MMP planning Kickstarter for Lincoln's War.

Dunno if this has been mentioned already elsewhere. The "What Kickstarter projects..." thread is more personal chatter than news, and this seemed like a notable turn of events for those interested in Lincoln's War.

MMP News: Lincoln's War on Kickstarter! - Thursday, February 07, 2013

We are pleased to announce that we have chosen Lincoln’s War for our first foray into using Kickstarter to produce games. Lincoln’s War is a wonderful design by John Poniske with great art by Mark Mahaffey and Niko Eskubi that has been struggling to hit the preorder number needed to get published under our traditional preorder process.

We intend to launch the Kickstarter campaign for Lincoln’s War in a month at the beginning of March. There is much to do before then to get the campaign ready, but we wanted to give our customers a heads up about this. We will shut down the ability to preorder Lincoln’s War through our website, and all existing preorders will be nullified without the need for any action by our customers.

We are strong supporters of Lincoln’s War and have great faith in its ability to be a huge success. We would not be investing the time and effort otherwise. Nor would we be doing so without the enthusiastic support of the designer, John Poniske. All of us want to thank the many people who had faith in this game and took the time to preorder it. We apologize that we were not able to make our traditional process work for this game. We sincerely hope that each of you will pledge to purchase the game once the Kickstarter campaign begins next month. We think that this can we a win-win scenario for all concerned.

We understand that you will have many questions about this transition, and we hope to be able to answer them in the next month or so, and to get the word out to as many people as possible, as we gear up for Kickstarter. Please stay tuned for further details as they become available.

Slightly misleading headline since it's a few weeks out from being put on KS. I'm interested to see what the story is on how they plan on pushing the game into the production queue because I doubt many are interested in backing a Multiman Kickstarter effort without some pretty significant assurances about the timeline. Unlike most of the other notable game publishers using Kickstarter, MMP's history when it comes to pre-orders and production timelines probably isn't a source of comfort when it comes to a cash up-front pre-pub model.

I'm also interested to see what MMP does in terms of moving the needle on the Kickstarter hype machine (getting the word out, stretch goals, promos/exclusives, etc.) to generate interest in the product. I suspect it will be very easy for them to just put it up as if it was just another Pxxx model with an announcement on CSW and then follow with radio silence for a month. Relatively easy to see MMP's potential/likely paths to failure when it comes to Kickstarter. Poniske strikes me as the sort of guy who would have some interesting ideas to market his game using KS [considering how many miles he's logged evangelizing the game thus far], but I'm not sure MMP is particularly interested in any of that sort of stuff.

(Hell, just as an example, I was a LW pre-order customer and have been on MMP's mailing list for eons...but I didn't receive any notification of any sort about LW going Kickstarter that I can find. I just stumbled over it during my monthly tour of wargame publisher websites to see what might have popped up. I'm not interested in wading through CSW's endless pages of trivia in the publisher-specific fora--and I don't really see a strong interest in Kickstarter among the CSW crowd (but who knows; I haven't seen many "proper" wargame projects thus far...).

I'm sad to see this, but I guess it was obvious. If the publisher has the choice between "print - get paid - deliver" and "get paid - print - deliver", why shouldn't they take the latter? Oh, and once you see the first ASL game on Kickstarter, with custom SS officer counters for the highest support level, you WILL see interest from the wargamer crowd.

I no longer read CSW and I rarely read wargame forums on BGG. I still have some idea what is going on at GMT, but as you said, have little or no idea what is going on at MMP. I think they have a newsletter? I don't remember.

I despair for the ability of MMP to turn anything around quickly.

This could be just the thing the anti-Kickstarter people have been railing against, once the buyers cough up their dough and it still spends years languishing in a "print queue" behind ASL stuff.

This is seriously the case where an existing publisher's reputation works against them for me. I don't even have the patience to pre-pub MMP stuff on a "pay then" model, I'm certainly not doing it on a "pay now".

Yep, the saving grace of MMP's system is that you pay on ship. So there's 0 risk. It's the only thing that make the waiting times (they say they've improved?) worthwhile.

this doesn't suprise me that much. My understanding is that MMP have not been quite as successful at implimenting their p500 as GMT so if their making a product that might appeal to a wider audience than that which typically frequents their website KS seems like a good way to go.

GMt recently tried to kickstart thunder alley for the same reason (i think it failed but they are making it anyway because a third party fronted the cash.

Whilst the p500 model is a reasonably good one (i think so anyways, i appreciate it can still undercut truely polishing a game if the profit is already there on paper but war game publishers need to survive somehow) it only works for the market that views their website. MMP are more hardcore than GMT in terms of most of their output so it makes sense that if this was a lighter game they may try going else where for more exposure.

DoC: Yea, I agree with the logic there. What MMP is up against, though, is captured nicely in NotSure's post above. Their P500 approach kind of fell apart because no one could understand WTF their production model was all about [well, that and the fact that overseas customers simply couldn't pre-order anymore because of the increasingly brutal combo of USPS rate hikes and their home country VAT/customs duties issues that would easily double the cost of the game versus waiting until it was published and distributed overseas].

I'm on the fence with this KS--I'd really like to see Lincoln's War published. That said, I'm not at all interested in giving MMP my money up front without a fair bit of insight into the development status and production timeline from them. Paul is on the money: They've dicked around for too many years with too many non-ASL and The Gamers games for me to just trust them.

While I do agree that MMP's history is spotty at best with regards to printing timelines and transparency, they are slowly trying to improve. If you look at the IGS Facebook page ( I only recently discovered it at www.facebook.com/igsandgts?fref=ts ) you'll see a bunch of stuff that Adam is tinkering with. A couple years ago, it would have been on prepub - now, they will wait til its baked and ready. They haven't added much to the preorder list other than some ASL stuff that always comes out for Winter Offensive. And hell, War of the Suns has started to see finished components after all this time.

