Anatomy of a $631,230 Kickstarter Video

How does reselling work in this context? Are there any restrictions about selling this for $50-$60 in a retail shop?

Also, what are the return policies for Amazon in this case? I've heard about resellers buying out individual channels, selling the inventory at a markup, then returning unsold inventory to the original seller.

Very interesting indeed. Obviously they'll be reselling them, but via which outlet is anybody's guess. Don't seem them on eBay yet. Anyway, that's quite a big investment. I hope they've done their homework.

Keep us updated on this?

Yeah, I was coming here to say that.

I've done two kickstarters for comic books, and my print run has been about 4x what I actually got from the Kickstarter. I've sold the extra copies of book 1 over the past year; I'll do the same with book 2 over the next. Basically I walk away from a Kickstarter with about $0 cash profit, and a nice pile of inventory to sell.

Of course, the margins on graphic novels are a LOT better than on board games. And they're easier to stick in a closet, easier to ship to a convention, etc.

I just bought one on Amazon for $45 (including shipping). It appears that price is still available, so they probably have some stock remaining.

I'm working on bringing the game back in some form, but right now my priorities are my awesome Kickstarter backers first, and getting the rest of this production run in lots of kids' hands second. And then going on vacation with my family third.

Stay tuned. :)

Also a backer that didn't watch the video. I've always been more swayed by ideas and text than videos anyway. We got our copy, and it's in christmas wrap right now, burning a hole in my floor underneath our tree. I can't wait to try it out on my 3.5 year old!

RoboRally is a fantastic concept, but imho the game is terribly bogged down - they hyper-dense maps, the long areas, the card-locking damage mechanic, the confusing conveyor-belt-turn rules... it makes the game take forever, and usually one player had a breakaway lead anyways.

I'd still recommend any programmer give it a try, it's a brilliant game that makes your brain grind hard. It just has its flaws.

If this "Robot Turtles" game is a stripped-down form of it, I'd love to give that a try.

And no, you can't copyright gameplay mechanics. As long as no actual art or verbiage of the rule-book is copied, a game can be copied freely.

> Can you patent or copywrite gameplay mechanics?

No, but Wizards has in the past, so it really depends, like everything else, on how much money you have.

Robo rally was invented by the legendary Richard Garfield. (His next game was Magic the Gathering). I had the good fortune to talk to him about robot turtles before it launched. He had an awesome suggestion to add sokoban style crates to the game, which turned into a stretch goal, which wound up in production. Richard is awesome.