Brandon the Game Dev

If you stay in the board game industry for long enough, you will hear your fair share of conventional wisdom. Board gamers like minis. Conventions are good for promoting your game. The list could go on forever.

Some of this wisdom is true, and some is not. The veracity of advice you hear will change year over year, and even month over month. This is not just because we’re experiencing an unprecedented shake-up in day-to-day life because of the coronavirus. It’s just a simple fact of life: the rules always change.

To succeed in making the game you want or building a business, you have to constantly question both your own assumptions and the conventional wisdom you hear. Listen to everyone, but maintain some skepticism. Be skeptical even of what you read here!

The Flawed Assumption That Many Gamers Think is True

I’ve noticed a peculiar trend in the hobby board games industry. The hobby board game industry was said to pull in about $1.5 billion in 2018. When you dig deeper, you realize that hobby games are a very small part of the overall tabletop games industry.

The tabletop games industry is actually $12 billion in size. The lion’s share of that figure went to Chess, Scrabble, Monopoly, and Ludo. For comparison, collectible card games as a category, including Magic the Gathering, represent about $625 million.

In short, the vast majority of the games people talk about on Board Game Geek make up a pretty small segment of the hobby board game industry as a whole. Yet it gets even stranger. Of that $1.5 billion, $200 million was raised on Kickstarter.

So in summary, what you see on Kickstarter makes up a fraction of the global $12 billion market. As little as 1.6%, in fact. Board gamers focus a lot on that small sliver of the industry, while ignoring mass market games and the surprising amount of best-selling products on Amazon.

This leads to a massive distortion in thinking. Hobby board gamers often think that games have to be made in a specific way, ignoring successful products along the way. Azul is a fantastic game, but What Do You Meme is making the money printer go brrr.

Kickstarter Isn’t the Same as It Was in 2010 or Even 2017

Kickstarter used to be a lot more welcoming toward board game projects that were not ready to print. Over time, though, production values went up and it was expected that your game would be complete before you launch.

As recently as 2014, Jamey Stegmaier advocated for leaving projects “pliable” so that backers could request meaningful changes to the game during the campaign. At the time, that was best practice. His advice was spot-on. However, to launch a “90% complete project” would make backers suspicious and hesitant since more complete options exist.

Kickstarter is slowly transitioning into a store, at least functionally if not in name. I don’t think this is a bad thing – not at all! Stores provide more consumer protections than 2010-style crowdfunding campaigns. Yet it does mean that many creators need to pair reading classic advice from 2009-2019 with an actual fresh look at Kickstarter as it is right now in 2020.

Board Game Media is Important, But You Can’t Rely on It to Generate Leads

I’ve seen a lot of board games get reviewed positively by Dice Tower and Geek & Sundry, only to fail on Kickstarter. I’ve actually privately consulted with some people in this situation. Using data available to me, I’ve found that most have made no mistakes with their campaign pages and indeed have high conversion rates. That is to say, people who see the page are buying.

So what gives? Well, it’s a lead generation problem! As it turns out, a lot of people who are watching the videos of these big board game media outlets and reading their articles are not actually visiting the Kickstarter campaigns.

This is why I’m very bullish on advertisements. They are proven ways to generate traffic. If you don’t get a return on your ad spending, you can always cut them off. Many media outlets, on the other hand, you end up paying a fee in advance and not actually getting a return on your money. This is okay if you’re trying to get “social proof” that your game is good, but it’s not okay if you’re trying to generate leads!

We Have No Idea What Virtual Cons Will do to the Board Game Industry

The board game industry has historically been thought of as a “boots on the ground” industry. I’ve always been a bit skeptical of that narrative for reasons I’ve mentioned above such as missing Amazon as an eCommerce outlet. Plus people tend to forget about the costs of flying, lodging, eating, attending, and setting up booths. Networking is good, but doing so through conventions can be very expensive!

Nevertheless, it’s undeniable that a lot of people have made important connections and friendships at board game conventions. Put the convention online, though, as so many are doing, and…well, I have no clue what that’s going to do to the experience!

Nobody really knows what’s going to happen now that board game conventions are online. The only thing I can say for sure is that digital marketing is going to be paramount, since the main two venues people go to in order to buy board games – conventions and gaming stores – are going to be closed (or dangerous to go to) for a while.

Tabletop Simulator & Tabletopia Are Growing

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is generally a good idea not to gather with others right now. That means a lot of board gamers can’t go to cons, local meet-up groups, or even over to their friends’ houses. Thus, a record-breaking number of people have downloaded Tabletop Simulator in the last few months.

This surge has been so meteoric that it’s created an entirely new niche within the tabletop gaming world: virtual board game creators. There’s no telling what else is going to come out of this recent trend. All we know for certain is that board gaming is likely to be inexorably and inevitably changed, even if that means nothing more than the birth of 10,000 board game live-streamers.

Final Thoughts

The rules of the board game industry are always changing. It’s always been that way. Every other industry is like that, too.

To be successful and to meet others’ needs, we must always check our assumptions. Always question the conventional wisdom and don’t believe everything you read!

