Almost There! Fulfillment Update
over 5 years ago
– Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 01:29:19 AM
I just got in the latest fulfillment report from QML. GamesQuest finished the day with only about a hundred orders left to get out the door. (And it might even be less than that as their automated reporting does lag a bit behind.) In any case, they should have all the orders out by the end of the day tomorrow. Of course, we all wish they could have gotten this done a month ago, but it's good news from where we were when we switched over to a new calendar.
In doing a final audit, we found a report that QML never received with about 10 names on it. Those have been processed for immediate shipment. I only point it out to note that there are still a few hiccups here and there, resulting in some late shipments. Indeed, once or twice a day, I'm still finding backers who managed to miss all of the updates and notices from BackerKit.
As I mentioned, I'll be on the Dice Tower Cruise pretty much all next week. Jenn from our team will be monitoring the [email protected] email address, so that's your best bet for immediate assistance during that time. (I monitor that box as well.) When I get back, I'll post an all-done update so we can try to identify any lagging problems or stragglers.
We'll then be turning our attention to parts replacement. Much smaller logistical undertaking than the initial shipment, but it's still quite a bit. We've processed all of the requests via the form. We are just waiting on the parts to come in. As you know, the manufacturer promised us the parts a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, they noticed they hadn't glued any grommets into the trays, so they had to rework the whole batch. Supposedly we will have these in next week, and we'll be underway.
Our partners at Hidden Achievement are already underway on programming the app module. We hope to have something to show at the end of the month, but these things are hard to predict, so please have some patience if it slips into February.
Thanks for your continuing patience.
GamesQuest Update
over 5 years ago
– Thu, Jan 03, 2019 at 01:15:43 AM
At my last GamesQuest update, just before Christmas, we had about 1,000 EU orders that had not yet gone out. That number is roughly the same as of today. They did apparently take the full week and change off. I've also seen a few instances of them shipping the games but not having updated the shipping info for us to track. So it's possible some more have gone out that just haven't been notified yet. On the plus side, they have informed us that they finally did enlist additional staff and are expecting to "fly through" the last batch. We'll see. Hopefully there will be a flurry of shipments going out by the end of this week, and they'll get through everything in the next two weeks.
(For those who pointed out that their retail arm was selling FI and promising quick delivery, thank you. They have now taken it down until they get their shipping duty fulfilled.)
In other news: Longshore has told us that the replacement parts should finally be going out to us this week. It might take us just a bit to get everything set up, but we'll be rolling through all those replacement requests as soon as we get them in.
We're also working on the app. We've completed design on a few of the items, such as the soundtrack and the first-player chooser. We'll be turning those over to our developer soon and hope to get it up by the end of the month. Likewise, co-op mode is essentially done, and we should be releasing at least a beta pdf of those rules by the end of the month.
Rob and I have outlined the D&D module, and it's looking like a lot of fun. We hope to have that ready to go, and maybe another piece or two of the app, in February.
In unrelated news, while I'm working pretty much 24/7 on this KS, the rest of the team is hard at work on our next projects. We actually have two new games coming this year that we haven't announced yet. Well, we'll be announcing one of those on the Dice Tower Cruise in just a couple of weeks. It's much more of a traditional game, while still offering a unique mechanic that we haven't seen in a game since it came out in the 70's. (Oops, did I just give a hint?)
That's it on our end. For those of you who haven't gotten your games yet, thank you for your continued patience.
Broken Token Game Crate + Discount Code
over 5 years ago
– Fri, Dec 28, 2018 at 01:39:58 AM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
GamesQuest Status and Review
over 5 years ago
– Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 01:54:20 AM
Let's start with the current numbers since that's the most important thing right now. They have reported to me that approximately 2000 orders will be out the door by end of day today. Many of you have already received yours -- that's great. And I anticipate that most of that batch will have theirs in time for Christmas. That is approximately half of all the EU shipments.
They expect to get another 500 out by Thursday and then another 500 by Monday. Barring a miracle, I would not expect those shipments to get to their backers by Christmas, but obviously shortly thereafter. That's another quarter of the EU batch.
As for the last quarter of the EU batch, they did not provide a specific timetable for delivery. It seems unlikely to be before the end of the year, but it should certainly be first thing after the start of the new year.
That's where we're at. I also wanted to a take a look back with as much transparency as possible, so you could see how we arrived here. Between all the comments and updates and social media posts and BGG forums, it's difficult to have a full picture.
Before we launched the campaign, we contacted Quartermaster Logstics to handle fulfillment for all of our hubs. They told us the local fulfillment partners they were using. We had previously worked with both GamesQuest and Aetherworks on our Stop Thief! Kickstarter, and they both did a great job. We had a couple of hiccups with GQ for post-fulfillment service, but we had no delays for fulfillment at all. This was in August of 2017. I've backed well over a hundred projects, dozens after that time. In the intervening time, I had not heard of any problems with GamesQuest's fulfillment, including the projects I backed. We had no reason to object to using them. When we asked QML to handle everything it was because we figured it would be a much larger project and we wanted someone with experience and a good reputation to oversee and to also have one point of contact should there be any problems. I understand now that there have been problems in the intervening time period that others have experienced; we were unaware of those issues.
