New Year's Day

 We will open regular hours New Year's Day. Come in and ask for either a Magic Welcome Pack or a Castle Perilous Cup Cosy for FREE. Get a free Sirius Die with each 3 stamps you earn on a Castle Card and a Magic Promo pack with each 5 stamps earned on Sealed Magic Product. Buy a booster box of Magic and get a free FOIL Magic Promo Pack.

One Successful Game

 Every notice how most designers have one really successful game in them? Although known as the creator of Magic, Richard Garfield has created a number of other games, none of which have attained the popularity of Magic. Gary Gygax co-created Dungeons and Dragons, along with Dave Arneson, which created the RPG industry. Both men went on to create other games but none every acheived the popularity of D&D. Brotherwise games has released several other games besides Boss Monster, but any Boos Monster supplememnt will outsde any of their new games. Even the creator of Wingspan, Elisabeth Hargraves,  failed to achieve major success with her second and third game releases.

Holiday Hours

We will open regular hours this week and remain open until Midnight on New Years Eve for your boardgaming and Magic playing enjoyment.

Five Ways to Waste Money on Advertising

 . The biggest chunk of the variable part of the budget goes to payroll. After that generally come advertising and other forms of promotion, which should run 8% to 10% of your budget but more often gets nicked down to 2% to 3%. Anyhow, if you do the any of the following, you might as well take that fistful of dollars you just spent on promotion, walk to the back of your store and flush them down your toilet. They will do about as much good there:

One and Done:  Running an ad one time is like trying to win at Warmachine with one roll of the dice. You need to run the ad multiple times for it to work  (Yes, Apple famously ran its ad for the Macintosh computer only one time and successfully launched it http://youtu.be/axSnW-ygU5g, but unless you’ve got Ridley Scot directing your commercial and can afford to run it during the Superbowl, not a good idea).

Hitting Them Where They Ain’t:  Good advice in baseball, lousy in advertising. Advertising where your customers aren’t means no-one sees your ad. If you want to promote your game about wine cultivation doesn’t reach the people who are interested.

No Point:  Too many ads get run with no call to action. What do you want the customer to do? They don’t know unless you tell them. Even Coke has an implied call to action in their ads:  “This beverage looks delicious. You should drink it.”

Too Many Points: I’ve got this space, or time on the radio or tv. Seems a waste not to get as much information into it as I possibly can. I’m going to put all sorts of information about my game or my store in here. Too many points means that none of them make an impression on the customer’s mind. Pick 1-3 points you want to emphasize and hit them hard.

I’m Bored:  I’ve run this same ad over and over again. If I see it again I will scream. Time to change it out and try something different. You may be bored with the ad, your customers are far more tolerant. Change just for the sake of change is bad. You change your ad when your customers tell you it is time to change it. How do you know when it is time to change it? When they stop responding to it.

And one more for good measure:

I Know What Makes a Good Ad:  I run a good game store or know what goes into good game design. Ipso facto, I know what goes into good ad design. No, you don’t. Talk with your ad rep. Realize that sure, they are trying to sell you advertising but also realize they do this for a living. They want you happy so you will buy more advertising and should know more about ad design than you do. After all, it’s what they do for a living.

Munchkin Sales

 

1)   The base Munchkin game still sells reliably week in and week out over 20 years after it first released.  Unlike some other game lines (cough-X-wing Miniatures, DiceMasters-cough), Steve Jackson Games manages to keep the almost the entire line in stock through distribution and, although they have run special sets through Target and Barnes and Noble, I have not seen them participate in any deep discounting or “Buy One, Get One Free” silliness such as appeared on the Target website last week. I doubted the game would sell when it first released but am happy to be proved wrong.

Christmas Drawing 2

 Had the drawing on FB at 4:30 there abouts this afternoon and have called or sent a message to all of the winners. If we have items not picked up by noon CT this Thursday, will contact the new people on the list for each item. Thanks to all that partiocpated.

Christmas Drawing

 We will have our annual Christmas drawing on Sunday Dec. 19 at 4;30. You may check the items on our Facebook or Instagram page. Currently items 1, 3, 8, 11, 18,19 ,22, 23, 24, 25 do not have any tickets on them.

D&D Errata

 Wizards has released a number of erratta sheets for 9 different books as well as a discussion on alignment and why alignment is not generally assigned to a particular race anymore. In general, if you want to play a halfling, you should get to determine what alighment the halfling is.

