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Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!

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Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!
« on: May 23, 2016, 10:39:57 AM »
 

leangyan

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Hi All,

Guru Ganjifa is live on KS but with no hope of seeing it getting funded  :( :(. Looks like I faltered on promotion & marketing, but there have been some concerns on high funding goal for first time project creator. Well, I understand that the funding goal is high and there are reasons behind it. First of all, there are round cards which is not a common shape, so everywhere the price is quite high than regular poker card stock. Secondly, the number of cards per deck is pretty high (130 in total). In addition to that, there is a 2- part custom rigid box and a booklet spanning 20 pages. I've even offered worldwide shipping but still, it hasn't resulted into an increase in number of backers. This project has taken a lot of efforts and I did try to make sure that through it, I can pay an ode to the legacy of Ganjifa cards, but it looks like it won't happen in near future. Even the booklet that has got history of Ganjifa and Playing Cards in General plus rules for different games, is being reviewed by the leading historians and collectors who have done work on this field like Her Highness Rajmata Stwashiladevi Bhonsle (erstwhile Queen of Sawantwadi, Maharashtra in India), Jeff Hopewell, Vasudha Joshi etc., still the deck struggles to find its takers.

I understand that I'm still learning and have got a lot to learn, but will appreciate if you can suggest or advice on anything that could help this project.  Or, should I take this forward in a different manner or platform? Is Kickstarter not a platform for such niche projects with somewhat high funding goal? What could have I done differently before launch? 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sunishchabba/guru-ganjifa-playing-cards-from-historyrevisited

Regards,
Sunish
« Last Edit: May 23, 2016, 10:54:47 AM by leangyan »
 

Re: Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2016, 01:15:15 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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I gave you advice about it already, if you recall.  How much of it did you take?

First of all, notice that I moved your topic to the Conversation Parlor.  We're a playing card forum, but we're a forum that mostly follows the International Standard design, in all its many wonderful variations.  Your deck is something completely different.  It's like trying to sell milk in a tobacco store - it's not a good fit.  How many game-oriented forums and websites did you visit and make inquiries about?  Think of sites that carry and talk about non-traditional board and card games - something like ganjifa would be a good fit for them.

I'm a fan of a game that might be as old as ganjifa if not close to it - shogi.  Shogi is Japanese chess, based on the ancient Indian game of shatranj.  I've seen a version of shogi that was created by an American game company, trying to promote it and sell it in the US.  The packaging was actually pretty slick, the rules were made easy to understand and the pieces were redesigned - same shapes, but with English letters and directional indicators instead of Japanese kanji.  In other words, the game company tweaked the game to better suit the audience, rather than stick to a 100% faithful reproduction of the original.  To be faithful to the original would have been a death sentence for the game - it's losing popularity in Japan, so how could you expect it to be an easy sell in the US?  Some Japanese versions aimed at interesting children in the game replace the Japanese kanji on the pieces with animal characters and arrows pointing out how the pieces move.

So, your game was as expensive as it was because of using round cards?  Why make them round?  Make them rectangular with rounded corners, just like ordinary International Standard cards - and even give them indices in the corners to make them easier to use!  You can stick to the traditional circular shape in the middle of the card, or you can alter the design's shape to conform to the modern standard of a rectangular card design.  It's still ganjifa, but it's 21st-century ganjifa, made easier to manufacture, package and, most importantly, play.  If you used a very thin card stock, you could have fit the entire game into a single package of the size and shape used for holding two decks of standard playing cards.  Standard packaging also reduces your costs.

You might even consider updating the artwork.  People seeing the traditional ganjifa art might think it's an old fashioned game and not be interested in playing.  Just as shogi games were updated to make them more appealing to new audiences, perhaps your ganjifa cards can be updated in the same manner.  Picture rectangular cards with updated two-way designs and indices, but all the traditional elements of a ganjifa card retained as well.

