I am sure that most of my readers are fully aware of the great crowd sourcing sites Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The allow a company to put up a product or product idea and seek crowd funding to get it to happen. Some people get it when it comes to how to do this tool. Some do not. I want to focus on those who do (from a miniatures game, board game, or rpg persepctive of course).
I was really first introduced to all of this when I kept seeing the ads for
Zombicide on TMP and TGN. I followed one of the links, and man it was pretty cool. A board game with high quality miniatures. Looked nice. Zombie genre. Different funding levels gets you different stuff. I then closed it and noted to check back later to see how much they raised.
Then the news updates started happening on TGN about stretch goals and adding more free stuff to the box sets because they were getting a good response. I followed more closely, and finally I bought in at the abomination level, which gave you all the great promo and free minis. The amount of stuff in the box over doubled because of the power of the crowd funding. With a prepaid funding source, the developer can put their money in those things that sold the product. Lowers the risk for producer and consumer. I am eagerly awaiting my game.
The second one that I followed was the OGRE kicstarter that ended up being the biggest Kickstarter for games in their history. I almost bought in to this one too. Big tanks blowing the hell out of each other was great, but the minis were carboard cutoouts, nicely done mind you and there were tons of extras, but not being a mini game and being really a blown up chit and hex board game sealed the deal for me. So I passed, but man it was temping.
Currently I am following the
Sedition Wars Kickstarter, which has about 20 days left. Mike McVey of GW fame( I love you McVey era Eldar) and his McVey Studios have put together a Space Hulky kinda game with troopers and biozombieyuckythings called the Strain. Scuplts are amazing. and finally, the Stretch goals are starting to add up to some really great bonus stuff. I will be pledging, gonna wait to see for sure in a couple of weeks though. I see a lot of use for the Strain in my post apoc stuff.
I also bought a PDF of an RPG on RPGNow of a SciFi game called Bulldogs!. I was looking for a fun and easy SciFi game to play with the group and our kids. Looked like fun. Well, turns out it was a Kickstarter Game, and the quality of the book shows. I assume the art, layout and general improvements were made possible by the Kickstarter Funding. So Bravo again.
So what have I learned about these crowd funding sources for gaming?:
1. If you want to do minis, make sure you have plenty of opportunity to strat putting more in with the stretch goals. This was really proven with the Zombicide, Sedition Wars, and OGRE sets.
2. You really need to find a way to do some up front funding to get product and high quality art to sell your product. The ones that die on the vine are the ones that expect the Kickstarter to fund it all. You gotta spend money to make money, and it is especially true here.
3. Constantly do Stretch goals that give something away of value to the funders. This is what will start the wildfire that will fund your goals and then some. People like free crap, especially of its good free crap.
4. Follow through. Deliver what you promise. I haven't gotten my Zombicide stuff yet(it will be a while), but if I do, and its not up to par, and the Sedition Wars stuff is not up to par, I am done with Kickstarter and those companies. Simple as that. So don't ruin it.
5. $100 seems to be the sweet spot to get in on the full game and all of the freebie stretch goals. This is a manageable figure. Much higher ad most poeple will be out. I crapped when eurogames were $60-70. Looks like $100 is the next step. But you better deliver a lot of value for that price point.
Go check it out, I'm sure you will find something you like.
