Why Kickstarter Should be Your Next Source for Board Games
I’m obsessed with games. Ever since I was a little girl, games have been a big part of my life. Pay Day, Monopoly, and Clue were staples at every sleepover. And each holiday, my entire family would huddle around one or two long tables to play Pit or Go to Thunder (my family’s version of Oh Hell/Go to Hell).
As I grew, so did my collection. Board games, card games, dice games — I had them all. And then came technological advancements. I can still remember the first time I played the VHS board game Nightmare. Frantically moving my tombstone piece around the board before I had to answer the Gatekeeper on my television. “YES, MY GATEKEEPER!” (Eek! That guy still makes me shiver!)
Board games with CDs, DVDs and electronic elements like Clue DVD and Stop Thief! soon followed. Then came the rise of console gaming. I traded in my Atari for Nintendos, Xboxes and PlayStations, but board games were always my favorite go-to console titles.
And then it flatlined.
I wasn’t amazed by games anymore. Sure, mass media games like Risk and The Game of Life still held nostalgic appeal. And recent titles like Photosynthesis and Charterstone were fun additions to my collection, but it wasn’t enough.
I wanted more.
I didn’t know what I wanted exactly. All I knew was that I wanted to recapture the feeling I had when I popped the Nightmare VHS tape in for the first time. Or when I solved my first Clue DVD murder. I wanted something different. A game I couldn’t wait to play. I often ventured to my local game store, The Gaming Goat, hoping to find such a game. And while I did get invested in new titles, I still hadn’t found what I wanted. I wasn’t surprised.
How can I expect to find a game I want if I don’t even know what I want?
Enter Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is a popular crowdsourcing platform where anyone with a product or an idea can launch a campaign to get it funded. For nearly every creative category, there’s a Kickstarter creator for it.
Dance and theater? Yes. Aspiring novelists? Yes. Cool furniture made from wind turbine rotor blades or shoes made of coffee? They’ve got that too.
But what about games? What could Kickstarter offer me that retailers couldn’t?
Innovation.
When I first discovered the 2022 Quest Calendar: An Adventure-a-Day RPG, it challenged my preconceptions about what a game could be.
Role-playing games (RPG) are played as a campaign with a group of people. Sundial Games’ Quest Calendar breaks that mold.
Can an RPG adventure still be fun as a solo experience? And via a day-by-day calendar, no less? Yes, it can.
This is what I was looking for. An evolution of gaming that transformed genre expectations and redefined the tabletop experience. I saw Kickstarter with fresh eyes.
Up to this point, my experience with Kickstarter had been limited to life enhancers. A Maker Knife for my husband, an unsuccessful Automated Microgreens Grower and The Hero’s Journal, which takes goal-making to an epic level.
I never even considered looking for crowdsourced games. I mean, it’s Kickstarter. It’s where you go for innovative kitchen devices or nifty gadgets. Not games, right? There’s a reason we have game publishers. We trust that a major publisher’s game has been evaluated, repeatedly play-tested, relatively error-free, and ensured it’s fun to play.
But mass publishing can stifle creativity and innovation. As Anastasia Khomych suggests, “As a rule, real publishers do not like experimental games and know well their audience needs.” But do they?
If mass publishers know their audience’s needs so well, why are games the most popular category on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter? Perhaps the answer lies in the very area mass publishers are weeding out. Experimental. Like me, gamers around the world went to Kickstarter for something novel. Something that inspires them or impassions them. Games they haven’t found through major publishers.
Take Frosthaven, for example, which raised nearly $13 million. Over 80,000 backers can’t be wrong, can they?
Think about it. When was the last time you bought a board game from a retail store that truly surprised you? Maybe it was Cards Against Humanity or Exploding Kittens. Think again. Both those games started on Kickstarter.
Kickstarter also allows game designers to experiment with different mediums and challenge our assumptions of what a board game can offer.
Some games, such as Earth Rising, turn a real-life problem into a problem-solving mission — on and off the board. Games, if they have a story at all, are typically about a fictitious quest of some kind. Not something we are tackling in the real world. A board game with a mission.
“It’s really great that more of this is coming out and normalizing the idea of this being a subject based for entertainment and for discussion. The more people shy away from it because it’s a heavy topic, the more we kind of repress it as something that can’t be discussed. The more we discuss it, the more we will actually discover that we generally have similar opinions.”
