Tabletop Bro: 8,000 units at $250 a pop; that's a steep ask. How do you plan on meeting that goal?
Patrick O'Rourke (Head of Marketing): All right, we'll have to talk about some of this at a high level just because of the nature of...
Tabletop Bro: Of course.
Patrick: ...of the, of what we're allowed to talk about. But, um, it's a very expensive game to make. And, and, it's even more so, it's a very expensive game to start making.
Chris Nadeau (Lead Design): Mhm.
Patrick: I think that's ultimately one of the reasons it didn't work the first time around, is because it was very difficult to recoup initial investment. And so, if we believe that there's a community here, and people who want to play this game, that's where we need, we need to be able to cover those costs to kick it off, because it's not gonna b... Look, I love HeroScape, but it's not, at least in the near term, not gonna be the biggest game in, in, Avalon Hill's or even, uh, Hasbro's portfolio. Right? So we've gotta... to bring this out we've gotta, we've got to be able to cover those very high startup costs. As far as a, as a plan is concerned, there's a lot in the works, and some of it I wish would have come out sooner, but there's a lot in the works and we're running as fast as we can on this side. There's videos being produced. We shot a video just a little bit ago. I don't know what I want to say about that but, there's stuff. Right? I hope it works. I'm... I'll tell you what, you... you mentioned it earlier, we're, we're up every night doing the best we can to move this thing through, and it's not done; we're not, we're not sitting down and hang out in the corner going like well I guess this thing's over". We've got a long time. At the time of this [interview] we've got 33 days. That's 33 days to work; to, to work our magic and, and be determined and drive as hard as we can.
Chris: Yeah, Patrick's task last night was to actually task out a bunch of, um, actionable deliverables that the design development team could support...
Patrick: They've got to be frustrated, heh heh.
Chris: ...The list that came in here this morning at 9:00 a.m. is 23 bullet points long, that I'm looking at right now, and, um... so it's all hands on. It's, you know, just attack, attack, breakdown these things, get this stuff out. Things like the fan poll, was just one bullet point. Right?
Patrick: Mhm.
Chris: So, just like the... we want... you know, the fans that wanted to see all the product laid out and I wanted to know what I got from a value perspective"; that's where that image came from, you know, yesterday. That's... We're just chipping away and getting that stuff out and doing all those things that I've got to, um, they gotta... to create some lift. And you know, Patrick's spot-on in terms of the insights here. It is a very expensive game to produce, and... and without giving any exact numbers, just the, just the tooling for the Haslab, um, is a massive chunk of that 2 million dollars that you're estimating there.
Patrick: Mhm.
Chris: And I'm not talking 20 or 30 percent of that. I'm talking it's a massive chunk...
Patrick: Mm hm
Chris: ...that, that's... those are, you know, hundred of molds to be able to do all of this. Um. So, these costs come with a fairly hefty price tag. Plus, all the R&D to generate all-new characters; all-new sculpts, you know; all-new Army Cards... like, that's a, that's a pretty hefty investment. And so, once you start chipping away at all of that and then you figure out the cost of producing these to get them to the backers, um, what, what number are you actually coming up with at the end of that...
Patrick: Mmhm.
Chris: ...might actually shock the people who think that something like this is a cash grab.
Patrick: Yeah, and the philosophy of Haslab is different than the philosophy of Kickstarter. So, there's that, that piece of it as well. Right? Like, if you look at a lot of Kickstarters, they claim that their funding goal is whatever their funding goal is, and then they blow that out of the water. But, you and I both know, Austin, that, like, as someone who backs Kickstarters, at least myself, it's like yeah, but I've seen these things hit goal and they cancel it anyway...
Chris: Mhm.
Patrick: ...because their real goal was something much higher...
Chris: Mhm.
Patrick: ...But for us, it's, you know, we, we have stretch goals, we'd love to go beyond it but that's the real, that's the real deal thing. Right? That's what we've got to hit. That's what we're able to get, get approved within the, within the company. And it, and it does logically make sense if I could break it, break it all down for you. You would see, um, and so it's like, that's what we're chasing. And to me it's almost more honest than setting an artificially low number that, yeah, maybe we would have blown away in 24 hours but we would have, you know, not been able to actually support the game in the way it needs to be supported; because we do have plans for it, if it works, if we can rally the people around it - when it works - um, then there's a lot we can do because we've, we've, we've paid the factory to get started. Like, that's the hardest part is, like, start making it, and that's super expensive and then, now you're making it so let's make some more stuff. Right? That's a lot easier to do; especially from a cost and resources standpoint. So, that's getting us over that first speedbump. Right?
