Kickstarter Questions on Kickstarter and the Tabletop Community

[Dannager]

I'm in the process of getting familiar with the Kickstarter model for getting tabletop gaming products to their funding goals. I know that there have been a handful truly incredible runaway successes - not the least of which is the ongoing EN World Kickstarter [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] has going - and a lot of projects that have hit or exceeded their goals (even if they didn't blow past them). I have some questions for those of you who have experience with Kickstarter drives.

1. Do you see Kickstarter as having "legs" in the tabletop gaming community, long-term? Does it strike you as a temporary fad, or do you consider it a paradigm-shift in how tabletop games and supplements are produced?

2. What avenues for publicizing your Kickstarter were most effective (assuming you have any idea)? Did word-of-mouth carry your project? Did you spend resources on advertising your Kickstarter campaign during the drive? What about before the drive started?

3. Assuming a purely digital set of deliverables (no physical print product), what might be some attractive backer rewards? What about stretch goals?

4. How much time did you allow yourself between the Kickstarter campaign and your promised delivery date? Did you hit your target for delivery?

5. If you could give a single piece of advice to someone interested in Kickstarting a tabletop gaming product, what would it be?

I'm sure I'll have more questions as people chime in. I really appreciate any input you're able to provide!

 

[Morrus]

I don't know about Kickstarter specifically- technology always evolves - but crowdfunding definitely has a future. I wonder if Facebook or G+ will launch integrated crowdfunding platforms into their systems, or whether various specialized crowdfunding ites geared specifically towards project types will become popular (a music one with a track list/player feature, perhaps).

Kickstarter has definitely been insanely popular in this industry, though. I read somewhere that tabletop gaming is one of the most often successful Kickstarter categories (and video projects are the least successful).

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I've got one successful Kickstarter already and I'm in the middle of another that looks well on its way to success. Here's some of my thoughts.

1. It's more than just a fad. Getting all the money up front to produce a book is just too tempting for a small RPG company.

2. Right now my highest referrers are:
Kickstarter
"No referral information"
Paizo
Enworld
rpgkickstarters.tumblr

I'm going to try some more advertising in the second half of the campaign, and we'll see how that goes.

3. The basic reward should always be the actual product. With print on demand being so easy at this point, I'd suggest including a print reward, even if never intend to sell it in stores.

For higher level rewards I like to give out things that let the backer have an impact on the product. Have the Backer's image incorporated into the art seems to be one that's relatively popular.

4. For my first project I estimated four months and it took eight. This time I'm giving myself eleven.

5. Keep your initial goal as low as you possibly can.

 

[Morrus]

rpgkickstarters.tumblr.

That's me!

 

[Dannager]

I've got on successful Kickstarter already and I'm in the middle of another that looks well on its way to success. Here's some of my thoughts.

1. It's more than just a fad. Getting all the money up front to produce a book is just too tempting for a small RPG company.

2. Right now my highest referrers are:
Kickstarter
"No referral information"
Paizo
Enworld
rpgkickstarters.tumblr

I'm going to try some more advertising in the second half of the campaign, and we'll see how that goes.

3. The basic reward should always be the actual product. With print on demand being so easy at this point, I'd suggest including a print reward, even if never intend to sell it in stores.

For higher level rewards I like to give out things that let the backer have an impact on the product. Have the Backer's image incorporated into the art seems to be one that's relatively popular.

4. For my first project I estimated four months and it took eight. This time I'm giving myself eleven.

5. Keep your initial goal as low as you possibly can.

Great info!

Another question: For higher-tier (including novelty) rewards, what balance do you strike between setting the price of the tier versus how much the reward itself will cost to produce? For instance, if you made one of the reward tiers include a commemorative dice set, how much of the backer's contribution should you be willing to spend on the reward itself (rather than funding the product)?

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Another question: For higher-tier (including novelty) rewards, what balance do you strike between setting the price of the tier versus how much the reward itself will cost to produce? For instance, if you made one of the reward tiers include a commemorative dice set, how much of the backer's contribution should you be willing to spend on the reward itself (rather than funding the product)?

