Do you plan on buying Atlantean on a card?

[xelement5x]

I voted yes, the price is fine by me.

[Arkhan]

[synbiosfan]

I believe so

[Bardoly]

I plan to buy a copy of Atlantean on a card.

[seieienbu]

Out of curiosity, how  long does it take to actually manufacture this stuff?

[Lochlan]

You should charge more.  I get that this is a hobby for you rather than a business per se, but I, for one, would be happy to pay $100 for a hand-assembled 3D-printed game.

[vestcoat]

You should charge more.  I get that this is a hobby for you rather than a business per se, but I, for one, would be happy to pay $100 for a hand-assembled 3D-printed game.

If I may be so bold, I think part of Arkhan's philosophy -- of programming classic games for real hardware and not shrink wrapping them -- is specifically to cater to gamers and invigorate the culture that spawned video games. Part of that culture is pricing games in the same ballpark as other kids toys.

He COULD charge $100 and most of us would still buy it, but boutique prices perpetuate collector mentality, artificial scarcity, reselling, and sitting-on-the-shelf-in-a-polybag "investment" bullshit.

Prices for Insanity and PP never compromised. Aetherbyte is in no danger of selling themselves short.

[TheOldMan]

Out of curiosity, how  long does it take to actually manufacture this stuff?

Assuming I have everything at hand, and don't have to wait for it....

It's about an hour to mount the chip and make sure it works.  That includes time for repairs/rework, if needed.
It takes anywhere from 5 to 10 hours to print the plastic parts, depending on how the printer feels that day. That's right, 5 to 10 hours. The card holder takes 4+ hours alone. Screw-ups after an hour or two of printing are fairly common, too.
It takes about an hour to mount the chip/board in the plastic. That's a very touchy, sensitive process, because we have to be accurate to .01 mm, or the contacts don't line up.
It takes another hour or two for programming and testing. Each card gets written twice (once US, once JP) to make sure it works in either machine. Any failures here have to start over, and the board has to be un-mounted first. It does happen, mostly due to solder joints breaking because the board got flexed during mounting.

Some of these operations can be over-lapped. I can print plastic while mounting chips or complete boards. The limiting factor is how quick I can make the plastic parts - 3D printing is slow for larger objects, especially if you want them to look nice.

And it doesn't help that I actually am an old man, and can't stare at a small chip through a magnifier for too long without getting a headache

I can manage, on the average, about 1 card a day, given a weeks head start on the plastic stuff. Some days I get none done, some days two or three. It averages out to 1 a day, with final finishing and cleaning.

(And I don't work Thursday, Friday, or Sunday.)

He COULD charge $100 and most of us would still buy it.

Like Arkhan said, about half of the $60 price tag is to cover what we have -already- invested in materials. Feeding the printer alone is a huge chunk of that - especially when its being a pain and nothing wants to print right, or it fails on the next-to-last layer of the cd plate because a wire breaks. (The wires to the print head flex a lot, and are a frequent failure point)
All we are looking for from our sales is enought to recoup our investment, and pay for parts for the next run.

[For those who are really curious, we also have about another $3k invested in tools and sundries. (Price a good 3d printer. And remember, we got ours almost 2 years ago...) Almost none of the money is actual 'profit'.  We are hoping the next run will help pay for a filament maker ]

[TheClash603]

That last post provided a lot of insight and also made me feel guilty.

You guys are doing A TON for the TG16 community, something which can't really be matched by most of the rest of us.

Perhaps there should be a $60 price, but then an option to donate $20 at the buyers discretion out of appreciation, with nothing else provided in return.  I for one wouldn't mind contributing to a big fancy dinner for the two of you, so you can pat yourselves on the back.  Obviously you won't get rich off the extra portion, but maybe treat yourself to something small and deserved.

[FiftyQuid]

Couldn't we just buy them both a fleshlight and/or some lube?

[seieienbu]

A lot of hard work goes into this!

Clearly!  How do you get the circuitry on the hucard?  Does a 3D printer handle that too?  I honestly don't know too much about the things...

[TheOldMan]

The circuitry is etched on a 0.30 mm circuit board. (We don't have to hunt for someone to do thick, old style 0.90 mm boards). The chip is soldered on the board - on the bottom, so it doesn't stick up. The board then locks / is glued into place on the plastic.  (We have to glue them because they have to be positioned 'just so'. The locks get it close, but it still takes some small adjustments, and the printer is only accurate to about 0.03 mm.)


BUT a team at MIT has a working head for a 3d printer that does print conductive traces. Only about $3000......

Couldn't we just buy them both a fleshlight and/or some lube?

Is that a joke, or a recommendation from experience?

[Lochlan]

Prices for Insanity and PP never compromised. Aetherbyte is in no danger of selling themselves short.

It's drastically cheaper and easier to manufacture CD titles.  At least an order of magnitude.

I wrote my previous message under the assumption that "a lot" of time goes into manufacturing Atlantean, but I had no idea it was on the level of what TheOldMan described.  Given the amount of work going into this endeavor, I personally don't think even $100 is a sufficiently "fair" price.  A full day's labor is necessary to manufacture what has already had a ton of programming and art work go into it.   What an achievement!  It's impressive, not to mention commendable, that so much is going into providing a professional-quality product for an extremely niche hobbyist market.

My initial opinion is that the Aetherbyte team's efforts to deter "collectors" with this $60 price-point (basically a gift) will ultimately be in vain.  (How could such a lovingly-crafted product help but become a "collector's item"?)  The inherent slowness of the manufacturing process seems like it will force Atlantean, by design, to be produced in only extremely-limited quantities.  Perhaps the thought here is that by manufacturing this in-house they can meet supply over time and never be "out of print"? And by charging $60 they can have access to a more "casual" customer at regional game expos and so forth?  There must also be some fairly radical populist economic reasons behind the price-point, so I think it's pointless to try and convince Aetherbyte to charge even $100--but I could hardly call it a gouge if they decided to charge even more than that.

@The Old Man and Arkhan: I'm assuming you guys must have also considered having HuCards made in China or something like that, right?  Is the market too niche and the tooling too expensive to permit a more conventional production run (as opposed to the hand-made approach  used for Atlantean)?

[TheOldMan]

I'm assuming you guys must have also considered having HuCards made in China or something like that, right?

Nope. From the beginning, this project was about seeing if we could do it from scratch. If we could have solved the through-hole problem, we would be using self-etched boards, as well

Btw: this is only #2 of the tri-fecta An ACD would make it complete

[Mathius]

A product made in China would surely bring many more headaches I'm assuming. These guys love their product, their community, and their hobby. That brings with it a level of professionalism and quality that you wouldn't get with a Chinese manufacturing process.

To Ark, OldMan, and the rest of Atherbyte; Thank you for all your hard work, love and steadfast dedication to getting out not only a brand new game, but an actual f*cking HuCard! You guys rock, you're price point is beyond fair, and greedy resellers don't seem to have any friends at this studio. *Brofist*