In part 1 of this pair of articles on crowdfunding, I outlined the crowdfunding mechanism, along with a detailed look at a typical project.
Here, I’ll try to help you decide whether to get involved, or play it safe and stick with retail.
Why you Shouldn’t Invest in Crowdfunding
I thought I’d do the cons before the pros, since in my opinion they’re more important.
The first thing to always take into consideration is that a crowdfunding platform is not a store! You’re placing a lot of trust in the creator to complete the project and deliver; and that when they deliver (assuming they do), the product lives up to the hype.
To put that in context, a summary of an independent report on fulfilment problems appears on the Kickstarter site. It is rather old, based on data from a 2015 survey of backers, and there may be more problems now, given the current state of the world economy, but at least it gives us something better than anecdotal information. On average, 9% of projects failed to give backers the rewards they paid for (which was defined as ‘if backers answered that they never expect to get the promised reward, or that they did receive a reward but it wasn’t what they were promised’), and that it’s not obvious from the start which projects will succeed and which will fail. There’s quite a lot more in the full report (well worth a read, if you have the time), but that figure is the important one for the purposes of this article. The paper does note that the 9% failure rate could be an over-estimate, since ‘a project may have failed to deliver its reward, but still succeeded in accomplishing the goals of the creator,’ but I’m concerned with backers here, not creators.
If you’re interested, Kickstarter publishes other success/failure information, but that doesn’t relate directly to backer experiences.
You might have noticed a ‘stable pledge’ label on some Gamefound campaigns, but that doesn’t protect against failure, just allowing you to get a refund in the face of significant price rises. I don’t think any crowdfunding platform offers any sort of assurance against losses.
The next reason not to purchase via crowdfunding is the false expectation of getting a bargain. Sometimes, the game won’t be available via retail channels, but where it is, prices quoted for the games are almost always shown with an apparent discount. This is quite disingenuous: there are shipping costs, and then VAT gets plopped on top when it comes to payment time. An unpleasant surprise that can come much later is import duty if the game’s coming from abroad (as most are) and the cost is above the £135 threshold. (That threshold could be in danger soon.) Additionally, that discount is relative to the recommended retail price—think how often retailers offer their own discounts too…
Backing a crowdfunded project will never save you money. If you want the game and don’t care about the exclusive bling, it’ll be cheaper (and safer) to wait for the game to hit retail, assuming it’s not a campaign that says there will be no retail offering. Note that retailers sometimes sell Kickstarter versions of games as well as the retail versions, but numbers are likely to be small. As an aside, I’m keen on Cascadia: Alpine Lakes and I’m trying to work out how much I want the wooden tokens and linen cards vs the standard game—are they really worth the extra cost? (But they are very nice!)
Incidentally, be aware of some slightly sneaky tricks that campaign managers can pull. If they quote a deliberately low funding goal, then their project will seem incredibly successful when you look at the over-funding ratio. As I noted at the start, boardgames are expensive to produce, so don’t be fooled by a low figure—Jamey Stegmaier and Ira Fay have something to say about realistic numbers. Another way to make a campaign appear successful is to have a minimal $1 or thereabouts pledge level, for fans to just to show support to the creator—this can result in a campaign seeming to be very popular through boosted backer numbers. (Some people dislike the $1 pledge idea so much they say they’ll never touch a project with it, but I think that’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.)
Don’t let over-funding and high backer counts lead you astray—look beyond the numbers. On that note, the goal for Alpine Lakes was rather small and they’re doing the $1 thing, but this is the company that produced the original Cascadia as well a lot of other successful games, and the campaign is doing all the other right things (videos, reviews, rulebook…), so I have a lot of confidence in them. Mind you, I do wonder why they chose to go the crowdfunding route—they could surely have afforded to do everything themselves… Perhaps their aim is mainly to generate a year’s worth of anticipation and excitement. If so, it seems to be working!
Even if everything looks above board (so to speak), the gods of fate can still throw a spanner in the works. There can be unforeseen problems, delays, mistakes, or additional delivery charges (though I guess we can be grateful we don’t live in a country where tariffs are deployed at the whim of an idiot who doesn’t understand what the word means).
Derisking Crowdfunding
OK, so I’ve made a big noise about gambling and risks. Most of the time, the creator won’t be deliberately setting out to fleece you—the majority of people running campaigns are enthusiastic about their product and want to do as good a job as they can. However, they might be great game designers but not so great businesspeople. While they’ll say nice things about themselves on the campaign web page, you need some independent evidence.