As for Lincoln's War, I think this is more similar to GMT and Thunder Alley . Both games are sort of outside the wheelhouse and these companies and KS is one last effort to reach a broader audience after struggling to appeal to their current customer base. I do NOT see MMP using KS on a wider basis - they certainly don't need it for ASL or Gamers series stuff. Some of the stuff not captured in those two categories will also fare well on prepub like the Normandy games using the Devils Cauldron rules.

I think the struggle besides their prepub history is that for MMP, it is a step backwards to charge up front. Like them or not, their long standing policy of charging only when shipping stands in stark contrast to most wargame companies.

Charging clear-date versus charging ship-date isn't as big an issue when the dates aren't separated by three years. I don't mind paying six weeks early.

To some extent I think this is a put-up or shut-up moment for MMP, where a successful campaign will mean they have to act in a short timeframe. Their Made in USA policy will help, but it's a complete change in business model. They'll need to own it, or fail. If they own it they're going to flush a great big piece of negative perception.

S.

It will help for sure, but I am not optmistic about the game's chances so it may take another example to move people away from that perception. We'll see.

I just don't see this getting funded.

Wargamers aren't the type to head to kickstarter for their games, from what I can tell. Also, Lincoln's War doesn't really stand out enough to get the viral-type marketing that is often necessary for something to succeed on there.

Unless they go with a really low goal, which could screw them even further.

Then again, I've never used kickstarter and I don't plan to, so what do I really know about the way it works?

Guns of Gettysburg just went up with a $20,000 goal. They also had bullshit stretch goals, so it appeared to just be an order form for people to fill out. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a way to take advantage of the brainless ordering that some people seem willing to do on KS. They get thrown on top of the real fans at no additional charge.

I am very curious to see where LW sets the line.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote: Guns of Gettysburg just went up with a $20,000 goal. They also had bullshit stretch goals, so it appeared to just be an order form for people to fill out. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a way to take advantage of the brainless ordering that some people seem willing to do on KS. They get thrown on top of the real fans at no additional charge.

I am very curious to see where LW sets the line.

S.

Pretty different audience and backstory though, no? Simmons' 2 Napoleon games had a pretty hefty cross-over audience (kind of like Twilight Struggle, too). Add to that the stated likelihood of just a single short print-run , and the fact that the game likely wouldn't have been finished and released at all due to Bowen's apparent health problems, and you have at least Grade B kickstarter hype already built in.

If Lincoln's War could be the sort of game that a guy whose collection is long on Alea titles with Caylus and Puerto Rico being his 2 "10-rated" games would get into--which is what Twilight Struggle turned out to be--I can see it taking off just fine. I haven't played it, so I don't know what it's really like, but I doubt it's going to have that sort of broad appeal. They're going to have to give it *some* amount of hype of some sort outside their traditional "post it on CSW" approach because those 300 people already pre-ordered it once.

Word is that Lincoln's War Kickstarter page will open up by the weekend.

S.

So, upon reflection, I think might be analogous to this project is the Hearts and Minds reprint from Worthington up on KS right now.

It is

1) A John Poniske game
2) A much-demanded (but not particularly necessary) component upgrade to a long-OOP game
3) A project that may have been announced on CSW but apparently nowhere else
4) A game that allegedly has had much demand for a reprint [perhaps on CSW, certainly--if briefly--on BGG]
5) Has no stretch goals of note and no apparent ongoing marketing push aside from some begging by one of the backers on the BGG wargame subdomain

and, of course, because of #3 and #5:
6) Is crawling along toward its goal and has almost no one talking about it.

It looks to need needs another 70 people to buy the game [at full retail via KS], but of all the game projects to which I've paid any attention, this feels like the least likely to hit the mark. Collins Games had the sense to set the goal for the Spearpoint General expansion at a very low mark and the 1 stretch goal at a much higher point. That meant that those of us backing the expansion would at least likely *get* the thing. They made the stretch goal [just by the hair of their chinny-chin-chin] in the last 48-hour push, which was a real plus. Thing is, I never got the sense that the basic project funding wouldn't be met; rather, I figured they'd fall just short of the stretch goal [6 more tiles, which was a huge amount of new material for the expansion].

Lincoln's War will have the benefit of no one already owning the game. I don't *need* a 2nd edition of Hearts & Minds, but I've played it enough to be happy to pick one up and pass my 1st edition along to someone else (for free, so if this funds, someone here can have it if they pay the $10 to ship it). But I suspect a lot of 1st edition owners see no need to upgrade at all, while the BGG crowd that called for a reprint aren't interested in what amounts to a 100% MSRP pre-paid pre-order without a proper bonus item or two thrown in to whet their appetites.

So, if LW goes the H&M route of a "fire and forget" KS project, I suspect they'll need to set their funding target at ~$12k to ensure it goes to print. However, if MMP could *go* to print at $12k, I bet they'd have done it already. IIRC the Pxx target and pricing, the pre-pub goal on LW was closer to $40k and I just don't see them getting there using Worthington's approach to date.

I do wonder if H&M was a trial balloon for the LW project. Hope John learned something good from it...

(I think this also reinforces my belief that Guns of G'burg was just a different animal. Too much "limited edition!" "Simmons won't finish it on his own and it's never to be seen without your order!" "we can print it in time for a July release--with your help...we hope!" hype attached to it piggy-backing on the significant popularity of Simmons' other games with the non-CSW crowd)