It's worth considering that perhaps putting up a comic-only Kickstarter in the comic section might have the added benefit of attracting comics fans who mightn't have heard of Sentinels of the Multiverse, not only to the comic but to the tabletop game.
Late to this party but I figured I'd throw my two cents in anyway.
The Story War "game" looked bad. 0 interest. Connecting the two was a gigantic mistake. The comic should have been attached to the WotC pre-order or the Sentinel Tactics KS. Then the shipping charges would vanish as the comic just slides into a box that already has other stuff we want.
As for the comic itself. Of course I'm interested. But...
1> I always thought a big hardcover worldbook/encyclopedia would make the most sense. You can reuse a lot of art from the cards. Give a lot of story and character information we want in walls of text. And Make it a nice big 300 page hardcover with a $50-$60 pricetag.
2> I'm not sure the Sentinels art will translate well to a full action comic. The pages in Sentinel Tactics are fine for Tactics but not at comic book level. Too many empty backgrounds for a start.
3> There was no mention that I saw when I looked (on launch day?) of what kind of comic it was. Stapled? Squarebound/"prestige" format with thicker cover or like a comic industry standard trade paperback? Or hardcover? 50 pages + no mention of it + a photo that looked like it had a staple meant I assumed this was a regular double-sized comic book issue. That meant it was way too expensive when you include shipping and that I can't even store it properly on my shelf or handle it repeatedly. Only way I want regular comic book issues is if they were released monthly - oh wait, even then I would wait for the TPBs at this point because that's what I've been trained to do.
In addition to all that, the unspoken problem is the absolute bath backers took on the Sentinel Tactics KS. With everything being sol at 60%+ off at online retailers just 2-3 months later, that's gonna leave a lot of people saying "I'll pass on this KS and just buy it later".
My suggestion is to finish the card game, release one or two more Tactics boxes to get all the heroes and villains and a handful of nextgenerations into miniature form, and then release a giant hardcover worldbook.
Have you already looked at the comic book that they did do?
I've seen this a couple of times both during and after the campaign, and I just don't understand. GTG never kickstarts or preorders under any false pretenses - it is A:WAYS at full retail, so if you are kickstarting to "get a deal" you're going to get it cheaper buying it later. That has always been thecase and they don't make any attempt to disguise that fact. So I disagree that people "took a bath" when everyone could look at the financials of the KS and make that decision for themselves
The main problem with waiting to buy it later is that it may not get made if you make that choice and thus it won't even be available to buy later. I understand if it's already hit the funding goal but if it hasn't then the money you pledge isn't just to buy the comic, it's to help it get made in the first place.
If they try to do the comic again they could possibly do some things they did in previous kickstarters. Have levels to get yourself drawn into the comic, even if it's just some civilian in the bacground. Those are usually good ways to get some extra money pledged.
Kickstarter isn't about getting stuff cheaper, or getting free stuff/exclusives. It's about helping to get something made that wouldn't exist otherwise.
This ^ ^
I have no issue with paying full price (or even over full price) for a Kickstarter project, as the very nature of kickstarter is to get the product made in the first place. Plus, when you factor in stretch goals, it’s often worth that extras payment in my eyes.
That said, I had precisely 0 interest in Story War as a game and, while I’d love an actual SotM universe comic, I was quite reticent to back a game I want interested in just to get the comic.
An art book/world guide after the SotM game is complete, though? I’d gladly pay for that by itself, especially if it was hardbound. Include references to real-life comics, strategies and combos from Christopher, and the official canon SotM storyline complete with clues and hints left from the beginning? Count me in! Maybe something to consider if there’s another Tactics kickstarter?
Well there's a difference between backing a $60 something early at MSRP but getting it a bit early or with a cool extra and then it gets sold online at the standard 30% off MSRP for $40 so you spent an extra $20 and with backing something early at MSRP of $hundreds and it is very quickly 60-70% off and you spent an extra $100+. For one example, I spent $31.17 to get WotC which is retailing for $23.26 at CSI. I got it the same day I would have from CSI (they had it in stock Monday) and I spent $8.00 extra but I got the promo cards (don't know if CSI has them or not) and the 3 art prints. I spent EXTRA but I'm not crying about it because its $8.00. (Of course, with 4500 preorders I wouldnt be surprised to see WotC in online super sales soon either.)
Another random example: I'll spend a 10% $2-$5 tip to get my food delivered so I don't have to leave my house. If I get $600 of groceries delivered I don't tip the delivery guy $60.
If I would have bought Tactics+Uprising+minis during Black Friday sales and the painted minis now I would have had enough money to buy 2 other games. If I wait until the painted minis go on sale, I'd be even further ahead. There's spending extra for convenience or for a good cause or to get things quicker, and then there's spending money wastefully.
It seems quite a few people agree that this "oh, you guys don't actually want the comic book" seems a little like a mis-reading of the situation. To me it almost feels a little "take our ball and going home". It doesn't take a cospiracy theorist to reason that its possible the comic was attached to Conflict as opposed to Tactics or Wotc specifically BECAUSE the comic was "in demand" and Story War wasn't.
I'm not saying there were false pretenses on the Tactics campaign, or that GTG are evil capitalists. What I'm saying is I might give them a couple of extra bucks in advance for a KS/preorder to make sure I get something, especially if they throw me a bone, but the same way they have to manage their budget, I have to manage mine, and if there aren't going to be better options than "same day delivery, no special promos/extras, full MSRP PLUS outrageous shipping" that there will be people backing off. And it is my opinion that this is part of the reason why the latest kickstarter underperformed. It doesn't even matter if people are right or wrong about feeling they "took a bath" , if they feel that way it affects their actions.