A couple of months ago, I asked the readers of this blog to send in answers to the question “what confuses you most about board game development?” I got a lot of responses, and one of them was about how to manage a Kickstarter community. That’s what I’ll be talking about in this post.

This week, I want to respond to a comment by Wade which can be roughly summarized as, “how do you manage a board game Kickstarter community?”

A lot of Wade’s comment is concerned with making sure that your Kickstarter community does not become overly negative. To me, this is particularly interesting since Wade correctly points out that many online communities can become toxic. As I see it, the best way to combat toxicity in online communities is to set a good example and make sure people are having their needs met.

Kickstarter Community Managers Have Three Responsibilities

Kickstarter communities are loosely-defined concepts. They consist often of the Kickstarter comments themselves as well as the publisher’s social media. Naturally, there is also an offline element too, experienced through play-tests and conventions. I’ll focus on the online community for the purposes of this post, though.

No matter where your Kickstarter is being discussed, though, you have three responsibilities as a Kickstarter creator (or collaborator):

1. Incorporate feedback to develop the best product.
2. Provide customer support.
3. Engage the community and build excitement.

Each responsibility is pretty nuanced, so let’s break them down one by one.

Incorporate feedback to develop the best product

When you create a Kickstarter campaign, backers have the general expectation that you will listen to their feedback and incorporate it into this product. When Kickstarter was relatively new, this was extra true. Nowadays, products on Kickstarter are much closer to completion, so there isn’t as much wiggle room.

Even still, astute backers often have good advice. They might tell you that a certain component finish or material feels better. Perhaps they have a little bit of advice for your art direction.

Not all advice is equal, and some of it is quite bad. Yet all of it should be acknowledged, publicly appreciated, and considered. Even advice you can’t use is a gift. Somebody cared enough about your project to stop their day, talk to you, and try to help you achieve your dreams.

At the same time, don’t overpromise! Don’t launch a campaign until you know what you can and cannot afford to change without compromising your game cost or delivery timeline. Upgrading card stock from 300 gsm to 330 gsm linen is usually reasonable. Adding 50 custom pieces of art is not.

Customer Service Rules

Kickstarter backers often use comments, messages, and social media to request customer service. During the campaign, they may ask about shipping prices, customs, components, and game rules. Answer their inquiries quickly, politely, and accurately.

After a campaign funds, but before it delivers, remember that you’re holding onto other people’s money. Give them regular updates. An update every couple of weeks goes a long way toward assuaging the ever-present fear of being ripped off!

After your campaign starts shipping, you will get a bunch of inquiries. Some people won’t receive their package. Others will get unexpected customs bills. A certain percentage will arrive damaged.

When you receive customer service inquiries of that nature, be polite, be quick, and be generous. I have found that because my money is worth time in consulting, it is often most cost-efficient for me to send replacement copies instead of investigating lost packages. If customers pay unexpected bills, I reimburse them.

Yes, you pay more money upfront by being radically generous. Think long-term, though! In the process, you build a great reputation and are more likely to retain customers. Plus, you don’t waste time that could be spent doing something else, including making money. Sure, someone might be out to screw you out of $50 for an extra copy of a game, but in the grand arc of the campaign, that is an insignificant line item.

Community Manager Rules

I’m obsessed with building online communities. Yet in doing so, I like to make sure that I’m building a community based on goodwill, kindness, generosity, civility, and shared interests. This is not always easy to do on the internet.

In a previous post, I talk about eight simple steps to building online communities. Now I’ll show you what they look like in the context of a Kickstarter campaign.

1. Choose the right gathering place for your community. That would be Kickstarter. Next!

2. Establish a theme and ground rules to ensure positive discussion. Your Kickstarter campaign itself will set the theme and Kickstarter as a platform will set the ground rules. To ensure positive discussion, though, make sure you think twice before you launch. Think of the objections people might have to your campaign and try to get ahead of the curve.

3. Invite about 20 of your friends. Ask your friends and family to leave the first handful of comments. This can set a positive tone which people emulate.

4. Establish norms. Kickstarter moves too quickly for you to establish norms the same way you usually would in an online community. However, I recommend sitting by your computer for the next hour or two – or having your collaborators do this on your behalf. Respond quickly and positively to all comments that come in. Again, this helps set a positive tone.

5. Give people a reason to join. This will be your game. Again, make sure your product is awesome before you launch and this will go a long way toward ensuring you have a friendly community.

6. Push to 1,000 members. This is the threshold where I find that people start talking to one another in online communities. This advice doesn’t apply so well to Kickstarter.

7. Listen to feedback to keep your community healthy. See my previous point about incorporating feedback to make the best product.

8. Don’t overspecialize on one platform. In this context, it means be sure to check websites other than just Kickstarter once you launch!

Final Thoughts

The keys to making sure you have a positive community on Kickstarter are simple. Listen to feedback and be genuinely grateful when you receive it. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Be open and communicative. Provide great customer service. Follow the basic rules of community building online.

It may seem like a lot to juggle, but I know you can get the hang of it. Simple gestures of kindness coupled with taking decisive meaningful action go a long way on Kickstarter!