~Laurie Blake, Earth Rising creator
But Kickstarter game campaigns aren’t limited to what we classically consider a game. “[B]orn out of my love of mail art and epistolary narrative forms, the United States Postal Service, and collaborative storytelling,” Shing Yin Khor’s Remember August takes gaming old-school — through the mail.
In order to find your childhood friend, August, who is lost in time, you will receive real letters in the actual mail to help her. I doubt you could find a game like this from Hasbro.
These three storytelling jewels are just a sample of crowdsourcing potential.
Even before the pandemic, board game sales were on the rise. And during the pandemic, board games played an increasingly prevalent role for in-home entertainment while we all sheltered-in-place. Christianna Silva with NPR reported, “Board game hobbyists had more time to spend learning about new games coming out, while newbies to the scene were discovering a world beyond classics like Monopoly and Clue.”
And this trend will likely continue.
According to Report Linker’s Global Board Games Market Report, board game revenue is expected to see a 13% rise in compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2021–2026. Still, a sure-fire way to gauge the market is to look at the competition. A new crowdsourcing platform, Gamefound, has emerged, giving crowdsourcing platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo serious opposition.
“It’s specifically for board games, as far as I know. [And] it’s taking the indie board game scene by storm. They’ve already done very, very well with their trial runs with different games.”
~Laurie Blake, Earth Rising creator
And according to Blake, Kickstarter has taken notice, evidenced by new features meant to better support and streamline the campaign process. Yet, no matter the venue, crowdsourcing platforms give creators a chance to turn their passion into substance and build their game portfolios.
As Oliver Roeder with FiveThirtyEight comments, “[C]rowdfunding has done the same thing for game designers that blogging platforms did for writers: turned them into publishers.”
If anyone can make a game, does game quality suffer?
Writing for Polygon, a gaming website, Charles Theel argues board game quality suffers as a result of crowdsourcing, particularly for expansions. “This is how it’s supposed to work,” Theel suggests of mass publishers, “A game is released and it isn’t perfect, then designers put their heads down and release an expansion, nudging the game that much closer toward excellence. But this virtuous cycle has been occurring less and less in the era of crowdfunding.”
I beg to differ. And so does user jdubzw. In response to Theel’s article, jdubzw writes — “small indie publishers bring a game out to good reception and then expand it knowing they have an audience…A lot of amazing games wouldn’t exist if crowd funding wasn’t an option.”
Still, Theel suggests that fear of missing out and multi-expansions in a single campaign hurt backers in their wallets and storage spaces. True, crowdsourcing campaigns can contribute to fear of missing out (FOMO) and tempt us to increase our pledges for more game options. But isn’t that why we go to these platforms in the first place? To find something we want to invest in. To back a project we care about. To feel like we are part of the end game design and community.
The crowdsourcing community is what it’s all about.
Community is a vital element of crowdsourcing campaigns. Like any social platform, updates and comments allow backers to ask questions, give feedback, and unite with other backers who share their excitement and passion.
“You get people that back it because they believe in it, they’re supportive of it… I get really good ideas from them… They want to see it succeed… It’s been a huge influence on motivation each day for the calendar. They have ideas to make it better… There are people telling you — this is a great idea; I can’t wait to get it! You’re like — yes, I can’t wait to give it to you!”
~Thomas Bedran, Quest Calendar creator
Not all campaigns make it the first go, however. Sometimes it’s due to timing or lack of buzz. And sometimes, it's just that the game’s not ready yet or not meeting player expectations. But, failed ventures are opportunities, no matter the venue. Opportunities for creators to engage their community in order to develop the best game possible.
“We took all those people [from the first campaign] who were really passionate about bringing that game to life and we said — help us make this great. Tell us what you think… What do you think of the way that we formatted our storyline? Tell us what you think is missing… We got so much feedback and they’ve really helped us make it such a polished and informative campaign… we would not be where we are if it weren’t for the passionate people supporting us.”
~Laurie Blake, Earth Rising Relaunch
When backing a Kickstarter campaign, we get to help something we are passionate about come to life. We are not just investing money for a game to succeed; we invest with our engagement. When we back a product, we often get to help in the game’s development. Thus, game designers not only source the crowd for funds but consult their community for feedback and suggestions. In a way, we all become little game designers.
That’s not something you can buy in a store.
