4 Reasons we Generally do Not Back Kickstarters

 While not as hot as it was about a year ago, Kickstarter is still used by a lot of independent companies in the gaming industry, primarily independent and small press publishers, to publish new releases.  Top tier publishers, such as Paizo, WOTC, Fantasy Flight, Konami, Bushyroad, etc., don't use Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites to crowdfund new releases as their current cashflow is strong enough to not need to do so.  A number of these projects offer retailer levels designed to allow/entice retailers to participate in the Kickstarter, generally by offering multiple copies of the game at a discount from the planned MSRP, along with any stretch level goals.  Last year, Reaper Miniatures ran an incredibly successful Kickstarter with Vampire levels for consumers and Undertaker levels for stores.  We, and a lot of other stores, bought into that project, but for us, it was the exception, rather than the rule.  Here’s why:

1)  Crowded marketplace.  When I checked earlier today, there are 386 game projects listed on Kickstarter alone. While we have a strong customer base here, there is no way we, or most stores for that matter, have the market to absorb that quantity of new releases, must of which will fund in the next 30 days but not arrive for six months to a year after the backing period ends.  This leads to #2.

2)  Cash flow.  Just like publishers, retailers struggle with cash flow as well.  In the publisher's case, however,  they get the the money up front and they spend it to produce the product.  In the retailer’s case, if we fund a product, we front the money now, tying it up for several months until the product ships, removing cash from our accounts for six months or better, until we, and everyone else receive it, leading to #3.

3)  Lateness.  There is a better than average chance that the publisher will not meet their projected shipping date.  An analysis by Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School of Business of over 48,000 Kickstarter funded projects  found that over 75% of  publishers missed their release dates.  To cite one example, Steve Jackson Games, which has a great track record of meeting release dates for their Munchkin game and other non-Kickstarter releases, used Kickstarter to fund a designer's edition of Ogre. Funding for this ended in May of 2102, with a projected release date of November 2012.  It is now September 2013 and the 5500+ backers still have not received Ogre.   Lateness may work for consumers who have a passion for the project and will wait.  Stores don’t have that level of flexibility given the number of product we stock.   In a way, this leads to #4.

4)  Market saturation.  Aldo Ghiozzi of Impressions Game Distribution Services, who has worked with small press game publishers for a number of years, is one of the most knowledgeable people I know regarding the field of independent gaming distribution.  According to Ghiozzi, the average RPG release, either via Kickstarter or through distribution, will sell between 150-250 copies ( A year ago or so, Kickstarter had a halo effect whereby RPGs published through it might sell up to double the amount they would if sold straight into distribution.  This effect appears to have subsided though) with maybe another hundred sold direct through the company's website or at conventions.  A  boardgame from an independent publisher will sell about 600 to 700 copies, 1000 or more copies only if a runaway success pulling in over $300,000.  Ergo, if a company's RPG Kickstarter pulls 300 backers or a boardgame does 600, that pretty much saturates the expected market for that particular product.  Only in those few rare cases (Cards Against Humanity, FATE, 13th Age), could a store expect to sell more than the publisher already has.

5)  Discount.  In order to survive, retailers have to sell products for more than we pay for them. In order to justify buying a Kickstarter project for the shelf, we need to buy it at a deeper discount that offered to purchasers of a single copy.  Most Kickstarter creators, understandably cannot or will not do this, both to avoid annoying those backers paying full price and because to do so would cause them to lose money on the project, neither outcome desirable.

A Brief History of Kickstarter

 

Kickstarter launched in 2009 out of frustration co-founder Perry Chen faced when he ran into difficulties promoting a concert and turned to the Internet for funding.  Finding lots of interest among internet users wanting to support creative types, Kickstarter started as a way for those interested in art and music to provide support to the artists creating it.  Kickstarter supports the company by taking 5% of the proceeds of projects that successfully fund.  For those of you that don’t like Amazon, grit your teeth when you fund a Kickstarter project as Kickstarter uses Amazon to process pledge payments, with Amazon taking another 3 to 5% of the contributions for the handling.  Since launching, Kickstarter has had about 61,000 projects posted to the site and processed over 215 million dollars in pledges   but didn’t hit its first million dollar funding until this past February, when a proposed solid aluminum iPod dock , originally looking for $75,000, raised $1.4 million.  The most successful Kickstarter campaign so far has been for  the Pebble, a watch with programmable faces.   Pebble Technologies originally sought $100,000 to produce 1,000 of the watches and would up collected about $10.3 million, selling about 85,000 watches, enabling the company to add 6 people to its staff within two weeks, tripling the company’s size.