How easy or complex are traditional ganjifa games?  How much effort did you put into educating potential customers about how to play?  You could have reduced your cost of manufacture by taking the rules and posting them online instead of including them in the package, thus giving people an opportunity to see how the game is played before considering a purchase.  I envision a website with not just a dull list of rules and card descriptions, but also videos with instructions and even game strategy - imagine how much fun that would be to create?  Putting the rules out there for the world to see functions as a means by which to promote ganjifa in general and your project in particular, while at the same time eliminating the need for you to include the rule sets inside your packaging and reducing your costs.

You face an uphill battle, marketing a game such as this.  But it's no different in many ways than the battle faced by any game designer creating a unique game with a unique set of rules and unique game pieces - any game from Uno to Monopoly to Yahtzee to Chutes and Ladders was unique when it first was created, and the public had to be educated on how to play before the games became popular.  You have a distinct advantage - your cards have been around for centuries and have a rich history to them, with many "play-tested" games you can play with them, I'm sure.  One could even take a subset of ganjifa cards to play standard card games, if they were so inclined.

You can make this into a successful project.  Be flexible, update your design for a 21st-century audience and make it easily accessible to them.
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Re: Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2016, 12:20:25 PM »
 

leangyan

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Hi Don,

First of all, thanks for the thoughtful and detailed reply, Really appreciate it and I owe you one.

So, as you know it has been my first KS campaign, and I'm still learning. In fact, I'd done my homework well (Or so I thought) before launching the campaign and I was expecting pledges from a certain group but it didn't happen. While I was talking to the vendors, it was evident that round cards (and their huge no.) are increasing the cost but still, I wanted to remain true to the old decks. Now, it hasn't worked with less or no takers is a learning experience for me. I was even able to find an old Ganjifa KS campaign (for a different Ganjifa variant), that was a success with 415 backers but seems like the quality hasn't been good considering the numeorus comments.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tabcreations/ganjifa-indian-playing-cards

I might have faltered in raising awareness of both the artwork inspiration, which was Madhubani, and the deck itself. Because, if you go by Ebay, both of Madhubani art and Ganjifa cards are sold at a premium where even I saw the instances of one card being sold at a price point as same as that of this whole deck of cards.

http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xganjifa.TRS0&_nkw=ganjifa&_sacat=0

http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_odkw=ganjifa&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xmadhubani.TRS0&_nkw=madhubani&_sacat=0

 If I'd have gone to another printer apart from EPCC/LPCC, the costs might have come down, still the question pertaining to the want for this deck may not have been answered.

I can understand what you're trying to say, but I'm working along with the artisans and craftsmen, and moving to a new format of artwork and shape of the cards might not have gone down with them. Still, I'm going to contemplate and think about if I need to change the approach for this deck. The rules are already there on the campaign page, but looks like I should have made them more explicit rather than just sharing them via a link on Google drive.

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bbvhaWCaE36dr_ynq_2w511Xwr4w_tsJ_kA1PXzw9cU/edit?usp=sharing

The problem is evident that I faltered in getting this deck noticed while making people aware of both the artforms used as an inspiration, and the rules for different games. There are references of Ganjifa decks being rectangular, and it would have resulted in reducing the cost. I've bookmarked this post, and will be going through every bit again to check and confirm the direction of moving forward with Ganjifa.

Thanks once again.

Regards,
Sunish
 

Re: Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!
« Reply #3 on: May 26, 2016, 06:52:21 PM »
 

Don Boyer

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When working on a project like this, there's a strong desire to remain faithful to the original.  Sometimes, though, in order to make the project a success with a modern audience, you need to look at modernizing the original in ways to make them more appealing to people.  It's easier to make the project to adapt to the audience than to make the audience to adapt to the project!  You can control the project - you have NO control over the audience!

Imagine you were Hasbro or Parker Brothers - some major company that's BIG in the games business in the Western world.  Think of what they would do if they were tasked with adapting ganjifa and making it appealing to today's game players.  They might even go so far as to give it a Western name!  Indices would be practically a given.  They might not ditch the round shape - but if it meant making the project less expensive to produce, you can bet they'd go for traditional rectangular card shapes, and it would give them the added benefit of making it in a format that's more familiar to Western audiences.  Look at other popular card games - Uno, Skip-Bo, Rook, Milles Bornes, etc. - every one of them uses a card size that's either identical to a poker-sized deck (3.5 x 2.5 inches) or darn close to it.  You could try a bridge-sized deck, especially if a given game requires a player to hold a lot of cards in his or her hand, but you'd be going even more narrow (3.5 x 2.25 inches), resulting in even less room for the lovely artwork.

