To follow-up on yesterday’s article – Streets of Stalingrad 4 – Kickstarting a Playtest Kit, WTF? Which presented concerns about 626 Designs, LLC’s upcoming release of Streets of Stalingrad 4 and their particular approach to the release. I reached out to one of the principles of the company about doing an interview for our readers in response to all the comments we received on various social media sites following yesterday’s article. The particular individual I reached out to promptly declined cited I had already passed judgment.
Well, I guess in a sense I have, but the fact they refused to do an interview leaves me wondering. I would have loved to have done the interview so as hopefully get some clarification on their approach to releasing this monster game and as an avenue to win over those that may have some concerns following yesterday’s article and Friday’s announcement on Consim World.
I just read up on the game’s Consim World thread and one of the two company principles stated that the playtest kit might cost $30 and the full game might cost $170, but those prices are not firm yet. It also was posted that supporters of the May playtest campaign will get some type of discount in the full game campaign in September.
I am hopeful that the September campaign is successful! I would love to see the 4th edition of this classic and very hard to find game get into the hands of gamers. My concerns still stand until I see these campaigns launch to assess for myself the costs, intent, objectives, etc.
I will continue to let readers know of future developments as things come to light. I hope they are positive in nature, but as you have come to expect I won’t pull any punched either.
~ Modoc
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Rolling Boxcars 
I think I’ve nailed what I thought on Twitter well enough but I also wanted to add; would an indie company be able to do this? What if they had a hell of an ideal and just needed quick funds for a prototype. Should they save or would this be appropriate?
I dunno, I’m on the fence a little.
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Searching for Dragons,
That’s a fair question. Having followed Kickstarter projects, mostly RPGs but some boardgames, I can see where what you proposed could go south in an instant.
In the example you have proposed, As a consumer who might consider such a thing, I would feel better if they invested their own money up front. If they are not confident enough in their own project to fund a prototype it is highly suspect whether or not it would be successful in the long run.
At least in the gaming area, projects like that could be seen and suspected of being highly fraudulent.
~ Modoc
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This is an extremely late response/comment but it might be worth consideration: Given the fact SoS4 development team is a niche, indie company coupled with the cost of the project and taking into consideration there is no reasonable method to determine how many potential buyers of the game are aware it’s about to be produced, a Playtest Kickstrater may in fact be a brilliant idea. How is that you say? Realistically, it is safe to assume 95 – 99% of the play testing for the game has already been done but this is one way to get a last minute look by a fresh set of play testers before the rules are finalized. The brilliant part is that by putting out a limited version of the product, more people get to see it in person which in turn generates it’s own buzz or publicity for SoS4. Charging a fee for that simply offsets the costs to the publishers for producing that product material. The play testers then get a discount later and bragging rights that they were play testers for the game. In the end, it’s not a bad marketing strategy.
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