The more successful crowdfunding campaigns someone has run, the more confidence I have that they’ll deliver what they say they will. Unless it’s an amazing product and very cheap, I’ll never back someone’s first project—someone else can dip their toes in that water. Yeah, I might miss out on something great, but I’m rather risk averse; in any case, there will be other projects—I don’t have to get every one.
Next, it’s not just themselves that a creator will say nice things about; they’ll hype their product through the roof too. Don’t believe everything you read, at least not on the campaign pages. Having said that, a well-written rulebook is a strong positive signal, as is a playable demo of some form (which will also give you a better idea of how much you’ll like the game than merely reading about it)—these show that the game design is pretty much complete, and most of what remains is manufacture. Conversely, if the material on the crowdfunding site is rather hand-wavy and vague, lacking concrete information about game play and photos or videos of the actual thing, I’m likely to walk away. See my views on a couple of particular projects for examples of this, though be aware there are many more—it’s not that these games are necessarily ‘bad,’ it’s just that there’s not enough information to tell. I should note that the STORM description has improved a bit since I wrote that post, but at time writing, it’s still a bit woollier than I’d like. I’ll also add that first impressions matter; after any preview period, crowdfunders should ensure their campaigns are as polished as they can make them right from the first ‘proper’ posting, and not hope that people will revisit to see improvements.
Look for the game on BoardGameGeek and peruse the forums there as well as reviews from trusted reviewers (e.g., check the Kickstarter section of the Zatu blog, though do be aware that only some of the crowdfunded games on other platforms are there; the News and Previews sections of the blog are also worth keeping an eye on). Do a wider web or YouTube search for the game—and while you’re there, look for the creator and their previous projects too. Work hard to convince yourself you really, really want the game and are confident that the creator can produce it.
If you’re on the fence, remind yourself that there will be other games coming along. You can also skip a new game and take a bet on it being sufficiently well-received to get a second version a bit further on, or expansions where a second printing of the base game will also happen (as with DinoGenics: New Arrivals—see part 1). Of course, you might have to wait a while, and there is no guarantee any of that will happen.
Talking all that into account, you need to decide how much risk you want to take. And always be prepared to end up with nothing.
Why you Should Invest in Crowdfunding
Maybe you really, really like the creator’s work and simply want to support them. You can donate without any expectation of a reward if you want; that’s entirely your prerogative, but I’m guessing most people want something for their money…
If the game’s a glorious creation (and you’ve managed to convince yourself of that via sources other than the crowdfunding page) which will not reach retail—or which you reckon won’t reach retail in sufficient quantities that you’re certain to snag a copy—sure, go ahead. This is my main reason for choosing to back DinoGenics—I realise they will be supporting retail, but based on UK availability of NinthHaven’s other games, I don’t want to take a chance on getting a copy via that route. Cascadia: Alpine Lakes, on the other hand, is surely going to flood retail channels, so I’m much less worried about missing out on that one if I don’t back it right now.
Finally, the extra bling… Do you really need it? If the answer’s yes, then you’ve got to go the crowdfunding route, and pay the extra for the deluxified components. FOMO is a problem with crowdfunded projects: there’s always a short window of time to decide what you want, and often an excess of very nice-looking add-ons. Take a deep breath and think before you commit yourself to every shiny gewgaw.
A possible indication of the consequences of FOMO is the smattering of just-fulfilled games turning up in second hand game trading groups, played once or sometimes not even taken out of their shrink wrap—the result of people realising that sometimes the ‘me’ receiving the game is not the same as the ‘me’ who backed the campaign all those many months earlier. (I suppose they could be speculators banking on others’ desire for exclusive games, but the prices don’t suggest that’s the case.)
Conclusion
As I asked at the end of the preceding article, is crowdfunding a way to spend too much money on games you might not see, or a way to get great game products few other people will?
The biggest game companies aren’t producing a huge amount of new and exciting content; it’s the littler guys we’re relying on for innovation. Some of those are big enough to do everything by themselves, such as Stonemaier Games, but even they used crowdfunding to kick things off. It does seem that the best new games are introduced on Kickstarter, Gamefound and the rest (though it’s also the case that there’s a lot of tripe there too), but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to take the risk of backing a crowdfunded campaign, especially if the game’s coming to retail anyway.
In the end, only you can decide whether you want to jump into crowdfunding or not, but my advice is to look very carefully before you leap.
Postscript
Just as I was wrapping up this article, a Reddit post appeared, offering a range of reasons to not back crowdfunded projects—worth a read, whether or not you agree with the author’s reasoning.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