You have the option of retaining the round card shape - if you have a poker-sized card, your cards could have a 2.5-inch diameter circle with the traditional art appearance in it, made to look just like a circular ganjifa card, and leaving you a half-inch above and below for an index, descriptive text or just some negative space.  Alternately, you could modify the art and make it conform to something closer to the modern International Standard playing card design - reshaped, rectangular art, perhaps even double-headed "court" cards.  Either way, making the cards rectangular and poker-sized will update your game and make it more appealing to audiences that have never seen ganjifa before.  Even people who already play ganjifa might appreciate having indices and a card shape that's easier to manage.

All food for thought...
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Re: Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!
« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2016, 07:25:17 AM »
 

leangyan

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When working on a project like this, there's a strong desire to remain faithful to the original.  Sometimes, though, in order to make the project a success with a modern audience, you need to look at modernizing the original in ways to make them more appealing to people.  It's easier to make the project to adapt to the audience than to make the audience to adapt to the project!  You can control the project - you have NO control over the audience!

Imagine you were Hasbro or Parker Brothers - some major company that's BIG in the games business in the Western world.  Think of what they would do if they were tasked with adapting ganjifa and making it appealing to today's game players.  They might even go so far as to give it a Western name!  Indices would be practically a given.  They might not ditch the round shape - but if it meant making the project less expensive to produce, you can bet they'd go for traditional rectangular card shapes, and it would give them the added benefit of making it in a format that's more familiar to Western audiences.  Look at other popular card games - Uno, Skip-Bo, Rook, Milles Bornes, etc. - every one of them uses a card size that's either identical to a poker-sized deck (3.5 x 2.5 inches) or darn close to it.  You could try a bridge-sized deck, especially if a given game requires a player to hold a lot of cards in his or her hand, but you'd be going even more narrow (3.5 x 2.25 inches), resulting in even less room for the lovely artwork.

You have the option of retaining the round card shape - if you have a poker-sized card, your cards could have a 2.5-inch diameter circle with the traditional art appearance in it, made to look just like a circular ganjifa card, and leaving you a half-inch above and below for an index, descriptive text or just some negative space.  Alternately, you could modify the art and make it conform to something closer to the modern International Standard playing card design - reshaped, rectangular art, perhaps even double-headed "court" cards.  Either way, making the cards rectangular and poker-sized will update your game and make it more appealing to audiences that have never seen ganjifa before.  Even people who already play ganjifa might appreciate having indices and a card shape that's easier to manage.

All food for thought...

Hi Don (and others),

I'm thinking to pull the plug on the current campaign soon and would like advice and/or suggestions. I'd been talking to a no. of people on this, and understand that for some the high cost acted as a deterrent to back this project. And, for some, I might not have been able to pitch it properly through the page (text and video) as they took it as a project of Poker chips :(. I did get this feedback from 5 different individuals. 3 guys on Board Game Geek felt the pricing was in USD (it is AUD) and got scared, it was only when I mentioned it again, they took another look and backed it. I'd already put the pricing in AUD on top, so not sure what more I can do in this regard.

The handful of artisans who know of this craft were rooting for me, and I'd like to try again in future, may be. Redoing it in regular poker card shape is one of the alternatives suggested, but has been frowned upon by both collectors and artisans. I think I need to pitch this in person because any conversation via mail or phone doesn't cut it. I did see one instance where a custom poker deck project has happened in India with round & oval shape.



