Patrick Korner: Mini-Interview with Mark Kaufmann of Days of Wonder

Days of Wonder has been in the news quite a bit recently – from Ticket to Ride Nordic edition to the recently-announced Memoir ’44 Air Pack, there seems to be a fair bit going on – not to mention some fairly strong fan reaction!  I thought I’d send DoW’s Mark Kaufmann some questions on these and other topics, and he has graciously answered them in detail, including a fair amount of info I haven’t seen published elsewhere yet.  So, without further ado, I present a mini-interview with Mark:

Patrick Korner: Will you or Eric Hautemont be at Essen this year?

Mark Kaufmann: Neither Eric, nor I will be at Essen this year. Our European office does a great job of managing our booth and events at Essen and frankly if we are there I think we just get in their way. :-) Besides, we’re too busy with the M ‘44 Air Pack and a few other surprises!

PK: How have sales of BattleLore been, and what kind of feedback have you been getting from gamers re: the expansions released thus far, their contents and the prices?

MK: We’ve been thrilled and frankly even a bit overwhelmed with the response from players to BattleLore and the expansions. Sales of the expansions have exceeded our estimates and while we still have a few copies available on our webstore, we underestimated demand in the channel and had to allocate our stock to distributors and resellers from day one. This is one thing we’re working on fixing but it may take some time to get products back in stock.

PK: I know I’ve seen at least one post on BoardGameGeek lamenting the dearth of $10-15 expansions - do you have anything to comment about that?

MK: Because BattleLore is growing into a game system rather than a one-off product, it’s been a balancing act and a learning experience in terms of satisfying customer requirements, reseller wishes, as well as our own profit margin criteria. We’re still making adjustments as we go and there are still a multitude of form factors and types of expansions we will be experimenting with. We have NOT given up on the idea of having some sub-$10 expansions for this system and Memoir ‘44. What form these end up precisely taking remains to be seen and is still a bit far off in the future for us to comment on further.

PK: I’m assuming the Ticket to Ride Swiss expansion will be out at Essen?

MK: The Ticket to Ride Swiss Map Expansion is scheduled for early October, so yes, it will be available at Essen. It’s a multi-lingual version, so that means it can be available worldwide at roughly the same time.

PK: Will the Nordic version of the game be released by then as well?  I know the game’s seeing release in Scandinavia only, but do you know if DoW or anyone else has plans to make some copies of the game available at Essen as well?

MK: The Nordic version will also be out in October, but we don’t plan to sell it at Essen. All the copies we are able to manufacture are already pre-sold to our distributors in Scandinavia.

PK: Do you have anything you’d like to add to the debate of expansion (ie Swiss) vs. full game (ie. Marklin, Nordic)?  I’m assuming that the decision to release a full box vs. expansion is made separately for each title and is dependent on a number of market factors, but is there anything else that hasn’t already been covered many times before?

MK: The Swiss map is really the first opportunity we’ve had to release a Ticket to Ride map as an expansion because the plastic components and the train card decks in both the original Ticket to Ride and TtR Europe are compatible with that map. And the vast majority of players interested in the Swiss map will already own one of the first two games.

The decision to make the Nordic Countries map a full version came from input from our distributors in those markets who felt strongly that this localized version would draw a lot of new players to the game, who hadn’t necessarily been exposed to the other versions. We currently have no plans to release the Nordic version in the rest of the world, but then again neither did we envision selling the T2R Swiss Map as a physical product when we asked Alan to design it for the Computer game’s release!

PK: Does DoW have anything else in the works for Essen or beyond that you can talk about at this time? 

MK: Nope, mum’s the word, though I would not expect any surprise for Essen (beyond the already publicly discussed products). Discussing longer term plans is not something we’ll do either, as we like to keep a sense of surprise and wonder in our line ;-).

PK: I’ve seen several comments from gamers that seem to imply that DoW has shifted the lion’s share of its development and production muscle to expansions and new versions of existing franchise titles.  When I interviewed Eric just before the BattleLore launch, he indicated that DoW had no intention of cutting back on other titles; any lull was more the result of a lack of quality submissions, not capacity.  Is this still the case or have plans changed somewhat?

MK: Yes, it is true that we are very focused on further building our main game franchises (Ticket to Ride, BattleLore and Memoir ‘44), especially in the short term. Then again, it is easy to forget that it was less than four months ago that we released Colosseum! While that may seem like a lifetime for a lot of BGN readers, it’s still brand new for our retailers and the vast majority of our customers, including most Essen visitors!

On the other hand, we still believe there are many more games released in the market each year than should be (at least from a business perspective). Our strategy has always been 1-2 new games max each year; and we’re very comfortable releasing zero if none match our publishing criteria during a given year.

While this might not satisfy everyone’s wishes, this strategy has served us well in the past, and is the only way we know of to maintain the quality we’ve become known for.

PK: Do you have any comment on the recent rash of toy recalls that have turned public attention to Chinese manufacturerse and their supposed lack of standards and inspection?

MK: We’ve been paying attention to these issues since day one of starting the company before we even had a single product. As a matter of fact the very first trip that Eric and I made out of the country, back in 2002, was to visit a manufacturer’s operations and get first hand opinions for ourselves.

PK: What safeguards does DoW utilize to ensure that substandard materials or production processes are not used in the manufacture of its games and game components?

MK: Because the European governments have much more stringent laws and testing procedures for imported toys and games than the US, and because we release all our games worldwide at launch, we must submit samples of all new products to a testing lab before we have approval to bring them into the EU countries. While it’s a bit of an administrative pain, it allows us to have confidence that our products are safe.

PK: Random question: Why are there a star, a rocket ship and what looks like a radar screen on the DoW homepage?  To my knowledge there’s no DoW game set in space… :)

MK: My multiple choice answer:
A) It’s a tease for an upcoming product…
B) Our Web Designer is a Trekkie…
C) It’s totally random… I have no idea!

Many thanks to Mark for taking time out of his busy day to provide these answers!

© 2007 Patrick Korner

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Comments:

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Fantastic Article and great information.  Also a very good read.  I’m looking forward to what is next from DoW. Thank you Patrick and Mark. Posted by Brent Mair on Sep 7, 2007 at 06:28 PM | #

Mark is exactly right, IMO, that there are more games released in the market each year than what should be.  To the regular “fan”, all these releases seem like a great thing and it is viewed as an indicator of health.  Not all is as it seems. From a business perspective, the sheer volume of all of these releases serves as bellweather for longer term challenges for the industry.  Eagle & Avalon Hill are two game companies that suffered for a number of reasons.  But Mark’s comments are a good read for understanding the logic behind why Days of Wonder is profitable and continues to be a progessive player in the industry today.  My hats off to them, because they run their business soooo well.  I have always thought so.... Mark’s comments about the recent release date for Colosseum and the fact that they won’t publish a anything they consider a substandard title… were especially astute. Patrick, great interview… a very interesting read. Posted by Ryan Bretsch on Sep 8, 2007 at 01:29 PM | #

Thanks for the interview Patrick, I enjoyed reading it! :) Posted by Tom Rosen on Sep 10, 2007 at 05:30 PM | #

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