The Mayday Games Blog

Hello Mayday Fans! It has been way to long since I sat down and wrote anything to let you all know what is going on in the world of Mayday Games.  It is Tax Season which means I'm forced to reflect upon the last year and, for better or worse, render an accounting of how things have gone.  The good news is that Mayday continues to grow and we have a lot of great things in the works for the rest of 2015.   But before I spill the beans on that let's look back at our prior years.

Kickstarter

It will come as no surprise to anyone when I mention Kickstarter first and foremost.  We were totally blown away with 2014's KS results, due mostly to the stunning results of our final campaign of 2014, Viceroy.  If you haven't heard of Viceroy you owe it to yourself to check it out.  I have to say that the success of the project was due in no small part to this "Final Thoughts" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iLoOGx7yiU But even more in the forefront of all our minds are Mayday are our other unfulfilled projects.  There is Meteor which should begin shipping in the next 2-3 weeks, but more importantly there are 4 other projects that are not quite finished.  That includes Coconuts Duo, Hold Your Breath, Chopstick Dexterity Mega Challenge 3000, and Dead Man's Draw.  Sure those backers of those games to the US, Canada and most of the rest of the world got their games long ago, but our loyal fans in the EU (Europe) have not! We are keenly aware of this and are anxious for all of those to finally be delivered.  We went into those projects determined NOT to airmail product from the USA to the EU and force our backers to pay more customs/duties/VAT and so we set up a process to get the games into the EU from the US via boat and then from there to backers.  The good news is that when these backers DO finally get their much-anticipated rewards, they will be coming with no customs or extra fees, since we pay for all of the VAT tax when the product comes into the EU initially.  The bad news is that we had to carefully sort through every single order to ensure we sent everything that was needed for those rewards to ship AND we had to ship them via a freight forwarder, which seems like it is taking FOREVER. We know this is frustrating, especially since some retailers in Europe have ordered the product via other means from a US or other distributor who now has the game already.  The good news is that while some of these games may be available on a limited basis already, they will NOT include the KS bonus rewards or extras or add-ons that our backers get.  I also expect in almost every case that the few retailers offering these games already will have to charge more for the game than our backers pledged for since they had to airmail them in from oversseas.  We know this is NOT an ideal situation and we are very sorry, which is why we are committed to this NOT happening again.  In fact, while we have several games that are ready or nearly ready for Kickstarter, we are NOT going to launch them until these 4 older projects are totally fulfilled, and we have a good dent on Meteor and Viceroy too.

The Path Forward

Please know that OUR GOAL has always been to fulfill these rewards as soon as possible, we want nothing more than to get these out to you. Suzi and Natalie are working tirelessly on processing comments, address changes, order modifications and communicating with lots of backers who are understandably frustrated.  Let me be clear, this is OUR FAULT and we are striving to fix it as quickly as possible.  We feel your pain and are frustrated too.  So what can be done going forward?  Well lots of things.  Of course we can fulfill these 4 projects to Europe but what else? Well while Meteor is already late, about 4 months late.  We had hoped to deliver it in December 2014 and here it is early April.  We aren't happy about this either but the good news is that the game is coming in within the next 2 weeks.  It is already in the Port and we are just waiting for it to clear through the mess that is the West Coast Port and arrive to us in Utah.  We expect that to happen soon, but we are at the mercy of the port.  We are just glad the game is produced and we are ready and waiting to fulfill it.  The other good news is that we got a few copies airmailed in for advanced reviewer copies and the response to the game has been amazing.  Check out Bower's Game Corner's final thoughts on the game, we couldn't pay him to give the game a better review!  I mean he says straight up "This is the best finished game I have played in 2015"...  but watch his full analysis below: [embed]https://youtu.be/tURwm8zxOPQ?t=10m47s[/embed]   Yeah... pretty good review for this game, so hold on a bit longer faithful backers!

Viceroy KS Fulfillment

So what about for our next game after that... Viceroy?  We have over 5,000 backers for this one compared to our usual 1,000-2,000 backers, so how are we going to do this?  Well since we have had such poor luck getting rewards out ourselves, especially with all the problems from the Port, we are trying something totally different.  Rather than get all of the rewards into our Utah warehouse, we are sending all rewards outside of the USA at the same time as we send them to the boat to ship to the US.  This means that our international backers SHOULD get the game even before we do! That's right, we are using a local fulfillment house near the factory to airmail everyone's rewards out. We fully expect all non-US backers to get the game before we even get the boat to the US, and since we will still ship out our US rewards at least 2 weeks before any distributor gets the game, that means it will be IMPOSSIBLE for a store to have the game before any backer.  Ok, well that is for everyone except our store backers, who of course will get it ahead of time too.  Still though, there are only 29 of those worldwide and they did back the project too, so they deserve it early as well.  The good news is that, while Viceroy is still going to be late, it will not be NEARLY as late as these last projects. We are trying this as a test run for all future projects but expect this may be the way we go in the future for all projects, if the feedback from our backers is good.

Final Thoughts

So where does Mayday go from here?  Well for one, we have learned our lesson about our release dates.  We are committed to setting more realistic release dates for all our projects in the future and hope these projects will be the last ones we are ever late on.  Yes, we really expect that to be the case.  Please bear with us all you loyal fans, we really are trying and we really are SORRY for all the delays with our latest projects. In other news, our warehouse has never been more full and we've never had fewer out of stock products before.  Yes we are out of our super-popular MDG-7041 card sleeve right now, but that is really our only major product that is out of stock and we hope to have it back in within a few weeks too.  We are trying everyone and are so excited for the rest of 2015.  Thanks again for all your support and a big thanks to the Mayday Team.  If you haven't met Ryan Bruns or any of the rest of the Mayday Team, please come find us at GenCon or Essen or one of the other shows we attend.  We were recently in Las Vegas for the GAMA Trade Show and Allison and Natalie and Ryan and I had a great time meeting with stores, distributors and other publishers.  We love this industry and are grateful for the support all of our customers provide us to allow us to continue to grow.  Thank you. Seth