Comment by edye
12 days ago
To set the record straight, I was the one that reached out to the creator to get his story, because I thought the cards were cool. He would not have spent the time doing this interview if I hadn't asked him to.
12 days ago
To set the record straight, I was the one that reached out to the creator to get his story, because I thought the cards were cool. He would not have spent the time doing this interview if I hadn't asked him to.
And that's fair enough.
The larger point of having a platform without a product still exists.
And I think this is still something where the idea is cooler than the current reality. Mostly because you can vaguely imagine the coolest version of this and you aren't being asked to put anything on the line for it.
Is there some version of this that's genuinely fun and engaging? Maybe so. The potential of non-destructive persistent changes to physical game pieces you own is pretty appealing.
Would I spend $300 for it? Hard no. Especially since the plinth has four slots, but they only give you cards in sets of three. I'd add a fourth card to the base sets and sell the cards in single units and in sets of 4. Three is really weird. It's a hot dog/bun situation.
But that doesn't even address the core issue. For the same price, I can get a game console. I can also get an Android tablet and a couple hundred NFC tags. The only thing you lose is the ability for the card itself to be a small pixelated image.
They claim they've raised $7277, which comes out to 21 base sets at $299 ($6279) and 2 deluxe sets at $499 ($998). And then he spent the last year delivering those 23 units. He claims 25 units sold, but I can't make the math work for that. 25 units at $299 would be $7475, so I'm going to have to guess that the prices have changed over the course of time. Which is normally fine, but that means the cost of these things have already gone up.
It just seems that from every angle I look at this thing, I see clear problems with bringing it to market as a viable product.
So, the goal was to build a devkit so that I could use it to develop my own game. I wanted the physical things to exist, so that I could try it out with people and find out which interactions are fun, vs which aren't.
Well the internet liked the idea, and saw some of the same promise in it that I did (plus HN is a sucker for e-ink). With all the interest, and people asking how they can get their hands on one, I ran a crowdfunding campaign to make devkits for everyone who wanted.
Turns out making 25 of something is way more work than making 2 of a thing. The supplier changed the display firmware on me, I had to make things to more exact measurements so parts were interchangeable, I had to write docs and make videos, etc etc. Took a whole year.
Now the pressure is off and I don't owe people products after they gave me money for them, so I can take a break to clear out my backlog of minor projects, then get onto designing my own game, using my own devkit :)
Once I have an actually fun game, I could increase volume and bring down the costs. My goal is to make the game accessible for $80. I'll need the e-ink price to come down a little, and use injection molding instead of resin casting and wood. Plus the base won't need a Raspberry Pi, that's just for my quick iteration. Final product will need to be embedded.
(Almost all the devkits sold were to friends and family, with only a few going to actual game designers. CrowdSupply itself puts in an order for more units along with the campaign, so that they can stock them after the campaign ends and initial delivery is over. Except they negotiate a different price for those because the margins work differently)
I wouldn’t have made any until I had a viable game to demonstrate the system.
As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have committed to hardware until I had the game sketched out. You have constrained yourself to certain choices before you know the implications of those choices.
Is color going to hinder it?
Is this really a board game where the tiles are eink devices? In which case, you’d want the connections on the edges instead of the back.
Do you need more space for text?
Do the cards need to remain in the board?
And so on. You’ve already effectively made these decisions without knowing how they’ll affect game development.
You should’ve come up with a game, then developed the hardware prototype around that game. Even if the initial hardware would have cost more with your current setup. Because, as you’ve noted, when you’re ready to go to manufacturing, you be able to take advantage of proper tooling and economies of scale.
I really think the lack of a game is the thing that’s going to be your major roadblock.
>> It just seems that from every angle I look at this thing, I see clear problems with bringing it to market as a viable product.
Yeah, the goal is to make a cool thing, and then make a fun game.