yeah pins for a reward aren't anything I am interested in. the few times i have gotten pins from campaigns and stuff I usually say ' oh..cute' and never look at it again or use them. hehehe. they seem to be more of a thing to put on backpacks, purses and other carry accessories, which is more of a "young folk" thing and young folk are not so much the ones with disposable income to throw at upper level tiers. So I can see why they may have failed last time.
where fridge magnets.. yeah.. anyone with a fridge, including old folk, has a bit more function. and getting images printed to those flat flexible magnet types shouldn't be too pricey to do en masse. But I could be wrong.
I have seen a lot of gamers that resent the fact game manuals are slowly being phased out. It is also something very appreciated when folk open an indiebox and see they have a game AND a nicely printed full color manual. But if it ends up being very expensive to design print and bind a manual then so be it. No real point making it if it inflates the cost of physical copies immensely (though again, skipping the manual with a physical copy falls into the "cheapskate" category that has ruined gamer's view of most AAA games to a degree).
I guess for me, if I have a choice between a barebones copy of a game, physical, that is just disc-art-case or just getting it digitally, i'd just go digital since the physical really isn't anything "special" to have beyond disk and boxart. At this point physical media is something of a collector's item with so much going digital, so it seems like a waste to do it super cheap and no frills.
It also makes unboxing video's on youtube pointless (so you lose those potential adverts for future sales) Do yo guys plan on putting full printed labels on the disc at least?
I would enjoy a physical soundtrack. Maybe i'm just weird though. If it is a solid soundtrack I have been known to bring the disc into the car and throw it in every once in a while when I have a lot of driving. Also kool to throw it on as background audio when I am working on writing or art. I guess digital downloads also make it possible, but for my car i'd have to hook in my phone or a mp3 player or burn a mp3 cd to play them. not a huge deal, but just popping in the cd is nice. And seeing the extra art on the cd case and the disk is always kool.
one thing that may be interesting is doing a custom photo locket or keychain fob with a small pic relevant to the game. that's unusual and may draw a lot of interest. photo lockets can run as cheap as $30 online for silver ones, likely a lot less for ones made from pewter or something cheaper. I guess having a physical replica of a significant item from the game would just be kool, and folk will pay more to have that as a showpiece or keepsake. If you did a locket with pics of the 2 main characters from NeN in it back during that campaign i'd have gotten it. some websites will make and add the photo for you and ship it all done, others may require you custom cut the pics to place in the locket (once you get a proper sized die cutter it wouldn't take long to cut and add the pics to a bunch of them. but that also depends on how many are interested.
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