Ask Valley Games: You Have Questions, Kevin Nesbitt Has Answers

Things have been rough for Valley Games these past few months: Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage was delayed several times; Container barely made it to Essen, yet arrived before preordered copies; the Martin Wallace titles Mordred and Brass have filtered into retail stores, yet again before preordered copies; and the first showings of the new version of Titan have drawn scalding criticism. What’s a small publisher to do?

Well, if you’re Kevin Nesbitt, you take a long list of questions and answer them. Here goes:

Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage
Q: What’s the current status of deliveries of Hannibal? Which countries have received games, and which are still waiting? Why did some gamestores have copies for sale before all the preorder customers received theirs?

A: Hannibal is officially in print in most countries. Shipments were and still are radiating out from two areas—Germany and the United States—so some more distant countries have yet to receive their supply. Australia is one of those that comes to mind. [Editor’s note: Hannibal arrived in Canada on Nov. 28, so Canadian customers should receive their copies within a couple of days.]

We sent out all of our preorder copies before we sent anything to retail stores. This is our promise to our preorder customers, and we stuck to it—but there have been some unfortunate consequences from the way Hannibal was handled, and I’d like to give an example of that:

Consider our United States shipments. Our shipping and fulfillment company sent out all our U.S. preorders within two days—a gargantuan task! On day 3, they began sending shipments to our distributors and retail stores. On days 3 and 4, these shipments began to show up at some retail stores that were extremely close to our shipping company, which is located in Georgia. By comparison, someone in the extreme Northwest of the United States may have needed to wait five days for his game to arrive, given the distance it was being shipped. So, in this case, this person would have had his game shipped first, but seen it turn up for sale on an Internet retail site before he had received his copy, not realizing the location of that Internet retailer.

Of course, since Hannibal is our first BIG preorder distribution—Die Macher was our first game, but was not preordered or sold in nearly the same numbers as Hannibal—we’re still working out some of the kinks. In the future, we’re considering a “phased shipping” process in which a customer’s distance from our warehouse dictates when their game is shipped. The idea behind this is to make sure that everyone receives his or her game on approximately the same day. Whether this will work or not is still in question, but we are certainly working to correct some of the issues we learned about with our Hannibal shipments.

Q: How did copies of Hannibal end up for sale on Tanga.com at a price below the preorder price and before preorder customers received their copies? Is this a failure of the distribution system, the mail, or something else? Is this a failure at all? Can’t Tanga sell games for whatever price it wants?

A: We were a bit shocked to hear this news ourselves. In fact, we didn’t even know about the Tanga sale until the day after it happened, as some customers emailed us to let us know about it.

I need to stress that more than 96% of our American preorder customers received their copy of Hannibal before the Tanga sale began. In addition, some of the remaining preorder customers simply live much further away than Tanga from our shipping facility. Though our preorder customers were shipped to first, there’s no guarantee about how many days it will take for the game to reach them, and this is an issue that we cannot control; we’re not a shipping company.

Tanga is certainly entitled to sell any product that they wish, and we’re honoured that they would seek out our product for sale on their website. In fact, after speaking with a Tanga representative over the phone, I found out that Tanga simply wanted a few copies to sell as a prestige item, a way of thanking their current customers, and creating some “buzz” over the types of products that Tanga is able to offer. I was told that fewer than 20 copies of Hannibal were sold in a sale lasting approximately 20 minutes.

Most importantly perhaps, is that Tanga did not acquire their games from us directly. Based on my discussion with their representative, it appears that they went through regular retail distribution routes to secure the game and were willing to sell for a loss in order to promote the website.

Q: Finally, what’s the status on the general figures?

A: The general figures are nearly ready for their debut. We were not happy with the first versions of the generals that we saw and elected to ask for new ones to be created. Currently, we’re expecting the generals in less than two months, meaning our customers should have them right around the New Year or slightly afterwards. Though they have proven to be a major headache, we’re certain our customers will appreciate the time we’ve spent on them making sure that they are done right.

Container
Q: What’s the current status of Container? It appears that some game stores have already received copies of Container, so is the game out?

