🔑 Key features for crowdfunded board games

👍🏻 You’re finally there!

After several weeks spent deciding on the best funding strategy for your board game, you’ve chosen crowdfunding. Now it’s time to work on the presentation of your campaign and your rewards. Like many other authors/publishers before, you sense that irrepressible need to present your game to the world in a very personal way: yours! This represents a form of authenticity that you are confident will be recognized and appreciated by backers.

⚠️ Beware! Over the years, a number of codes and standards have emerged in the field of crowdfunding for board games, and it’s not easy to stray from these. In this post, I’d like to tell you more about the key characteristics of crowdfunded board game projects.

😺 Catchy & Innovative

🌱 Modular

🤑 The Good Deal

😺 Catchy and innovative

You’re convinced that you’ve come up with the idea of the century. Your game concept has never been seen before. It may even be the best game in the world created to this day?

🤞🏻 I hope so!

But how can you ensure that it will incite backers sufficiently to visit your project page, and then convert their interests into pledges?

🖼️ Graphics

In my opinion, this is one of the most important aspects of our time: the choice of your graphic design and your illustrator.

Modern social networking algorithms favour publications containing both texts AND pictures ⌨️🖼️. The users of these platforms are now educated to focus their attention on a post associated to a visual.

I estimate that around half (if not more) of the attention retention gained by your ads on social networks is due to the impact of the associated picture. Likewise, when a user browses the projects on a crowdfunding platform, their attention will be drawn to a visual which occupies around 2/3 of the size of a project presentation thumbnail. This is what will most likely attract people’s attention to your project.

Surround yourself with artists and graphic designers with a distinctive, impactful and attractive style.

🫙 Free Tip : Kawai works… Kawai works A LOT !

🎡 The theme

“Well, to be honest, I really like your game, but I’d see it more in a Zombie theme. Zombies will be back in fashion soon.

This is a typical conversation that a publisher might have with an author presenting their game. You have to analyse the Zeitgeist (the current of times), follow current or future trends, or be able to fill an empty slot.

Analysing the state of the art from a thematic point of view is very important for the success of your game. Indeed, I didn’t take the example of the undead theme at random. A few years ago, I remember a wave of games on this theme, both in retail shops and through crowdfunding, thanks in particular to the phenomenal success of the TV show The Walking Dead

The first projects to take advantage of this wave benefited from a favourable response from backers, who were intrigued by a popular theme. However, projects at the end of the wave were no longer considered “pioneers”, and instead generated a negative, opposing effect of “Yet another zombie game…”.

I therefore recommend a good analysis of market trends, a quick grasp of opportunities and staying away from overused themes that have been around for too long.

⚙️ The mechanics

My previous analysis of Thematics can be applied to the Mechanics of your game.

In fact, being the last to offer a “narrative game of exploration and survival” after or during the campaign launch of Tainted Grail, Gloomhaven or the 7th Continent is likely to be a disadvantage to you.

One of the considerations encouraging a backer to support a project is to enrich their gaming library with a type of game that they do not yet own and wish to discover.

If you launch your project after others that are more or less similar, you may have missed a niche and the opportunity to fill this void among this type of backer.

Nevertheless, an innovative new mechanic or an old mechanic that has been updated** may prove to be a wave on which you can surf in the months to come.

🌱 Modular

“My project is truly brilliant and I’ve put a lot of work into it, so I think it doesn’t need any additional content, either Stretch Goal or Add-on. Besides, I don’t have the internal resources to develop anything else during the campaign.”

Here’s another typical conversation we have during our meetings at the agency.

The desire to bring your game to life in your own way, according to your own vision, is a great approach… Nevertheless, as I explained in the preamble, crowdfunding evolved and became codified on certain aspects. A backer is not just a passionate philanthropist wishing to support a project, but also a player looking for something new, and hopefully a good deal.

The more add-ons or improved content a project offers, the more your game’s perceived value increases. This promotes the “value for money” feeling of backers, who end up with much more content or a better quality product, at no extra cost.

⚠️ A crowdfunding project with no plans for Stretch Goals has a thorn in its side.

🔒 Stretch Goals

Whether it’s a question of quantitative or qualitative elements, plan some Stretch Goals! As I explained in this post, crowdfunding allows the project holder to dream their game bigger. So I encourage you to take a step back from the work you’ve done so far on your game. Where have you limited yourself, for financial or time reasons? Perhaps these are areas you could explore to enrich your game in the way you initially intended?

Listen to your community. Making a Stretch Goal for the sake of making one may prove to be unproductive. Especially when your community clearly manifests its disinterest in one of your suggestions (in the case of a vote) or when the bonus is announced.

However, be extremely careful not to let backers interfere too drastically with your promised extra content and add-ons. Although some suggestions may turn out to be relevant and enriching to your project, most of them will often be off the mark. Don’t blame your backers, most of them have never worked on this kind of project before. Some have no idea of production costs, materials, logistics and so on.

🙅🏻‍♂️ Never be afraid to say ‘no’ to a suggestion, at the risk of jeopardising your project.

Stretch Goals will also turn out to be powerful marketing tools. A project financed with X much more elements will attract more interest from your target audience once exposed to your advertising on social networks.

Really? That much more content for a cost 15% cheaper than the MSRP? This is something I can’t pass up!

🛍️ Add-ons

Add-ons are essential to the financing of a campaign. If advertising is one of your main commitment engines at the start of your campaign, it will have an ever more limited reach over time.

