An Honest Inquiry About BD

[Intymike]

Hmmmm....I hate to point out the obvious solution, but clearly selling one of your children would clear up all the car bills and build the hobby slush fund up for both of you quite nicely.

Some days I lament the fact that I only have one child. Lol!

 

 

No, you can't get other peoples children for your hobby lair. (hm, sounds a bit like a sentence from REV)

[m-crew]

If they are unemployed, sell them as "broke, for parts".

now that would be most of the youth these days.. lol hard to find jobs when most employers prefer temps and contract workers these days..

[+cmart604]

Actually, you'd be surprised to know that children don't command the same price they once did. The market is drying up.

 

You're better off renting them out instead of selling. You could try auctioning (with a high reserve) too, if it's exceptionally cute.

Bahahahahaha!

[+intvsteve]

I use my children for testing.

 

 

 

 

Intellivision games, of course. Silly.

[+cmart604]

 

 

No, you can't get other peoples children for your hobby lair. (hm, sounds a bit like a sentence from REV)

But I would pay them fair wages. I just need them to clean, test and sort carts and occasionally take packages to the post office.

[+Tarzilla]

 

Don't BS me. You KNOW that is not 'all I had to say'.

 

You really should stop obsessing about this hobby.

Surely you have noticed a pattern with [ignored User]...most of us have

 

I'm not sure why people forget that to extend a contract with any company requires the services of one or more lawyers...they charge just to think about reading the existing contract let alone the negotiation and drafting of the extension.

That cost alone would have forced anycompany to decide it was not cost effective vs what the projected future sales would have covered, no matter what armchair experts think they know is an unfulfilled market.

 

[ignored User] is not worth the increased blood pressure, this is your business but you also need to enjoy the process (at least most of the time )

 

I am curious if you noticed a jump in sales from the post on Reddit? I saw the post on /r/INTV but not one in the main /r/retrogaming sub which has a much larger audience.

[fdr4prez]

Hmmmm....I hate to point out the obvious solution, but clearly selling one of your children would clear up all the car bills and build the hobby slush fund up for both of you quite nicely.

Some days I lament the fact that I only have one child. Lol!

 

That's a nice suggestion.... Now if only I had twins, then I could sell of my duplicate(s) like Eric sold off his duplicates

[+intellivotion]

Great dark humor in this thread!!

 

Thanks, I needed it

[DZ-Jay]

 

That's a nice suggestion.... Now if only I had twins, then I could sell of my duplicate(s) like Eric sold off his duplicates

 

Yeah, and the best thing is that your wife need not know. All you need to do is to avoid situations where both are required in the same room at the same time.

[fdr4prez]

 

Yeah, and the best thing is that your wife need not know. All you need to do is to avoid situations where both are required in the same room at the same time.

 

I can get a lower cost "stunt double" that wears a similar wig, and always faces away from my wife.

 

Or for a more tech savvy approach I can do what they did in The Patty Duke Show for Patty and her "identical cousin". Then my wife would have to walk around wearing Google Glasses, or a VR headset, all the time.

[+freewheel]

 

I'm not sure why people forget that to extend a contract with any company requires the services of one or more lawyers...they charge just to think about reading the existing contract let alone the negotiation and drafting of the extension.

That cost alone would have forced anycompany to decide it was not cost effective vs what the projected future sales would have covered, no matter what armchair experts think they know is an unfulfilled market.

 

Lawyers, plus whatever licensing cost is involved. You and I both know from experience the ridiculous numbers that get thrown around. So let me spell it out for the Erics of the world, in case anyone's curious:

 

While each contract is different, and how each company treats their IP is different, and it's all confidential, you can generally ignore everything that your "common sense" tells you. First of all, NO ONE is willing to license their IP on any kind of basis that makes an indefinite licensing agreement even remotely feasible. So if you've ever thought "hey, why can't Elektronite just give First Star $5-10 per copy sold, forever" - nope, sorry, that's never how it works in the real world.

 

What usually happens is a variation on this: you pay $XXXX(X) just to start talking. Which is why 99.9% of licensed properties out there will never, ever appear on the Intellivision in any kind of legit format. You'd need to sell thousands, and often tens of thousands of copies to make it worthwhile. Remember that shitty kids cartoon from the 1970s that ran for one season, hardly anyone remembers, and has never seen a revival since in any media format? Well, the rights holders currently want $10,000 for any kind of licensing agreement. Now think about what happens with something even remotely recognizable. Hell, BC's Quest For Tires isn't exactly a hot property in 2016 but it still had to be released incognito.

