online content producers to see about partnering to make videos.  We’re even listed on BoardGameGeek now!

We’ll still be improving our Kickstarter campaign page too.  If you’d like to help and you’ve already given us your feedback, share it with your friends and family.  The more eyes that see it, the more we can improve it to capture the excitement and charm that we think the game deserves.

In Other Moos…  er…  News.

We have also, at long last, created a proper page dedicated just to Cows.  It’s still in the general list of “Our Games” on that page of course, but now you can explore further by clicking the logo.   You can even click the logo here, if you’re feeling adventuresome.

Cows

We’ll also include a link for those feeling less adventuresome.

That’s all for now, but as always more exciting news is always fast approaching!  Until then feel free to leave any comments or questions you have in the space below.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Preview the Cows Crowdfunding Campaign

     Here is some news that we have been looking forward to having the chance to share for a long time.  Our first Kickstarter campaign, Cows,  has been approved by Kickstarter and is ready to launch!  Check out the preview for it here!  Let us know what you think, and if it looks interesting, you can help us tremendously by sharing the link with others who might enjoy it.   

What does this mean?

     Admittedly, unless you have run a crowdfunding campaign yourself, this might not make sense to you, or may not be exciting.  Kickstarter approval though is the last hurdle of the “prelude” to the campaign.  We’ve been working for a while to enter information, crunch numbers, build the campaign website, and put all of the pieces in place.  Only after all of that could we submit it to Kickstarter for their review and approval: they have to agree to host the campaign or we can’t run it with them.  Tonight that approval came through!

     Now we can say with pride and relief that Cows on Kickstarter is actually going to happen!  We’ve shared the preview link around to try to spread the good news.  Hopefully our somewhat modest campaign creation ability still allows people to glimpse how fun the game is to play.
     With that hope in mind, let us say again that we’re sincere in our invitation for feedback.  Please preview the Cows crowdfunding campaign and let us know what you think!

Why Crowdfund?

     This is an important question, and one we actually wrestled with for a long time.

     Unlike some of our other projects, Cows is a fairly modest game with relatively simple components, so it isn’t terribly expensive to produce.   (Sometimes confusing, but not expensive.)  That was an important consideration for us as we chose which game to launch first; we wanted to keep the price point low since people wouldn’t have prior experience with our company.  We could probably pay the cost to publish it without crowdfunding, so the campaign isn’t urgently necessary financially.

     For us the benefit of crowdfunding is helping to find players for our whimsical little darling.  If we print them without knowing who wants to play them, they’ll sit in our offices as a sad reminder that we don’t have enough friends.  Crowdfunding gives us a chance to show the game to a community that’s already interested in the possibility of supporting an unfamiliar, small, and independent  company.  If they like what they see and want to play it, we can make sure that a copy is sent to them “hot off the presses,” so to speak.  (Not literally though, because transit time from the manufacturer alone would give them time to cool.)  

What’s Next?

     Next we ask everyone we can reach to preview the Cows crowdfunding campaign!  Check it out!  Give us feedback!  Spread the word!

     Then, soon and very soon, excitingly and frighteningly soon, the campaign will launch and we’ll all see what happens!

     That’s all for now, but as always more exciting news is always fast approaching!  Until then feel free to leave any comments or questions you have in the space below.  We look forward to hearing from you!