We all agree that in business you have to find a price point that maximizes profits right? Too low and you don't make enough per sale. Too high and you don't make enough sales. Those prices have little to do with actual "value" and everything to do with customer perception. We already know from when WotC and Tactics launched that GTG has a customer price perception "problem". I'm just saying that its getting worse. You say people can see the financials and make the decision for themselves. I agree. People decided not to back the next project.
I bet that if there was a "pre-order" put up for the comic book(s) with a "pay what you want" scheme for the PDF ($10 for the PDF is a bit high) and detailed information about the phsyical comic with a "Free shipping with your next GTG preorder" option that a lot more of the 4500 people who preordered WotC would jump in and that GTG could set a goal total and reach it with room to spare.
Wow, you guys with your "standard 30% off MSRP" kill me.
Try living in the UK, where a game with a $100 price tag will usually cost you £100 despite the fact that $100 is actually about £65, and free shipping is rare. A 30% discount would be some kind of extreme closing-down sale or an otherwise unsellable ding-and-dent copy or a game that's sat in the store for years eating its head off and gathering dust.
When it comes to board games, Americans are horribly spoilt and entitled.
I imagine that the only way that >G could give people free shipping would be to increase the price of the game, and as an EU citizen who would get hit by customs/import taxes if this pushed the value over the threshold, I wouldn't be very happy about that.
Didnt you also get three FREE mini-expansions? That would likely retail for $12 or so?
It isn't just where board games are concerned. 
Spot on. Every KS that >G does is followed by random price rants :yawn: Actually every KS ever is followed by this sort of thing, but the difference is that >G pile on so many extras that it has always balanced out for the end consumer. Not to mention all the free promo cards that are worth a fortune on the secondary market.
There are a lot of KS projects that price crash after publishing purely because that site is filled with vanity projects and half-finished games with worthless stretch goals. Because >G are serious about the publishing business they have used KS as it was intended to be - to give their business a push with funding and marketing, and to test consumer reaction to their products. SotM has proved to be an evergreen hit and the KS/Pre-order package has always been fairly priced with tangible stretch goals that have added genuine value.
Yay for >G I say 
Yeah. The CSI prices for them are $13.49 for WotC, 3.49 for Guise and Wager-Master and 2.79 for Omnitron = $23.26. I don't count shipping at online retailers because they all have a free shipping threshold. So those retail prices are $3.26 "more" but the $11.17 shipping from GTG is a thing. And I've never paid for shipping at CSI/MM/Cardhaus/etc because I just order 3-4 games at a time. If GTG offered free shipping even if it was on bulk orders this conversation would pop up a lot less because their prices would be more in the "ballpark".
I think you're just going to have to get over the fact that >G aren't going to give anyone free shipping because shipping costs them money.
Those big retailers sell thousands upon thousands of games and thus can afford to take a hit on shipping, and offer those discounts, because they sell in such volume.
There's no way >G can take advantage of the same economies of scale. If they sold you Wrath for $20 with free shipping, how much exactly do you think would be left over after as profit?
Obviously I don't know the actual numbers for >G, but in general the actual cost of the product is 25% of the retail price. Say they've paid $5 for the game from the manufacturers. They'll sell it to retailers/distributors at wholesale, which is about $10. Someone has to be paid wages to package up a batch of games for each retailer. Marketing costs money. Profit per game out of the $5 that's left? Not very much, I imagine.
If they sell the game directly, they have to pay someone to package each individual game (more per game than withe the bulk order). They also have to advertise, deal with returns/replacements, buy/maintain equipment and storage, etc… and if you're expecting them to pay $10 for your free shipping, that remaining $5 isn't going to go very far to cover that. Let's say they make $2.50 per game if they pay for shipping (I'm making up the numbers, and I don't believe it would be as high as that) - they'd have to sell FIVE TIMES as many games to make the same profit as NOT paying for shipping. Unlikely to happen.
Personally, I'd like >G to stay in business, and that trumps my desire to buy uber-cheap games.
Also, sites like csi take a dive on some products because of the 100 free shipping. If they mmarkspme down to almost no profit (or even a loss) they are far more likely to get added to your 3-4 game pile for the free shipping. Chances are, over the hundreds of thousands of customers they have. A good chunk are buying something that is making them a lot of profit, and something at the same time that is not, and it balances in their favor. In fact, chances are better than good, because the site is still in business, despite comments from people like Christopher when SoTm goes on sale and he remarks “they must be loosing money selling it that low”. (Because of the understanding he didn’t sell it to them at an even lower price)
I have to echo this guy's opinion on the comic itself though -- I don't think the FF one was particularly great except as a vehicle for delivering more character background, which a Marvel Universe-style comic could probably do better.
Hell. Yes. Make this happen right now.
stevelabny wrote:
I always thought a big hardcover worldbook/encyclopedia would make the most sense. You can reuse a lot of art from the cards. Give a lot of story and character information we want in walls of text. And Make it a nice big 300 page hardcover with a $50-$60 pricetag.
I think this would have a lot of people drooling. They would probably wait until all characters are released or do a Vol. 1 and 2 kinda thing