Yu Gi Oh Updates

 Konami has announced delated release dates for a number of Yu Gi Oh Products

 Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME The Grand Creators

The release date has been moved from 01/14/2022 to 01/28/22

 

      -     Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Hidden Arsenal: Chapter 1

The release date has been moved from 01/28/2022 to 02/25/22

 

      -     Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Speed Duel GX: Duel Academy Box

The release date has been moved from 02/25/2022 to 03/18/22
Please note that there is a release celebration with this launch being offered to OTS.
This release will be followed by a new Speed Duel Tournament Pack on 3/23/21 offered to OTS to help support OP activities for Speed Duel.

 

      -     Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Structure Deck: Albaz Strike

The release date has been moved from 03/11/2022 to 04/08/22
Please note that there is a release celebration with this launch being offered to OTS.

 

Siuius Sundays

 While quantities last, with every 3 stamps earned on your Castle Card on Sunday, you will receive a dice from the Sirius Dice box . You select a number and we give you the corresponding dice. If you pull a gold die, you can redeem the code in the box for a $70 set from the Sirius website. If you pull a silver or copper die, you get one of the sets we have set aside in the store. If you pull a red d20, you get the free d20.

Deckbuilding Games and the Product Life Cycle

 

An overheard comment about the introduction of yet another deck building game to the market set me to thinking about the number of deckbuilding games, the product life cycle and what the PLC means for this particular segment of the market.

The product life cycle consists of four stages:  introduction, growth, maturity and decline.  All products go through all four of these stages, some at a faster rate than others (roughly 50,000 new products come onto the market every year, only about 10% of them stay in production for more than five years).

The introductory stage of the PLC is always the most exciting part of a product’s life.  The manufacturer has this cool new idea for a great new product(Dominion) or an interesting take on an already existing one (Ascension).  The manufacturer has (hopefully) playtested it extensively, made mockups or prototypes, lined up a production option, either in-house or outsourced and lined up financing, again either through theirself or, quite commonly today, through an exterior source such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo. The manufacturer is also all over Twitter, Facebook, TheyTube and any other media source  to which they can get access, talking about this cool new product and trying to get others to do the same.   During this stage, while their sales increases hit double or triple percentages, their expenses far exceed their revenues.  In short, they are losing money on the product until they hit the breakeven point, at which their revenues cover their expenses. 

Now, they move into the growth stage of the product life cycle.  During this stage their promotional efforts slack off as others have, hopefully, picked up on the buzz their original efforts generated for their products.  This means less expenditure on promotion, allowing they to divert more of the gross profits to cover fixed costs.  If they allocated revenues well, they start making a net profit during this stage.  As their product gets wider notice in the market though, sales start to slacken from the triple or high double digit growth they posted after the launch.  They should still see growth in the low double digits though.

The characteristic of the growth stage that makes me think the deckbuilding category is exiting the growth stage and entering the maturity stage of the PLC is that, towards the end of the growth stage, competition products start to enter the market.  Competitors see how well this product has done satisfying consumers and want a piece of the action, so they enter the market with similar products, planning to capture a share.  Currently, I count a minimum of ten deckbuilding games on the market, with more on the way.  Nothing says more clearly that the market for deckbuilding games has matured than the number of companies announcing their entry into the market.

What happens during this stage?  Profits for early entrants into the market continue to increase as their expenses likewise continue to drop.  However, sales increases drop to single digits and start to decline towards the end of the cycle, as the product moves from maturity to decline.  One sure sign that the market has moved from maturity to the decline stage of the PLC is competitors pulling the plug on their products and announced product launches never making it to market. 

Yu Gi Oh Can Tournament

 Since we still have plenty of packs left over from the December 4 can tournament, we will hold another one on Dec. 19 at 12;30.  Bring in 5 cans, at least 10.5 ounces and good through the end of Feb. 2022 and play 4 rounds, then turn your cans in for packs.

Yu Gi Oh Can Tournament

 Well Since we only had 5 people show up for the holiday can tournament and we have plenty of booster packs left, we will run another tournament on the 12th also at 12:30. Particpants must bring 5 cans, at least 10.5 ounces that are good through at least the end of February 2022. You play 4 rounds and collect your opponent's can if you beat them, then turn in all of your cans after the 4th round of play for a booster pack per can.

Lights Fantastic

  Just a reminder that the Lights Fantastic Parade takes place tomorrow and downtown streets will start closing at 5 p.m. If you park on S. Illions prior to that, you will need to move your car prior to 5 p.m. as your car will either be towed or stuck there until 8 p.m. when the streets reopen.

Magic

 We will host Friday Night Magic at 5:30 tomorrow and a Store Championship draft at 12;30 on Saturday. If we see enough interest, we will start hosting drafts again, likely on a monthly rather than weekly basis to start.