Titanomachina: Pathway to Production

There is a current gap in my push to get Titanomachina out there and in front of people: I don't actually have copies to give to people that they can use to play, or even to buy. This is a big stumbling block because what people mainly like to do with games is to buy them. Currently people can play Titanomachina on Tabletop Simulator, hosted in the workshop of the Steam online store, but in general people who play board games prefer to do so with company (or even alone and without a screen). I don't think I know of any reviewers that would review Titanomachina based on what is available on online, because they review boxes of stuff they're sent. Having boxes of stuff to send to people that want to play this game is clearly something I should be working on. 

Which brings me to the issue of money, mainly that I'm still working on paying off the debts I accumulated paying for the first couple of Kickstarter attempts to bring Titanomachina to market. In those situations I definitely over-estimated the appeal of the game as it was at those times, and the critical importance of marketing (as well as the cost of marketing). My plan in the past few years has been to hone Titanomachina into a really great experience, pay off the debt I accumulated, and use Tabletop Simulator and various social media tools to build an audience. One out of three isn't bad, as my confidence in Titanomachina has grown as it's developed these past few years. I think the addition of the pass card may be what turns a satisfying gaming experience into an exciting gaming experience, given the enthusiastic response players have had to it. 

However, I'm still coughing up cash that could otherwise fund another Kickstarter (or non-KS crowdfunding project) to pay off debt thanks to inflation and a few other factors, and while Titanomachina seems to have a solid audience on Tabletop Simulator, it is also a fairly small audience. I suspect on a fraction of the people subscribed to it on Steam actually play. Certainly feedback on the game via social media or even on the workshop item itself, has been non-existent. There are a million other products people can actually buy out there, and again people are primarily interested in games as products that they can consume rather than experiences they can have. It's certainly discouraging. That said, given the fire-hose of new games, and more importantly new products, out there, it's also kind of neat to see that some people I don't know at all are still enjoying Titanomachina. 

I can't really afford another crowd-funding campaign because the audience is not nearly large enough to support one that isn't selling fewer than 100 copies with somewhat sub-par components. Because there is also a lot of other costs to manufacturing, shipping, and fulfillment that requires those 100 boxes to be bought at roughly 1/3 of the selling price. Traditionally one lowballs the amount required to produce a kind of bare minimum with the hope that funding on day 1 will see a Kickstarter campaign snowball with the excitement of the backers to create a volume of sales that will justify the cost of production and distribution. One of the primary hurdles here is the Titan miniatures, but also the habitat buildings which I would prefer to be hard plastic pieces like those of Santorini. These would require a considerable volume of sales to be feasible, however. Like vastly more the audience would be able to support by a factor of perhaps 100x. The irony that Titanomachina is intended as a mass market game is somewhat sharp here. I can substitute things like blank dice (still expensive, especially in the volume required), or standees with stickers, but the sort of people that buy things from crowd-funding are really in it for the plastic miniatures where standees or cardboard chits would do. One thought was to sell with these basic components in mind, and provide STL files upon request. This minimizes the risk that custom place components raise, and makes it considerably faster to produce and deliver. 

I think a short run of 50 copies of a two-player Titanomachina set for $50 USD would be the right way to start, followed by an expansion for two more Titans (so sans board and board-sized box, etc). This would be a $3,000 ask on KS, which I think is low enough that it would be achievable, but also high enough that it would still be achievable (due to 5% going to KS, ~3% going to fulfillment). As mentioned there is a trick to KS whereby you basically spend way more on advertising than you are asking for to produce and ship a product because that tricks people into Fear Of Missing Out, and then of course you ship a produce with incredible production value that fails as an actual game, or has the re-play value of a month-old pumpkin. Fortunately Titanomachina is a fantastic game, and it's one I'm determined to grow and develop.