It makes me a little bit sad to see people break down game costs versus component costs only, as if the number and quality of the bits is all that goes into making a game. Designers need to eat, too. ._.
(And artists, and developers, and playtesters, and editors, and writers. There's a lot of upfront costs besides just the cost of the components.)
Oh, obviously! I'm not going to suggest that designers/artists/etc. shouldn't eat! But I think there's a much greater disparity between component cost and final cost here than with others KSs and board games. I think Pairs is the best example of that--yet Pairs's lower cost still includes a dozen different artists.
"Stretch goals" usually means "pointless things that have nothing to do with the gameplay we didn't plan for and will delay the entire thing forever" or "gameplay thing we didn't playtest"...
A lot of stretch goals are not just extra gameplay or non-gameplay stuff, but better-quality components and the like.
Complaining about the lack of stretch goals in this project is ridiculous anyway.
The project went way past its initial target within 24 hours.
When they posted the project they couldn't have known for sure that it even warranted stretch goals.
Most KSs these days launch with stretch goals. This one, he already knew he had a loyal following ready to fund; they certainly knew those goals were warranted.
Every work lives or dies on its own merits. Dominion was successful because it's a great game, not because it was lucky not to be eclipsed by Mousetrap... You're comparing apples to oranges. If Fifty Shades of Grey didn't exist, would Pat Rothfuss have sold 100 million extra novels? No. Different audience. That's just not how the world works.
This from someone who upthread was saying Kuildeous didn't understand capitalism. People only have X amount of disposable income. It's sad to see poorly-written fiction become a bestseller, because it means some other author didn't get published.
And, frankly, complaining that people like things that you don't like just makes you sound like an elitist snob.
Horror of horrors, to be called an elitist snob! Yeah, I'm elitist about a few things, I won't try to claim otherwise. There are only X hours in my day to consume entertainment or art. Twilight and Fifty Shades are horribly written books; it was literally* painful to read even a few pages of either (see also: books by Dan Brown, James Patterson, etc.). And I won't play Monopoly, because it's not a good game--even with the correct rules. Yet these things get published and purchased by the millions where higher-quality works don't, because there's a limited market.
Yeah, man, we get it, you like alt-J
Never heard of them/him/her.
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*literally as in "literally painful in the way that hearing the scratching of fingernails on a chalkboard is."