I gave CAH (and expansion packs) as stocking stuffers for xmas and they were extremely well received.
What they say on the tin is true -- you feel like a horrible person when you play the game, which is extremely cathartic.
Hell, they even did a pay what you want for a small package of Christmas themed cards and pretty sure they pulled a 70k profit from that maneuver, despite ~25% percent paying $0.
Their average credit card fee was $0.43 per transaction. Ouch!
Salaries and Wages 7,468,743
Outside Contract Services 1,791,275
Internet Hosting 1,309,591
Other Operating Expenses 1,010,273
Bank Fees 945,190
That is not the cost structure I expected. I thought the balance would be more on Internet Hosting. What are those ~10 million of salaries, contracts and other operating expenses? Besides, their expenses were 15 million and income 30 million, do they need more money?
If you manage to get a copy of Apples to Apples, Disney Edition (not sure if that's the real title) then you can play the mashup I was exposed to several weeks ago: Cards Against Disney. Everyone has a hand with cards from both games; a prompt is drawn from one game and answered with cards from the other game, alternating each turn. Much silliness ensues.
When I was young, I liked to mix the questions and answers from different Trivial Pursuit cards. A kind of surreal "Trivial Pursuit: Exquisite Corpse Edition." :)
I was first introduced to this as Thousand White Cards Against Humanity, wherein instead of drawing from the deck or playing a card, you could take a blank and write in a new card. Compared to that, the boxed version just seems crass and unimaginative.
On the other hand, I'm normally the one to introduce groups to Apples To Apples. Those who claim this more tame version of the concept isn't fun are missing the real joy - how a limited set of choices forces surreality, playing for the person, and twisted readings of the cards.
Of course, if you're playing any of these as straight-up "this one wins", you are missing the incredible joy of "hamburgers smell, but only the bad ones are fragrant. Hilter probably was fragrant, but I doubt anyone lived to tell the tale. My birthday, however, boy was that fragrant...". The verdict slow-descriptive-reveal as the judge is the real art, and where you learn the most about people
It's not often discussed, but 20% of Kickstarter's top 20 projects are board games. The Pebble and Ouya skew the average, but D&D style games with little plastic figurines clean up with multiple games clearing $2MM or more.
Kickstarter is a huge topic on BoardgameGeek.com. It's everywhere, and tends to dominate the discussions of new titles. It's all over the site, but the concentrated discussion is here:
The success of Cards Against Humanity is evidence of massive demand, and yet all they have protecting them is their brand—unlike, say, craigslist, whose unwillingness to innovate is legendary but whose business benefits from massive network effects. As a result, the (apparent) apathy of the Cards Against Humanity founders offers an opportunity: copy their basic idea, for which they have no protection, and structure your new venture as a real business with full-time efforts devoted to growing sales. You could even one-up them by dropping the non-commercial clause in the Creative Commons license, allowing potential partners to profit and thereby grow your brand further.
The Cards Against Humanity guys are leaving money on the table. Who's going to pick it up?
I wonder, would this get rejected at the iOS App Store on grounds of taste or something? (That's aside from the fact it'd probably be DMCAed away if someone did it.)
We're doing the same thing. Our team is located in NYC, London, and Aurora, IL.
We launched our little meta-board gaming company at http://susd.pretend-money.com a little over 1.5 months ago. And we're already profitable!
We made a conscious decision to forego taking money from advertisers/investors, and even dodged a pre-launch acquihire offer, in an attempt to create something that's 100% our vision (unless YC wanted to fund us.) Our plan is to grow slowly, keep up the quality, and use the money that we're making from the show/blog/podcast to fund even more ambitious community/tech projects.
AND!
Board Games are Big Business!
Board/card/traditional gaming (whatever you want to call it) has been exploding in America over the last 10 years or so. It taps into that primal need for people to sit around together and ACTUALLY interact with each other.
I absolutely love Shut Up and Sit Down, I followed Quinns over from Rock Paper Shotgun and have enjoyed the videos very much since. I'm very happy to hear you're profitable already.
This is awesome, but not creating a corporate structure at all and just letting who does and gets what go organically is a really bad idea. It's nice that it's worked for them so far, but if they continue to succeed -- and I hope they do, I love what they've done -- they're very likely to find out that money does matter and does change things.
Yeah, basically toilet humor. Granted, a lot of it is funny, but it's the non-family-friendly version (not that Apples to Apples is all that family-friendly once my family starts playing, and I'm sure that's the same with many others, but at least it has the potential to avoid offending most people's delicate sensibilities).
This is the juvenile dorm room version (which makes sense, as that's what they created it for in the first place).
Essentially yes. The game is massively unplayable for a lot of different kinds of people due to the really triggering nature of the card content (rape jokes, pedophilia, racism, sexism, etc.). A lot of people find that content to be one of its virtues, but I've generally found that only certain kinds of people really enjoy CAH (read: white men).
I swing back and forth on which one I like better. Cards Against Humanity is fun because it lets you come out and say truly horrible things. Apples to Apples is fun because it lets you imply truly horrible things in really creative ways.
At its best (read: I am indeed a horrible person), either one is like drawing a smiley face on Hitler.
Pretty much. My friends found that the game wore very quickly compared to Apples to Apples. Pick the most offensive one, it'll win. Down to luck really.
I love CaH but I do have to say that the founders are full of themselves. I and several other friends/entrepreneurs have reached out to them regarding ideas to build associated products that would help build their brand. Even companion apps and such since their content is under Creative Commons. Every single one of us was sent back extremely rude and vile replies. This article just reeks of more narcissism.
