ZOMBICIDE: INVADER EPIC FAIL – PART 5
LEARNING TO ADAPT
CMON, just like GW, have learned that they can get away with treating their market badly. Zombicide: Invader was a test. It provided an eclectic mix of miniatures, some good, more bad, and most average at best. The game itself seemed cobbled together with ranged weapons rendered useless by ‘dark’ (limited light source) rules and over-powered Xenos ‘zombies’ that appeared beside Survivors or attacked from adjacent tiles and were game enders. But nobody seemed that interested in the rules anyway.
Well, aside from complaints about the artwork. And the lack of actual zombies. A mining colony where the miners and most colonists had gone missing, allegedly eaten by Xenos that were, somehow, being classified as ‘zombies’. There was some suggestion the Xenos were infected with something that made them into zombies… but the backers weren’t impressed. They kept asking for zombies. CMON ignored them. Some backers even began to refer to the game as ‘Xenocide’.
What could they have done instead of what they did? Well, it doesn’t take them long to make alternate poses for models, so why didn’t they make the Xenos look like zombies? All they needed was missing bits, a few bullet holes, even one of the Xenos as a survivor and a bunch of Survivor species as zombies, like miners and former civilians and soldiers. If they’d added that rather than more Xenos and piles of Survivors… and tossed in a few new equipment cards and tiles or barricades… and changed the artwork, to help it feel more like the Green Horde campaign, maybe it would have worked better.
But… the lack of any action against trolls (or the bad behaviour of CMON) to serve as a serious deterrent has demonstrated that CMON and their fanboy-trolls can act like colossal douchebags without any real repercussions. It doesn’t matter what smaller backers might say because CMON is not interested in those backers, only those with a lot of money. It doesn’t matter that they could gain far more market share, sales and profit by adapting to the market when they are getting what looks and feels like a lot of money (for very little real thought or effort) already.
Yes, if GW reduced their prices they could sell far more product and to a much larger market base. Yes, they could make more profit. But their target demographic are elitists that like to bully others and suck up the narcissistic, arrogant, fascist culture modelled by the company and its game-based literature. CMON has the same culture. Their fanboy-trolls insist people who ‘whine’ about not getting things are ‘butt-hurt’ with all the conviction of people projecting… and who have an all too disturbing obsession with hurting butts and people who like to do that.
But the reality is, the people at GW and CMON have no idea about basic psychology. Nobody likes to pay the same or more for a product as someone else if they are getting less of that product. And they most definitely don’t respond to insults by suddenly deciding they want to be ripped off so throw money at the seller to obtain that partial product. Don’t believe me? Try charging someone full price for a burger and fries, or a car, then give them half of that thing, then insult them when they complain.
GW was warned, for decades, what would happen if they continued to produce their piss-poor quality product and sell it at over-inflated prices, and how much worse it would be to continue alienating their community and market base. The sudden turn-around and leap in revenue and profits is little more than smoke and mirrors. They increased their prices and re-released a popular product that they will remove again just as quickly, the same as they always have. They haven’t increased their market base at all.
CMON have followed a similar path. They were warned about their negative marketing strategies and poor treatment of their market, but ignored what they were told, and look what happened. What should have been a sure-thing turned into another epic fail. Compare the figures and actions of their Zombicide: Invader campaign to the Zombicide: Green Horde and Zombicide: Black Plague campaigns and see for yourself. Go ahead. The stats are all included in this blog post.
Compare the Pledge totals and number of Backers. The costs to fund it and what backers got. What SGs were awarded, whether they were contingent upon expansion pledges, and the price per model to the backers. How the campaign was run. Clearly Black Plague was the best result for backers, yet they were still willing to invest in Green Horde despite it being more expensive to back. So, again, why did Zombicide: Invader fail so miserably?
The statistics would suggest, despite it being a much better deal than Green Horde, it was pledge costs that exceeded the financial means of the target demographic because the amount of content in return for cost does not seem to be an issue. Feedback and social media chatter (what little of it that wasn’t silenced by CMON’s toadies and then purged by CMON), however, reveals a very different set of factors that were becoming evident and prophesied by observers during the Green Horde campaign.
Despite what sycophantic fanboy zealots might say, the reality is that US$3.35M was only 84% of what Black Plague got (not more), and only 67% of what Green Horde got. Worse, CMON had to put in a lot more content than Green Horde had (+76%) in order to reach even that total. And the disappointing product, trolls, and pledge cost (to unlock all SGs) simply drove or priced too many potential backers out of the campaign. No matter what the claims by CMON or its sycophants, it was a monumental fail.
It’s unclear what the profit margins for these things are. Back in the 1990’s, GW was making models of average troopers, packing, shipping, and selling them for an average of US$4.00 each at a cost of around US$0.40 each. More for ‘characters’ and bigger models. That’s a hell of a profit margin. We can assume CMON can do the same, that it costs them around US$0.15 a model, and that their profit margins are whatever they sell them at minus that and the cost of the box, cards, tiles and rules.