 

If you do manage to find someone reasonable, like First Star, things go a few ways. But again, it's never, ever some kind of loosey-goosey "just pay us $X per copy and we're cool". There are base contract amounts. Possibly (usually) extra costs per unit sold. And it's time limited. And here's where I begin to pull numbers entirely out of my ass. Let's say First Star was really cool about it, and were willing to license out a basic contract for $500 per year, and $5 per copy sold. That means every year, Elektronite has to give these guys $505 just to sell ONE COPY. And I highly doubt the agreement was anywhere near this generous. Multiply some of those numbers a few times and you'll get into more realistic territory.

 

Now, you may think the people publishing games for 37 year old consoles are raking in the dough, but let me tell you, they're not. While the profit margins aren't $1/copy, it's not like you make $50 on each copy sold. There's a minimum number of copies you need to sell, each year, just to break even. I'd be gobsmacked if BD was selling 50 copies per year at this point, once the initial demand dried up. When you factor in the licensing costs, you might barely be making a profit. So you might think hey, any money is better than no money, right? Well sure - if your time is free. Most of us have jobs and lives. You don't order infinite boxes, carts, labels, manuals, or overlays. You order a certain amount. And once those are gone, you need to order more. The time involved in ordering all of those pieces, putting them together, and shipping out the games is not 0. And for what? A couple of hundred dollars when it's all said and done? With the risk that you might LOSE hundreds if not thousands of dollars?

 

This hobby/business/whatever is a HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK. The people involved dedicate hundreds of hours of their lives just to make one game happen, and most people aren't really making any money at it. I'd say minimum wage pays more than homebrew production for all but a select few. I'm not trying to rant, or complain. I'm doing this right now and it's a metric asston of fun. But it's a ridiculous amount of your time and the returns are very minimal in the end. If I had to pay a licensing fee on top of things? I doubt I'd ever bother. Part of why I've been so personally nosy with BD (and William has been very gracious in answering my questions, when he can) is that I'm impressed that anyone's actually pulled it off, while still trying to operate a profitable business.

 

Just remember: your "common sense" ideas of how this works are almost always wrong.

[mr_me]

Sounds like common sense. I have a question. Do these time limited contracts and/or license agreements typically cover the production of copies of the game or the sale of those copies. For example the contract expires so the publisher is unable to produce more copies of a title but can sell the current inventory beyond the expiry date. I suppose a contract can be written either way but typically how is unsold inventory dealt with. For example, my understanding with all of the licenses that Mattel had with their games, some of the third party licenses did not transfer to Intellivision Inc but automatically expired when Mattel Electronics closed. Intellivision Inc was permitted to sell all existing inventory as is, but to produce more copies they had to remove the trademarks except where it was difficult or unreasonable to do so (ie. software modifications).

[JasonlikesINTV]

...a metric asston of fun.

I'm taking this.

[Eric7100]

Lawyers, plus whatever licensing cost is involved. You and I both know from experience the ridiculous numbers that get thrown around. So let me spell it out for the Erics of the world, in case anyone's curious:

 

While each contract is different, and how each company treats their IP is different, and it's all confidential, you can generally ignore everything that your "common sense" tells you. First of all, NO ONE is willing to license their IP on any kind of basis that makes an indefinite licensing agreement even remotely feasible. So if you've ever thought "hey, why can't Elektronite just give First Star $5-10 per copy sold, forever" - nope, sorry, that's never how it works in the real world.

 

What usually happens is a variation on this: you pay $XXXX(X) just to start talking. Which is why 99.9% of licensed properties out there will never, ever appear on the Intellivision in any kind of legit format. You'd need to sell thousands, and often tens of thousands of copies to make it worthwhile. Remember that shitty kids cartoon from the 1970s that ran for one season, hardly anyone remembers, and has never seen a revival since in any media format? Well, the rights holders currently want $10,000 for any kind of licensing agreement. Now think about what happens with something even remotely recognizable. Hell, BC's Quest For Tires isn't exactly a hot property in 2016 but it still had to be released incognito.

 

If you do manage to find someone reasonable, like First Star, things go a few ways. But again, it's never, ever some kind of loosey-goosey "just pay us $X per copy and we're cool". There are base contract amounts. Possibly (usually) extra costs per unit sold. And it's time limited. And here's where I begin to pull numbers entirely out of my ass. Let's say First Star was really cool about it, and were willing to license out a basic contract for $500 per year, and $5 per copy sold. That means every year, Elektronite has to give these guys $505 just to sell ONE COPY. And I highly doubt the agreement was anywhere near this generous. Multiply some of those numbers a few times and you'll get into more realistic territory.

