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Post by karangela on Dec 14, 2017 12:20:43 GMT -5
They had a substantial infusion of cash with the last Kickstarter campaign, I wonder how that figures in.
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Post by Yasoda Dei Conti on Dec 17, 2017 2:25:18 GMT -5
Locking the poll because with their news (see the message from Angus under general MPC) it doesn't seem to matter any more. Volume 3 is what really got me into puzzling and the community, really sorry it had to go this way.
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Post by lucasscooter on Dec 17, 2017 4:04:55 GMT -5
Locking the poll because with their news (see the message from Angus under general MPC) it doesn't seem to matter any more. Volume 3 is what really got me into puzzling and the community, really sorry it had to go this way. Where one flower dies, another plant may grow to take its place. Just because CnC is ending does not mean either puzzling or this community will be ending with it.
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Post by Yasoda Dei Conti on Dec 17, 2017 5:27:07 GMT -5
Locking the poll because with their news (see the message from Angus under general MPC) it doesn't seem to matter any more. Volume 3 is what really got me into puzzling and the community, really sorry it had to go this way. Where one flower dies, another plant may grow to take its place. Just because CnC is ending does not mean either puzzling or this community will be ending with it. Oh, no, absolutely. I'm certainly not stopping puzzling. I'm just sad that their response to us wanting an experience more like Vol 3 is to end it entirely.
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Post by verdantfruu on Dec 17, 2017 9:07:50 GMT -5
Since i've since come out of stealth mode as the designer for CnC volumes 3 and 4 (and the wrapper-upper of vols 1 and 2), i wanted to clarify my earlier post on this thread about the financial challenges of running a product like Curios and Conundrums. i deliberately threw out incorrect and inaccurate numbers as "Verdant Fru" (your mole), trying to appear as an outsider, while still attempting to convey some of the business realities a company might face while offering a product like Curios and Conundrums. Please be assured that "Verdant Fru's" guesses as to the number of employees involved, their salaries, the amount of time they spent developing the CnC, and the subscriber numbers required to break even, were all pulled from the ether, and were intentionally misleading. But the sentiment stands: puzzles are a niche market, and it's very difficult to build a viable product from them. Every customer comes in at a different ability/familiarity level and with different puzzle preferences. Despite it being a tough nut to crack, i've got an awfully large nutcracker. Let's go!
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Post by Todd on Dec 17, 2017 9:16:32 GMT -5
In fairness, MPC has promised a new product and has made an effort to establish a presence in our midst. Perhaps they are simply seeking to abandon the whole OSS/SZ storyline and start something new? I wouldn't write them off entirely just yet. Early reviews of the first mailings of their two new Experiences seem to show that they are reversing the negative trend that set the tone of 2017.
And if we muster enough support for a new product from the former Mole, then we have the potential to be winning on two fronts.
And with the first Armchair Detective box shipping and the Wilson Wolfe Affair Kickstarter in it's final days, 2018 looks like a very exciting time for this community.
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Post by wortelboer on Jan 16, 2018 11:39:33 GMT -5
"Hit them with the numbers"? And the poll gets 34 votes? Let's actually talk about numbers, and what they must mean to the MPC. How many people does it take to create Curios and Conundrums? My guess is that it's written by between 2-10 people, although it's hard to tell. Are those people full time? Let's say some are, and some are freelancers. But take the lowest possible estimate: that 2 people create the paper (1 writer and 1 art/layout person), full time. And let's go low-end again and suppose they make modest salaries at $40k/year. So $80k in labour every year, and we won't even consider what it takes to make the prestige artifact or the other elements of the newspaper. 34 people paying 30 dollars 4 times a year is just over 4000 dollars. And it costs a MINIMUM of $80k a year just to staff the paper, let alone make a profit. So we 34 survey respondents represent 5% of the barest minimum, most ridiculous calculation of the company's business model that I can imagine. In order to break even on $80k (and it's almost definitely WAY more than an $80k cost), the company needs 666 (heh) subscribers. Again, ridiculously modest estimates here. If you were the MPC, how much heed would you pay to a very insistent, but dramatically small percentage of your subscribership? Hit them with numbers, sure... but 34 people aren't the numbers to hit them with. While your model would be accurate if Curios & Conundrums was the only thing that MPC was producing, the same staff that is making C&C is most likely also designing the Experiences, so they are a fixed cost. Not acknowledging that unnecessarily inflates the cost of design and content. We're getting a 12 page tabloid with C&C. Not including the puzzle design, realistically that's 60-80 hours of content, design, and layout per issue, or a high estimate of 320 labor hours per year. That's only about 6.5% of a single full time position, or at your 40K/year estimate, about $3,500 per year including benefits. The trick is to maximize profitability in order to surpass your overhead. That's where the production costs and the subscription price come into play. If what MPC is looking at is a loss of revenue of about $4,000 a year, they are most likely seeing that they have sufficient fixed overhead to retain this customer base. Add to that some basic marketing theory, like the cost to acquire one new customer is 6 to 7 times the cost to retain an existing customer, and that increasing your customer retention rate by 5% increases profitability by as much as 80%, and an existing customer is 75% more likely to by a new product than a new customer, then I feel it would be foolhardy to not feel the need to address this dissatisfaction amongst what was once their core audience for Curios & Conundrums. And I have faith that they have noticed and have something up their sleeves for 2018. I know it is a moot point, but considering I pay $26-$30 a month for one of my favorite puzzle subscriptions...I would gladly would have paid that much and maybe a little more for C&C to continue the way it did with Volume I-III...especially Volume III considering the amount of puzzles and other delightful twists, turns, places to go and things to you had to get through to solve everything in a quarterly issue. So take that high estimate of $80K...and say we are charged $80 a quarter for it (allowing monthly payments of $27 a month to ease the financial chuck of a quarterly price)...and that is about $325 per subscriber per year. Now we know people will pay that price because look at Hunt A Killer and Dispatch. So C&C could have sustained itself with a mere subscriber base of 246 subscriptions and anything on top of that would have been profit, right? Even if the cost is more go ahead and double it...that would be 500 subscribers. Empty Faces from HAK already has at least 2,500 subscribers signed up. Something just doesn't add up right.
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