EPCC, MPC etc. are pretty expensive because of the large no.of cards as well as the round shape. I got one prototype done by LongPack (lpboardgames.com) and their quotation is lower than , and I'm thinking to go with them for the second try. The prototype was done on 300 gsm Chinese black core card stock with linen finish, and I observed that they did pretty well with the yellow borders because the other prototypes done by Admagic Print & Play, and MPC had too much deviation in the borders (see attached pic-first is by Admagic, second is MPC and last one is by LongPack).
You may not have heard about LongPack, they are into board games, and they have done a  few Kickstarter projects for  Australian card games and board game creators. Offering the booklet as a digital pdf initially for lower tiers of the funding goal and removing the 10 description cards for Avatars (and getting those into the booklet) are two areas where I'm looking to reduce the cost of the deck. Getting a square box is one option to get the deck weigh lower, and in turn affect the shipping cost.

There have been some talks going with 2 Playing Card museums in 2 countries, and they are interested in getting a few decks for the museum shop. Apart from that, there are a few playing card and Tarot deck collectors who have shown some interest in this deck. The games would also be playtested and I'll also get video reviews done posted in BGG. I was also advised to go with a smaller deck for first Kickstarter project, and now I see why that was important. Considering, I was already working on another playing card project inspired by two of other traditional Indian art forms, I would have learned a bit more  if I'd gone with that as first KS project.

Anyways, how does the above look and should I cancel the KS right away or let it go till the end where it moves to the status of  funding unsuccessful? 

Regards,
Sunish
« Last Edit: June 15, 2016, 07:30:10 AM by leangyan »
 

Re: Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!
« Reply #5 on: June 15, 2016, 04:27:55 PM »
 

Don Boyer

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Stay the course until the end of the project.  If it doesn't succeed - THAT'S when you retool.

Yes, there are round poker cards - but they're considered a novelty and aren't terribly popular these days.  I haven't even seen a round deck in years, and usually only in tourist locales along other cheap and cheesy souvenirs.  Oval cards are even more of a novelty - I've never actually held or even seen a deck up close.

I've given you all the advice I can as far as retooling the project to make it more palatable to the masses.  As far as the pricing, Kickstarter now automatically translates project goals and tier pricing into one's own local currency based on recent exchange rates.  You only have to worry about currency conversion when personally mentioning the project to anyone.

If people thought your project was for POKER CHIPS, they clearly didn't read it very well.  But then again, perhaps simplifying the explanation even further would help?  Though as I suggested, going for a standard poker-sized card would give you certain advantages when trying to sell to Western markets that are used to poker-sized cards for a variety of applications - have you ever noticed that even collectible card games like Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are ALL printed on poker-sized cards?  The same goes for popular card games using custom cards, like Uno, Mille Bornes, Rook, Exploding Kittens, etc.  Never heard of Exploding Kittens?  It was only the most heavily-funded Kickstarter project to date - the creators asked for $10,000 and received over EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS in pledges...  Poker-sized cards...

Collectors and artisans can frown upon the idea of a rectangular card all they want - are they putting enough money in your pocket to fund the project and make the cards?  If the answer is NO, then you need to take what they're saying with a grain of salt and LET THEM FROWN.  Like I said, pretend you're a HUGE game company and you want to make a NEW game based on ganjifa cards.  What would you do to make them palatable, acceptable, appealing, fun, etc. for the broadest audience possible?  Hint - you might consider making your game in the MOST POPULAR FORMAT on the global market, to give it that extra degree of familiarity (and prevent your game from being confused with poker chips)...

If you can make a successful game in poker-card format, then, as a STRETCH GOAL, you can make your "ultra-premium extra-special traditional version" with all the bells and whistles you and your audience want.  But you can't get there without first hitting your goal, and you can't hit your goal if your game isn't capturing the imagination of the market you're trying to sell it to.
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Re: Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!
« Reply #6 on: June 16, 2016, 11:39:22 AM »
 

leangyan

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Stay the course until the end of the project.  If it doesn't succeed - THAT'S when you retool.

Yes, there are round poker cards - but they're considered a novelty and aren't terribly popular these days.  I haven't even seen a round deck in years, and usually only in tourist locales along other cheap and cheesy souvenirs.  Oval cards are even more of a novelty - I've never actually held or even seen a deck up close.

