The Challenges of Restarting Pirates

After more than a year and a half of working on my Pirates CSG relaunch full-time (since January 2024), unfortunately the time has come to reduce it to a part-time effort due to a large number of factors. I outline these below, as well as my overall thoughts on the project.

The Pirates with Ben Store will be closed from approximately 7/29-8/3. When it comes back, some prices might be different and some products might disappear (potentially just temporarily).

Master List of problems and issues with the Restarting Pirates project

Big 3:

1. Not profitable/lucrative enough to do full-time (by far the biggest reason). Only financially in the green for 2 out of the 14 months since the Store opened on June 1st 2024. Since the project started, I’m somewhere in the range of negative $15,000 net.
   -It is not going to take me where I want to go financially. It has essentially turned into a very low-paying job, with my best month only being about $9.33/hr (and most far less than that). Based on my income this year, I’m below the poverty line.
   -Bad economic timing – tons of people I’ve messaged don’t have any money to spend on this right now.
2. Legal risk. Talking to Wizkids has been a dead end so far, and rights to the game would likely cost far more than what the community could come up with. The chance of getting shut down tomorrow via C&D makes planning for my future very difficult, and makes long-term business planning impossible and arguably pointless.
3. Health risks with inevitable burnt styrene fume inhalation. Many mitigations in place but can’t completely avoid. (mitigations: enclosure for the laser cutter, exhaust system, fan in laser room, respirator worn during sheet cleaning and card extraction, all product stored in sealed bags inside weatherproof container)

Other reasons:
-Too many single points of failure. If the laser cutters don’t work, or go down for an extended period of time, I might not be able to make inventory. If the printing companies raise their prices, I can’t stay profitable unless I also raise mine and somehow sell at least as many units. If the printing companies can’t get adequate front-back alignment, I don’t feel I can charge full price (and thus would have to sell far more units if decreasing the price due to quality issues). If Wizkids sends a C&D, I don’t have many good options to counter that.

-Too much time spent on production, order fulfillment, and lead generation/marketing (sometimes 30+ hours/week on those alone). Little time left over for the creative aspect that fuels new releases. But new releases are necessary to keep the sales coming in. Lately it’s starting to feel like a production manager and marketer job more than a passionate life dream being fulfilled. Can feel like the “starving artist” trope but with barely enough time for the art. Losing touch with the actual game and the joys it brings. (and there is no money to delegate/hire)

-Tiny market with limited spending power. In theory there might be enough people interested in Pirates to sustain a full-time income. However, there is always turnover in the community – I’ve been surprised by how many community veterans have been silent or not bought anything since I opened my store. People have a myriad of reasons not to buy, so the conversion rate of “interested” to customers is always lower than what it might look to be on the surface. There are a number of things people have to accept about a Pirates relaunch nowadays – higher prices per game piece (mass manufacturing and economies of scale not realistic), “unofficial”, different production method, etc. But it seems to me there will always be hardliners that will accept nothing other than what the game started as – cheap, mass produced, all original crew art, collectible with packs at major retailers, etc.

-Tired of trying to recapture the magic. Essentially (re)building someone else’s product instead of my own idea. Hard to escape the shadow of Wizkids given their mass production+retail scale. For me it’s an obsession and something I have contact with every day, for most it’s just memories and nostalgia. Without a huge marketing budget, most people who have heard of the game or knew it will never know I did a ton of things to bring it back. Hard for one person to shift public perception from “oh I remember that” to “Ben’s making the game now!” – it’s like an endless loop of chasing ghosts.

-Impossible to compete on price with the existing glut of product still on the market. Can’t sell the game at the $2/ship sale price that RV and OE packs are still going for. Might even be impossible at the mass manufacturing level due to inflation/tariffs/etc.

-In the grand scope of life, Pirates being out of print was arguably not a real problem. It was a personal problem for me (in my opinion) that I solved by making it again. But I’m probably one of the only people in the world who saw the game’s status (OOP) as a “problem” to be solved.

