KickstarterForum.org

[Red_Dragon87]

Hi all, I am planning to launch a project on kickstarter in the next few months for a fantasy themed board game. To be honest, the original inspiration was from the fact that my friends and I have been playing role playing tabletop games for as long as I can remember and as we have the creative skills to develop our own we thought to give it a try.
We aren't really looking to make money out of it and would be happy with enough support to simply send out a published copy to our backers and have a few to give friends. If it became something more, that would be amazing but it's not what is driving us.
My question is, is it possible to even succeed in this area on kickstarter? I've seen a few individual projects which have succeeded, but the vast majority seem to be games from established companies who are getting hundreds of thousands (and in a few select cases, millions) of dollars to develop board games. I understand why these projects would get so many backers. The games are polished, you can see that all of the figurines are high quality, the cards, tokens, etc etc are all beautiful. But why do these projects even need to use crowd funding? Their setup costs for the game and it's development have already been completed, and even the massive amount of stretch goal rewards have already been designed and manufactured in a lot of cases.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I've personally backed a number of these games which I thought were promising. It just seems like if you want to get crowd funding to develop your game, you need to already have the game developed and ready to ship if you want to compete with the bigger players on kickstarter. Having artwork and detailed concepts just won't cut it when trying to get backers. That seems to kind of defeat the purpose.

[sbriggman]

I would say that you need to have some kind of prototype, whether that's the art work or a trial play with prototype cards/figures. I don't see a lot of purely idea or conceptual projects funded.

On the topic of competition, I would solely focus on developing the game that you, as a table top game enthusiast, want to play and proving that you can develop it.

Before google, there was yahoo and a slew of other search engines.

Facebook was by no means the first social network to the market.

DropBox had thousands of other cloud storage services to compete with.

HipMunk entered an industry where there are already huge sites with lots of funding dedicated to travel search.

Mashable had major news outlets to compete with.

All these companies were built by small teams or individuals who focused on creating something they themselves would want to use or read. They were the ideal customers or person to use the product. They all had humble beginnings and for the most part, didn't have much or any funding.

This is your #1 advantage in getting your game recognized. You are the ideal player. Build the most incredible game you yourself would want to play and I bet there are other gamers in the tabletop game audience like you who would love to play it.

Once you have it - then you need to sell your vision for it to that audience through prototypes/art, an intriguing video, explaining why there is nothing like it out there on the market, etc.

[Red_Dragon87]

Cheers for the reply. Apologies if the original post seemed whiney. I was more curious for other peoples thoughts and experiences. We are still going to give it a good go and see what happens.

[sbriggman]

Apologies if the original post seemed whiney.

Not at all! Sorry if I came across as lecturey. I was going for inspirational haha. I always find it empowering to keep in mind that usually great things start from small places, not from big companies with big budgets and slick UIs.

[Wbatty]

I think a lot of gamers and game shops are also wondering why this has gone from an opportunity for new designers and publishers to get that "kickstart" to a way for established companies like Queen Games (as an example, not to single them out) to help with cash-flow and use KS as a chance to bypass the shops and get full retail from customers. I also think this tends to be the natural way of things. A few of the KS games I've bought from new publishers have been good but didn't feel quite "finished," so that may enter into t.

[sbriggman]

Interesting thoughts. At the same time, while I was researching one of my articles, it very seemed like even the studios that seem to "score" on Kickstarter, actually aren't making very much money from it. See: http://www.crowdcrux.com/make-money-kickstarter/

[themadnessgame]

I have recently launched a tabletop game on kickstarter and so far it has done extreamly well. This is our first project. We have been hitting the streets as much as possible showing our game, including going to a game convention last weekend. We have had great responce for the game so far.

This is a dream of mine to be able to make games for a living. Im want to share my game with the world

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/madness/madness-a-fast-and-fun-card-game-for-2-or-4-player?ref=live

[manderson99]

Interesting point, red_dragon, though I think your lament may extend to fields outside of tabletop gaming. When I look at fully-funded kickstarter projects in . . . let's say, the technology category, I see a lot of corporate names displaying slick prototypes. I am not sure if these projects are soaking up capital that could be going to smaller Creators that can't (or haven't yet) cobbled together sufficient resources for basic prototypes. What are they supposed to do?

Even still, most if not all of these projects seem to have a real need for funding. Getting loans or capital investment through more-traditional channels these days is difficult, to say the least.