How can we assume this? Well, when the Second Wave of your Green Horde pledge arrives with a value docket indicating $36, you start to wonder. A delivery including all the Stretch Goals ($13) plus a box of Deadeye Walkers ($3), No Rest For The Wicked ($10), and Friends and Foes ($10). Backers paid US$50 each for the two expansions, and US$22 for the Deadeye Walkers. All up, the SGs for a Core Box pledge of US$120 only cost CMON $11. And that looks like Australian dollars. Based on those figures, the Core Box itself would have only cost CMON $24. Again, probably Australian dollars.
Their profit margins were around 70% after manufacturing. Getting backers to pay for postage is the icing on the cake. More profit. Backers for Green Horde and the two expansions didn’t seem to consider that they spent US$220 for a game… plus about 30% postage. The price per model was, therefore, up to +30% more when postage was added. Now the Core Box and two expansions are US$286. That’s a lot of money for a game. Still, if the figures on the Second Wave Green Horde pledge box are used, CMON would have only made about 60% in profit for Invader rather than the 70% it did for Green Horde.
Now, if you assume, on average, all the backers order the equivalent of a Core Box and both expansions, Invader actually sold more miniatures than Green Horde. That looks good. But the profit margins were less, and the overall profit was less, and from that you still need to deduct the cost of wages and all the other things required to design the miniatures and game, as well as run the campaign… and taxes… and how the end result impacts on the reputation of the company and response of its market.
Yes, yes, there will be trolls pointing out that most of what I’ve posted here is based on assumptions, and they are right. But unless you use troll math to change the figures, the result is the same. Invader was an epic fail. More product for less return. An increase in backers from the Black Plague campaign to the Green Horde campaign decreasing dramatically for the Invader campaign. And a fundamental misunderstanding and betrayal of the core demographic.
The kickstarter campaign wasn’t just a step back, it was a very real, very obvious, epic failure. Worse, the irony of the last Stretch Goal, the tribute to Stephen Hawking, appears lost on CMON. While they repeat the vile behaviours modelled by the likes of GW, refuse to consider all fact(or)s, learn from this, and fail to apply the logic imparted in the statement that “intelligence is the ability to adapt to change”, CMON can expect to suffer many, many more of these monumental fails in the future.
ZOMBICIDE: INVADER EPIC FAIL – PART 4
CMON, just like GW, have learned that they can get away with treating their market badly. Zombicide: Invader was a test. It provided an eclectic mix of miniatures, some good, more bad, and most average at best. The game itself seemed cobbled together with ranged weapons rendered useless by ‘dark’ (limited light source) rules and over-powered Xenos ‘zombies’ that appeared beside Survivors or attacked from adjacent tiles and were game enders. But nobody seemed that interested in the rules anyway.
Well, aside from complaints about the artwork. And the lack of actual zombies. A mining colony where the miners and most colonists had gone missing, allegedly eaten by Xenos that were, somehow, being classified as ‘zombies’. There was some suggestion the Xenos were infected with something that made them into zombies… but the backers weren’t impressed. They kept asking for zombies. CMON ignored them. Some backers even began to refer to the game as ‘Xenocide’.
What could they have done instead of what they did? Well, it doesn’t take them long to make alternate poses for models, so why didn’t they make the Xenos look like zombies? All they needed was missing bits, a few bullet holes, even one of the Xenos as a survivor and a bunch of Survivor species as zombies, like miners and former civilians and soldiers. If they’d added that rather than more Xenos and piles of Survivors… and tossed in a few new equipment cards and tiles or barricades… and changed the artwork, to help it feel more like the Green Horde campaign, maybe it would have worked better.
But… the lack of any action against trolls (or the bad behaviour of CMON) to serve as a serious deterrent has demonstrated that CMON and their fanboy-trolls can act like colossal douchebags without any real repercussions. It doesn’t matter what smaller backers might say because CMON is not interested in those backers, only those with a lot of money. It doesn’t matter that they could gain far more market share, sales and profit by adapting to the market when they are getting what looks and feels like a lot of money (for very little real thought or effort) already.
Yes, if GW reduced their prices they could sell far more product and to a much larger market base. Yes, they could make more profit. But their target demographic are elitists that like to bully others and suck up the narcissistic, arrogant, fascist culture modelled by the company and its game-based literature. CMON has the same culture. Their fanboy-trolls insist people who ‘whine’ about not getting things are ‘butt-hurt’ with all the conviction of people projecting… and who have an all too disturbing obsession with hurting butts and people who like to do that.