It's a real shame too. It will go out of style in a year or two and, gasp, maybe these people will have to get real jobs or start a real company! Assholes.
The less travelled path - figuring out how to do it with fewer people so you can stay in control. Kudos to them for thinking for themselves.
Quote: 'And it’s dawning on them that they’re doing something impressive. “We’re doing a lot of stuff that no one has done before,” Hantoot reflects. “I do think we’re sort of proof that if you streamlined your business enough, you could do a big thing with a few people.”'
It's interesting that they blank out the MICR routing number at the bottom or the check but leave enough information elsewhere in the check to trivially figure it out.
The $12 million figure isn't confirmed. Just the author speculating based on reported sales figures and "made" doesn't account for the cost of producing the game.
I've given away 10-12 complete CAH sets to friends. Not a single person has said "oh that game is boring", and more than one of them has come back later and told me it was their favorite birthday/Christmas present, etc.
It's also a great way to judge if you'll get along with someone.
[+] [-] fsckin|13 years ago|reply
What they say on the tin is true -- you feel like a horrible person when you play the game, which is extremely cathartic.
Hell, they even did a pay what you want for a small package of Christmas themed cards and pretty sure they pulled a 70k profit from that maneuver, despite ~25% percent paying $0.
Their average credit card fee was $0.43 per transaction. Ouch!
http://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/holidaystats/
[+] [-] tommi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coherentpony|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nbashaw|13 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/335124440469876737
[+] [-] morpheusart|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Cyranix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egypturnash|13 years ago|reply
I'd suggest calling it "Disney against Humanity" - but then again I used to work in animation, maybe I'm bitter.
[+] [-] cpeterso|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdisraeli|13 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I'm normally the one to introduce groups to Apples To Apples. Those who claim this more tame version of the concept isn't fun are missing the real joy - how a limited set of choices forces surreality, playing for the person, and twisted readings of the cards.
Of course, if you're playing any of these as straight-up "this one wins", you are missing the incredible joy of "hamburgers smell, but only the bad ones are fragrant. Hilter probably was fragrant, but I doubt anyone lived to tell the tale. My birthday, however, boy was that fragrant...". The verdict slow-descriptive-reveal as the judge is the real art, and where you learn the most about people
[+] [-] replicatorblog|13 years ago|reply
http://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2013/05/15415-ranked-31-mill...
[+] [-] jdludlow|13 years ago|reply
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/forum/915012/kickstarter/genera...
[+] [-] mhartl|13 years ago|reply
The Cards Against Humanity guys are leaving money on the table. Who's going to pick it up?
[+] [-] doctorpangloss|13 years ago|reply
http://www.redactedonline.com
[+] [-] mikecane|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghempton|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeurbanski|13 years ago|reply
We launched our little meta-board gaming company at http://susd.pretend-money.com a little over 1.5 months ago. And we're already profitable!
We made a conscious decision to forego taking money from advertisers/investors, and even dodged a pre-launch acquihire offer, in an attempt to create something that's 100% our vision (unless YC wanted to fund us.) Our plan is to grow slowly, keep up the quality, and use the money that we're making from the show/blog/podcast to fund even more ambitious community/tech projects.
AND!
Board Games are Big Business!
Board/card/traditional gaming (whatever you want to call it) has been exploding in America over the last 10 years or so. It taps into that primal need for people to sit around together and ACTUALLY interact with each other.
We're in a bit of a "Golden Age of Board Gaming". Quinns gave a hilarious talk on the subject: http://susd.pretend-money.com/videos/v/board-game-golden-age...
[+] [-] JonLim|13 years ago|reply
I'm just trying to figure out if you guys make them or just talk about them. :) Either way, a lot of great content on there.
[+] [-] DizzyDoo|13 years ago|reply
I would love to see what the Quinns and Paul think of Machine Of Death, a similarly mega-funded card game Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1234131468/machine-of-de...) when it arrives.
[+] [-] obviouslygreen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wittyphrasehere|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evan_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|13 years ago|reply
I won't even repeat many of them here for fear of getting shadow banned.
[+] [-] obviouslygreen|13 years ago|reply
This is the juvenile dorm room version (which makes sense, as that's what they created it for in the first place).
[+] [-] Recoil42|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] king_jester|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azylman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|13 years ago|reply
I swing back and forth on which one I like better. Cards Against Humanity is fun because it lets you come out and say truly horrible things. Apples to Apples is fun because it lets you imply truly horrible things in really creative ways.
At its best (read: I am indeed a horrible person), either one is like drawing a smiley face on Hitler.
[+] [-] Falling3|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowboy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symmetry|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gsibble|13 years ago|reply
It's a real shame too. It will go out of style in a year or two and, gasp, maybe these people will have to get real jobs or start a real company! Assholes.
[+] [-] not_that_noob|13 years ago|reply
Quote: 'And it’s dawning on them that they’re doing something impressive. “We’re doing a lot of stuff that no one has done before,” Hantoot reflects. “I do think we’re sort of proof that if you streamlined your business enough, you could do a big thing with a few people.”'
[+] [-] jamieb|13 years ago|reply
i.e. perfect for parents =)
[+] [-] ghempton|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelhoffman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smmnyc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kiro|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrbill|13 years ago|reply
It's also a great way to judge if you'll get along with someone.
[+] [-] mnicole|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goloxc|13 years ago|reply
love it when a business professor analyzes why something like this game is so successful