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Messages - Grakelin

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256
Other Games / Re: Crusader Kings 2 is released.
« on: June 02, 2012, 11:14:07 pm »
I also assume that the historical research of Paradox is better than the one of modders so that will probably be different as well.

Looking at the Paradox forums, I think a lot of people disagree with you there.  What with the "Game isn't historically accurate" threads and the "More Historical" mods, it seems Paradox's ability to do historic research is in dispute, whereas most modders are tend to be a bit anal about that sort of thing.  And modders who aren't are more responsive to mod fans who are.

Stumbled across a webforum where the community was primarily from the Balkans, and they kept complaining about the possibility to form Kingdoms named for their hated enemies.

257
Other Games / Re: Crusader Kings 2 is released.
« on: May 14, 2012, 05:01:17 pm »
Has to be a mod. Paradox didn't include child birth deaths, miscarriages and (high odds of) infant/childhood deaths in vanilla.

I'm in vanilla. Both wives died "of Natural Causes" in their mid-20s c. 9 months after being declared pregnant.

258
Other Games / Re: Crusader Kings 2 is released.
« on: May 13, 2012, 09:12:16 pm »
In my LAN Ireland game I lost two wives to childbirth in a row.

259
Other Games / Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« on: May 10, 2012, 04:50:04 pm »
So, six soldiers per mission confirmed.

The only thing I can mop about so far, but still: :<

Yeah, JA2 was really terrible specifically because you only got 6 mans.

Quote
I don’t know that cabbages made it in.

I'm out.

260
General Discussion / Re: When Kickstarter goes wrong?
« on: May 09, 2012, 07:02:24 pm »
http://www.sjgames.com/general/stakeholders/

Oh shit, wow, the last time I peaked at that they had 2010 up, now they have 2011. Damn these last two ears have been great for Steve Jackson games. I guess getting Muchin into Target was quite the benefit. Or maybe I'm horribly butchering my millions here. XD

Err, I'm not sure what you're saying here. Getting Munchkin into Target actually is a huge benefit because now teens all over the US are going to buy it when they ordinarily wouldn't. There's no financial reporting there, either. The company is, however, glowing about their large gross.

Let's all stop pretending Steve Jackson Games is an impoverished business. It is quite successful.

I was looking for something more like this, incidentally, which is an accurate report of a game company's financial standing.

261
Other Games / Re: Crusader Kings 2 is released.
« on: May 08, 2012, 09:15:14 pm »
My IRL friend and I are both playing Ireland in an online match (she's Munster, I'm Connacht). It is vicious. At first we allied together to unite Ireland, and I promised that she could be the King as long as she helped me revoke the unruly Breifne lord. Then she started getting greedy and taking things I was trying to claim, so we got into a war, which she eventually won. For 50 or 60 years, we remained at a tenuous peace, where I forced her into Elective Succession and gave one of my cousins Dublin (and, thus, the Duchy of Meath and an extra vote). She put Feudal Taxation at Harsh.

At around the 1130sh mark, where we started tonight's game, all hell broke loose. I assassinated her main character (First King of Ireland), who had killed my father AND grandfather in battles. Then she became my mother, as well as Queen of Ireland (I had voted for my mother, even though she was in her dynasty, because her original heir was me). Nobody much liked this woman, because she was actually a Breton (and I don't think she was even from Ireland). I ended up assassinating her with the help of the Earl of Ossory. Her aunt (First King's sister) left Powys (in Wales) to be the new Queen, after getting votes from Meath and Leinster (dope AI always gets greedy right when I'm about to be King!).

We fight a multitude of bloody Irish revolutions against the Tax Queen over the next fifteen years. The first one ends in an assassin war where my assassin fails and hers stabs my Main in the chest. He is replaced by his legitimized bastard half-brother. The half-brother proceeds to join the next revolt, and is imprisoned. His regent joins every revolt after that in an attempt to rescue his liege. The Queen is always alone in these wars, but has so much money in the treasury from the harsh tax that she just buys mercenaries. I turn the tide of the revolts by hiring smaller bands of cheap mercenaries, who tear Ireland apart. Eventually, after the 5th of 6th war, she runs out of money. However, she has just run out of real enemies from the AI, too.

Meath arranges for me to get out of prison, and I become the Chancellor (possibly in an attempt to placate me). After a few years, the Earl of Ossory and I murder the queen (who is trying to get some random from her Dynasty elected). She is replaced by the random, who the Duke of Ulster and I kill, thus making the Duchess of Leinster the Queen of Ireland (Ruler #5, with #4 lasting less than a year).

The very first thing the Duchess of Leinster has done is attack Gwynedd (which I approve of). Right now we're waiting for that war to be over, and then it's back to plotting to get the throne back.

It's such a sordid game. Between the two of us, our families are constantly interelated thanks to a huge flurry of marriages I made with her family and her branches when she first became ruler, along with the marriage of the sons of our first two Mains. Tonight alone, I assassinated four of her Mains (one of which was my Grandfather, the other of which was my actual Mother), I almost lost the direct line of succession (thankfully I legitimized that bastard!), and the future of Ireland is uncertain.

The rest of the world is pretty basic, except that the Iberian Peninsula is dominated by Muslims and England is constantly fractured and has been in a succession war for as long as I can remember.

