[Icehouse] Making new product decisions

[Robin Vinopal]

--On September 7, 2007 9:29:03 AM -0700 David Artman 
<david at davidartman.com> wrote:

> 1) Is this game under a CC or Open license, so that one of us may put it
> onto the IcehouseGames.org wiki (or will Andy do so, copyright or not)?

Looney Labs owns the copyright to all games created by Andy. Please feel 
free to make pages about any of Andy's games on the icehouse wiki, but 
instead of listing the rules again, please point to his rules on 
wunderland.com. That way if changes are made, the two sites won't get out 
of sync.

> 3) Did I see a new product in the video: a printed Twin Win board with
> movement arrows and the rules? Surely, you won't put out another coaster
> game until you've release Xeno Martian Coasters?! There's now, I think,
> five games that need the distinction of coaster color and that support
> over five players, so folks have to mark-up a  set of Rainbow Coasters
> big Xs or something (ugly and not particularly easy to use/see).

Martian Coasters has arrows in the Xeno colors, so it can be used with Xeno 
colors. There are currently no plans to make a Xeno Martian Coasters 
product. As for Twin Win, the printed board you saw in Andy's video might 
turn into a postcard one day, but there are no current plans for doing 
anything with it in the near future.

I'm sorry you (and others) are frustrated that we haven't made many of the 
products you've suggested. We are currently over budget for new product 
development and if this holiday's sales aren't where we need them to be, 
things will get rougher for the company. And when I say that, I mean we 
need to increase sales by hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to get 
this company to a better place - which means making hard decisions on what 
we think we can sell that will bring in that much, fast. We're hoping 
Zombie Fluxx will help us achieve that goal. Some of the smaller, popular 
games, like Martian Coasters and Are You A Werewolf? may seem like hot 
products, but each of these products has brought in just over $2,000 
revenue so far this year - a couple of orders of magnitude less than we 
need - which is why we aren't spending any more time or effort on them 
*right now*. Deciding to pump money into a product might also mean we'd 
have to downsize payroll in order to "find" the cash (i.e., lay someone 
off). A very hard decision that I wouldn't wish on anyone. We already had 
to say goodbye to some beloved employees this year because our sales 
weren't high enough to cover salaries.

We really appreciate everyone's enthusiasm and passion for suggesting new 
product ideas, but please don't be offended when we aren't able to act on 
them quickly. We're trying to make the best decisions possible on what to 
spend our money on, and while it all may not make sense to people looking 
in from the outside, we are trying very hard to do the right thing for the 
company so that it will be around for many, many years to come, and 
hopefully be a lot more prosperous so that we can get back to the business 
of cranking out tons of cool new products each year.

If anyone wishes to chat further about this, please contact me offline.

Thanks,

Robin Vinopal
Chief Operating Officer
Looney Labs
http://looneylabs.com/
Phone: 301-441-1019   Fax: 301-441-4871
P.O. Box 761, College Park, MD 20741
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