 

Now, you may think the people publishing games for 37 year old consoles are raking in the dough, but let me tell you, they're not. While the profit margins aren't $1/copy, it's not like you make $50 on each copy sold. There's a minimum number of copies you need to sell, each year, just to break even. I'd be gobsmacked if BD was selling 50 copies per year at this point, once the initial demand dried up. When you factor in the licensing costs, you might barely be making a profit. So you might think hey, any money is better than no money, right? Well sure - if your time is free. Most of us have jobs and lives. You don't order infinite boxes, carts, labels, manuals, or overlays. You order a certain amount. And once those are gone, you need to order more. The time involved in ordering all of those pieces, putting them together, and shipping out the games is not 0. And for what? A couple of hundred dollars when it's all said and done? With the risk that you might LOSE hundreds if not thousands of dollars?

 

This hobby/business/whatever is a HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK. The people involved dedicate hundreds of hours of their lives just to make one game happen, and most people aren't really making any money at it. I'd say minimum wage pays more than homebrew production for all but a select few. I'm not trying to rant, or complain. I'm doing this right now and it's a metric asston of fun. But it's a ridiculous amount of your time and the returns are very minimal in the end. If I had to pay a licensing fee on top of things? I doubt I'd ever bother. Part of why I've been so personally nosy with BD (and William has been very gracious in answering my questions, when he can) is that I'm impressed that anyone's actually pulled it off, while still trying to operate a profitable business.

 

Just remember: your "common sense" ideas of how this works are almost always wrong.

 

Thanks, Free!

[First Spear]

I can't believe another poison thread by E---- has once again sucked up time I could have otherwise used for developing my own game ideas.

I have got to get more disciplined about coming to this forum.

[Rev]

I can't believe another poison thread by E---- has once again sucked up time I could have otherwise used for developing my own game ideas.

I have got to get more disciplined about coming to this forum.

Who is "E----"?

 

Eric should be "E---".

[m-crew]

Who is "E----"?

 

Eric should be "E---".

are you sure its not "E-------"

[DZ-Jay]

Whenever I get a notification for a new post in this thread, I misread the subject line as "An Honest Inquiry About VD" and think, there must be a better forum for that!

[m-crew]

lmao! sometime someones post could be VD as in verbal diarrhea....

[Eric7100]

...another poison thread by E----...

 

I'm sorry you feel this way. Have a nice day.

[+SoulBuster]

Sounds like common sense. I have a question. Do these time limited contracts and/or license agreements typically cover the production of copies of the game or the sale of those copies. For example the contract expires so the publisher is unable to produce more copies of a title but can sell the current inventory beyond the expiry date. I suppose a contract can be written either way but typically how is unsold inventory dealt with. For example, my understanding with all of the licenses that Mattel had with their games, some of the third party licenses did not transfer to Intellivision Inc but automatically expired when Mattel Electronics closed. Intellivision Inc was permitted to sell all existing inventory as is, but to produce more copies they had to remove the trademarks except where it was difficult or unreasonable to do so (ie. software modifications).

 

I'll just say this. If it was not purchased at retail by end of day 8/15/2016, we cannot sell it now.

 

That being said, I did personally buy a some copies, yes at retail. I have not offered them for sale on my site yet as I have agreed to discontinue the original page and craft a disclosure about how these copies came to me. These copies are part of the finite number of serials that were sold before 8/15/2016 ended.

[jaybird3rd]

I'm sorry you feel this way. Have a nice day.

So what do you think, everybody? Would you call this passive-aggressive, or just plain aggressive-aggressive?

 

I appreciate that William and freewheel and SoulBuster have taken the time in this thread to explain things that should never have had to be explained in the first place. It will probably fall on deaf ears with the Erics of the world, who will be just as petulant and picayune and demanding when the next limited release comes along, but I'm sure the rest of us found it very enlightening.

 

The only thing I would add is that, whether the developers and publishers of games for vintage systems are doing it as a business or as a hobby, they are under no obligation to provide their games to anyone, nor are they under any obligation to keep their games available indefinitely even if it doesn't make financial sense for them to do so.

[m-crew]

So what do you think, everybody? Would you call this passive-aggressive, or just plain aggressive-aggressive?

I would say Bipolar- you never know what you are going to get from Eric, but I don't think he means any harm most of the time. It just comes out the wrong way from him .. because of his ups and downs.. my guess..

[+Gemintronic]

Everyone that bemoans limitations on the previous Boulderdash licensing completely ignores those that say: "Hey! Let's make a non-branded game with similar gameplay!"

 

Pining about what could have been but ignoring real options to move forward is more than futile.

[BBWW]

Another thread about nothing! What is the big deal here? I can't find one. A license ran out. Period. Anyone who wanted the game now has one. If not they will be available in the re-sell market. So buy it there. If you could not afford it or missed it, that's life, get over it!!

 

No one cares about the stupid first world problems of video game collecting on a 35 year old system. Some people can't buy bread.

 

Yawn!