Kickstarter – A New World of Board Games

My first Kickstarter purchase, a great little deckbuilder that combines Scrabble and Dominion: Paperback

I’ve always dreamed of fantastical market bazaars imagined in the world of the Arabian nights. Genies offering you a thousand wishes, exotic and never before seen magical artifacts and the feeling of magically being pulled towards seemingly ridiculous deals that never should see the light of day. Of course, these deals are not eternal and time is of the essence. If you hesitate, you may never get that extra royal assassin for your army or the additional map to the hidden caverns of the 41 thieves. However, not all merchants can be trusted and many times has a traveller left the market with tin instead of gold.

Oh sorry… This is a features post about Kickstarter and board games, not one of my fantasy intros to a future fairytale. *cough*

The founders here at Cardboard Quest (edit: “just Stuart” Jason) have a Kickstarter interest (read: “obsession” Jason). It’s a mystical store online where you’re offered the imaginations of indie developers all bidding for your attention, trust and a little of your hard earned cash. Whenever I delve into the myriad options on Kickstarter, I feel a little like one of those wealthy, successful business men on “Dragon’s Den” with these designers pitching me their concept or, in this specific case, game. There are those that are loopy, those that make you feel giddy, ones that make you scratch your head like a Jackie Chan Meme and ones that levitate wallets from pockets. The great news for South African gamers is that most projects will ship to your front doors, although in some cases at a hefty price.

So the basics of Kickstarter, for those of you already clicking links away from this page to go and back your first project, is that you are funding a product that developers have engineered to give them the funds ahead of time so that they have the capital to produce the product. While the Persian meesenger inside of you would mutter “This is madness”, there are perks for what is essentially a pre-order product. Backers will in almost all cases get their copies before general public release, and in many instances will also get extras for the games in the form of Stretch goals. Stretch Goals can include upgraded components, additional expansions and other little extras to entice more backers to come on board for the initial pledge drive. While Kickstarter used to exist in a new realm of ecommerce, the company now heavily regulates developers to deliver on the promised goods. Each project has a required base amount needed for the project to be funded and stretch goals are added as additional funding levels are met. No money will be deducted from your account until the project date ends, giving you flexibility to cancel/or upgrade knee jerk purchases.

No one saw the signs.. that the demonic publishers were not destroying worlds, but simply exploiting the backers.

So while this has all sounded as enchanting as the opening lyrics of this post, I’d be singing the song of the sirens without warning you of some caveats to this online bazaar. There have been numerous Kickstarter campaigns, more in the infantile stages of their growth, where developers failed to deliver on their promised product and even fled with tens of thousands of dollars of backers money, never to be heard from again. The most famous of these was the Cthulhu game, The Doom that came to Atlantic City, which swindled backers for a sizeable sum, as well as the “reprint” of the race game, Odin’s Ravens. Both of these had eventual happily ever afters, as they were picked up by other publishers, with the latter pledging to fulfill the original backers as long as they paid for shipping. Sadly these stories of fulfillment are far from the norm.

The other fact is that many games that appear on Kickstarter, are crap. Before I get stripped naked and forced to walk through the throng of “shame” being hurled at me, there are many fantastic games that made their beginnings in crowd funding. Sadly, the ratio of gaming classic to crap heap does not favour mass purchases. Publishers may not always control the market, but they form a gate keeping function, as essentially they need their backed project to provide a return on investment as well as reflect the integrity of their publishing house. When passion is involved, it’s easy to overlook genuine quality – as you can’t see the meeples for the cardboard – and with independent kick starters trying to engineer a breakthrough, personal bias can be a rose-tinted minefield.

Cool Mini or Not produces the most detailed miniatures, just look at these Viking Warlords from Blood Rage

Doom and gloom aside, Kickstarter has opened a portal to a new dimension of board games for people to experience. Numerous successful projects, and the studios along with them, have gone on to produce new games, when initial proposals may have been rejected through traditional channels. Jamey Stegmaier of StoneMaier Games has created his publishing company around Kickstarter, producing Viticulture, Tuscany, Euphoria and Between Two Cities, and is heralded as the company that does crowdfunding games the best. Cool Mini or Not sells almost all of its projects on Kickstarter, some of them reaching peaks of funding never seen before! Zombicide, Arcadia Quest and the most recent Blood Rage have all been massive funding successes, as well as being lauded by games critics. A personal favourite kickstarter company is the studio Red Raven which is run by Ryan Laukat. Ryan is the Designer, Artist and Publisher for all his games – that’s a one man board game band – City of Iron, Above and Below  and Artifacts Inc.  are all massive Kickstarter success stories. His games have been difficult (near impossible) to get hold of in South Africa and I’m still on the quest to own something from Red Raven. If you haven’t heard of any of these, check out the funding pages on Kickstarter or look at Board Game Geek for more details.

Yes, shipping is expensive and it delays the instant gratification to be found in buying off the shelf, but Kickstarter is changing the face of board game production. It creates competition and gives small publishers a method to acquire funding for more great games. While it has its fair share of lemons, it’s a driving force behind some of the sweetest gaming, thirst quenching products that make our holidays as gamers, all the better.