I've given you all the advice I can as far as retooling the project to make it more palatable to the masses.  As far as the pricing, Kickstarter now automatically translates project goals and tier pricing into one's own local currency based on recent exchange rates.  You only have to worry about currency conversion when personally mentioning the project to anyone.

If people thought your project was for POKER CHIPS, they clearly didn't read it very well.  But then again, perhaps simplifying the explanation even further would help?  Though as I suggested, going for a standard poker-sized card would give you certain advantages when trying to sell to Western markets that are used to poker-sized cards for a variety of applications - have you ever noticed that even collectible card games like Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are ALL printed on poker-sized cards?  The same goes for popular card games using custom cards, like Uno, Mille Bornes, Rook, Exploding Kittens, etc.  Never heard of Exploding Kittens?  It was only the most heavily-funded Kickstarter project to date - the creators asked for $10,000 and received over EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS in pledges...  Poker-sized cards...

Collectors and artisans can frown upon the idea of a rectangular card all they want - are they putting enough money in your pocket to fund the project and make the cards?  If the answer is NO, then you need to take what they're saying with a grain of salt and LET THEM FROWN.  Like I said, pretend you're a HUGE game company and you want to make a NEW game based on ganjifa cards.  What would you do to make them palatable, acceptable, appealing, fun, etc. for the broadest audience possible?  Hint - you might consider making your game in the MOST POPULAR FORMAT on the global market, to give it that extra degree of familiarity (and prevent your game from being confused with poker chips)...

If you can make a successful game in poker-card format, then, as a STRETCH GOAL, you can make your "ultra-premium extra-special traditional version" with all the bells and whistles you and your audience want.  But you can't get there without first hitting your goal, and you can't hit your goal if your game isn't capturing the imagination of the market you're trying to sell it to.

Thanks Don. Being frank, you've always provided thoughtful advice and suggestions and I really appreciate it. Seems like I need to go through all of it again as well as other feedback and analytics data that I captured for this project. Hope to be back with update soon.
 

Re: Guru Ganjifa - Live on Kickstarter!!!
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2016, 01:47:01 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Thanks Don. Being frank, you've always provided thoughtful advice and suggestions and I really appreciate it. Seems like I need to go through all of it again as well as other feedback and analytics data that I captured for this project. Hope to be back with update soon.

You're welcome.

Here's something more to think about.  You stated that people were confusing your project with poker chips - they weren't looking closely enough at the description.  I'm thinking that perhaps they're of the "tl:dr" category of reader - "too long, didn't read."  If it's longer than a text message, their eyes glaze over.  As you can see, I'm more of a long-form writer - I send emails to my friends, and a few of them never even read to the end!  Attention spans have become way too short these days.

I know that ganjifa has a long, rich history - but to sell it to a modern audience, presenting it as something that's new, exciting and simple might make the difference between a hit and a miss.  The largest part of making it simple is keeping the text short, distilled down to the bare minimum of what's needed to be interested in playing.

Remember I mentioned a board game, shogi - the Japanese version of chess?  I owned an Americanized version of this game and it didn't bother at all to go into the long history of the game - it just came with a single sheet of paper that had perhaps a paragraph of color text and the rest was simply the game rules.  Maybe for the sake of mass marketing, when you relaunch the project, you can provide a short paragraph about ganjifa's history that ends with link that takes interested readers to the full history.  Then you can instead use the project description text to provide a brief explanation of the kinds of games one can play with it.  Keeping the project page short on text might actually help sell the game itself.

Your video - I recall it had pictures of craftsmen creating ganjifa cards in the traditional way.  What if instead, you had a video of people actually playing the game, having fun with it, maybe with a spectator or two looking over with excitement, wanting to play?  When I see television ads for, for example, Monopoly, I never hear a word about the facts of when it was first created or any other elements of the games history, but instead I see kids and adults playing the game and having a good time at it.  To a kid seeing an ad for Monopoly for the first time, especially one of the newer, modernized editions, they might think it was a brand new game that had just been invented.  You can do the same with ganjifa!
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