The Best Damn Gaming Coins Ever...TWO!

Official Post-Campaign Survey Closing Monday!
about 8 years ago – Fri, Feb 05, 2016 at 06:28:28 PM

Now that we've finalized the Sci-Fi bills and per our last update, we're moving quickly into fulfillment mode.  This means we will be closing the official post-campaign survey on Monday, February 8th!  

If you have not already done so, please go to BackerKit and select your rewards!  Information on this can be found in here.  It only takes a few minutes to complete.  Almost all of you have done so already, but please please please to anyone that hasn't - go do this now!  We won't be able to fulfill your reward on time if you don't.  And we really are excited to get you your stuff so survey survey survey!  

Thanks, as always, for your support.

Team Artana

Big Update - Production Pix, Sci-Fi Bills, and More!
about 8 years ago – Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 10:36:52 PM

Happy New Year to everyone!  It's been a while since our last update, but we've been hard at work here at Team Artana.  Rest assured, everything is proceeding on schedule and we're super excited to get you all your rewards.

First, our artist has now created the Sci-Fi/Galactic Bank Credits!  Here is a preview of the set.  For those of you that were waiting on these to finish your survey, please go ahead and do so now.  We think these look beautiful!

In terms of the metal goodies, after producing over a million coins, we've figured out a thing or two.  Production has been coming along smoothly and here are a few photos of the process and the finished products.  We thought you might find this behind-the-scenes montage interesting.  As you can see, we're just about finished.  Production will break for Chinese New Year  and we expect everything to ship out soon after so delivery remains on schedule.  Loot is headed your way!

Finally, we've kept the survey open pending the Galactic Bank Credits being finished so people would have a chance to see these first.  Now that they are done, we'll be closing the survey soon and getting ready for fulfillment so please do go ahead and complete yours if you have not already done so.  We'll be sending around a separate update about this in the near future.

Thanks again for your support!  

- Team Artana

Official Campaign Survey Available
over 8 years ago – Fri, Dec 04, 2015 at 06:05:59 PM

Happy holidays, all! The backer survey is now finished and you will all be receiving it shortly. As mentioned in a prior update, we did end up choosing BackerKit for the survey and we’re excited to be working with them. Given the scope of the coins project, we feel this is the best choice for the reward selection process and subsequent campaign fulfillment. We wanted to first send out this update though to explain how certain things are going to work. Please read through the bullets below for specific details about the BackerKit process and reward selection generally. There are a number of items, but understanding the process should make everything go much more smoothly.

• First, we’ve received a great many requests for people asking to overpledge at lower reward tiers. Since we didn’t allow this during the campaign, we feel it wouldn’t be fair to do so now after others already backed at the higher $50 reward tier specifically to overpledge. That said, we do want to be responsive to people in lower reward tiers who now desire additional rewards and BackerKit lets us do this. We’ve decided to let lower tiers upgrade to the $50 tier if they wish which permits them to still overpledge at campaign pricing while remaining fair to everyone already in the $50 tier. To do so, backers should select the “Want to upgrade your pledge level?” option as shown below. 

• Second, BackerKit likes structured data. To accommodate this framework, we parsed the survey question for the $50 tier into three parts. First, you will be asked if you want one of the specific Deluxe Collections we offered. If you do – you select the one you want and you’re done. You then just answer “NONE” in the next two parts. If, however, you prefer to split up your 12 pack base reward into two Theme Sets or into 12 mixed PiecePacks or Bill Bundles, you will indicate your preferences in the next two parts. Each part asks you to pick 6 PiecePacks (either as one Theme Set or as one Mixed-6 with any 6 packs of your choice). You do this twice (once in each of the two parts) for a total of 12 packs and then you’re done. It’s a little clunky, but it works and gets us nice structured data that should make fulfillment butter smooth. Yay! 
    
•  For add-ons, you have over 120 options! To make this easier to navigate, we categorized them by theme and product type. You can find everything quickly using the Category drop down menu as shown below. Have fun! 