262
General Discussion / Re: When Kickstarter goes wrong?
« on: May 08, 2012, 05:06:03 pm »
Can you link to the quarterly reports from SJG? This is a privately held company, thus reports to stakeholders aren't typically public knowledge.

However, if we're trying to say that SJG is poor and its employees need our help to produce their games, we can't remove the payroll from our net income.

SJG is not doing WotC well because WotC is a subsidiary of a $4 billion corporation. To compare the two is ridiculous. It's like saying the bakery down the store isn't doing too well because they don't make as much as Wonder Bread.

...

   You do realize that if 100 or so dollars is what its basically started pre-selling for that with all they have added, while they will make profit they are not going to make fistsfulls of money. Do you realize how much it costs to setup manufacturing for something like this? Its not just another run of cards for Munchkin. This is a whole new manufacturing line with new dies and stuff. They can't even offset prices by using generic things like for instance generic game box or anything as its all uniquely sized for this game.

I'm confused at what you're trying to claim. Let's look at how many people backed at $100 or more on the Kickstarter alone:

3,792 (as of May 8 ).

If we play pretend and cut all those down to just $100, that's still $379,200 in game sales. How much are they intending to pay for shipping, exactly? Especially when there are similarly massive, and cheaper, games on the market that didn't need a kickstarter to launch. Note that BGG lists the weight of these games. TI is 7.4 pounds, which expands rapidly once you start adding expansions. The last weighed version of Ogre is half a pound. I have seen the game in person. It is ridiculous that SJ is trying to make a 14 pound game out of that.

Since the Kickstarter goal was $20,000, I have to wonder what, exactly, would motivate somebody to tell us their manufacturing costs are crippling their ability to produce games.

I mean come on, guys. All my LGSes have big shelves filled with Munchkin goods. They're selling cheap boxes of easily reprinted cards for $20.00 a pop, often to the same people multiple times, and they've carved a sizable marketshare. Let's stop pretending these guys are a down-on-their-luck business in any sense.

263
Other Games / Re: How did you last die?
« on: May 08, 2012, 04:54:37 pm »
I misread as Master of Magic. I retract my offense.

264
General Discussion / Re: When Kickstarter goes wrong?
« on: May 07, 2012, 10:25:39 pm »
Here's another way of looking at it:

In 2007, SJG had a gross revenue of $2.7 million. They employ 17 people. That is a gross revenue of $158,000 per person. Obviously they aren't all making $158,000 each, but when you compare that to a megacorporation (such as OpenText, which grossed $232,000 per employee in 2011), they're not exactly doing badly.

You might argue that the operating costs eat up most of the $2.7 million in annual revenue, if only that were true.

This is not an impoverished business by any means. The board game industry is not suffering. It is growing and expanding, and companies like SJG, Fantasy Flight, and Rio Grande are all in the black.

265
General Discussion / Re: When Kickstarter goes wrong?
« on: May 07, 2012, 09:11:03 pm »
Why do you think Steve Jackson and Steve Jackson Game is a company that is well to do?

Hobbist Gaming industry has very thin margins, and fairly high production cost. The reason why Steve Jackson Games has been around as long as it has is because Steve Jackson & Games have had so far a brilliant ability to read trends and feel the future for the industry.

Munchin, is a very well selling game, but it's not selling like M:tG well. The other source of income that Steve Jackson Games has is it's rpg on line store, which also have low margins.

The Orge game is very very expensive to make, (to physically make, not including the money on RD and prototyping) , expensive to ship, and takes /alot/ of storage space due to its HUGE (relatively speaking to modern hobbist games) size.

It's very expensive product to do anything with. When Steve Jackson said they'd only be able to make 3k for one production run they figure it'd sell in about a year, that should tell  just how expensive, and how low selling they thought this product would be.

Kickstarter is a great place for someone, liken Steve Jackson Games. A company that has a long history on delivering products but doesn't have the easiest time in getting venture capitalism to invest in new product lines.

And with the Kickstarter, it allows Steve Jackson & Game to have pre-orders, and to see just how far they can really take the game, while lessening the damage of Over Production.

Uhm, I don't want to hear any of this silly "It's not real richness bro" stuff about SJG. SJG makes a lot of money off of Munchkin. A lot of money. And it makes enough money that it can afford to stay in business and pay its employees livable wages. They make enough to market and distribute their products. They don't actually need Kickstarter. Especially not to produce and ship an already developed game.

I call this poor Kickstarter usage.

266
Other Games / Re: How did you last die?
« on: May 07, 2012, 07:18:49 pm »
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm a bit offended by your term for Fall From Heaven. :P

267
Other Games / Re: Games you wish existed
« on: May 07, 2012, 04:43:39 pm »
A game with completely 100% accurate physics. It would be awesome.

Also worthy of a Nobel Prize!

268
Be aware that I recently got an e-mail notifying me that Shores of Hazeron had been compromised by hackers, so make sure you don't register with your usual credentials.

269
As far as I was aware, there already is a Bay12 SoH empire.

270
Other Games / Re: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
« on: May 04, 2012, 06:21:39 pm »
If the ESO packaging is lined with anthrax, that would be a betrayal.

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