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Role Playing (Games) The Internet Businesses

How Crowdfunding Transformed Tabletop Board Games (npr.org) 24

Posted by EditorDavid from the not-Monopoly-money dept.
The board game Frosthaven has become Kickstarter's "most-funded board game on the site ever, with nearly $13 million pledged toward funding the game's development," reports NPR. "Only two projects have ever crowdsourced more funding on the site."

NPR sees a larger trend: Frosthaven's success seemed to exemplify a shift that has been happening in the tabletop gaming community for years: toward games that are not only focused on strategy and adventure, but also a new type of funding model where fans have more say than ever in which games move from the idea stage to their living rooms. And hobbyist tabletop games are a different breed of entertainment altogether. For many of these smaller games, funding from fans has proved essential... These makers have become part of one of the country's most popular quarantine hobbies, but they've done so through a mini-economy that relies on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter...

Creators use Kickstarter like a social media site, an advertisement and a fundraising tool all in one, and they use it more successfully than nearly any other game creators on the site. In 2019, fans pledged more than $176 million toward tabletop games — up 6.8% over the previous year, according to Kickstarter data gathered by the entertainment site Polygon. In all, more than 1 million people pledged to games on the site last year... "For the board game community, there's a culture of looking on Kickstarter ... and being more willing to fund things," said Isaac Childres, the CEO of Cephalofair Games and creator of Forge War, Gloomhaven and Frosthaven. "It's like a larger avenue for board game creators to use that automatically picks up a following."

This is what makes Kickstarter so attractive to individual makers and less attractive to other gaming industries — like video game makers. It takes a lot of startup value to create your own video game, for instance, but for board games, you only need a good enough idea and a well-placed Kickstarter page to gauge public interest... [T]here are drawbacks to the funding technique, too. Creators are responsible for everything if their goals are reached. They have to print the games and send them to their customers on their own — a process that can be grueling, time-consuming and even detrimental. One board game creator miscalculated the amount of money it would cost to ship games and lost his house due to the unexpected financial burden.

But, for many creators, the positives outweigh the negatives. Childres said it's hard to imagine where he might be without crowdfunding. Offering his game Forge War as an example, he said had he "somehow found the money to publish it on my own and get it into stores, I don't think anyone would have paid attention to it."

Now, he's one of the most successful hobbyist tabletop board game creators in the country.
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How Crowdfunding Transformed Tabletop Board Games More

How Crowdfunding Transformed Tabletop Board Games

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  • The only people that think Kickstarter board games are a good idea are the Kickstarter staff and a very vocal minority of the board game community that's deluded enough to think "maybe this time it's not gonna suck".
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This appears to be design by committee; we all know where that leads.

    • Almost all boardgames (on KS or elsewhere) are the brainchild of 1 to 2 designers. But you do need play testers to see if it is fun and balanced.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by E-Rock ( 84950 )

      I've backed several games. Other than voting for optional add-ons the Kickstarter isn't designing, they're putting money down on ideas they like.

      So the designers, instead of convincing a publisher, they convince the customer directly. So instead of designing games with features the publisher likes, they're making games customers will prepay to buy.

    • This appears to be design by committee

      Despite the article kind of leading to that thought, that's not really what crowdfunding allows for...

      Instead, what it does is allows the creative vision of a very small number of people, come to life if enough other people think it's a good idea.

      Even though there have been some projects fail, on the whole it has led to some awesome stuff being developed that otherwise would never have come to be, because the heads of companies cannot see how people would like something

  • Many of these Kickstarter games have pretty expensive base packages. For example the linked Frosthaven, that's $100 for the game without extras and without shipping. Looking at what is in the box, it may well be worth that much in components, but I don't like the idea of putting that kind of money into a game that I've never played. No matter how high the production values, if you or your friends don't enjoy how it plays, it will just be sitting on your shelf.

    • Depends on the game. I've backed (and received) a few Kickstarter games, and they usually run under $50 USD. Frosthaven is likely a huge game (have you seen the Gloomhaven box?), and $100 is probably a bargain for something like that. Plus, they have the massive success of Gloomhaven to leverage, so it's little wonder people are putting so much faith (and dollars) in it.

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