The attention garnered by successful Kickstarter projects such as these, and the Reaper and Giant In the Playground projects, obscures  the fact that posting a project to Kickstarter is nowise a guarantee of success.  In fact, according to Kickstarter, roughly 9% of all projects posted to the site receive zero pledges.  Less than 35% of game projects and 32% of publishing projects successfully fund (the most successful category:  theater.  Over 60% of theater projects launched on the site have successfully hit their funding levels).  Very few Kickstarter projects reach levels that attract the attention of the media, with only seven so far breaking the $1 million mark, as far as I can find.  The most successful Kickstarter projects fall into two categories, 1) they come from companies that already have a base of support for the project and are able to drive support for the project by pushing it relentlessly to that fan base or 2) technology blogs or other media sources find about the project, view it as novel or innovative, and start talking about it, creating awareness of it among potential funders.

There is also the problem of, what happens if a project funds but never gets produced.  In the early days of Kickstarter,  projects were typically musicians seeking funding from fans so they could produce another album.  Today,  aKickstarter project is much more likely a developer  seeking funding by preselling a product before producing it.   According to the terms of service on Kickstarter, if this happens , the creator is supposed to refund all money fund to the backers but the company provides no method for doing so on the website.  Since  Kickstarter never has the funds for a project, operating solely as a facilitator between creator and funder,  the company’s position is that it does not  give refunds and all negotiations must take place between creator and backer. 

According to a recent story on NPR (http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/09/03/160505449/when-a-kickstarter-campaign-fails-does-anyone-get-their-money-back), the designer of PopSockets, an iPod case and cord designed not to tangle while dancing, raised about $18,600 from 520 backers, last February.  Now, the money is gone, spent on legal and manufacturing fees, with no PopSockets to show for it, none likely to appear, and a host of unhappy backers.    Creator David Barnett eventually refunded about $1300 to 40 of them, which only made the 480 unpaid backers even unhappier.

The problem, really, is that Kickstarter is not set up to police itself, similar to eBay in its early days.  The side only does cursory investigation of projects before allowing them to post and, while the terms of use do constitute a legal requirement for the creator to produce or refund, there is no mechanism on the site for enforcement.  All legal disputes are between creator and backer and, given the size of many pledges, backers likely don’t feel it worthwhile to involve the law.

For the moment, Kickstarter is the premier source for crowdfunded projects.  However, unless the company develops better mechanisms for policing itself, it likely will lose that position to a similar website that provides stronger protections for funders.

Change is Coming

 

Consider this:  in the past it took decades if not centuries for humans to widely adopt technological change. The printing press, telegraph, automobile. Today, however that change can spread in a few decades or less.  The  smartphone is less than two decades old and, according to BankMyCell already over 80% of the population has one. Similarly, according to DataReportal, social media, also less than 2 decades old, is now utilized by over 57% of the world’s population. Countries and private organizations are installing renewable energy sources at a blistering rate. Polio vaccine took two decades to develop, we managed to create one for COVID-19 in under less than a year.

What’s the point? Change is coming at us faster and faster. What took decades can now be done in a year or two. In the game industry, we have seen a massive ramp up in online board and RPG play, watching other people playing RPGs, card and boardgames have become viable means of entertainment and those selfsame people appearing on the streaming platforms you want cane move sales with just a mention of the game. Witness the effect the games sales of just a mention of the Skull card game on TikTok. https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/50051/rolling-initiative-three-trends-will-likely-continue Only a couple of years ago, only a few games even considered buying and using metal dice in a game, now our store sells 2 to 3 sets a week at a price I would never have thought anyone would pay for a set of dice. Our store has at least 3 Chinese manufacturers contacting us directly want us to place orders for metal dice with them.  10 years ago, there was no way I could feasibly justify purchasing metal dice in quantities to make the buy profitable. Today it is quite feasible.

Similarly with dice towers and dice trays. Both have been available for years but only in the last few years, as a greater number of people sale them in use on various RPG play streaming shows that demand for them increased to the level that made stoking a good selection of them with a dozen or more manufacturers offering both in assorted designs.

So what changes can we expect to see over the next few years? Here are couple of things I think will come about

Reshoring to Mexico—Although not feasible in the immediate future, i.e. next year, I expect to see some boardgame production companies open up factories in Mexico over the next five years and, under the USMCA, companies will see significant tax and cost advantages compared to importing from China. In addition, a much shorter supply chain will shorten the turnaround time. The quicker the US market can get a product, the quicker it can sell, and the quicker channels will need to restock. A shorter supply chain speeds the turnaround process dramatically.

