Reply: Glory to Rome:: General:: Re: legal advice

by topherr

hairrorist wrote:

I think the main reason a lot of people are angry is just how brazenly the company is skimping on every aspect of the project.

I'm sorry you feel this way, Joe. We've made plenty of mistakes. I just don't get how we could be criticized for "skimping." While there have been some quality issues, it is pretty clear that the actual paper stock and component stock are high, higher than any other comparably priced game I've seen. We paid extra for this. We offered free or nearly free international shipping. We paid extra for this, and are still paying extra for this. We also offered a free game to every single supporter as a way of saying sorry for delays. We paid for this too. Not sure where skimping comes in.

hairrorist wrote:

The shipping method was especially bizarre and amounted to CGF asking their customers to beg for a free PO Box and storage space at thousands of local gaming stores across America.

That is truly surreal.

That's an interesting way of looking at it, for sure. We've had really good cooperation with stores. Particularly because every store that agreed to accept supporter copies (even a single one) has received a free demo copy of Glory to Rome Black Box. Yeah, we paid for this too.

hairrorist wrote:

Combine that with long production delays, a high rate of manufacturing error and atrocious QA review with the shipping product, consumers have every reason to question the professionalism of CGF and their ability to follow through on their new promises.

I'm curious as to how you feel you know exactly how high the rate of manufacturing error is. What I've seen is completely anecdotal, and cuts both ways. Look, there are clearly quality issues, and we're addressing them. We get that people are upset at us - with good reason - and we are working to correct this. It is up to each individual whether they want to buy our future games or not.

My personal view is that our company is very good at some things and obviously sub-par at other things. I believe that Montana, Quills, and Pala are each above average games in their respective niche (poker-themed medium-weight, word-game-that's-not-a-word-game filler, and clever trick-taking game, respectively). Frankly, a lot of beautiful looking games out there with pretty pastel colors in big shiny boxes (mostly full of air), just aren't that good. The plain fact is that our company would not have survived our other various problems so far, including terrible art, without actually developing better than average games. We've got Rob ;)

Now that Heiko Gunter has taken over as Artistic Director, our art made a pretty big turnaround. Peronally, I'm pretty stoked at how interesting the art is, and how different it is from most of the rest of the industry. Judge for yourself what you think our next couple of game covers:





So we've got good games, with good art. That ought to be the hard part. My job is to make our production and distribution live up to the high standards that Rob and Heiko have set. I get that it's an open question whether I'll be able to do this.

hairrorist wrote:

This is not the behavior of a company that is truly dedicated to producing a quality product. This is what an amateur juggler looks like with two flaming chainsaws in the air.

We leave it to each game enthusiast to judge for himself or herself. These last couple of months I've certainly felt like a am amateur juggler at times (ironically I do juggle, poorly, IRL) trying to catch flaming chainsaws. I believe I can do the job pretty smoothly, with the support of the ops team in Boston. I guess we'll see if I'm right :D

As I've written many times, I welcome criticism because it makes us better, so long as the criticism is fact-based. Keep it comin'.

topherr
director of production
cgf