-Based on Alex Hormozi’s $100M Offers book, this is: a declining market without pain, without adequate purchasing power, that generally isn’t growing. A nightmare scenario that is arguably a terrible business model and idea. Based on MJ DeMarco’s CENTS framework, the business violates most of that business framework: Control – none due to IP situation. Entry – somewhat hard to make, or at least make the game right and well, consistently. Need – no need for it, as discussed above (especially with original version still cheap). Time – can’t get away from the business. If I stop creating new releases, laser cutting and marketing, revenue dries up quick. Scale – can’t really scale laser cutting. Dies might not be much better, especially given their higher cost. Can’t delegate/hire in order to scale when I don’t even have enough owner’s comp to pay myself most months.

-Solopreneur overwhelm (minor reason). This was inevitable from the start, especially as a first-time business owner. I am trying to bring back a board game that had an entire team of professionals working on it for full-time incomes. For most of this project I’ve been the only person doing pretty much everything. It’s been a wonderful learning experience. A non-comprehensive list of roles or “job titles”: business owner, game piece designer, artist/graphic designer, playtester, videographer, photographer, website manager, product developer, product manager, blogger, copywriter, marketer, salesman, logistics/fulfillment, procurement, production manager, quality control+assurance, social media manager, accountant, publisher, etc.

-Starting to feel like “been there, done that”. Technically an endless amount of game pieces that can be created, but you get trapped in a content treadmill of having to keep creating new releases. Which comes with deadline pressures and some fatigue. (very minor reason)

-To anyone saying “keep up the good work”, I appreciate your feedback but the fact of the matter is that there needs to be more money involved to justify continuing at a full-time rate. It took a full-time effort to get to this point with my store open and various core printed styrene products available, and it would take the same to continue the project the way I’ve been doing it thus far. So unless you have a bunch of friends/etc that can start buying product now or some hefty (and recurring) donations ready, the atta-boys aren’t going to cut it. Money was required to start the game back in the 2000’s, money was required to keep making the game, and money is certainly required to bring the game back.

 

Still a major life dream (partially) accomplished:
I’m happy that I solved 2 out of the 3 major things I set out to do with this project:

1. Learn how to make the game (production, artwork files, sheet printing, etc.)
2. Bring the game back (regardless of scale)
3. Make a living off it (mostly unsolved due to reasons above)

Related post: 10 step journey to making Pirates

 

Other thoughts on the project

-Already used up most of my “dry powder” with mass reachouts to the community in early July – I finally sent out a blast to an old email list compiled from many years ago to today. Plus various emails to customers and individual reachouts to almost everyone in the Facebook group and many in the Discord server.

-Also already did lots of my “Restarting Pirates bucket list” with various private communications, inquiries, etc. Along with “hail mary’s” like sending PotC packs to Johnny Depp, Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski.

-I almost always knew that someone (with immense passion) needed to be working full-time on Pirates to make true progress. When I was trying to do it part-time in various chunks of 2018-2023, it was very difficult to make substantial progress due to the sheer volume of work required (and the lack of momentum whenever you miss days/weeks at a time).  I’m not sure if Wizkids had anyone other than Mike Mulvihill working on Pirates full-time past Spanish Main, but they had a full team of professionals getting paid adequately whether the product succeeded or not. In order to figure out if a Pirates restart could truly work, somebody had to go all-in to figure out production costs, method of making everything (from concept to finished models in customer hands, including the entire artwork, files and testing processes), and seeing if there was enough demand. That person was probably always going to be me. I underestimated the difficulties of production a bit, but the lack of demand is a bigger issue (especially now that I have almost everything figured out on the supply side).  If I can’t even make a measly living (~$2500/month owner’s comp) from selling to the community – in theory the most interested and passionate potential customers I can find – how would this even work?  It’s nice when people say they like how products look, but people need to pay me to justify doing this full-time.  The people that say “this looks awesome!” need to buy more often, but from what I’m seeing and what they’ve told me, a lot of them are broke (which is fair, but this product can’t be free). I’ve invested over 2300+ hours into this Restarting Pirates project since January 2024, for way less than poverty wages. My savings can run out too, so that can’t continue forever.