More Kickstarted TCGs-  The success of Flesh and Blood and Metazoo have put dollar signs in the eyes of other creators. https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/49780/witness-greatest-show-rathe-next-flesh-blood-set WE have gotten several solicitations from several companies launching their own TCG with funding secured through Kickstarter and I expect to see a glut of these hitting the market over the next few years. Unfortunately for most of them, the “Ladders in the Mind” concept says that most markets have room for a Number 1 and a Number 2 with all other competitors battling it out for third place. Currently we have three battling it out:  Pokemon, Magic and Yu Gi Oh with no indication of any of the three fading away to give space to an upstart. I expect some to gain attention for several months or a year or two and then fade away, much like the The Crow TCG (You did know there was a Crow TCG, right/)

A Brief History of Kickstarter

 Since it looks as if our back copies or Return to Dark Tower are shipping, I thought a look at the history of Kickstarter was in order:

Kickstarter launched in 2009 out of frustration co-founder Perry Chen faced when he ran into difficulties promoting a concert and turned to the Internet for funding.  Finding lots of interest among internet users wanting to support creative types, Kickstarter started as a way for those interested in art and music to provide support to the artists creating it.  Kickstarter supports the company by taking 5% of the proceeds of projects that successfully fund.  For those of you that don’t like Amazon, grit your teeth when you fund a Kickstarter project as Kickstarter uses Amazon to process pledge payments, with Amazon taking another 3 to 5% of the contributions for the handling.  Since launching, Kickstarter has had about 61,000 projects posted to the site and processed over 215 million dollars in pledges   but didn’t hit its first million dollar funding until this past February, when a proposed solid aluminum iPod dock , originally looking for $75,000, raised $1.4 million.  The most successful Kickstarter campaign so far has been for  the Pebble, a watch with programmable faces.   Pebble Technologies originally sought $100,000 to produce 1,000 of the watches and would up collected about $10.3 million, selling about 85,000 watches, enabling the company to add 6 people to its staff within two weeks, tripling the company’s size.

The attention garnered by successful Kickstarter projects such as these, and the Reaper and Giant In the Playground projects, obscures  the fact that posting a project to Kickstarter is nowise a guarantee of success.  In fact, according to Kickstarter, roughly 9% of all projects posted to the site receive zero pledges.  Less than 35% of game projects and 32% of publishing projects successfully fund (the most successful category:  theater.  Over 60% of theater projects launched on the site have successfully hit their funding levels).  Very few Kickstarter projects reach levels that attract the attention of the media, with only seven so far breaking the $1 million mark, as far as I can find.  The most successful Kickstarter projects fall into two categories, 1) they come from companies that already have a base of support for the project and are able to drive support for the project by pushing it relentlessly to that fan base or 2) technology blogs or other media sources find about the project, view it as novel or innovative, and start talking about it, creating awareness of it among potential funders.

There is also the problem of, what happens if a project funds but never gets produced.  In the early days of Kickstarter,  projects were typically musicians seeking funding from fans so they could produce another album.  Today,  aKickstarter project is much more likely a developer  seeking funding by preselling a product before producing it.   According to the terms of service on Kickstarter, if this happens , the creator is supposed to refund all money fund to the backers but the company provides no method for doing so on the website.  Since  Kickstarter never has the funds for a project, operating solely as a facilitator between creator and funder,  the company’s position is that it does not  give refunds and all negotiations must take place between creator and backer. 

According to a recent story on NPR (http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/09/03/160505449/when-a-kickstarter-campaign-fails-does-anyone-get-their-money-back), the designer of PopSockets, an iPod case and cord designed not to tangle while dancing, raised about $18,600 from 520 backers, last February.  Now, the money is gone, spent on legal and manufacturing fees, with no PopSockets to show for it, none likely to appear, and a host of unhappy backers.    Creator David Barnett eventually refunded about $1300 to 40 of them, which only made the 480 unpaid backers even unhappier.

The problem, really, is that Kickstarter is not set up to police itself, similar to eBay in its early days.  The side only does cursory investigation of projects before allowing them to post and, while the terms of use do constitute a legal requirement for the creator to produce or refund, there is no mechanism on the site for enforcement.  All legal disputes are between creator and backer and, given the size of many pledges, backers likely don’t feel it worthwhile to involve the law.