I haven't done much with those kinds of rewards, but my instinct says that the reward level should be about equal to the amount that the backer would spend if they bought the same thing in the store (which should be more than it costs you to produce, but not too much so).

 

[amerigoV]

Its the d20 thing all over again. Some folks will make some great stuff, some will make some crap. In the end, those with an established record will still be able to use it as a model. The rest will fall to the wayside and unknowns will have a hard time getting traction.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

From my perspective as a cuistomer in Europe, I'm a bit leery. I backed on kickstarter project (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1778492214/appendix-n-adventure-toolkits-dcc-rpg-modules) which is horribly delayed. I still want the stuff and am quite relaxed about the delay, but this alone diminishes my enthusiasm for this way of business.

Over on rpg.net several RPG projects are discussed which apparently busted completely. Either the backers got some sort of refund, there came apologies and more apologies from the producers, or it busted completely: no product and no money back.

Another trend seems to be that the books - not PDFs, mind you - are rather high-priced. Take 50-60$ to claim the book as reward, add another 30-40$ for international shipping, and we're talking about a luxury item. Other people might differ, but I want risk such a sum on a project which might go bust.

I think we are experience a wave of RPG crow-funding projects right now which will be over a year from now. There'll be some (semi-)professional companies using this way to fund risky projects, which might not sell in needed numbers. They could use crowd-funding as a pre-order channel where they sell directly to customers.

On the other hand I see small scale publishers using crowd-funding to finance art or maps for their PDF projects. The price to gain a reward would be quite low as well as the goals to be reached. If I back such a project with 5-10$, my risk is acceptable. If the oal is reached, I'll get (hoepfully!) a decent PDF, and if it's really successful, the PDF might turn out to be beautiful.

I might be completely wrong, of course, but this scenario seems most likely to me.

 

[delericho]

1. Do you see Kickstarter as having "legs" in the tabletop gaming community, long-term? Does it strike you as a temporary fad, or do you consider it a paradigm-shift in how tabletop games and supplements are produced?

My expectation is that it will be a three-phase effect.

In the first phase (which is just about ending now), it's new, cool, and exciting. There's loads of enthusiasm, loads of money getting thrown about, and loads of projects getting funded. Indeed, provided you're at least somewhat reasonable, it's almost hard not to get funded.

Unfortunately, "getting funded" and "successfully delivering" are vastly different things, and I fear we're now starting to see projects fail in fairly large numbers. Some projects will simply fail with no money refunded, some will offer refunds, some will deliver vastly late, and some will deliver things that are just not what the backers envisaged.

That leads to the second phase, where people start to get disillusioned. Suddenly, it becomes nigh-impossible to fund a project unless you already have a track record - either you have successful Kickstarter experience, or you already have name recognition, or something. But for the new guy? Forget it.

However, the effect of that is that Kickstarters will become a bit more of a known quantity, and will serve to rehabilitiate the reputation of the model to some extent. And that leads to phase three...

In phase three, people will approach Kickstarter the same way as they do, say, an OGL product - they'll fund it, or not, based on a reasoned assessment of whether they're likely to see what was promised. Which, in real terms, probably means that the 'names' can continue to get funded, and so will 'unknowns'... but only on a specific, limited basis. So, if you want a few thousand for an art budget for an already-written book, Kickstarter might help you out. But if you want many thousands for an entire RPG line, you can forget it. (But Monte Cook, on the other hand, could still fund the whole line. Such is the benefit of reputation.)

Basically, as amerigoV says up-thread, it's the OGL thing again.

 

[Morrus]

I think we are experience a wave of RPG crow-funding projects right now which will be over a year from now.

I absolutely believe the opposite. We're seeing the opening salvos in what's gonna eventually change not just our little industry, but many industries permanently. Crowdfunding will grow in popularity, it will split off into specialized resources, and it will start to be integrated fully into social networking. It'll change over the next few years, and it might not always be Kickstarter leading the pack, but crowdfunding going nowhere, any more than self-publishing did.