A: Container is not yet officially in print in any country. We’re expecting the game to debut within 2-3 weeks. That said, some game stores sent representation to the Essen fair and purchased retail copies there, hence the odd copy popping up here and there. We have not shipped any product to any distributor or game store.

Q: Speaking of Spiel, some people who preordered were steamed that Container showed up first at Essen instead of in their mailboxes. How did this situation come about? And were preorder customers promised the first copies of the game?

A: I can understand that some people were upset about this. Generally speaking, it is Valley Games’ policy to have preorder customer copies of a game sent out first before sending anything to stores or distributors. We do not promise that preorder customers will have the first copies of a new game, but rather that we will send their game to them first. In more than 95% of cases, preorder customers do end up getting their game before their local game store.

With Container, we expected to have a simultaneous release to both stores and Essen shoppers at the fair, as it was originally our timeline to have preorder customers supplied before the fair. Leading up to the fair, we began to realize that this would prove to be an unrealistic timeline and were forced to make a decision. If we were to cancel the debut of Container at Essen, we would have been forced to cancel our entire show, as everything revolved around the game being there. Unfortunately, this also meant that we would have to swallow the entire cost of our Essen show, as everything is arranged and paid for in advance. For such a small company, this would have put us in great danger—having paid so much for a show, then not be able to attend with anything to sell. In the end, we made the tough decision to fly in our copies directly from our factory at great expense, just for the promotional benefit of having the game make it to the show, and as a justification of the great expense we paid to be there.

Q: What’s the situation with the bonus containers that were distributed at Essen?

A: The bonus containers made it to the Essen show late. Once they arrived, we hurriedly unpacked them for inclusion with our Essen games. Unfortunately, because of the rush, we had not immediately realized that the colour pallete of the bonus containers did not match the colours of the game itself.

After a series of phone calls to our factory, they admitted responsibility for the error, and promised to supply replacements for our customers. Once these replacement containers are finished, we’ll make sure that our Essen customers are able to replace their containers if they wish. Some people prefer the wooden containers, so this may not matter to them at all.

Mordred
Q: What’s the current status of deliveries for Mordred? Copies have been showing up for sale on Internet retailers; how did that happen? Was Valley the lone distributor in North America? How was the distribution process supposed to work? Did it work out this way?

A: Mordred is due to arrive in the U.S. any day. We’re going to ship Mordred out as soon as possible, as we know our customers have been waiting for it for a long time. If this means working every night until it is done, so be it.

Valley Games is not the lone distributor of Mordred. There are three that I know of: Valley Games, FRED Distribution, and Martin Wallace himself. Distribution was supposed to occur at a near-simultaneous rate, though it hasn’t exactly worked out in that way.

For some reason, the Valley Games supply of Mordred was late in being released. I’m not about to point fingers at anyone, but it appears that some documentation that would allow for the release of the Valley Games copies was very late in arriving, meaning that the factory was unable to allow the games to leave its storage, so we were the last of the three distribution teams to receive their supply. Copies appearing in stores have arrived from the other two distribution channels; Valley Games will not be supplying retail stores with any copies of Mordred.

In the end, it is our customer who matters to us, and we regret the delay in getting Mordred to them. We’re taking steps to make our delivery system better, and we’ll be making those steps public in the near future.

Brass
Q: Is the situation with Brass the same as Mordred?

A: Brass is scheduled for delivery at the same time as Mordred. For Valley Games customers, this means that the wait is nearly over. I don’t have an exact date for delivery, but we will include any updated information that we have in our newsletter.

Once again, three distribution channels were used, and it seems that Valley Games was the last of these three channels to receive their supply. It’s an unfortunate situation, and we’re making changes to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. For our customers who are waiting patiently for their copy, thank you. We don’t like making our customers wait, and I can promise you that these instances have not gone past us unnoticed or without us making changes to avoid these problems in the future.

Titan
Q: What’s the current production schedule for Titan? The most recent date that I heard was Jan/Feb 2008—is this still valid?

A: At this time, yes, this estimate is still valid. I would suggest that February is the more likely date, as Valley Games has made major changes to its preorder program and will be implementing them soon. Additionally, we are thrilled to be working with Heidelberger on a German edition, and we want to give them enough time to make sure their final product has all the beauty and quality of ours.