This is because the first wave of backers to your project is relatively easily acquired thanks to your advertising. In particular with the ripple effect of the first few hours of the campaign and the desire to be kept informed of its progress.

As time passes, your ads will need to target people who haven’t yet backed your game. But if they haven’t done so in the first moments, it’s likely that your project doesn’t interest them enough to commit to it, even at a later date.

💡 There’s an obvious solution here:

The fewer new backers commit to your campaign, the more you need to motivate your current backers to raise the amount of their pledge.

This is when add-ons become really important. Whether they’re cosmetic elements, such as playmats, sleeves or an artbook, or gameplay elements with new expansions, heroes or adventures. Without forcing your backers’ hands, you provide them with the opportunity to support your project further, with the opportunity of a reward that’s more customised and tailored to their desires, their finances or their needs.

Revealing your add-ons during key phases of your funding is crucial. Knowing when to introduce them into your campaign is a complex strategy that would benefit from its own dedicated article.

👓 Transparent and exhaustive

Certain types of game are more complicated to promote than others when it comes to crowdfunding.

This is particularly true for games of the Legacy or highly narrative type.

Editor’s note: a Legacy game is a type of game in which the rules and elements evolve over time, often involving one-off destruction or use of certain parts of its content.

Indeed, the whole essence of a Legacy or Narrative game lies in the progressive discovery of its rules and their evolution over the course of the story arc. It is common for the first rounds of these types of game to serve as a tutorial in which the basic mechanics are simplified. This means that the basic gameplay presented to the players is often very streamlined with a view to becoming rapidly more complex with striking events pre-scripted.

When funding your project, if you only present the basic rules of the game, it might appear too light to convince backers to support you. On the other hand, if you reveal too much about the evolution of the rules and the game’s content, backers risk not to commit since the adventure promised to them would have been spoiled.

Promoting this type of game is a highly complex exercise requiring more time to prepare than for a more standard game.

Nevertheless, I invite you to be vigilant to what I consider to be a good warning indicator with such projects. Are your backers asking too often the same questions about your game’s mechanics, rules or concept? If the answer is yes, you’ve probably not detailed it exhaustively enough, probably with the intention to ensure the surprise and discovery aspect of the game experience.

🤑 The Good Deal

This part of the post comes across the plurality of backer’s sensitivities. A good deal for one may not constitute a good deal for another. Everyone has their own reasons for supporting a crowdfunded project. Those motives may also evolve from one project to another. So this results as a very personal experience and my own feelings as a backer, rather than an unfailing golden rule.

🏭 The initial/end product gap

This concept implies a slow implementation, since it requires your project to be already funded and several Stretch Goals to be released. As the price of your pledge is set and can’t change, increasing the quantity of content in your game will have a direct impact on committed backers as well as hesitant backers.

• Backers who have already supported your project will consider their pledge increased in value, since for the same initial investment they will receive more miniatures, cards or scenarios. They’ll promote it better on their social networks.
• Hesitant backers will be easier to convince if they see that, for the same price as when the campaign launched, they now get more miniatures, cards or scenarios. Commitment will be facilitated and encouraged by the positive promotion of other backers on their social networks.

🛒 The Retail/Crowdfunding comparison

If you’re planning to sell your game in a retail store and have communicated about it, a backer will automatically embark on a comparison process. Two major elements then play a part in their decision to support the campaign straight away or not.

• MSRP: the estimated retail price of your game once it’s on the shelves. This is always higher than the campaign price, since it includes the margins of stores and distributors.
• Is the additional content unlocked during the campaign exclusive, or will it be available with the retail version of the game?

This is a simple arithmetic question applied to the main appreciation of a game in terms of material content. What “quantity of game” am I getting for this price, compared to the “quantity of game” in store for a higher price? It’s humanly natural, for a given price, to ask for a greater quantity of something. This serves as an introduction to the notion of Fear Of Missing Out, which I’ll develop next.

If the price of your rewards and additional content is attractive, then you will more easily convince your backers to jump on board.

What if the additional content unlocked during the campaign was sold separately in the store, you might ask?

💡 The answer is simple: “Why would I wait to pay for something that I can get “for free right now”? “

😱 Fear Of Missing Out

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is undoubtedly one of the most powerful reasons that convinced me to support games. Here, we’re talking about offering a one-off deal, with limited quantity and availability. If you want this game, it’s now or never. To apply this principle to a board game, simply explain that the game or its collector’s edition will never reach retail shops. Backers therefore understand that they can only obtain the game by taking part in this campaign.

To a lesser extent, FOMO can be leveraged with exclusive content to crowdfunding (with add-ons or stretch goals, for instance).

🧠 Originally a simple natural reaction due to human psychic construction, FOMO has been and can still be exploited as an aggressive selling tool.

I don’t like to resort to this method, which, in my opinion, shows a certain lack of professional ethics. This fear can also lead to dangerous consumer behavior among backers.

I hope this post has provided you with information on The key characteristics of a Crowdfunding project.

You now have the keys to a successful Crowdfunding project!

🌳 At The Crowdfunding Agency, we can advise, coach and guide you through the process of establishing a customized and achievable campaign strategy for your project.

🗣️ We remain at your disposal if you are looking for campaign management or consulting services for your project.

Tell us everything about it with this form. We’ll be delighted to find more about it so that we can support you in this thrilling adventure.

📃 Other posts on the crowdfunding topic will make reference to this one. For more detailed information, if you’d like to share your experience and your own key characteristics, please comment on the appropriate section ⬇️

Some pictures in this post have been created with AI on www.canva.com