What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

I don't do resolutions (everyone ELSE needs to change ) but if I did, backing less crowdfunded games in 2022 is number one on my list.

If they fail for some reason the loss is on the backers, no loan to repay.

No middlemen if they sell it from their own site.

The people I’ve spoken to that have been involved in Kickstarters have PTSD from them. I think some people just aren’t interested in the hype machine method regardless of the PR boost.

Hollandspiele is a small privately owned publisher that sells the old fashioned way. GMT does and they’re pretty big. Asmodee is huge and doesn’t kickstart at all I believe. There’s a lot of stuff still coming out in the traditional publishing channels.

Hollandspiele publishes on-demand, so their risk is virtually zero. And frankly, Amabel tells customers to get stuffed when they complain about bullshit. In spite of that her games sell. They’re good enough that they have a loyal audience that gets the word out when new titles appear. Then again, they publish for the love of gaming, not to get rich fleecing buyers for $580 apiece.

There are other successful business models out there, and other definitions of success drives much of them

To be fair, GMT/Hollandspielle are not publishing games with minis/complex mold demands. That is what drives a lot if not all the big ticket KS campaigns.

Msample wrote: To be fair, GMT/Hollandspielle are not publishing games with minis/complex mold demands. That is what drives a lot if not all the big ticket KS campaigns.

Well, yeah, but that’s a design decision those publishers are overtly making, assuredly for a reason.

I'm not suggesting everyone should use Kickstarter nor am I defending it, I'm just saying why companies use it. It will not go away anytime soon. Boardgames are a third of Kickstarter's revenue.

Reaper would never sell three million of product from their site. Also, many publishers have deals in place with their distributors that they will not undercut them with direct sales. Kickstarter campaigns seem a way around that due to general acceptance.

Sagrilarus wrote:

Msample wrote: To be fair, GMT/Hollandspielle are not publishing games with minis/complex mold demands. That is what drives a lot if not all the big ticket KS campaigns.

Well, yeah, but that’s a design decision those publishers are overtly making, assuredly for a reason.

It's the same reason why Ford announced in 2018 that they will be discontinuing all sedans. Their average profit on a sedan was about $1,500, while their average profit on a truck is $12,000. A smart consumer would realize that the sedan is a better deal, but fortunately for Ford, there are a lot of stupid Americans. Thanks to toxic masculinity, some guys can only drive a pickup truck now.

That is largely my point. These companies are making these games big and selling them big because their fundamental motive is revenue. That’s fine, but I think the interesting stuff is happening at the smaller level, kickstarter or otherwise.

There’s a lot coming out. Kickstarter is a facile way to shop for new games. They come to you. It’s worth shopping around.

I agree. It's much easier to tuck in a big profit margin with a $100 box of miniatures paired up with a generic rule set, especially when packaged with numerous expansions featuring less product and more profit.

charlest wrote: Even if they could get a huge loan, they wouldn't sell three million worth of product at retail. There's a magic and excitement in Kickstarter absent from the retail experience.

Furthermore, their margins will be worse as the middlemen take bites. This is how they offer you better value during the campaign (sharing that higher profit partially with the backers).

Reaper is an interesting case. That first Bones KS was in 2012, and at the time they made a lot of noise about bringing production in-house back to the USA. But their KS were so large & successful that the Bones were always made in China. Last year they finally made good on their initial promise/desire to begin manufacturing Reaper Bones in the USA (with a product line conveniently named 'Bones USA'), which makes me wonder what that means for future Bones KS. Especially now that there are boatloads of alternatives that didn't exist back in 2012.

They are really scraping bottom in terms of what they could possibly produce that they haven't already, but then again I thought they were out of good ideas circa Bones 2 (and they've done 5).

I backed 3 of the Bones, but that was before I got a resin printer. I would not back one again. I was hoping that the USA production was going to happen faster based on the numbers from the first 2 campaigns.

Sagrilarus wrote: GMT does and they’re pretty big.

To be fair, GMT has figured out their own p500 system to mitigate risk. You don't pay up front, but the trade-off is you do wait infinity time for most things to actually come into print. I think it's a smart system, but I don't think you can really say they do straight "publish and send to distributors" traditional style game publishing. Neither here nor there.

As far as Kickstarter, I have 2 outstanding that theoretically should deliver in the next month or so and haven't actually backed anything in probably a year. I hit a saturation point on games where I don't really get excited about buying something a year and a half in advance any more. I've got enough games to play as it is.

I have three BIG deliveries coming down the pike. My wife would murder me and bury me in the backyard if I did any more. Now I just KS digital miniature files. LOL

the_jake_1973 wrote: Now I just KS digital miniature files. LOL

I recently backed three STL kickstarters and get so excited when they get delivered either immediately or only a month later. I also have a list of like 40 Patreons that I check every month. Luckily I keep to very specific use cases for miniatures files I buy so I only sub to one or two a month, if any.

I have four things sitting out right now:
Tiny Epic Dungeons, which is on the boats and delivering this month or next.
Root: Marauder expansion, which is in production and slated for Q2 this year.
John Company, 2nd Ed, which is a completed design, but not in production and slated for Q3 or 4.
Cthulhu Wars expansion stuff which, really, who the fuck knows?

And that's the end of my KS involvement for the foreseeable future. I'm certainly interested to see what Cole Wehrle, Eric Lang, and Scott Almes come up with in the future, but I'm just not in the mindset to spend even more money on games anymore. I have more than I will ever be able to regularly play, which means that I'll likely be ignoring KS efforts from even those guys and just trying to trade my way into future releases, as I do with most things now.