Chris: Yeah, and what separates too is, you know... to Patrick, your point of, like, Kickstarters they, they come with a little bit of the unknown. Right?
Patrick: Yeah.
Chris: ...Um... Like, while people will say, "Well how come you didn't just make this a Kickstarter? How come you didn't, you know, go after that fan base?", you know. The Haslab name, um, comes with that assurance. Right? If, if this backs, you get it and it's Hasbro-backed, and you know that thing's showing up in the mail. You're not gonna get notice 2 months down the line that uh, "Hey, sorry I'm gonna move out the delivery of this thing another year." It's getting made and, uh, you know exactly who to call on customer service if it, you know, you're not getting your answers, and that, you know, that should mean something t, um, to the community.
Tabletop Bro: There's no tiered level of backing. That's been the one thing that, like, when people complain about that, I'm like, they kind of have a point. So, what was the, the reasoning, uh, behind having one backer level?
Patrick: Well, I'm tryin' to think of the, of a, tight answer to it that, that I can summarize the, the rationale. But, really it comes down to that's the best value we felt we could deliver. Because, you know, because of the way in which the financials break down, we can put a lot of value in the box once it... once it hit $250, we could... you, like... I don't think anybody, or I've seen very few people question... Hey this is a lot of stuff for $250! Like, there's a lot in this box. The, the problem is $250 is a lot of money to pay, and I understand that, and respect that completely. But, as far as a value to what you get perspective, $250 was really the sweet spot where we felt that we could get the best, the best deal to the consumer. Once you start getting lower than that we're... it just got a little more like I don't want anyone to feel like they're not getting enough.
Chris: Are they getting something they're going to prize? Does it feel like a treasure? Does it feel like I can actually bring my friends into this game system and be proud of that? And I... the, the finances to something like this is super super complex. So in a... you... to the point of how the financials kind of break down; even if you halved the price to $125, that's not half the products...
Patrick: Mhm.
Chris: ...it's like a third the products. Right? That's what happens as you scale...
Patrick: Mhm.
Chris: ...Right? So, as you start to create a really competitive price point, what you might not have, is a game. And you might feel like the starter set doesn't feel impressive to you. You're not... this isn't something when you, when you break it open a year from now, you're gonna be excited about.
Patrick: Mhm.
Chris: And so, it was, it's that ... it's a lot of that back and forth on our team of, like, scaling up and down that offering for, for weeks and months. And we're honestly, we, we still have those conversations of what is, what is the right comparison of a price point to a value. What are people gonna feel good about at the end of the day, when they have it. And, I, I, we, we, get that they're, that that kind of knocks a, a certain demographic, who might not have $250 in their checking account handy, to be able to participate. We, we understand, and you know, we've had a lot of discussions about that. We have a lot of plans about that, but you know, first and foremost, what we have to do is, we have to, we have to generate the money...
Patrick: Mhm.
Chris: ...to make this line a possibility. And, that's what the Haslab system is designed to do. And so, it is, it is a community funded, crowd-funded, relaunch of HeroScape, and that comes with some of these nuances of, yeah, it doesn't feel like the kind of thing I would find in a, in a Wal-Mart or a Toys-R-Us. And yeah...
Patrick: Yeah. It's not by design. Right? But again, those are... Also, if you think in terms of mass-produced stuff, 8,000 units is very few.
Tabletop Bro: Oh totally. 100 percent.
Patrick: So it's not even, So its, it's a ...
Chris: You pay, you pay a premium with the factory when the factory is telling you, Well if you're only going to run 8,000 units, you're gonna pay more per unit than if you were print, you were producing 200,000 units". And, and so all of this gets factored in. It's the, the finances is super complex to this kind of stuff. It's not as simple as a conversation on Discord or, um, you know, the varying perspectives and opinions of, you know, the community on Facebook. It's hard. It's, it's, it's...
Patrick: Complex.
Chris: ...it's a big deal.