For the moment, Kickstarter is the premier source for crowdfunded projects.  However, unless the company develops better mechanisms for policing itself, it likely will lose that position to a similar website that provides stronger protections for funders.

Kickstarter from a Retailer Perspective

While from a publisher’s point of view, there is no real downside to Kickstarter, from a retailer’s point of view, there is almost no upside to the process, at least at the basic level at which crowdfunding works.

Conisder, the publisher lists a game on Kickstarter, or IndieGoGo, or some other crowdfunding site, gets pre-orders for it, collects funding, produces the game and ships it out.  Yes, there is more to it than that, but the publisher is selling their games to the customers who are most primed and ready to buy them.  At least one publisher that uses Kickstarter extensively has said they have moved their business model to a crowdfunding platform.  The company develops a game, puts it on Kickstarter, pre-sells 500-1000 copies, then, instead of keeping the game in print, develops another one and launches it via Kickstarter.

From the retailer’s point of view, stores see games coming up on Kickstarter and watch as they fund, with the opportunity to stock them occurring weeks or even months after those who participated in the Kickstarter receive their copies.  Assuming the typical print RPG sells  300-500 copies of a print run while small press boardgames sell 500-1000 copies, almost all of that demand gets satisfied by the Kickstarter campaign, leaving little demand left for distributors and retailers to satisfy.  Unless the game attracts a lot of post production buzz, such as Brotherwise Games Boss Monster, a Kickstarter funded game has already seen most of its sales during the campaign, leaving only a few potential sales through the distribution channel and lots of unsold Kickstarted games sitting on the shelf.

A number of Kickstarter campaigns do offer retailer tiers, wherein the retailer commits to purchasing several copies of the game, delivered at the same time as other supporters, at a discount comparable to what the store would get if purchasing the game through distribution.  This does require the retailer to tie up precious capital for several months, waiting for the product to release. Other Kickstarter campaigns, if the retailer commits to purchasing a certain number of copies of the game, have arranged to take payment and ship the game at the same time as it ships to the regular backers, putting it on the shelves while buzz still exists about it.

The big benefit that Kickstarter provides to retailers is the potential to develop an unending flow of new games and related products, some of which will prove comparatively successful in the distribution channel, such as 13^th Age, and some which will not, such as Kill the Overlord.  The case then becomes how much scarce time the store can allocate to determining which is which.

A Retail View of Kickstarted Projects

While from a publisher’s point of view, there is no real downside to Kickstarter, from a retailer’s point of view, there is almost no upside to the process, at least at the basic level at which crowdfunding works.

Conisder, the publisher lists a game on Kickstarter, or IndieGoGo, or some other crowdfunding site, gets pre-orders for it, collects funding, produces the game and ships it out.  Yes, there is more to it than that, but the publisher is selling their games to the customers who are most primed and ready to buy them.  At least one publisher that uses Kickstarter extensively has said they have moved their business model to a crowdfunding platform.  The company develops a game, puts it on Kickstarter, pre-sells 500-1000 copies, then, instead of keeping the game in print, develops another one and launches it via Kickstarter.

From the retailer’s point of view, stores see games coming up on Kickstarter and watch as they fund, with the opportunity to stock them occurring weeks or even months after those who participated in the Kickstarter receive their copies.  Assuming the typical print RPG sells  300-500 copies of a print run while small press boardgames sell 500-1000 copies, almost all of that demand gets satisfied by the Kickstarter campaign, leaving little demand left for distributors and retailers to satisfy.  Unless the game attracts a lot of post production buzz, such as Brotherwise Games Boss Monster, a Kickstarter funded game has already seen most of its sales during the campaign, leaving only a few potential sales through the distribution channel and lots of unsold Kickstarted games sitting on the shelf.

A number of Kickstarter campaigns do offer retailer tiers, wherein the retailer commits to purchasing several copies of the game, delivered at the same time as other supporters, at a discount comparable to what the store would get if purchasing the game through distribution.  This does require the retailer to tie up precious capital for several months, waiting for the product to release. Other Kickstarter campaigns, if the retailer commits to purchasing a certain number of copies of the game, have arranged to take payment and ship the game at the same time as it ships to the regular backers, putting it on the shelves while buzz still exists about it.

The big benefit that Kickstarter provides to retailers is the potential to develop an unending flow of new games and related products, some of which will prove comparatively successful in the distribution channel, such as 13^th Age, and some which will not, such as Kill the Overlord.  The case then becomes how much scarce time the store can allocate to determining which is which.

