But hey, look, all of a sudden GTG has a completely unrelated board game coming to KS soon.
https://www.freedomfivegame.com
The absence of any mention of this upcoming product in the original post is telling IMO. They could have said they were just going in a completely different direction and offered to include Tactics/Prime War backers, or explained why it was necessary to refund original backers due to constraints of the deal with Defenders Of The Realm developers.
This update was solely about Prime War and their regret that they realize they couldn't make it happen. I'd take more umbrage if they announced the new game with this same announcement. The Freedom Five boardgame is mostly being done by an established publisher Arcane Wonders just using the IP of Sentinels with some input from GtG. From what I've looked up the Freedom Five game is based off Defenders of the Realm which is not really the same genre of boardgame as Prime War. Lastly, this Freedom Five boardgame will be some through KS so it's not like they would have an easy way to redirect out money to that.
As I said GTG could have explained why it was necessary to refund original backers due to constraints of the development deal. It's not we wouldn't notice a new Sentinels miniatures game and draw a connection. Including an explanation of why prepaid funds had to be refunded and could not be transferred to the new project would have helped to clarify issues which they have now left open to speculation.
Funding was raised through their old web store and they would have needed to do a refund as I don't see any method they really have of transferring that money to something else without it becoming really shady. As to speculation as I already said this needed to be solely about Prime War and not about any future products. The announcement of Freedom Five by GtG would be a more appropriate place to talk about that.
Yeah, I don’t think the two things are connected particularly closely. For whatever reason, Prime War never quite became what GtG wanted it to be, so they made the decision to end it despite the resources that had been put into developing it.
Meanwhile, they’re starting a project with an established game system, a very different (and solely co-op) kind of game.
if there’s any link, I think it’s most likely a pure resourcing issue, a matter of ‘where do we spend our time.’
In the current editors note around the 41 minute mark they talk about this https://theletterspage.libsyn.com/editors-note-43
To summarize a little mostly for fenianb's sake:
They deeply regret Prime War not working out, because it was a project they were excited about, was turning out well, and they sunk a lot of time, energy, and resources into. But in the end the market just plain didn't exist for it.
This was far from the only project they've had make a lot of progress to not work out in the end, this is just one they talked about during the process. And now they're reluctant to talk about projects until they're practically guaranteed precisely because they don't want to dash people's hopes again if things don't work out.
The Freedom Five game not only has literally zero connection at all, but it took two different companies coming up with related ideas independently to talk C&A into letting them make it because for the longest time C&A were reluctant about it.
The part of this that surprised me was that it started with a proposal from Launius in 2012. :-o
Also I'll add I think Broken City/Prime War had adjusted their thinking on KS and preorders as they've talked about in State of GtG panels. Basically that they are going to lean more towards have only more finalized products go to a KS or be a preorders. I hope what has happened doesn't dampen their spirits on making other games as I think GtG overall is a good board game company.
Oh, they're clearly super-enthusiastic about making other games. They just need to keep a lid on that enthusiasm longer in the future.
One important thing to realize here is that “finalized product” doesn’t just mean “at an advanced stage of board game rule development,” but also that they’ve established through market and production analyses that it’ll be a viable commercial product. This isn’t a thing that we passionate players may think about much, but it’s critical for GtG as a small company. Christopher tossed out the number that they might have had only “a few hundred” players interested in buying Prime War. You can multiply by expected price to see that’s not a lot of revenue.
To a degree. That's why I'd expect items to go to KS that they have as a finalized product they are excited about but they don't know how popular or how the market might be for it.
Didn't they have a almost done project on kickstarter that told them it wouldn't be viable. Something about monster trucks?
Monster Truck Mayhem I believe
There was also the Story Wars game that didn't fund.
And there was a worker placement game, Dubai: Rebuild the Ruins that they cancelled on KS when it became clear that it wouldn't fund. So KS can certainly be a helpful guage of market interest.
I think for Prime War the issue was that the launched the pre-orders for the expansion too quickly. Most of the problems/issues that exist with Tactics (from a market perspective) weren't noticed by GtG until after the pre-orders ended, so they found themselves stuck trying to find a way to make it work. The commitment to backers probably kept the project alive a lot longer than it otherwise should have been.
I agree there. I would guess next time we see a preorder for a new game or expansion it's one they know they have a market and is pretty well into development if not nearly finished.
This was the most frustrating because there was a SotM comic book as part of the KS. While the game failed to gain interest, the comic was heavily demanded and never got made.
We got the comic in a way when thye covered Cosmic Contest on the Letters Page and to me I feel thats probably for the best. Since that comic would be 100+ pages which wouid all have all the art done by Adam. If Adam had to do that it still might in progress.
I guess this is closure at least.
I'm over here still playing Tactics with the Broken City playtest characters we had. . .