-No I’m not interested in making a game “similar but not the same” like Pirates CSG. My vision has always been to bring back PCSG. I don’t think we need another (new) pirate board game on the market right now. I’d rather revive what I consider a timeless classic and fulfill that dream… not skirt around the legal risk and pretend I’m making something original when I really just want PCSG to be back. For me it has to be the same thing or bust.

 

Why it’s probably difficult even for Wizkids to restart the game
There are a number of problems:
-New product would still have to compete with existing stock of RV, OE, etc. With most or all costs of everything higher than they were in the 2000’s, it would probably not be feasible to make packs/boxes/tins at the same price point.
-Tariffs
-“Shadow recession”. Wages have not kept pace with inflation – cost of living crisis makes the reintroduction of an entertainment product more risky.
-The team is completely different, so a lot of the expertise and direct knowledge has moved on. I don’t believe there are any employees still there who worked on Pirates.
-Royalties owed to some of the original designers/etc – eats into margins that would likely be thin due to other reasons above.

 

Problems with Dies:

1. Cost – not just the die(s), but equipment to use them
2. No modularity compared to laser cutting – locked into X specific ship types
3. Financial death sentence if they don’t work or if they break/wear out quickly – probably can’t really “edit” them after production, the opposite of laser vector files.
4. Time, effort, and money spent learning a new production method.
5. Would have to retool print files based on how many cards a die could cut at once, and potentially other things like the spacing gap between cards.
6. Might not be faster than laser cutting, especially if you include all the time spent learning, designing and testing dies.

Overall dies are best for mass manufacturing, and I just haven’t seen the demand that would justify the investment.

 

Why I’m not going to lower prices: (assuming COGS and manufacturing methods stay the same)
-Effectively a punishment for people who already bought, who are my biggest fans/most loyal customers/etc.
-Would need to get more customers than I currently have (not guaranteed)
-Requires more laser cutting, packaging, and order fulfillment because now I would have to sell more units to make the same meager amount of money (basically more time required for the physical labor, leaving even less for creativity/new releases/business development/etc).
-It would set new expectations of lower prices that would not hold up to inflation over time.
-You also have to consider that I’ve never even done a “legal premium” in my pricing – arguably there should be an extra fee on every product to offset the legal risk I’m taking on by doing all this, but higher prices would just be even less demand I imagine.
-If anything, one of the only ways to make this work would be to raise prices.
-And like one of the comments on this video….
“I’d rather have less stress from less customers and make more money per job.”

 

Issues with collectible releases:
-Hand-making and hand-collation of packs is time consuming and annoying. More labor than non-collectible. (handmade packs are not scalable)
-Seas of Japan has had some pretty big lulls in sales, so demand for that product may already be waning.
-Creating a release large enough to justify a collectible distribution is hard, and takes time I can’t afford to waste if it doesn’t sell. Ideally a full set numbered to 80-100+. Golden Seas was a mammoth effort for a half-set worth of game pieces. I would probably need $20K+ up front to justify even thinking about a full set, let alone trying to figure out a collectible distribution model for it.
-In this facebook poll, “less collectible” was the most-voted option among factors that would make people want to buy a relaunch of the game. (I’ve pretty much nailed all 3 of the most-voted responses in that poll with my major product releases….)

 

A lot of these thoughts and issues have been festering for months now. The combination of the RoA and War of 1812 Mega Packs along with the rerelease of USS America and mass reachouts did help revenue in June and July, but I can barely break even overall even in the best months so far. There have been weeks where I work 50 hours to make about 50 bucks. I had to use about $12K of savings just to take the time required to do the ramp-up period in early 2024 where I figured out all of the 3D printing, decal cutting, Store opening, product pages, and more. One of the reasons I moved to Vegas was to knock my living expenses as low as possible so I could increase my “runway” with which to make this work. But with only 2/14 months solvent, it is not something I can continually dedicate my life to.