Kickstarter Growth

Games funded by Kickstarter campaigns accounted for about 20% of overall sales on the platform, growing for the 4^th year in a row. Currently, there are over 20,000 tabletop game projects seeking funding on the platform with an untold additional number seeking funding on Indiegogo and other platforms. Given than roughly half of the games seeking funding on crowdfunding platforms fail, that is still a lot of games heading to the market. While the funded ones obviously have demand from their backers, it is a crap shoot for publishers as to whether they should produce enough of a crowdfunded game to have copies to put into distribution.

Kickstarter Survey

Stonemeier Games posted an interesting column on their website this week, looking at the results of a survey of retailers conducted by Joe Siebert of FlameStryke Games and John Stephens posted a follow up column, responding to the Stonemeier Games post. Siebert and FlameStryke recently launched their first Kickstarter campaign for their game Royal Bastards and apparently conducted the survey in order to garner current retailer interest in and willingness to support Kickstarter funded games ( I sent a message to FlameStryke Games asking for some more details on the survey but have not heard anything back yet, so all of my comments are based on the Stonemeier Game .  FlameStryke also sent the store some promotional cards for the game, along with a letter promoting the campaign, but we have not decided whether or not to back it).

According to the Stonemeier Games post, of the 1042 retailers FlameStryke contacted which I gather the company quantified for the survey by asking if they carried Scythe or Catan as stocking those would indicate the store has boardgames as at least part of its product mix, 223 or 21% said they had backed at least one Kickstarter.

A Brief History of Kickstarter

Since Kickstarter has become such an important source of new games, here is a brief look at the history of the company

Kickstarter launched in 2009 out of frustration co-founder Perry Chen faced when he ran into difficulties promoting a concert and turned to the Internet for funding.  Finding lots of interest among internet users wanting to support creative types, Kickstarter started as a way for those interested in art and music to provide support to the artists creating it.  Kickstarter supports the company by taking 5% of the proceeds of projects that successfully fund.  For those of you that don’t like Amazon, grit your teeth when you fund a Kickstarter project as Kickstarter uses Amazon to process pledge payments, with Amazon taking another 3 to 5% of the contributions for the handling.  Since launching, Kickstarter has had about 61,000 projects posted to the site and processed over 215 million dollars in pledges   but didn’t hit its first million dollar funding until this past February, when a proposed solid aluminum iPod dock , originally looking for $75,000, raised $1.4 million.  The most successful Kickstarter campaign so far has been for  the Pebble, a watch with programmable faces.   Pebble Technologies originally sought $100,000 to produce 1,000 of the watches and would up collected about $10.3 million, selling about 85,000 watches, enabling the company to add 6 people to its staff within two weeks, tripling the company’s size.

The attention garnered by successful Kickstarter projects such as these, and the Reaper and Giant In the Playground projects, obscures  the fact that posting a project to Kickstarter is nowise a guarantee of success.  In fact, according to Kickstarter, roughly 9% of all projects posted to the site receive zero pledges.  Less than 35% of game projects and 32% of publishing projects successfully fund (the most successful category:  theater.  Over 60% of theater projects launched on the site have successfully hit their funding levels).  Very few Kickstarter projects reach levels that attract the attention of the media, with only seven so far breaking the $1 million mark, as far as I can find.  The most successful Kickstarter projects fall into two categories, 1) they come from companies that already have a base of support for the project and are able to drive support for the project by pushing it relentlessly to that fan base or 2) technology blogs or other media sources find about the project, view it as novel or innovative, and start talking about it, creating awareness of it among potential funders.

There is also the problem of, what happens if a project funds but never gets produced.  In the early days of Kickstarter,  projects were typically musicians seeking funding from fans so they could produce another album.  Today,  aKickstarter project is much more likely a developer  seeking funding by preselling a product before producing it.   According to the terms of service on Kickstarter, if this happens , the creator is supposed to refund all money fund to the backers but the company provides no method for doing so on the website.  Since  Kickstarter never has the funds for a project, operating solely as a facilitator between creator and funder,  the company’s position is that it does not  give refunds and all negotiations must take place between creator and backer. 

According to a recent story on NPR 

Kickstarter Problems for Ninja Division

Ninja Division and Soda Pop Miniatures, which had a really good track record with projects on Kickstarter for several years, have run into trouble with their last few projects, to the tune of $3  million in cash taken in with no releases to show for it.

