Chaosium Idiocy

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun May 01, 2016 4:32 pm

http://geekandsundry.com/cthulhu-compan ... -happened/

I hadn't heard of this. Apparently Chaosium went to Kickstarter to finance some products and wound up committing sudoku through overseas shipping costs. I don't even.

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Sun May 01, 2016 11:03 pm

The little that was reported about the new management company seems like a breath of fresh air... for the industry as a whole.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Sun May 01, 2016 11:33 pm

International shipping is relatively easy to mess up, even for big companies. I suspect Chaosium totally failed to understand just how globally scattered their hardcore fans actually were - its probably not easy for them to gauge the popularity of Call of Cthulhu in Japan - and didn't plan accordingly until way too late. It seems they fell into the apparently fairly common trap of using a new kickstarter to pay the last kickstarter rather than simply breaking their promises and not printing and shipping a bunch of books. While clearly management was being moronic, part of this is simply the weakness of the kickstarter model in the first place.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Mon May 02, 2016 4:19 am

Mechalich wrote:International shipping is relatively easy to mess up, even for big companies. I suspect Chaosium totally failed to understand just how globally scattered their hardcore fans actually were - its probably not easy for them to gauge the popularity of Call of Cthulhu in Japan - and didn't plan accordingly until way too late. It seems they fell into the apparently fairly common trap of using a new kickstarter to pay the last kickstarter rather than simply breaking their promises and not printing and shipping a bunch of books. While clearly management was being moronic, part of this is simply the weakness of the kickstarter model in the first place.

Nothing about the Kickstarter model requires you to chain campaigns together to cover shortfalls, but it does seem to be a very common trap for people to fall into. Probably first-time project creators are nervous about putting too high a price tag on their products, especially where nonproductive fees like shipping are concerned.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Mon May 02, 2016 5:34 am

Mord wrote:Nothing about the Kickstarter model requires you to chain campaigns together to cover shortfalls, but it does seem to be a very common trap for people to fall into.

I think the problem is that, for these small kickstarters, you're basically attempting to soak the same group of fanatical fans over and over again. The number of backers for all Chaosium kickstarters was probably less than 10,000 people globally. The business model is to nab a large percentage of them for between 100 and 500 bucks each year for as many years as possible.

However, this model simply does not allow for failures. The fanbase is too small and too interconnected. If you break a promise once, you're done. But, and this is the trick, because the fans are fanatical in their interest, they'll tolerate an almost endless amount of delays and excuses before they turn away entirely.

So instead, you ride the downward spiral for as long as you can - you're still getting paid while the kickstarter money keeps coming in after all - and hope that at some point you can cut costs enough to pull out from underneath prior losses.