Firstly: thank you for this blog and your time! Question: I might be overly cynical, but I’ve noticed that pubs have been pushing “big” CEs for new, often niche / indie / “indie” IPs over the last while — massive boxes, plastic tat, books, records, postcards, etc (sometimes without the game!) — and it’s felt… like a bit of a set up for a new IP or even an entire studio to fail. All of that spend on an unproven / unreleased IP or game can’t go unrecouped and it must balloon like crazy on top of general dev costs. Callisto Protocol is the most recent bad example that’s stuck in my mind, re: a new IP in a niche genre that’s making big promises. The immensity of its CE rose red flags for me as a buyer really into the genre, and decided against pre-ordering out of a gut feeling that something didn’t add up. Ultimately CalP’s issues ran deeper than an overstuffed CE, but I feel like it really didn’t help and contributed to its crash landing. Another new indie, niche, horror IP is getting the same big CE treatment: Reanimal, and I feel concerned the same way I did for CalP. I have total faith in Tarsier’s ability, but at the same time… it seems like a symptom of a greater unnecessary risk being taken under the surface. I’m reminded of EA’s really terrible marketing campaigns for Dante’s Inferno and Dead Space 2 that either directly or indirectly killed or crippled the IP or entire dev teams moving forward — re: no sequel to DI, DS3 was reshaped into a co-op microtransaction storefront to make more money. It seems like history is repeating itself, but with a different skin. I feel such immense pressure shouldn’t be put on a new IP, ESPECIALLY in a niche genre — it’s like pre-loading the gun for Ol’ Yeller while the dog is still healthy because you intend to actively pit it against the rabid animal that will guarantee you will be pulling that trigger later. What are your thoughts as someone within the industry? Are you seeing the same?

boynextdoornews

Honestly, Collector's Editions have already been hiding in plain sight as the price hike that people have been dreading for years. All of the Collector's Edition extras are inexpensive to manufacture at scale, which is what makes them worthwhile to produce if they sell. The in-game extras like this armor or that hat or emote are not super expensive to produce and can be given to as many players as we like. Any expensive Collector's Edition isn't much of a risk at all - as long as we sell enough of them (and the number is actually fairly small), they usually make us significantly more than it costs to produce them. It's really hard to lose money on Collector's Edition sales.

Regarding marketing and the effectiveness thereof... that's a really difficult beast to predict. It's always difficult to tell whether marketing is cost-effective and there are so many different ways to advertise a product each with varying levels of success, each with many differing factors. I honestly don't feel like I have enough context to judge marketing properly, so I'll leave that to the experts in the field.

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