Fireball Island

It seems like every time I hear about games on Kickstarter, another game has broken records for funding levels on the platform. This time, it is Fireball Island, a recreation of the 1980s marble rolling game, which was seeking $250,000 in funding and currently had taken in almost $2 million. Thinking about backing it since the game releases this November. If they make the proposed release date, we would have it on the shelves just in time for Christmas. What do you think? Are you already backing this or would this be more of an item you would want to give (or get) for Christmas?  My concern with the game is, from what I remember about it from the 1980s, it didn't have great replay value, certainly not at the level of a Catan or Ticket to Ride.

Kickstarter Pros and Cons

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at the pros and cons of a Kickstarter campaign, this time from the publishers perspective, rather than the retailer's.

Kickstarter Sales

According to this, gaming sales via Kickstarer are still healthy, up about 37% from 2016. However, we are seeing a few gaming companies pulling back. Stonemaier Games announced last year they were pulling projects off Kickstarter and Ninja Division announced at the GAMA Trade Show that they would not fund large projects through the platform anymore, though they might still use Kickstarter for smaller one.

Palladium Robotech Kickstarter

Palladium announced February 27 that it would not produce the second wave of Robotech products that it funded through Kickstarter back in 2013. Apparently a big part of the problem was that the funds generated were used to produce extra Wave 1 figures for sale through distribution and distribution bought far fewer of them than Palladium had expected, thus leaving money tied up in excess inventory instead of the expected capital that would have produced Wave 2 of the figures.

In fact, we passed on buying any of the figures for sale in the store because of the success of the Kickstarter. We figures that, given the massive numbers of people who bought into the campaign, anyone who wanted the figures would get them through the Kickstarter. We had no desire to risk our capital stocking a product that Palladium had already sold to its most avid customers.

Below is the email Palladium sent out to those contacting the company about non-fulfillment of the Kickstarter:

We share your frustration and apologize for the unfortunate delay. Palladium Books has been working tirelessly to bring Robotech® fans a superior product. Progress is being made and we are moving toward manufacturing of the First Wave of releases.

Please understand, as a Kickstarter backer, you have not purchased or pre-ordered a product. You have “supported a project” in exchange for a promise of a reward. That reward had an original estimated delivery date which has passed, but that date was always an estimate, not a guaranteed deadline.

By Kickstarter’s terms of service, we are obligated to deliver on the rewards we have promised, and we will do that. We are currently working toward doing just that.

As such, we cannot offer you a refund at this time. If the time should ever come that Palladium Books cannot fulfill the terms of our Kickstarter project, we will of course offer refunds, as we would be required to do by Kickstarter.

In the meantime, please be patient. We appreciate your support of the project, and your pledge will help us to produce a fantastic product that we think everyone will enjoy.

With Appreciation,
The Palladium Books Team"

SJG Acquires TFT

In a post on the Daily Illuminator, Steve Jackson Games announced it had acquired the rights to The Fantasy Trip, an early RPG developed by Steve Jackson while at Metagaming and a precursor to GURPS. No indication as to what the company will do with the game but I would bet we will see a Kickstarter campaign to produce a limited print run of Melee and Wizard, along with accompanying products and a PDF release shortly thereafter.

Monolith

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at the recent announcement by Monolith to only "sell" the Batman Boardgame through Kickstarter.

Kickstarter Retail Model

This week's ICV2 column looks at the increasing number of companies including a retaier level in their Kickstarter campaigns.

Robotech Tactics Kickstarter

While I remember playing the Robotech RPG back in the 1980s when Palladium Games first released it, I have not followed more recent iterations of the game, but, back in 2013, Palladium launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a miniatures combat game based on the series. Here in February 2017, those who funded the campaign, to the tune of around $1.4 million, still have not received the miniatures promised. This forum posting summarizes the events of the campaign as well as a lengthy response from Palladium head Kevin Siembieda.

Kickstarter as Distributor

Scott's column on ICV2 this week looks at the future of distribution in the game industry and sees Kickstarter playing a major role.

Who Prints Cards Against Humanity (and Other Games)

For those of you interested in the business side of the industry, the current issue of Business Week has an article on Art Magic, the company that co-ordinates the printing for games like Cards Against Humanity, Poop:  The Game and Exploding Kittens. I find it interesting that games is the number 3 category funded on Kickstarter, only exceeded by films and music. Of course, the games category on Kickstarter includes both tabletop and video games, skewing the numbers in terms of the games that people reading this are primary interested in.