The Many Harms of Kickstarter
June 26, 2015 - 8:20pm
The influence of Kickstarter on the board gaming hobby is immense, and it has been for years now. At any given time, the crowdfunding juggernaut is awash with gaming projects ranging from tiny card games to big bombastic miniatures-laden affairs, and everything in between. Whether it has helped or harmed our precious hobby is a matter of debate. There are certainly arguments that can be made for and against, but it’s no question that the gaming industry is forever changed by Kickstarter.
And that’s no surprise. After all, change is part of the Kickstarter package. It was born of a mission to help amateur creative and artistic projects find like-minded individuals willing to donate to a dream and turn it into a reality. The early days of Kickstarter were like a bazaar of insane and innovative expression served up to the masses for a modest investment. It was as inspiring and it was successful, and as we all know, success is a double-edged sword.
An Absolute Sense of Mission
Kickstarter is, and has always been, a for-profit organization. For each successfully funded project, 5% of the pledges end up in Kickstarter’s coffers. There’s nothing wrong with that intrinsically, but it does indicate an overriding motivation: get as many projects funded as possible. They do that through clever marketing, social media, promotions, and the website itself which does nothing but try to convince would-be backers to take the plunge.
They also have done it by abandoning their original intent. In the ancient times, Kickstarter required that projects be creative in nature and that they come from individuals that aren’t already successful. That’s a fairly slippery set of requirements, so to maintain that purity of intent, a cadre of community managers reviewed every proposed Kickstarter campaign to ensure that they aligned with the mission.
Over time, the slipperiness of Kickstarter’s project requirements opened the door for semi-professional and established organizations to peddle their wares on the site. In the board gaming world, this gave rise to CoolMiniOrNot’s Kickstarter dominance and Queen Games’ crowdfunding-first approach to developing and publishing new games. It’s the backbone of Stonemaier Games’ business model and the reason why Game Salute exists. In June 2014, Kickstarter opened the floodgates even wider by removing the community manager review requirement for project submissions. Short of raising funds for dangerous or illegal goods, anything is permitted on Kickstarter.
Why does this matter? With so many Goliaths walking through the crowdfunding playground, the ability for any Davids to surface among all that noise is next to impossible. Modern board game Kickstarters are clinics in graphic design and marketing intelligence featuring nearly complete products, amazing artwork, compelling stretch goals, and big promotional support. That leaves John Q. Designer, who just wants to raise a few thousand dollars to get his clever abstract game published, in the dust. He can’t even afford to design a campaign as flashy as his big shot competitors, let alone stand up to their glorious promises. After all, there are only so many crowdfunding dollars to go around, and showing a prototype on graph paper isn’t going to turn heads away from a box of miniatures from an industry professional.
Abused Patience Turns to Fury
This lack of oversight has led to some very questionable campaigns. I’m not talking about the high profile failures that make people wary of crowdfunding all together. I mean companies like Mantic Games, Flying Frog Productions, Cryptozoic Entertainment, and CoolMiniOrNot that almost single-handedly round out the top 10 most funded board games on Kickstarter:
- Conan by Monolith Board Games - $3.33 million
- Zombicide: Season 3 by CoolMiniOrNot - $2.85 million
- Zombicide: Black Plague by CoolMiniOrNot - $2.28 million (and still going)
- Zombicide: Season 2 by CoolMiniOrNot - $2.26 million
- Kingdom Death: Monster by Kingdom Death - $2.05 million
- Ghostbusters: The Board Game by Cryptozoic Entertainment - $1.55 million
- Robotech RPG Tactics by Palladium Books - $1.44 million
- Cthulhu Wars by Sandy Petersen - $1.4 million
- Shadows of Brimstone by Flying Frog Productions - $1.34 million
- Deadzone: The Sci-Fi Miniatures Board Game by Mantic Games