Whew, sorry about missing the past 1.5 updates everyone! The end of the year standard business busy-ness, plus the Jagged Earth Kickstarter, PAX Unplugged, and the upcoming Sentinel Comics RPG Kickstarter all just destroyed my schedule. However, I'm back now and more or less kind of caught up! Let's take a look at stuff that's happened at GTG since early November!
Jeremy Handel from Handelabra Games visited St. Louis for a series of meetings!
Lore Forge Games visited St. Louis for a series of meetings about and playtesting of Prime War!
Maggie attended BGG Con!
The Kickstarter for Spirit Island: Jagged Earth came to a thrilling conclusion!
We hired a new warehouse employee, Ruby! She will be focusing on distributor/freight order packing for the most part.
We did a full reorganization of our entire warehousing and shipping department in light of the shipping issues from the OblivAeon Kickstarter!
We finished shipping all of the OblivAeon related replacement parts that came in before the 26th of December.
Thanksgiving!
The majority of GTG employees attended PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia!
We had our GTG Annual Holiday Party!
Chris Kirkman visited St. Louis for a series of meetings!
Many people went on vacation over the Christmans and/or New Years holidays!
We hired a full time customer service manager, Katie!
We sold out of Spirit Island again!
We commissioned a ton of art for Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game and Spirit Island: Jagged Earth!
Here is the status of all of our works in progress.
In Stock Since November
Spirit Island (6th Printing part 2)
Bottom of the 9th mini-expansions
Shipping to Backers
Some replacement parts and shipping error replacements
In Transit; On a Boat
Bottom of the 9th reprint
Villains of the Multiverse reprint
Spirit Island (7th printing)
Spirit Island: Branch & Claw reprint
Spirit Island: Promo Spirit Pack 1 reprint
At Factory; Pre-Press Work
Legends of Sleepy Hollow
Homebrewers
Microbrewers
Current WIP Focus by GTG
Sentinel Comics: The Role Playing Game core rulebook (Christopher, Jenn, Critical Hits)
Prime War (Christopher, Chris Burton, Lore Forge)
Spirit Island: The Jagged Earth (Paul, Christopher, Jenn, Erik)
Sentinels of Freedom video game (Christopher, Adam, Underbite Studio)
The History of Sentinel Comics (Christopher, Adam)
Fate of the Elder Gods: Agents of Arkham (Chris Kirkman)
Homebrewers (Chris Kirkman, Chris Burton, SaRae)
Some other games (Chris Kirkman, Chris Burton)
A new and improved website (Jenn, Paul, Alex, Joel)
@Paul, regarding Prime War in July you advised that by the fall the updates should be monthly just like a Kickstarter. What are your plans for more detailed updates in the future?
My apologies! Could you please re-send the email with what you are missing to both me and Katie@greaterthangames.com? I want to make sure that goes out.
It’s #16 on the BGG rankings, and still moving up. It’s got 8.5K ratings there; this is surely a small fraction of the units sold. Yes, it’s doing really well…
Yeah currently Spirit Island is our fastest selling product, and at this rate it is reasonably likely that sales of the core game of Spirit Island will pass sales of the core game of Sentinels of the Multiverse by the end of the year. However, it'll take a while (and more Spirit Island expansions) for sales of overall SKUs for the Spirit Island product line to pass sales of overall SKUs for the Sentinels of the Multiverse product line.
Also, Sentinels of the Multiverse has spawned a vibrant fan base for the stories, which lets us be commercially successful with things like The Letters Page and (hopefully) the RPG and Prime War, and Spirit Island isn't that kind of heavily-story-driven game.
In summary, I like having a diverse set of products (and therefore revenue streams) that appeal to different audiences :)
I know that Eric has talked about another Dahan-centered expansion, which has a name in my head. But we need to finish playtesting this one first, and then take several months off so we can enjoy other things!
I wouldn't say that Spirit Island has to be less story-driven than SotM. From what I understood of the GtG Origin Story, the original impetus that C&A had for creating the game was because they wanted an actual good superhero game, which is why the core game contains more classic comic book archetypes than the expansions. The story came quickly afterward, but it did come afterward.
Now, it doesn't seem to have been Eric's idea to have a "canon" story behind Spirit Island that justifies its content, but if Eric wanted to design spin-off products, I don't see any reason why he couldn't. There's plenty of room in the setting for it.
And I thought The Letters Page wasn't actually commercially successful? I see Patreon supporters are kicking in only $1640 a month right now, before Pateron's cut. That's like $400 an episode. Would that actually be worth the time Christopher, Adam, and Trevor put into it if it weren't helping to advance sales of the games? (Not counting how much C&A find intrinsic value in doing it, for their own sake.)
Consider the amount of manhours that were going into each podcast. Between recording and prep time, Christopher and Adam each were spending 10+ hours per podcast. And, while some of that might have been useful for the SCRPG and Prime War, most of it is fluff at best.
So, let's say that it's 80 manhours per month for just C&A to do the podcast. That breaks down to $20.50 per manhour....
... for just those two. Let's add in payment for Trevor and whatever fees Patreon takes out, and you're going to be down to minimum wage or less per manhour very quickly.
And, outside of the financial cost, consider the opportunity cost. That's 10 hours a week that Adam isn't doing art or handling art direction. That's 10 hours a week that Christopher isn't designing or developing new products. That's 10 hours that trevor isn't prepping Kickstarter videos or aiding in marketing. That's a lot of time in a week not doing your actual job.
So yeah, I can see why they're cutting back the patreon/podcasting.
I don’t think they were, really? Rather, they acknowledged sometime recently that the podcast was more useful for them and their creative processes than as a profit center.
(OK, they did cut back slightly, to move the Editor’s Notes to a Tuesday rather than as an extra Thursday episode.)
The episodes are also generally shorter now than they tended to be in the last year. Generally 90ish minutes on the outside (and some well under an hour) rather than 2-3 hours.
Sounds like Adam should probably be doing 10 hours less of art a week anyway, if he hurt his finger again. I know he loves it but he’s going to risk permanent damage at this rate.
Back when I was teaching, I often would lean against the classroom white-erase board with my left arm while writing up notes or other information with my right hand. By 2009, I was in physical therapy for a slowly-but-surely tearing rotator cuff. Basically, the docs told me, "Yup, it'll tear at some point. Can't do much till then; just wait until it tears and we'll go in and stitch it back together..."
Gotta make sure to moderate your work! Hopefully, with Adam seeming to do art direction for the SCRPG, he won't have such a huge illustration load...
