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Dungeon Saga: The Dwarf King's Quest

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GarandMarine:
Thought for the day: Does Mantic REALLY need a KS? Surely they're an established company by now. Why not just bring the product to market?

Neko_Ali:
I really don't know how big they are. But using kickstarter means they can get funded for their projects up front, without having to go to the risk and extra expense of borrowing money for whatever their latest big project is. I've only seen them using KS when launching new, big projects. Like Deadzone, Mars Attacks, Dreadball Extreme and now Dungeon Saga. In between they release new products for their existing lines on their own dime. And besides that, KS allows  a company to gauge interest in their product. If they go a month and don't or barely make funding, they can figure this may not be something to do, or at least not do big time. However, that is not really a good plan for Mantic at this point. They've done so many games this way that they have to wonder how much is genuine interest in this product, and how much is just people willing to back Mantic no matter what they do. They win at Kickstarter either way, but will there be interest in the game after release?

GarandMarine:
A good KS doesn't necessarily mean they win at it. Consider the many successful KS that have had fulfillment issues due to sheer cost of the various rewards they were handing out. There's been some excellent business journals discussing KS and why it can put you in a very negative business cycle. 

TheEvilDog:
The problem is more about resources rather than how established they are. Mantic Games don't have production facilities like Games Workshop, which pretty much has it's own factories around the world. At the moment, Mantic are pretty much a few offices and a warehouse and that's it. They have to get a third party to do the production for them (and the cost of production molds is ridiculously high, we're talking $20,000).
Then we're getting into the points Neko_Ali has brought up, it gauges interest and how far they can go (hell, there was so much of an interest in Dreadball that they created a new KS just for an expansion). Taking a look at how much their previous KS's have taken in ($3.75 million) and the reputation they're garnering for themselves and you can see why Kickstarter is a viable tactic for what is still a small company.
Not to mention that for a company that has branched into a niche that Games Workshop has done away with, it's a much smarter idea for them to gauge which direction to go for.

GarandMarine:
Molds cost far less then you think they do, even by the old 20,000 number, especially when scaled out. Also Mantic's a bigger operation then you seem to think it is, especially now that they've become a small multinational firm. I worked in this industry for little over a year up till last month and I have buddies who work at Mantic, I'm well aware of what's what and who's who. So let's look at the KS model. So let's assuming this KS is finishing at 250k, which gives us a nice round number of 4 million total to work with. That's good. Quite good even, so we account for X amount of that for producing the rewards, then Y amount for the backer swag. Now Mantic has a good rep, and they're good on their swag for KS backers, so there's usually a fair bit for the customer to gain from backing, this is where we get into a problem, specifically the issue that Reaper had where they made the pot too sweet. Did you notice Bones II came PDQ? From what I understand that's because they had bills to pay from Bones I, it can absolutely cause a death spiral, and it doesn't encourage sustainable income or growth. Another thought: Does a short term gain like a KS hurt your potential total market impact and long term revenue? I know I just said it, but thinking honestly... how often do you really see Mantic kits at your LGS? I've seen a copy of Dreadball, once, and that was IN Baltimore, where their US office is.

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