One of our primary points of focus during the campaign was our extremely tight timeline. We wanted to make sure the game was completed as quickly as possible so we could fulfill backers and still make Black Friday for our retail release. Contrary, to some comments, we wanted to make sure our backers got their games before the retail release. We asked QML for a "drop-dead date" to get them the games so they could fulfill before that date. Then, we turned around and asked Longshore for a drop-dead date to get the games to QML to make their drop-dead date. After that, everything we did came with an accompanying question: "Will this blow our drop-dead date?" If the answer was yes, we simply didn't consider it.
We made one huge mistake during the campaign. In those first few hours, we got caught up in the frenzy. We had talked about deluxe marbles as an idea but never followed up on the logistics of it. This was the one time we didn't ask our "drop-dead" question, so of course it would come back to bite us in the butt. But we did it. We Oprah'd up the deluxe marbles.
When it came time to source them, it turned out to be a much bigger problem than we anticipated. Because glass marbles are not a standard game piece, we had to source them from a third-party vendor. They were more expensive than we anticipated. What's more, for some reason, it was going to cause us to blow our drop-dead date.
So, we paid $5,000 to fly a literal ton of marbles over on an airplane.
But it was done. We did it. We hit our drop-dead date with Longshore, so everything should have been good to go. As it turns out, there were three things that happened that caused delays.
First, the ship destined for the EU had mechanical troubles. It was only about a week's delay. Our logistics partner was great. They found us a new ship right away and got everything rebooked. Obviously, there's nothing we could do about that. These things happen. But it's worth keeping in mind that we'd likely have another thousand EU shipments out by now if that ship had not been delayed.
Second, the games were not palletized. This was not a huge deal, but given the size of the shipment, it probably caused a couple of days' delay. We always palletize our shipments. It makes things quicker on the warehouse side, and usually any savings is eaten up by a surcharge from the warehouse anyway. But, as we've said before, this was our first time working with Longshore, and we didn't properly communicate that to them.
Third, of course, is GamesQuest itself. There's no getting around the fact that they have not fulfilled the games as quickly as we were promised. You might recall that Snakes & Lattes were going to be delayed as well; we paid them to hire additional staff to overcome that delay. We made a similar offer to GamesQuest, but they did not accept. It seems as though they have simply overextended themselves. I don't have enough information to make an assessment of why or what they might have done to resolve the problem. We attempted to expedite special requests for Christmas delivery as best we were able. That was largely effective, and I'm glad we were able to ameliorate the problem even just that little bit. It seems that they just have too many projects to fulfill and not enough staff to get through them. It also appears that they are doing piecemeal shipments on all of their open projects to sort of "spread the misery". In then end, the cause doesn't really matter.
So that about sums it up. We know that those of you who don't have your games yet are deeply disappointed. We share fully in that disappointment. Every game a backer didn't receive is a game we couldn't deliver to them. So we feel that sting a thousandfold.
While I'm confident we did everything we could to get everyone their games on time, we did not. And for that, I am sorry. Ultimately, it was our project, so the responsibility lies with us.
But.
It's worth keeping in mind that, ultimately, eventually, you will get your game. It's worth keeping in mind that you did get the game at a discount from MSRP which should put it pretty close even to online discount prices. It's worth keeping in mind that you are getting a gorgeous thank-you map and a free Treasure Trove deck that's never going to show up in retail distribution and, of course, those **shakes fist at the heavens** deluxe marbles. But mostly it's worth keeping in mind, that you will get your game very soon. And when you are playing it with your friends in the deep winter of January or over Spring Break with the kids or on that rainy summer afternoon or at Gen Con or next year, this delay will be a distant memory. And it will be all smiles and laughs and blasting your friends and family with fireballs.
Australia Shipments Are Out the Door -and- Broken Token Goodies
almost 6 years ago
– Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 10:34:54 PM
Just a quick update to say that Aetherworks have gotten all of the shipments out the door. So, two important notes.
1) If you haven't gotten a shipment notification yet, that means there's an issue with the order. The most likely culprit is that you didn't complete your BackerKit survey, perhaps with your address, so that's worth checking out. If you didn't get a notification and your BackerKit survey is in order, please contact [email protected] directly to get it resolved.
2) As our Aussie backers start getting their games, it's worth reminding you all about the process for any problems on the receiving end, e.g., missing items, damaged parts, etc. For those types of issues, I will just refer you to our last update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/restorationgames/fireball-island-80s-board-game-reignited-and-resto/posts/2366238
And, I just found out: Broken Token have put up a couple of goodies on their website: Wooden Maw and Hello-Copter! They are putting the finishing touches on the storage solution, but they were really excited about getting something up in time for Xmas for our FI fans. You can see the love and detail they put into these, so it should be a good sign for the future product. (Edited to add this info.)
Now, back to work on making sure GQ keeps those EU shipment rolling out the door....