Q: Mike Doyle, who is doing graphic design for the game with artwork by Kurt Miller, has been posting samples of the gameboard and creature chits on his blog, sometimes to acclaim from readers and sometimes to titanic complaints. Were you surprised by the negative reaction from some commentors? What influence do gamers have on the final look of Titan, or of any title that appears from Valley Games?

A: No, we were not surprised by some of the complaints. After dealing with the production of Hannibal, we’ve learned that everyone has an idea about how a reprint should work. Let’s face it, a lot of our customers have more experience with the game than even the original designers may have had. That’s a lot of valuable experience and advice that we need to consider. The trick is filtering out all the “noise” and finding the truly well-thought-out and experienced opinions that we’re so open to hearing.

The premise of Valley Games has always been “gamers first,” and we try to listen to everybody who presents a valid point in a reasonable manner. After that though, we make the final decisions needed to ensure that the product we bring to market can be a success, and we know our customers understand that no game can truly please everybody.

Future titles
Q: Valley Games has missed release dates for Hannibal, Container and Brass. Will you adopt a more conservative policy for release dates in the future?

A: We’re looking at ways to speed up our production times, and we believe that we can clear our current crop of announced games before the end of 2008. That being said, 2008 will be our first “all-out” year for production, meaning that we will be doing two or three titles at a time. Unlike other game companies in North America, we are not simply piggy-backing with German publishers. All of our titles are done completely on our own, and this requires that we sometimes move at a slower pace. Certainly 2008 will tell if we need to be more conservative in the number of games we schedule, although we do believe that we can meet this expectation.

[Editor’s note: BGN’s Gone Cardboard has been udpated with the latest expected release dates for titles from Valley Games.]

Q: Many people are complaining about the lack of recent comunication from Valley, and that seems to upset them more than late games; a number of them have already cancelled preorders or announced that they won’t be placing preorders in the future. What’s happening behind the scenes at Valley? Why has communication from Valley been so lax? How are you handling the current crises, and what can be done to prevent problems in the future?

A: I strongly disagree about the lack of communication from Valley Games. First, we answer over 100 emails a day, each with a personalized answer for our customer. (We don’t use “form” answers.) In addition, we make ourselves available to the gaming public on forums such as BoardGameGeek. In fact, I would challenge that our activity on these forums exceeds ALL other game manufacturers worldwide. I cannot think of any other publisher so willing to be involved at the chat forum level.

But perhaps this is where the criticism originates? It’s hard to criticize a company that doesn’t communicate so intensively in open forums, because after all, who will hear the criticism? It’s a bit of a Pandora’s Box, it seems. We’ve set a goal of open communication which people seem to appreciate, but on the other hand, when a thread goes without an official answer for more than 24 hours, people assume that it’s being ignored.

Valley Games consists of three people. At any one time, all three are working to each manage production on a different game, and all the work that this process entails. We’re not like some other publishers; we don’t simply “piggy-back” our print runs. We have to arrange and handle all aspects of production entirely on our own. In addition, we answer many dozens of emails each day, participate in online forums, and handle incoming requests from retailers and distributors.

And this, I might add, isn’t even our day jobs; we all have regular obligations outside Valley Games. I know that I personally have been turning in consecutive 80+ hour weeks over the last few months, and sometimes even that isn’t as many hours as Rik or Torben put in. It’s a BIG job, and while we want to give even more time to our customers, we also need to ask that they respect our human need for sleep and food. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to roll my eyes when I see a complaint that we’ve taken more than eight hours to respond to someone’s email, and I often wonder if people think we’re some kind of publishing giant, with both money and manpower to burn.

There is a real issue, in my opinion, in the recent lack of website updating. Though we do continue to issue our newsletter, primarily on a monthly basis, I do agree that this is not enough. We’ve managed to agree on some major internal changes which should allow for us to keep our website more updated with recent news than in the past. We’ll be making these changes public in the next few days, and this should allow our customers the ability to have many of their questions answered without necessarily needing to wait for an email response.

My thanks to Kevin Nesbitt for taking the time to answer so many questions!

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