--On September 7, 2007 9:29:03 AM -0700 David Artman <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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