• Also, good news for international overpledgers! The way we structured the campaign, we thought of things in terms of numbers of PiecePacks and not really in terms of dollars per pack. You order a 6-pack, a 12-pack, etc. BackerKit, not surprisingly, likes dollars instead of PiecePacks for currency. We were offering a slight discount for international backers to overpledge a 12-pack ($53 for 12 vs $27 for 6) that isn’t working well with the BackerKit schema. To make things work better with their data model, we reduced the 6-pack price by 50 cents – now international backers can pay $26.50 to overpledge a 6-pack (Theme Set, etc.) or the same $53 for a 12-pack (Deluxe Collection, etc.) which works out to the same price per pack. In short, international backers will now save 50 cents when overpledging for a 6-pack due to the change. 
    
•  Another note with respect to add-ons: you can add on Deluxe Collections, Theme Sets, individual PiecePacks, and BillBundles. The tool is only so smart though. Individual PiecePacks and BillBundles are priced individually. If you want 6 of these, you should select a Mixed-6 add-on (you can find this easily via the category dropdown menu) rather than add each pack/bundle individually to your cart which would cost more. You’ll be asked a subsequent question later in the process to confirm the six specific packs/bundles you want. Also, now that we’ve reduced the price of the 6-pack, there is no additional discount for purchasing a 12-pack so you can just grab two Mixed-6 instead. This has no impact on Theme Sets or Deluxe Collections – feel free to select those directly.
    
•  For any additional payment, BackerKit accepts Stripe only which usually does not present a problem for people. If you do have a major issue with it though, please email us at hello (at) artana (dot) com and we can also assist you manually via PayPal. 
    
•  Finally, to spread a little extra holiday cheer, we’ve also discounted and made available a limited number of copies of our games Tesla vs. Edison and The New Science as add-ons. We’ll ship these separately from your coins or bills once we close the survey down the road. We thought this would be fun for people and also give you a chance to try some of our other stuff if you haven’t already.

Thanks all for your patience and support. Enjoy selecting your rewards! 

Team Artana

Holiday Weekend Update
over 8 years ago – Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 08:59:30 PM

We’re now all back from BGG Con and stuffed with turkey after the Thanksgiving holiday. We’d like to say how thankful we are for you, our backers, and the support you’ve provided to this project. We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again – you make this all possible and we really appreciate you.

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last update, but rest assured that behind the scenes things have been moving diligently forward. First, we’re happy to report that all of the coins have now moved into production! We’re serious about hitting deadlines here at Team Artana and we wanted to get things rolling on our end to make sure that everyone gets their stuff as promised next spring. We’ve spoken with our manufacturing partner and everyone feels comfortable that production is in good shape.

Second, the official post-campaign backer survey is just around the corner. You haven’t seen it yet because we’ve been working on the best way to let everyone select their rewards. With our new PiecePack schema, we now effectively have over 120 SKUs from the 20 themes as well as BillBundles and other add-ons that you can choose. The sheer volume of items created certain challenges that we wanted to be sure to address. We’ve been testing various solutions, however, and, barring any last minute issues, we’re expecting to send out the final survey using BackerKit later next week. BackerKit offers a number of advantages that we think will smooth out the process for everyone. We’ll have a separate update devoted to the survey itself when this happens so stay tuned!

Happy holidays,
Team Artana 

Backers' Choice BillBundle Final Results
over 8 years ago – Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 10:51:04 PM

The latest survey results are back. It was pretty close between two of the contenders so we let the survey run for a while to make sure everyone had a chance to voice their opinion. And the winner is… GALACTIC BANK CREDITS!!! Now it’s on us to design something sweet to go on those bills. Final results as follows:

• Astronomical Objects 25.1% 
• Galactic Bank Credits 30.1% 
• Planets of Our Solar System 7.5%
• Precious Materials 13.3% 
• Sci-Fi/Space-Related Inventions 2.5% 
• Space Missions 7.5% 
• Writers and Thinkers 14.0%

Next steps from here will be getting the final post-campaign survey out so everyone can select their coins, bills, etc. You can expect to see that in the next week-ish and we’ll announce it with a separate update. We’re also in constant communication with our production partner and they are already spinning up things on their end so we remain on schedule.

Thanks, as always, for your support.

Team Artana