But the reality is, the people at GW and CMON have no idea about basic psychology. Nobody likes to pay the same or more for a product as someone else if they are getting less of that product. And they most definitely don’t respond to insults by suddenly deciding they want to be ripped off so throw money at the seller to obtain that partial product. Don’t believe me? Try charging someone full price for a burger and fries, or a car, then give them half of that thing, then insult them when they complain.
GW was warned, for decades, what would happen if they continued to produce their piss-poor quality product and sell it at over-inflated prices, and how much worse it would be to continue alienating their community and market base. The sudden turn-around and leap in revenue and profits is little more than smoke and mirrors. They increased their prices and re-released a popular product that they will remove again just as quickly, the same as they always have. They haven’t increased their market base at all.
CMON have followed a similar path. They were warned about their negative marketing strategies and poor treatment of their market, but ignored what they were told, and look what happened. What should have been a sure-thing turned into another epic fail. Compare the figures and actions of their Zombicide: Invader campaign to the Zombicide: Green Horde and Zombicide: Black Plague campaigns and see for yourself. Go ahead. The stats are all included in this blog post.
Compare the Pledge totals and number of Backers. The costs to fund it and what backers got. What SGs were awarded, whether they were contingent upon expansion pledges, and the price per model to the backers. How the campaign was run. Clearly Black Plague was the best result for backers, yet they were still willing to invest in Green Horde despite it being more expensive to back. So, again, why did Zombicide: Invader fail so miserably?
The statistics would suggest, despite it being a much better deal than Green Horde, it was pledge costs that exceeded the financial means of the target demographic because the amount of content in return for cost does not seem to be an issue. Feedback and social media chatter (what little of it that wasn’t silenced by CMON’s toadies and then purged by CMON), however, reveals a very different set of factors that were becoming evident and prophesied by observers during the Green Horde campaign.
Despite what sycophantic fanboy zealots might say, the reality is that US$3.35M was only 84% of what Black Plague got (not more), and only 67% of what Green Horde got. Worse, CMON had to put in a lot more content than Green Horde had (+76%) in order to reach even that total. And the disappointing product, trolls, and pledge cost (to unlock all SGs) simply drove or priced too many potential backers out of the campaign. No matter what the claims by CMON or its sycophants, it was a monumental fail.
It’s unclear what the profit margins for these things are. Back in the 1990’s, GW was making models of average troopers, packing, shipping, and selling them for an average of US$4.00 each at a cost of around US$0.40 each. More for ‘characters’ and bigger models. That’s a hell of a profit margin. We can assume CMON can do the same, that it costs them around US$0.15 a model, and that their profit margins are whatever they sell them at minus that and the cost of the box, cards, tiles and rules.
How can we assume this? Well, when the Second Wave of your Green Horde pledge arrives with a value docket indicating $36, you start to wonder. A delivery including all the Stretch Goals ($13) plus a box of Deadeye Walkers ($3), No Rest For The Wicked ($10), and Friends and Foes ($10). Backers paid US$50 each for the two expansions, and US$22 for the Deadeye Walkers. All up, the SGs for a Core Box pledge of US$120 only cost CMON $11. And that looks like Australian dollars. Based on those figures, the Core Box itself would have only cost CMON $24. Again, probably Australian dollars.
Their profit margins were around 70% after manufacturing. Getting backers to pay for postage is the icing on the cake. More profit. Backers for Green Horde and the two expansions didn’t seem to consider that they spent US$220 for a game… plus about 30% postage. The price per model was, therefore, up to +30% more when postage was added. Now the Core Box and two expansions are US$286. That’s a lot of money for a game. Still, if the figures on the Second Wave Green Horde pledge box are used, CMON would have only made about 60% in profit for Invader rather than the 70% it did for Green Horde.
Now, if you assume, on average, all the backers order the equivalent of a Core Box and both expansions, Invader actually sold more miniatures than Green Horde. That looks good. But the profit margins were less, and the overall profit was less, and from that you still need to deduct the cost of wages and all the other things required to design the miniatures and game, as well as run the campaign… and taxes… and how the end result impacts on the reputation of the company and response of its market.
Yes, yes, there will be trolls pointing out that most of what I’ve posted here is based on assumptions, and they are right. But unless you use troll math to change the figures, the result is the same. Invader was an epic fail. More product for less return. An increase in backers from the Black Plague campaign to the Green Horde campaign decreasing dramatically for the Invader campaign. And a fundamental misunderstanding and betrayal of the core demographic.
The kickstarter campaign wasn’t just a step back, it was a very real, very obvious, epic failure. Worse, the irony of the last Stretch Goal, the tribute to Stephen Hawking, appears lost on CMON. While they repeat the vile behaviours modelled by the likes of GW, refuse to consider all fact(or)s, learn from this, and fail to apply the logic imparted in the statement that “intelligence is the ability to adapt to change”, CMON can expect to suffer many, many more of these monumental fails in the future.
ZOMBICIDE: INVADER EPIC FAIL – PART 4
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