Sunday yesterday marked 1 month since the announcement that SFG is getting back to the pitch.
The promised blog post about GB as a business case was posted, and for some reason a lot of the bitter salt from ages past surfaced from the ocean around this blog post.
My personal take first: Having been disappointed before is reasonable. Still being angry really isn’t.
Read the blog post for yourself:
https://steamforged.com/en-eu/blogs/brands/guild-ball-business-case-2024
The post is something that was asked about during the Questions & Answers youtube live session held a few weeks ago, and SFG delivered as they had promised. There still isn’t all that much hard data to base financial decisions on, but it’s a small insight into how the product is viewed by the company.
I think it was a great post overall, and I’m still happy with how SFG have conducted everything during the last month.
Many others think along the lines of: “SFG means that “if the game makes us money we will keep pushing forward. If it doesn’t then we will drop it. The community must be our flag bearers once again and do all the marketing for us… again. Maybe we won’t blame you when we pull out again and have to “re-evaluate”. I think that is pretty close?”
Me personally, I disagree. I rather read it as “We at SFG care about this game and really want it to survive. If it really doesn’t make us any money, we will have to think again about what to do. But we really think it will work out.“
Some store owners have spoken up about not being able to sell Guild Ball products in their physical stores. That might pose a problem for SFG and the Guild Ball community, but it really shouldn’t be. Stores that host events or allow players to use the store space to play will inevitably sell paints and other games and other hobby stuff, and those who stock drinks and snacks will sell more of those too.
Having been a LFGS store manager myself some years ago, I know that getting people into the store and getting people that spend time in the store are both vitally important to survive.
While Guild Ball might be a long time coming in getting to shelves in stores, if ever (we don’t know this, but let’s expect that for now) it can still be a tremendous source of income for stores that cooperate well with their local community. At least there is very little for a store to lose by letting people organise events in available store spaces. If it’s fully booked for a long time ahead that’s great for the store, and that wouldn’t change regardless of how popular and available GB would be.
A healthy scepticism based on past events I can have respect for. Having been disappointed and angry a few years ago, that I can understand. But I feel that SFG are genuine in their expressed feelings to want to make good on all of it this time around.
Still being salty or angry after 3-4 years and through the whole pandemic, I just don’t see it. Seeing all of this getting renewed life the way it has during the last month has been incredible.
Apart from the mini and card, these pictures below are all the salt we need:
