Don’t Pee in the Sandbox…

I have worn many hats in my days, from retailer to publisher, from designer to project manager, from e-book distributor to Kickstarter fulfillment, from trainee to consultant. I decided I’d share some of the knowledge I’ve garnered over the years in hopes of setting some standard or best practices in our small hobby industry. Maybe reading this it will also help you see things though the eyes of your business partners and understand why they do what they do.

A typical path a game takes to reach a customer these days would be:

Designer → Publisher → Kickstarter → Manufacturer → Fulfillment → Distributor → Retailer → Consumer

Business Startup

• Create an LLC and don’t do this under your own name. It’s simple and not very costly. If things go south, you have a way out without losing your assets.
• Check out my free ePublisher Guide ebook I wrote some years ago. It’s still very relevant.http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=17585
• Make sure you have some operating capital to survive if your first game isn’t a huge success.

Designer

• Your game needs to be in a “blind test”-ready state before submitting to a publisher. This means that out of the box, reading the rules someone can play the game.
• Don’t submit to a company that doesn’t make games like the one you made. That just wastes everyone’s time.
• First try to find a publisher to work with before you consider crowdfunding at Kickstarter. Yes you might have a bit more control and higher initial profits, but retailers do not support many crowdfunded games. In fact many actively avoid them.
• Don’t send the same prototypes to multiple publishers unless they agree that it’s acceptable.
• Don’t harass a publisher. Contact them once a month at most.
• Attend prototype events like http://www.Protospiel.org and http://www.UnPub.net
• Make appointments to meet with publishers at conventions, don’t just hit them up at the show.
• Please read: “Courting a Game Publisher – DO’s and DON’Ts”http://www.jamesmathe.com/courting-a-game-publisher-dos-and-donts/

Publisher

PRODUCTION:

• Provide exceptional art and graphic design in our games. Don’t have your buddy or family member do it. Pay for a professional artist.
• Make usable box inserts that allow for expansions and especially card in sleeves.
• Use 2mm chipboard when possible as it’s not much more expensive.
• Make sure the box is roughly a standard size and shape. 12”x12” square or 12”x9” rectangle for example.
• Make sure your box is at least 2” deep so it can stand on end on a store’s shelf.
• Make high-quality games that use production upgrades to create a more intuitive gaming experience (i.e., custom tokens instead of generic cubes)
• Don’t mix landscape and portrait cards in the same deck of cards.
• Don’t sacrifice style for functionality. Make fonts readable and not overly fancy that are hard to read.
• Include a way to keep score in the box. Sounds simple but some forget this. Expecting players to find paper or dice is not acceptable.
• Counters & tiles should be double-sided. They look cheap and require flipping if they are not.
• Use a proof reader outside the development team to review your manual.
• Invest in good cover and back art and designs. Don’t use boring human portraits.
• Back of your game box should show a picture of your game in action so a retailer can point at it and give a sales pitch or quick explaination of the game.
• Don’t use paper money in your games. Cardboard chits or even cards are a better choice. Paper gets damaged easily and seems cheap to the consumer.
• In your manual, use many pictures and diagrams plus a full image of setup at the beginning of the game. This image is a good place to call out all the components.
• Don’t keep using these overused themes: Cathedrals, Farming, Zombies, Build Castle, Mediterranean Trading, etc.
• Use full size cards if they are to be held in the hand. Make sure all they need to see is visible in the upper LEFT as most people fan their cards this way.
• Make sure your books and manuals follow some standards for layout, check out another one of my free ebooks here: “ePublisher PDF Creator” http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=18370
• 10,000 feet to making a game http://www.jamesmathe.com/10000-feet-to-publishing-a-board-game/

PRICING:

• Price our games reasonably. $10-20 for single deck card games, $30-45 for party games, $50-75 for heavy gamer games. $99 is about the limit consumers will pay for a huge game.
• Deep discounters are out there and there is little you can really do about it. Some companies have tried to use Minimum Mark Up contracts, but if you do that – make sure you’re actively enforcing that. Small companies will not have the clout to manage that.

DISTRIBUTION:

• You don’t have to love it, but using the distribution system is still a must these days. Retailers do not want to direct order from you and are not interested in your solicitation calls.
• Meet delivery promises, make sure you build in a few months for issues that will arise.
• Provide retailers with PDF versions of the game or rules for free if they want them.

THE GAME:

• Publish only special games, not mediocre games.
• Make games that provide memorable moments and vast replayability.
• Make games that scale well for a wide range of players (our general goal is 2-5 players)
• Thoroughly playtest (in person and blind) every game you release
• Don’t rename common things just for theme (like the discard pile)
• Make sure you define tie breakers in the the rule. Even how to break the ties of the breaker.
• Include a method for choosing a start player in the manual.
• Color blind test all aspects of the game. Make use symbols/icon to help as well.
• Make sure the game theme fits the mechanics and audience.

MARKETING:

• Know the audience your company wishes to cater to. Don’t try to please all gamers. Pick a niche within the niche and attempt to shine.
• It’s a small industry so networking with others is very important. You can’t hide in your room and expect to do well.
• Many games are bought on faith of a brand/company. So spend some money on branding, which usually means attending conventions and running some online ads.
• Print ads are only good for branding once you have the money to spend on them. They are not a good choice for a small publisher.
• If you choose to use crowdfunding, realize that you will alienate some retailers.
• You products should always be sold at full MSRP on your own website. If you don’t believe in your own MSRP value, then there is a larger problem.
• Conventions are a pain and rarely make any money, but are a necessity for a serious publishing company. Your consumers want to know you’re taking your business seriously.
• Consider providing convention support with free games for prizes.
• Help retailers find demo teams in their area to show off your games on their game nights.
• If you choose to sell mostly direct and not use the distribution system, at least still provide a path to allow for retailer support and discounts though you directly.
• Provide all stores and customers a product at the same time. Do not release to other channels at different times.
• Launch party support helps promote the game, provide exclusives.
• Retailers love promotional materials, but flyers are not enough.
• Store demo copies should be provide at 25% of MSRP or free with a case or just send a scratch and dented copy to use.

Kickstarter

Read my blog: “Kicking & Screaming” http://www.jamesmathe.com/kicking-screaming/

• How to make it retailer friendly

  • Offer proven retailers (at least in the USA) exclusives and demo kits
  • Ship on time and to retailers the first week (if not first).
  • Stores are used to 45-50% off MSRP plus free shipping and you should offer them that.
  • The biggest complaint from retailers is the out-lay of money for the time it takes you to produce the game. So offer them a way to “pledge” their support without paying up front. Problem is Kickstarter does not really allow this – so you have to work this out offsite. You cannot for example put a $1 pledge up with the intention of more being paid after the campaign is completed. You need to direct the retailer to another page on your own website with infromation on how you want to handle getting them a commitment of the game and the stretch goals and exclusives.
  • Allow local customer pickup so that the retailer will actually help promote your product by getting people to commit through their store to buying copies of the game. A sort of pre-order pull-through marketing.
  • Try using the Springboard Local Support program from Game Salute. Http://www.GameSalute.com

• Overseas shipping: Two ways to handle this better…

  • Allow for group purchase of around 5 copies at a discounted shipping rate. Sure you eat some shipping costs, but the backers on the other end will work hard to get other locals in their country to join them in a group purchase.
  • Find a company willing to help you with fulfillment to the EU. This can save your customers a lot and you only eat a couple hundred in VAT and Pallet delivery charges at most. Many more EU backers (the second largest group of backers) will jump on board this way.

Manufacturer

(more of what you can do to keep from being burned)

• Get pricing quotes from several manufacturers you trust.
• Ask their turn around time
• Most require 50% up front, but this is negotiable after your first game.
• Ask them to provide a shipping quote
• Don’t let the Manufacturer do any product testing, get it done in the USA if you’re selling games for younger kids.
• Make sure they store the games in a climate-controlled facility and dehumidify the boards before packaging.
• Make sure they use real card stock (with layers called grey-core and such) and not just art paper.
• There are high quality Print on Demand (POD) companies these days you can use for short print runs, such as DriveThruCards or TheGameCrafter
• Manufacturers I personally trust without question: http://www.PandaGM.com and http://www.LudoFact.com
• 10,000 feet to making a game http://www.jamesmathe.com/10000-feet-to-publishing-a-board-game/

Fulfillment

• Since distribution no longer attempts to promote our products, help smaller companies get more exposure.
• Keep pallet/flooring fees reasonable.

COMPANIES:

• Game Salute: Provides convention support, direct sales, and minimum mark up protection. Only works with 1 major distributor.
• Impressions Advertising: Provides access to the most distributors throughout the world.
• Publisher Services Inc (PSI): Can (if you’re lucky) provide access to main stream retail outlets.
• Alliance Distribution: Flooring: Can help with shipping out your crowdfunded project and sell on consignment.
• Amazon Fullfillment: Can help with direct sales and fulfillment of crowdfunded projects.

Distribution

• Don’t make exclusive deals with publishers! This is why I think exclusive deals in distribution suck: http://www.jamesmathe.com/exclusive-deals-suck
• Picking errors kill sales. Some distributors are worse than others. Hire good staff.
• Stop expanding your “net pricing” products which charges you more than your standard discount.

Major USA Distributors:

• ACD Distribution
• Aladdin Distributors
• Alliance Game Distribution
• Diamond Comic Distributors
• GTS Distribution
• Mad Al Distributors
• Premier Hobby Distributors
• Southern Hobby
• WarPath Games Distribution

Retailer

• Help pull-through sales by pre-ordering small publisher products from distribution as they are almost always under-ordering product which then causes delays for restocks and lost sales.
• Train your staff in the games you sell. Nothing worse than the staff member who’s an MTG fan who knows nothing about the board games in your store.
• Greet all customers and don’t stereotype. For example, don’t ask a girl in your shop what their boyfiend plays.
• Provide game play space and clean bathrooms.
• Provide store rules and enforce them. Ask the stinky people to bathe & use deodorant.
• Provide an events calendar online and/or in store.

More of Trogs Comic: http://www.jamesmathe.com/Trogs

The Enlightened Path to Virtual Popularity

I’ve seen many great looking games or great ideas just languish on Kickstarter and they really did a good job with their campaign page. So what went wrong? In almost all these cases the project creators came out of the woodwork as an unknown until the day they posted their project. Crowd Funding sites (including the big mall of a site: Kickstarter) cannot promote your project on their own enough to get funded. In is certainly not a case of posting it and they will come!

Much of your success on a crowd funding site depends on your social network / reach. You need to begin working on this weeks before you plan to launch your campaign. You need to have several hundred likes on Facebook and hundreds of followers on Twitter as well as a presence on many other social sites, forums and blogs. You will also need to start working on creating a direct mailing list. These sources can account for 25-50% of your funding!

First, a couple general notes from the marketing guru Alexi Vandenberg of Rabid Fanboy…

1. Your website isn’t as important as your mailing list and social networking. People don’t “find” your website on their own – they find it from marketing. The back your project on Kickstarter not your website. So it’s your marketing that needs the most exposure, and you usually want to point them to Kickstarter, not your website. Sure your website is still important but don’t waste a disproportional amount of time and money on it.
2. As a creator your project is important, do not take anything personal. If a donor asks a question it is probably because he doesn’t understand the project and is honestly curious. I have seen many creators get very short if someone asks a question regarding the product. That is more detrimental than they realize because that person has friends. It only takes one example of obnoxiousness or rudeness for someone to change their mind about buying your product and, on the internet, such examples can travel widely, especially in fandom circles.
3. Don’t panic with the doldrums. Sales and fund-raising has ebbs and flows. If funding has stopped completely then there is a problem; but if it slows or is moving in fits and starts but is still going towards your goal, do not suddenly change your entire marketing strategy to make it more “sexy”. Marketing is sometimes not so much flashy as it is steady messaging. Changing suddenly smacks of something going wrong and undermines confidence in your product.

Now onto the meat…

GETTING LIKES, FOLLOWS & MAILING LISTS?

On Any Site

• Follow / Friend others and they will do the same back
• Make sure your fans are part of the conversation. Ask questions or seek feedback. Engagement is key.
• Be a part of the community, ask questions and engage conversations
• Post regular, informative, and helpful posts and replies
• Always include pictures and/or links in everything you post.
• Reply to other people’s posts and tweets, don’t just like them.
• Get others to share your posts and retweet your messages.
• Leave relevant comments on other people’s blogs and leave your FB page URL
• Reach out to bloggers, podcasters, news sites and more to at least mention your product page.
• Attempt to reach outside the industry/gamer sites to find people who may be interested in the theme/topic of your game. Try comic book sites for example.
• Encourage posts to Reddit about your project.
• Join Meetup.com groups and attend Events in your area playing games
• Post/tweet/share pictures of people actually playing your game
• Run a Contest or a Fan of the Month promotion

Facebook

• Share other Facebook posts of similar products
• Link to your Facebook page in your signature on forum posts
• Join other groups on Facebook
• Post interesting stuff to OTHER groups/pages besides your own or your own feed
• Install a LIKE button or Widget or Feed on your website or blog – https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/
• Create/share things that are interesting or inspiring or funny to gamer geeks
• Use Interactive YouTube annotations to drive likes from your videos
• Link to your Facebook page from your Linked-in profile
• Create a poll for people to vote on.
• Pay to promote a post with a great picture on your page.
• Promote LIKES as a stretch goal in your campaign
• Use a “LIKE-Gate” tab on your page for exclusive content reveal, such as game rules or some PnP content. http://ustandout.com/facebook/how-to-promote-your-facebook-pages-like-gate-tab-to-get-more-likes
• Use status tagging – Status tagging is a cool and fairly new feature of Facebook This feature allows you to tag any page or person by entering the @ sign and then typing the name of the page or person you want to tag.
• Connect your Facebook page to Twitter and allow it to tweet your posts. https://www.facebook.com/twitter/
• Find yourself more friends – http://www.facebook.com/find-friends/
• Take small fliers (with QR codes pointing to your FB page) to events & conventions you attend
• Run a demo at your local gaming stores and give participants your flier
• If you can find a way to highly target the audience for a FB add and you have a budget, you can get some likes for 10-25 cents each.
• Obviously, invite your friends to your page

Twitter

• Use # tags, like #boardgames, to alert people of your topic
• Use @username to get the attention of key people (don’t use more than 2 or 3 per tweet or you’ll get flagged for spamming)
• Follow the “smores” (social media whores) – All the board game or RPG people you can find, many will follow you back.
• Re-tweet others who tweet things of interest to you
• Asking for follows and retweets on Twitter is acceptable.

Mailing List

• Use SurveyMonkey.com where you can get input from 100 people for free… so why not ask questions about what people want out of your game or campaign? When they fill out your short (3-4 questions) survey you can ask for their email address
• Collect emails from your contests
• When running demos collect people’s email addresses
• Get emails from previous campaigns you’ve run
• Use a subscribe form on your website

THE DON’T's

• Don’t waste your time on Fiverr.com or other paid likes sites.
• Avoid outright asking everyone for likes/follows (friends are OK)
• In general don’t pay for broad FB ads to get likes (they will cost you too much and are not quality likes)
• Don’t plan your success around getting staff picks, they are not as integral to success as you might think.
• Don’t spam groups or pages that are for discussions, instead ask for feedback about your product or campaign on them.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Avoid using Social Networking only as an advertising platform to push product. See it as a place to have a conversation and gather feedback about your product. Posting product info isn’t bad, but it can quickly wear thin.
• The number-one rule for success within a community or social platform is to engage in the relevant conversations that are taking place and add value when doing so.
• Tell users how the feedback you get from them is impacting your business and what you’re doing with the feedback. Few people will give suggestions or feedback if they know the company ignores it.
• Use the follow friends on Kickstarter to share purchases
• The comments on your project should be considered social networking as well and you should remain engaged (especially in the first and final days).

Facebook (1-5 times a week)

• Make a company and/or product page on Facebook
• Create an easy-to-remember URL – https://www.facebook.com/username
• Create a good-looking page with nice header and fill out the ABOUT section.
• Remember, each posting to your page only reaches a small percentage of your follower’s news feeds.
• Promoting posts for $5 or $10 works (if you want to reach outside the country you live in you need to setup an ad manually)
• Targeted Ads – if you do spend money on ads on FB make sure they are highly targeted.
• Create a launch party event and invite people to it so they feel a part of the event
• Say something with context, not just – HEY BACK MY CAMPAIGN!
• LIKE the comments left about your posts.
• Post to promotion pages like: https://www.facebook.com/KickstarterGamesFan

Google+ (1-3 times a week)

• There are two types of accounts on G+ — a personal account, and a business page. Create a business page: http://www.google.com/+/business
• Being search engine driven, make sure you include Keywords and Relevant Links on your about page
• The things that separates Google+ from Facebook is that brands can appear at the top of Google search results as well as status updates.
• Google Events feature allows Google+ users to send out customized invitations to anyone regardless of whether they are Google+ users. It syncs with Google Calendar and shows up automatically when a user confirms for an event.
• Join the many game groups found on Google+
• With Circles, you can segment their followers. They can sort by different customer types, new customers, old customers, prospective customers, etc
• You can take advantage of Circles by sending coupons to just prospective customers or having specials for current customers
• Hangouts (chat/video rooms) can be used during the final hours of your event to help drive the hype and backing frenzy. Give it sort of a party feel. I’ve personally seen hundreds of dollars added by existing backers in attempts to meet the next stretch goals.
• Google is YouTube, and integration of videos is a key factor in Google+

Twitter (3+ times daily)

• Get a Twitter account and plan to keep up the tweeting, it’s not hard
• Re-tweet the other people who tweet about your product or things similar
• Thank people for re-tweeting you.
• Judiciously include # hashtags like #boardgames or #gencon when you post
• Follow everyone who follows you
• Small talk on Twitter goes a long way toward building brand loyalty.
• Share interesting things and topics not just your own spam. Be kind and click other people’s TWEET buttons on their blogs and sites.
• Tweet whenever you back someone else’s project.
• Tweet during USA peak times such the evening.
• Keep your posts short enough to retweet. Remember it adds text when you do.

LinkedIn (Once a week)

• Join and make some posts to game groups
• Follow others active in the gaming groups.
• Make profile updates when you have some big news like launch or updates.

Pinterest (as needed)

• Your game should look cool, right? Some bits look especially cool! Post them here for people to share and look at.

YouTube (as needed)

• Post all your videos to YouTube as well as Kickstarter (or whichever) as YouTube has its own social aspects.
• Use annotations to point to your product & pages.
• Don’t forget you can share video on most social networks as well as pictures, so share your videos!

Reddit (Once per forum)

• Posts to just promote your product are frowned on and won’t get you much of anywhere
• Post a topic/subject that’s engaging
• Reply to other posts in your categories
• Schedule a Reddit IAMA – Ask Me Anything event
• Forums: /r/boardgames, /r/boardgamedesign, /r/kickstarter, /r/rpg, /r/tabletop, /r/Pathfinder_RPG

COMMUNITY REACH

You don’t want to pollute forums and such you’ve never been to before, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start building connections to those sites now. Find forums that are for similar interests, join their conversations, ask questions, be friendly, and when your campaign does launch you can more naturally invite them to check it out.

BoardGameGeek.com (daily)

• Create a Database entry on BGG and upload some pictures
• Post a designer blog at BGG during the campaign
• Post to the forums as regular as you can
• Post your game to the Kickstarter pages:
  http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/746926/crowdfunding-announcements-thread
• Add to the kickstarter forum
  http://www.boardgamegeek.com/forum/915012/kickstarter/general
• Become a part of the community and help others
• To any valid Geek Lists your game fits, such as this one: Kickstarter Boardgame Projects
• Post major updates to BGG as well

RPG.net (Role-playing Games)

• Become a part of the community and help others
• Post major updates to RPG.NET as well

News Sites & Blogs

• KickTraq
• Tabletop Gaming News
• The Miniatures Page
• Purple Pawn
• Game Salute News
• Game Bugle

Crowd Funding Friendly Reviewers

Before the launch of your campaign, you need to have arranged a third party review of your game or at least an interview.

• UndeadViking Video Reviews
• Drive Thru Review
• The Dice Tower
• Dice Hate Me.com/
• Penny Arcade Report
• The Gaming Gang
• The Spiel
• Geek Dad
• Father Geek
• G*M*S Magazine
• Rahdo Runs Through
• 2d6.org
• Crits Happen.net/
• Watch It Played
• Opinionated Gamers
• Drake’s Flames
• Board to Death TV
• On Board Games
• I Slay the Dragon
• The Cardboard Jungle
• GreyElephant Gaming
• Something Awful Game Forums

Podcasts

• Try to get some exposure with popular video and podcasts
• Do an interview or give them your game to try out
• Have them link to your Facebook page before the campaign

Mailing List (weekly)

• Include call to actions or discounts
• Be brief and to the point, people don’t read long emails
• Make sure you use HTML and include pictures and formatting
• Track your source and clicks using special URLs from BIT.ly – see my blog post “Myth Busters – Kickstarter Referrer Page?”

Your own Website / Blog (weekly)

• Write about your ideas, your game, and path to production
• You could help educate your followers about crowd funding by providing them with these links on your pages and tweets to get them prepped.

Conventions

• GTS – Trade show to get exposure to retailers.
• Origins – Decent board and war game exposure.
• GenCon – Huge audience of all kinds. Best vendor exposure.
• BGG.CON – Great exposure to alpha card and board gamers.
• Essen ‘Spiel – European market exposure from casual to hardcore gamers.

PAID ADVERTISING

• Gamerati Network Banners – Reaches mainly RPG fans
• RPG.NET Banners – Great for RPG games
• BGG Banners – Expensive but good exposure for card & board games.
• Google ad-words – Can get expensive and poor quality clicks.
• Facebook promote – Good cheap buys on a great graphic post work.
• Fortress AT – Cheap exposure to some Ameritrash gamers
• Tabletop Gaming News – Cheap exposure to most game groups.
• The Dice Tower – Reasonable priced exposure to a large group of gamers
• KickTraq – Effective direct promotions to Kickstarter backers.

PAID PROMOTIONS

• Woobox – allows you to run contests that require LIKE or FOLLOW
• Contest Domination – allows free contests for LIKEs
• BGG Contest – Expensive for the amount of backers, but gets you traffic and hot list exposure.
• Kickin’ It Games – They offer mailing list and social blasts to gamers for a reasonable price.

MARKETING YOUR CAMPAIGN

• Reach out to other campaigns that might share a similar customer base and work out a deal to promote each other
• Create a custom avatar for the campaign so others can use it to show support
• Share your updates to other pages and groups on all the social networks
• When your campaign is live direct people to the kickstarter page, not the Facebook or your publisher pages. Each click a potential customer has to make you lose 20% more ROI.
• Add your campaign to Stumble Upon – http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit
• Do an E-mail blast at start of campaign and again a week before it ends.
• Do a Reddit IAMA (Ask Me Anything) event during your campaign.
• An update is an excuse to market and a call to action. Make sure you use it as such with images and encourage people to come pledge or raise their pledge.
• Spread out your updates. Don’t post more then one a day and 3 a week.
• After the initial buzz dies down about your campaign, start to post review links, videos, and your designer blog. One a day at most, spread them out. These give you a great reason to get mentioned in site news and other blogs and promote your campaign.
• On the last day of the campaign make sure the front page of your Kickstarter has a link to point back to your website. Once the campaign ends, you will not be able to update your Kickstarter front page.

REFERENCE

http://crowdbooster.com/ – Facebook / Twitter Analytics

Jamey Stegmaier – Kickstarter Lessons blogs:

Social Networks
Bloggers, Podcasters, and Reviewers
Paid Advertising & How Backers Find your Project
Reddit

Jonathan H. Liu – Kickstarter Primers

Richard Bliss – Dive into Kickstarter videos

REFERRALS

I am in the unique position of having run many Kickstarter campaigns myself and knowing personally two other prolific publishers that use Kickstarter. So I reached out to 9 Table Top game publishers and 3 Video Game publishers to get some answers about the misleading Kickstarter Referrer page.

Why do I say it’s misleading? Well, Kickstarter’s method for tracking referrals doesn’t work well. First off they are relying on a post variable to set the referral cookie and it overwrites it often during just browsing their site. If you notice in the URL when you click through to a project you’ll often see a ?ref=something tagged on the end of the line. This is setting the variable (and cookie) of “ref” to a new value. This overwrites any old value. So no matter where you really came from or heard of a project from, you are now tagged as learning about that project from the last place you clicked. Thus, the referrer page is only valid for those who pledged more or less the first time they saw your project or at least used the same off-site link to get back to it later when they did pledge.

Worse, I have personally tracked that even when you modify your past reward to a new reward, it’s overwriting your ref variable. Thus, the data that Kickstarter provides for referrals has to be looked at with a big block of salt instead of just a grain. In fact, it’s so bad I can only guess that its somewhere between 10-70% corrupted data. So, I have little choice but to toss out most of the referrals that Kickstarter claims as their own. Kickstarter campaigns typically boast around 40-60% referrals form Kickstarter itself, and this is just not true.

To make matters even worse there are plenty of ad-blockers out there that prevent the reporting of the referral site from the browser itself. I have bundled most of these unknown sources into Mailing Lists as I found a majority of our mailings result in this sort of code. So Mailing Lists below are overstated.

Specifically looking at 3 of my recent large campaigns where I actually surveyed backers directly, I see the truth of the matter. I found that Kickstarter was responsible for 21-36% of my referrals and yet they claim 47-57% on their referrer page for all the campaigns.

The data-set that I have analyzed is of successful campaigns in the gaming category only, the majority of which is in the Table Top gaming category. Still we have a pretty good data set of 12 different publishers, 23 campaigns, and over 34,000 backers.

NOTE: Both because of the fact that only 3 Video Game publishers responded and because the data was significantly different then the Table Top category, I have only included a reference chart of that data at the bottom of this article. Also note that we did not get any data from Role Playing Game publishers.

SOME WORK AROUNDS

Chatting with Kicktraq, he had the idea that just adding ?ref=whatever to the end of any link to Kickstarter it will include that data on the referrer page (if not overwritten). This will help in having other campaigns see your data. I’ve seen “Kicktraq” highlighted in green even which is weird as that’s usually for internal referrers.

Chatting with Ryan Dancey, he also had some good ideas. If you use bit.ly to direct people when doing your own marketing, you can later see true referral data on that custom link by appending a + to the end of the custom link.

So without any more delay here is a break down of the overall Table Top (Board/Card) Games category:

BREAK DOWN

Surprisingly in the break down of all the data, aside from a few outliers from lucky breaks in the media, most of the referrals all came from the same places. These are the sites I saw repeatedly in the data and worth your time to work with:

A surprise to me is that I rarely ever saw TheDiceTower.com (or 2d6.org for that matter) as a referrer in my data-set. I assume that this means most of his following is more interested in finished games they can buy at the store. It might just be the publishers that responded to me didn’t make use of his services, so I won’t be listing this as a MYTH. Someone who actually paid for his preview will have to let us know.

MYTH #1: Kickstarter is responsible for 50% of your sales

To the right I have displayed 3 prolific publishers and a general grouping of 6 other campaigns (2nd from the top). As you can see most of the backers are coming from a Publisher’s own promotions which is usually a mailing list of some sort. In fact, if you add the Publisher’s home page and Mailing lists together you can constantly account for 50% of all referrals. While Kickstarter data was left out and it probably plays a decent role in your referrals, I do not believe it trumps the publisher’s own fan base (maybe not even close).

Don’t get me wrong, Kickstarter does drive a lot of traffic, especially if you’ve used them before. Initial days you can gain a lot of exposure from the friends’ backing (emails) from Kickstarter. Mainly I think because it’s easier to browse what your friends like than the stupid browsing system Kickstarter uses.

What does this mean? It means successful campaigns are run by those publishers who manage to build a fan base before they start their campaign. This is the reason we preach the fact that you must start your marketing well before you ever hit that launch button.

The second small chart from the top is a chart with 6 single game publishers. They are all newer companies or first time Kickstarters. So they relied more heavily on social media but still worked hard to get direct traffic to Kickstarter.

MYTH #2: Advertisements pay for themselves

The next big take-away is an obvious one we can probably all agree on… it’s extremely important to make use of the major community/forums for your product. BoardGameGeek.com played a very important role in every project. The myth to bust here though is that running contests or advertisements there would be very effective; they were only mildly so. Many companies ran them at the start of their campaign so the data was disguised in the initial rush to pledge. But I have run several controlled tests myself as have a couple of other publishers and have found that the ads will pay for themselves if you’re lucky and the contests definitely are not worth it. You can generate 75% or more of those same sales by simply using their forums and talking about your project on their site. That doesn’t mean spamming – use the areas they provide for listing your project.

Some ads were also paid for on blog sites and Kicktraq by a few publishers. Similar results though the break even was much lower.

Facebook allows you to promote your posts for $5 or $10 and those are a good return if you do that on one post with a nice picture once a week.

I surveyed over 1000 backers and less than 1/3rd of them ever pay attention to banners or online ads.

Traditional media or print ads are a complete waste of time and usually too slow. The public is starting to move on from this darling new thing called crowd funding. Don’t waste your time there. Same goes for conventions as people attend them to get something while they’re there, not when they return and have to purchase something. That’s not to say you shouldn’t demo your game at conventions, but just don’t expect it to generate pledges on the spot.

I would only recommend online ads if you’re not able to gain any traction without them or if your trend line is showing your funding might be borderline.

MYTH #3: Constant posting on social media generates a lot of sales

I found that most of the time each social media site (where you have to spend a disproportionate amount of your time hyping up your game) usually only resulted in up to 5% of your sales. While Facebook averaged 5.4%, Google+ 4.3%, Reddit 2.4%, and Twitter 1.6%, the combined effort to troll them all probably would consume over a quarter of your time.

So, while they are useful, I do not feel it’s useful to be overly active on them. A post somewhere and a tweet or two a day is all you really need. What’s more important is your reach (likes and followers) which you should have built up before the campaign started.

MYTH #4: Kicktraq provides large amounts of new backers for your project

I think KickTraq is a pleasant and welcome surprise in this analysis. There are two elements at play here: one of initial discovery and one of final commitment. Kicktraq certainly plays a role in each, but the way Kickstarter tracks these referrals can be misleading. I think it also suffers from overstated referrals, as people viewing the status of a campaign on their site that click through then finally decide to pledge are all marked as having found out about the game on their site. While Kicktraq definitely adds some better browsing and some great tracking tools, it’s not as big of an originating source as the data might lead you to believe. That’s certainly not any ding on them, I love them to death for the services they provide! My own surveys show that even with Kickstarter wiping out a lot of their referrer tags, they still are overstated in the dashboard, but only mildly. So this service is of great use in conversions, but has been overstated in initial discovery.

MYTH #5: You must have a video to succeed

While I still highly recommend having a video for every campaign, there where several campaigns that did not have them and still did just fine. The key (or the only time you can get away with it) is that they had products that people recognized and were already fans of, like expansions to a previous game.

That said, there was a direct correlation between the length of a video and it’s play-through count. You need to keep that intro video under 3 minutes.

MYTH #6: I can put my game on Kickstarter and all those people will want to buy it

I think that’s a gross misconception about Kickstarter, that you can launch a decent-looking project and sit back for people to find you. Yes, they are a mall of sorts that will bring you some customers to browse your wares, but you are in charge of your own fate, not Kickstarter. People might see your project at first on Kickstarter, but for many of them, it’s not until they see other websites talking about it that they’ll pull the trigger on a pledge. You must make promotion your primary goal before and during your campaign.

VIDEO GAME CHART

As I said earlier, I don’t think I have enough data to make many statements about the Video Game side of things. But here is the chart for 4 campaigns anyway…

REFERENCES:

http://stonemaiergames.com/2012/10/16/how-to-overfund-your-kickstarter-campaign-part-1/

http://stonemaiergames.com/2012/10/17/how-to-overfund-your-kickstarter-campaign-part-2/

http://stonemaiergames.com/media/

http://www.reddit.com/r/kickstarter/

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/forum/31/boardgamegeek/press-releases

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/forum/915012/kickstarter/general

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/6755/bgg-banner-ads-for-kickstarter-worth-it

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ILoveKickstarter/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/320445024722916/   (FB Game Designers Guild)

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/111229977945579240171  (Board Games Group)

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/118380390691616458392  (Crowd Funding Group)

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101196434779406961595  (Geek & Sundry Group)

Courting a Game Publisher – DO’s and DON’Ts

Believe it or not, there is an etiquette when submitting your game to Publishers. Publishers receive many submissions and just like submitting a resume for a job, the simplest things can turn Publishers off. To a degree it’s like courting- there are Dos and there are Don’ts that most Publishers expect. I reached out to a few of my Publisher friends, and of course I’m also a Publisher, to assemble a short list for you Game Designers out there to follow:

DOs

• Research Publishers and only contact those who are likely to be interested in your types of games. Don’t waste everyone’s time by attempting to submit your war game to a casual game company. Same goes for themes that might be a turn-off to the Publisher you’re submitting too.
• Check a Publisher’s website for submission guidelines before you do anything else.
• Read the Publisher’s submission rules and clauses – some even take ownership of your submission
• In most cases it’s acceptable to contact multiple Publishers at the same time about interest in your game. But please tell the Publisher that you are doing so.
• E-mailing Publishers is fine. Make sure you put a 1-paragraph description of your game near the top of your letter. Try to include the “hook” for your game that makes it unique.
• List the game’s vitals: play time, age, # of players, primary mechanics, expected retail price
• List the game’s components – just totals of each item (like cards) not details
• List the game’s target audience: Euro-gamers, Ameritrash, Casual gamers, Party gamers, etc
• Send 1 small picture of your game with the initial inquiry or be prepared to send several pictures of your prototype on request
• Include a link to the PDF rules or provide them on request
• If you can, make a game sales pitch / short play video or even a sales flyer. It’s easier to watch and listen or gaze at a summary sheet then read through a long email to figure out what your game has to offer and what makes it stand out.
• The best thing you can do is schedule time (beforehand) at a convention to meet with the Publisher to demo your game in person. Not all publishers have the time at conventions but personal demos work best
• When creating a prototype, consider layout and use clip art graphics. Try to approximate what you think the final version should look like.
• When you send your prototype to the Publisher make sure it’s a fully functional prototype with all the bits (including dice) in it. Don’t make the Publisher hunt for bits.
• When submitting a prototype, include multiple copies of the rulebook.
• Write only once a month at the most for an update but once a quarter would be best. Publishers are busy and get a lot of submissions.
• It is acceptable to ask for a final answer or the game back if it’s been a year or longer. This can be a double-edge sword though – it puts some pressure on the Publisher to take you seriously but they might not have the time and just send the Prototype back.
• You may be required to pay shipping if you want your prototype back, but most Publishers will pay.
• Keep improving and testing your game while you are waiting
• Take your game to conventions and local meet-ups and game store game nights. Get people to play your game and listen to as much feedback from as many types of people as you can.
• Be flexible on potential theme, component, or rules changes / development proposed by the Publisher.
• Offer to work with the Publisher’s developer to test their proposed design changes and to continue to develop the game.
• Offer to help with promotion of your game, including Kickstarter if applicable, as well as upon release. Most Publishers are small 1 or 2 people companies and your personal help promoting the game will go a long way. But make sure you get permission before releasing any artwork or details on final products.
• Write a rule book that can be blind-tested. This means that you don’t have to explain the game and someone can learn it without your help. This is very hard but the better you do the more likely the Publish is to have a good time learning your game. Of course their editor will hack it apart later, but you need a good start.
• Make sure your rule book has an accurate parts/contents list.
• Be prepared to move once the Publisher says they want to go with your game. It’s GO TIME and you need to keep up.

DON’Ts

• Don’t write a long email on first contact.
• Don’t go into a long story about your development of the game.
• Don’t go into a lengthy description about the game’s theme. Publishers may want to change the theme for many reasons, such as using art resources they already have or simply prevent the theme from overlapping with another release. You can explain how a certain theme could enhance the game but don’t look like you’re going to fight the Publisher if they want to change it.
• Don’t submit a game similar to a game a Publisher already produces.
• Don’t send a game that requires a IP license
• Don’t ask for an NDA or imply you’re worried about your IP. This is a big newbie question and a turn off. Many Publishers will not even give you a second thought after that.
• Don’t bother to patent your game idea as it’s probably not useful and very expensive.
• Don’t worry about a Publisher stealing your game idea. They don’t have the time to redo all your work. They have plenty of ideas of their own they’d like to work on.
• Don’t submit more then one or two games to a Publisher at a time. Pitch the game you think that Publisher is most likely to print. You can always return later.
• Don’t set any hard deadlines or time frames for getting you an answer about your game unless you’re prepared to take it back right then
• Don’t hire an artist / friend to work on your game unless it’s for free or willing to be thrown out. That’s not your job and most Publishers will not accept it. You are offering a working game design and nothing more to the Publisher.
• Don’t be unwilling to make changes. Designers should be flexible to changes in design, components, and theme. The more established you become the more authority you’ll gain over these decisions but ultimately remember that it is the Publisher who is taking the biggest financial risk publishing the game so they need to do what they feel is the best chance for success.
• Don’t send copies of the same prototype to multiple Publishers (or even ask them). Once you’re at the prototype stage with a Publisher it is usually understood that they will be exclusively working with you till they make their decision.
• Don’t nag weekly about the status of your game. A Publisher has to get your game in front of several people and play it a few times. They have other games to look at too. Reviewing a prototype usually takes months. If you nag the Publisher they’ll just mail the prototype back or throw it out.
• Don’t send unsolicited prototypes to Publishers.
• Don’t submit game ideas to Publishers. They only want fully developed games. If you don’t think it’s playable out of the box, don’t submit it to a Publisher. This does not mean there won’t be more development suggestions from the Publisher.
• Don’t send a publisher a Collectible Card Game (CCG/TCG/TMG) – we don’t have the money to create and market a game that will be DOA. Make it a non-collectible game in a box or LCG
• I’ve learned this later in life and I’ll assume most of you are younger… so: Don’t make excuses. Whether it’s your Boss or your Publisher, they don’t want to hear about your issues and problems and excuses. They want to know when to expect results and for you to meet your deadlines.
• Don’t run a Kickstarter campaign and THEN look for a publisher. Most publishers won’t touch your game after you have run a crowd funding campaign for it already. Contact them before and leverage their marketing to make the best of crowd funding.

Publishers I know are accepting submissions:

Stronghold Games
Crafty Games
Alderac Ent.
Dan Verssen Games
Tasty Minstrel Games
Valley Games
Indie Boards and Cards
Z-Man Games
Game Salute
Clever Mojo Games
Minion Games
Rio Grande Games
Spartacus Publishing
Wishing Tree Games
Ape Games
Flatlined Games
Gozer Games

Some pretty common threads in what hobby publishers are looking for and more telling, NOT looking for…

ZMAN & MINION GAMES
Interested:
+ Unique with a great hook
Not Interested:
- party games
- trivia
- sport simulations
- abstracts
- educational games
- word games
- twists on classic games

AEG
Not Interested:
- RPGs
- CCGs
- Variants on classic games, like a chess or poker variant
- Games thematically dependent on acquiring a license.

TMG
Interested:
+ Small dice games
+ medium-heavy euros
+ interesting card games
+ space / fantasy
Not-Interested:
- Party games
- word games
- children’s games
- zombie stuff
- horror
- dexterity games

STRONGHOLD
Interested:
+ ***UNIQUE***
+ excel in mechanically
+ excel in thematically
+ excel in funtastically (my word)
+ Micro-Games
Not-Interested:
- Heavy/hard-core Euro games

Also check this index:
Game Designers Hub – Publishers Index

and these pages…
BGG Publisher’s Accepting Submissions List

BGDF.com Publishers List

And get your butt to some prototype events!
Game Designer’s Hub

Happy Gaming!
~ James

This guide was created to help people avoid the pitfalls of, and run, a successful campaign for a card or board game through Kickstarter. Kickstarter is like a mall, the worlds biggest, they bring the customers to your “store”. You must concentrate on selling them a game while they are visiting and get them to help shout out to others. Using your own website or even a competing crowd-funding site will not be nearly as effective.

As of the writing of this, I have run 7 successful Kickstarter Campaigns. Very few people or companies can say that. So I am not going to go into any long explanations of my statements below, you’re just going to have to trust that I know what I’m talking about. So, let’s just get right to the bullet points:

BEFORE YOU START

– ARE YOU SURE?

• Are you really sure you want to take on this second job? I’d suggest you first review one of my previous blog posts: 10000-feet-to-publishing-a-board-game
• If you cannot get a publisher to help you, you can look into some of the services offered by Game Salute to help you run a kickstarter campaign.

– REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

• Find out what ALL of your real costs before you start. Get a quote from a manufacturer. Make sure you’re not going to promise to make something that is very costly. Custom dice and miniatures for example are rarely worth it unless you sell over 3000 copies.
• You need to set a reasonable price for your game. While this is basically the cost of product and shipping to the USA multiplied by 5, you also need to make sure the price fits the type of game. A card game would be around $5-15, party or casual game around $20-39, a typical hobby gamer’s game around $45-65, and a very special component heavy game can get up to $99.
• Estimate the weight and shipping costs from the printer. Make sure your box design can fit in a medium priority box (13 5/8″ x 11 7/8″ x 3 3/8″)
• Set your campaign funding goal amount to the actual cost to make and ship the game. Do not set it to just a pie in the sky number.
• Plan out your stretch goals to reach that pie in the sky. Make the first couple easy and have them completed (designed) before the launch. You can add more later if needed but think about them now.
• If you think your campaign is going to go big ($50k+), consider setting up an off-site Paypal shopping cart to allow alternate forms of payment and post-campaign pre-orders.
• Game Cost =
  • + Actual production costs
  • + shipping costs to your warehouse
  • + 10% for Kickstarter and Amazon fees
  • + shipping costs to pledges
  • + extra production and shipping costs on add-ons

– ADD-ONS

• Find creative add-ons to be used in an a la carte menu. Typically this is T-Shirts, Pins & Buttons, Laser etched dice, velvet bags, posters, etc. Things you can put a few bucks up-charge on to make sure you add dollars to the actual project.
• Don’t add a lot of a la carte items at the start of the campaign as they bloat the true dollars raised. Wait ’til you have reached your funding goal and then use them to help reach stretch goals.
• Don’t forget about shipping on the extra add-ons and don’t promise them before game delivery unless you built in more shipping costs to the add-on. Don’t make your campaign bloat in $ but not profit.
• Remember, shipping a bunch of extra stuff is going to add a lot of extra work.

– SHIPPING

• Most campaigns include free shipping in the USA. Priority mail is the most common method used. Prices for these can be found online.
• Make your shipping options and up-charges very clear in your campaign description area.
• Try to find a EU company to help ship so you can do $15-20 USD shipping there. This will also help avoid the customers paying VAT which can be as much as shipping. Have your printer drop a pallet load of the games to the EU.
• Avoid sending multiple shipments, send it all at once when done. Or you’ll probably have to eat the shipping costs and lose many hours of your life.

– SOCIAL WORK

• Establish your brand before you start. I cannot stress this enough.
• Be a part of your community and gain followers now. Post on relevant topics and discussions.
• Get people to like your Facebook page (at least 500) and follow you on twitter (at least 100)
• Make a Facebook page now and give it a friendly URL with http://www.facebook.com/username

– PREP WORK

• Prior to your launch create an entry in the BGG game database and add a picture
• Update the rules the best you can make them. Try to have them “blind” (you not teaching or helping in the game) tested.
• There is a lot of value in making an early Print & Play (PnP) version of your game, even with no art . This will allow your prospective supporters to try before they buy.
• Contact reviewers and interview sites before you launch so they are ready when you do. Some reviewers (like The Dice Tower) will do game overviews for a fee.
• If at all possible get some final art done to show off. Even if you need the money to pay for an artist, find one and pay him for one piece or a cover to show off.
• Get the designer of the game to write up a designer’s blog (story) for posting at BoardGameGeek.com, but don’t post it right away.
• Try setting up a launch party on Facebook and invite people. Have some cool art for the picture.

– SETUP WORK

• Choose your Campaign Name carefully. Choose a search engine friendly phrase that includes the type of game you’re promoting. For example: “Hegemonic – 4x Space Board Game”
• Setup a business banking account or at least a separate personal one. Don’t use your personal account as the temptation is too great to mix your money.
• Apply for Amazon payments as soon as you can. This can take up to a week.
• Create a detailed bio entry for the creator of the Kickstarter campaign (you). Include relevant experience to help people trust that you can follow through on your promises.
• Back some projects on Kickstarter. Show you are part of the community and not just trying to run to the bank.

• Square Avatar images for people to use help get the word out around the Kickstarter pages and make your backers feel proud.

THE CAMPAIGN

– DURATION

• Good days to start a campaign are Sunday or Monday
• Good days to end a campaign are Friday Night or Monday or End of Month (think paydays)
• Holidays and season don’t appear to have that much effect on a campaign
• Set your duration from 30-45 days. Common wisdom and Kickstarter have stated that 30 days is the optimal duration for a campaign. I have however found that most of our campaigns continue to gain revenue every day till the end. So you can set it longer than 30 to get more total revenues (if you can bear the stress longer). My latest campaign was 40 days long and we got $1000 a day in sales which is more than I would have ever made selling through distribution or my own website. I’ve also seen some campaigns run only 21 days and come near failure.
• Plan for weekly updates (not daily annoying ones). Make sure you include a picture or video in each update. Make them interesting in some way.
• Based on the time you were told by your printer for how long to make and ship the game to you, add at least another 1 or 2 months and set that to your Ship Date. No one ever complains about a project being early, but they do if you’re late.

– REWARD LEVELS

• +$5-10: You can get $5 or $10 for a Print & Play (PnP) copy of the game. $1 for PnP is also a nice way to hook people in on a try-before-you-buy technique.
• +$10-25: Signed copies sell for $10-25 extra (remember you have to cover the cost of mailing the empty boxes to the designer and back)
• $20+: Previous game(s) you’ve made at a deep discount. Helps move old stock and push to stretch goals. Best to add after funding goal is met.
• +50-100: Add some content contribution levels as people are willing to pay $50-100 more to say they helped in some small way. Give them a credit in the manual.
• +$200: Add a few very large pledge goals with something special like dinner with you or using the likeness of the backer in the game. You’ll be surprised what people will pay for. Start these at least $200 over the normal pledge for you game at the least.
• Name your reward levels as they will be easier to find and cross reference
• Early bird rewards? No. Do not offer any special incentives to pledge right away. Most of your early backers will be the fans that already follow you. These kinds of reward levels also make it psychologically hard for someone to change pledge levels later.
• Deep discounts? No. $5 off and free shipping is the most you should offer non-retailers.
• Most pledged level will be in the $25-50 range which should get a basic copy of your game.
• Fewer reward levels to start your campaign is better. Add more later to re-energize upping pledges.
• A retailer level will need to be near 50% off, but don’t be afraid to charge shipping as most who take advantage of this will be overseas. Make sure you verify the existence of a store front through a supplied URL and Google maps. There are clubs that like to abuse this option.
• Generally each reward level should include the levels below it to keep them easy to understand.
• Avoid putting everyone’s names in the final rule book. They can cause extra costs (lots if you need 4 more pages) and are ugly. Provide credit only for game content contributor levels.
• If you plan to send rewards out right after the campaign, make sure you build in costs for shipping those. I advise against doing this though as it locks down the survey (address) for that group well before you get your hands on the actual game to ship.

– THE STORY:

• Tell us about your game and why it’s interesting in the first paragraph, don’t preach & brag. No one really cares about your BGG rating as the game isn’t widely distributed yet.
• Make a Video! A crappy video is better than no video. If possible be in your video. A personal touch goes a long way in building up the trust level.
• Your project video should be under 3 minutes long. Do not include any text longer then a phrase on any one page. Add some music in the background.
• List all of components so people can get a sense of the value of the game. Show pictures.
• Use pictures for your headers and menus and stretch goal status. It helps break up the text.
• Even more pictures, lots of them. Of the game and bits! If it’s not the final art, just state as much.
• Include an a la carte menu to let people give you more money for trinkets.
• Make the game rules downloadable in full from day 1.
• Make a game play demo to show the game in action. This is very important to many backers. You should add this after the initial rush to your game to give you a reason for an update message.
• Reviews will go here, but save them for now. Don’t post them yet.
• Shipping costs explained in detail. Probably the most confusing and annoying thing about Kickstarter is shipping. Be prepared to answer these questions.
• Add an About section for your company & designer. Your goal is to gain the backer’s trust & confidence. You want them to have no doubts that you can make this project a reality.
• Explain what the money raised is needed for. Don’t detail every dollar, just explain why you choose Kickstarter.

– A la Carte MENU

• Do not add too many items until after you have reached your funding goal.
• $2-5: Lapel Pins (PinCrafters.com) or Button (PureButtons.com)
• $4-6: Custom logo dice (Chessex.com)
• $5-15: Does your game use cards? Add some sleeves (MaydayGames.com). Better yet, add some custom sleeves (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/divingdragongames/your-art-card-sleeves)
• $5-20: Custom bags (Dragonchow.com), embroidered bags, or plan velvet bags (Uline.com)
• $10-20: Poster or Signed art piece (SuperCopyUSA.com)
• $10-20: Metal Tokens (check your printer)
• $15-30: Silkscreen T-Shirt
• $20-35: Playmat

– STRETCH GOALS: (Encourage backers to spread the word)

• I personally don’t feel it matters if you are revealing only a couple of stretch goals or all of them at one time. If you’re having a hard time figuring out more, you can delay it by revealing them later.
• Be careful not to over-promise or include too many things that will make your profit disappear.
• Your stretch goals should mainly consist of upgraded bits, bonus promo cards, or a mini expansion.
• Exclusive items should not be game content or rule changing. If you add a promo card, make it for sale or give it away at conventions later.
• Generally a stretch goal should not require an extra payment of any kind and should be free to all backers when it’s met.
• Interweave exciting in-demand goals with smaller token reward goals
• It’s a great idea to make a Kickstarter-only promotional card (with QR code) that you can then later hand out at conventions and trade to BGG for ad credit.
• Start Player tokens are not usually needed in most games, but it’s fun to add one as the cardboard doesn’t cost much to do this.

LAUNCH TIME

- GETTING READY

• Submit a rough version of your campaign to Kickstarter for approval, you can change it after they accept it.
• Be a tease on social networks about the imminent release of your campaign

- THE START

• The first couple days are very important – don’t rush into this. Set aside enough time to monitor your campaign constantly. Take the day off from your real job!
• If you don’t have a built-in fan base or large social following, don’t get discouraged by a slow start.

- THE LONG HAUL

• Monitor and add to your comments several times a day. Prevent any flame wars. Provide accurate and honest information.
• Don’t expect people to have read everything and all your updates and comments. Repeat yourself and links and images throughout. Embed important updates into your main story section.
• An update is an excuse to market and a call to action. Make sure you use it as such with images and encourage people to pledge or raise their pledge.
• Start updating the campaign FAQ as you get repeat or important questions. Especially about reward levels that have been taken already as you can’t edit them at that point.
• After the initial buzz dies down about your campaign, start to post review links, videos, and your designer blog. Once a day at most, spread them out. These give you a great reason to get mentioned in site news and other blogs and promote your campaign.

- SOME STATISTICS

• Expect a cancelation rate of about 3-6%
• A typical successful graph will have a spike in the beginning, then pledges will continue to come in steady ’til the last 2 days spike again.
• You want 30-50% Project Video plays completed. If you are getting a very low number (under 20%) consider shortening your video.
• Kickstarter overwrites cookie leads a lot (see my post: Myth Busters – Kickstarter Referrer Page), so take their numbers with a grain of salt. That said, about 50% of your funding comes from their site – which is why you need to use Kickstarter in the first place. If you’re doing things right, the next most popular referrer should be your direct traffic and boardgamegeek.com. After that your social networks make up the next biggest group of contributors. Spend your time wisely and target these.
  
• To see a spike mid-campaign, it is key to try to get some “outside” publicity from places like Wired.com or Penny-Arcade.com
• Don’t forget to use Kicktraq.com and give them news as you’ll get a decent number of backers from them too. Consider advertising there.
• You will get about 90% of your pledge money to your Amazon account usually within 1 day (not weeks). It’ll take a couple days to get to your bank. But within a week you should have your money.

- MARKETING

• When you do post or share, make it engaging and use a picture
• Hopefully in the months leading up to this campaign or from a previous campaign you collected a Mailing list to send to. Send them mail with a reason to check things out.
• BoardGameGeek.com (stagger your efforts to get steady flow of traffic)
  • BGG contest & banners are mildly worth it but you can get a lot of exposure by just communicating on their site. The contest will get you on the Hotness list which is very helpful getting eyes on your game. This works better for more popular game types/themes than niche games.
  • Post a Designer’s blog on BGG as it’ll get you a news entry and more interest.
• Facebook
  • $5 or $10 promote option on your post once a week is worth it in extra visits.
  • Share your updates to other pages and groups on Facebook
  • Post daily or at least several times a week. Not everyone sees every post.
• Twitter posts multiple times a day. Send out review links. Status updates. Everything.
• Reddit /r/boardgames /r/boardgamedesign – get listed in their roundup.
• Google+, LinkedIn, etc… post important updates or review links.
• Get mentioned on Blogs and post those links everywhere.
• Attempt to get Reviews & Interviews on Video / Pod Casts
• Run a contest off Kickstarter (KS doesn’t allow contests or raffles or such). Share on Facebook, referral trackers. Give away something for sharing your link/picture.
• Don’t waste your money on traditional advertisement vehicles (magazines, cons books, fliers, etc)
• Make a website or FB page but always direct people to the Kickstarter page. Extra clicks required = lost pledges.

- LAST DAY

• This is the time you’re allowed to be a bit annoying and post often on all social media.
• Update your story to include links at the top of the page to your website and post-sale page as you will not be able to edit your page after your campaign ends. Remember people still find your page after your campaign is over.
• Remind people of the a la carte items to help get extra $ toward that last stretch goal.
• Use Kickstarter to send a customized message to each reward level about things they miss out on. Ask them to use their social networking to spread the word.

AFTERMATH

– FAILURE

• It’s possible to cancel your campaign right before it ends, but I’m not sure that’s a good or bad thing.
• You can start a new campaign at any time to attempt this all again. I’ve done it and it works. Use what you learned to improve things the second time around. Wait a couple weeks to build more followers before relaunch.
• You can (if you’re willing) ask for less the second time around.

– SUCCESS

• Make sure you have a way for people who missed the Kickstarter to pre-order the game from your website.
• Export reports about a week after the campaign ends. Kickstarter will move the failed payment transactions to their own section and it makes it hard to know where they original pledged.
• Add these emails to a mailing list for future campaigns
• Surveys are allowed once per group so do them as late as possible so you don’t have to track address changes.
• Be prepared for a large shipment to fill your halls and for a delivery assembly line to take days getting the game out to backers.
• Ship to your backers before you sell at conventions.
• Ship to retailers the same week you ship to backers not weeks later.
• Communication and setting expectations at this point is key if you are ever going to be running another Kickstarter campaign.
• Post updates at least monthly on the status even if there is nothing to say other than you’re still working on it.
• Try to get connections into distribution and fulfillment houses to sell the rest of your product
• Don’t launch another Kickstarter until you’ve delivered this one.
• Go to conventions to promote, demo, and sell your games. Hand out promo cards.
• Remember you owe taxes on any of the money you didn’t spend making and delivering the game. So make sure you set aside something for the end of the year!

RESOURCES AND REFERENCES:

Crowd-funding Academy (Video)

Kickstarter Conversations (Blog)
http://kickstarter-conversations.blogspot.com/

Funding the Dream on Kickstarter (Podcast)
http://www.buzzsprout.com/4646

Kickstarters HQ (Blog + Podcast)
http://kickstartershq.com

Contest Domination (Free email referral contests)
http://contestdomination.com

Free Facebook like contests
http://woobox.com/

Tabletop Gaming News (KS friendly news site)
http://www.TabletopGamingNews.com/submitnews

The Purple Pawn (KS friendly news site)
http://www.purplepawn.com/submit-news

Kickstarter Best Practices and Lessons Learned
https://www.facebook.com/groups/138469072961355/

Card & Board Game Designers Guild
https://www.facebook.com/groups/320445024722916

I get asked the same questions a lot and I see post after post resurface on forums about some common topics. So I thought I’d get on the pedestal again and preach. In many cases the answer is specific to whether you wish to sell to the mainstream toy industry or our little hobby game market. I will answer for the latter unless I note otherwise.

Q: How do I pitch or sell my game idea to a company?

A: You don’t. No one buys ideas. Publishers want to see and play actual near-complete (previously play-tested) prototypes. Don’t waste the Publisher’s time sending them something that isn’t a fully tested game.

Q: How do I protect my IP (Intellectual Property)? Can I Patent my game idea? What keeps someone from stealing my ideas? What will Copyright cover?

The short answer is just forget about all of this and get play-testing! You cannot copyright or trademark or patent a game – you can copyright actual text of a game manual. You can trademark a specific title or trade dress. You can patent a specific mechanic (though I doubt it’ll hold up). A patent will cost you more money than you’ll ever make on your game. Publishers will not sign an NDA to look at your game. This is a small hobby niche and most people know each other and if you rip off a game you’ll get blasted in the public eye – still, it happens all the time and there is little you can do about it. Cards Against Humanity and Dixit for example are just rip-offs of Apples to Apples – yet Hasbro who now owns it doesn’t sue anyone – because they really can’t.

Q: I improved on a game, can I sell it as a new game? I want to remake this old game, can I?

A: This is the flip side of the above question. Yes you can rip-off a game technically, but if it’s a derivative of the original or almost identical to the original you’re going to have a very hard go at it. Ask yourself if you have the spare time and money to deal with a lawsuit? So drop those plans to extend Catan with your special cool new ideas. Also, remember, just cause you don’t make money on something doesn’t mean its OK to do.

Q: What should I ask for or look out for as a designer when signing a Publisher’s contract?

A: Publisher’s contract should include:

• Your royalty rate (3-5%), but specifically what that value is calculated off of (MSRP, Wholesale, Units, etc).
• The payment schedule and any penalties if not met.
• A maximum time to get the game to market (2 years).
• A clause for what happens to the game after the company goes out of business or if it hasn’t been “in print” for X number of years (and a definition of “in print”).
• Your earnings if the game is licensed for other languages, electronic versions, software editions.
• Copies for you the designer of all versions of the game
• Where your name will appear in credits (box cover?)

Q: Do I need to pay someone to make art? Do I need a good-looking prototype? Can I use art from the Internet on my prototype?

A: No, do not pay anyone for artwork. The publisher will have their own ideas and artists. Still, I’m not going to lie, the nicer your prototype looks the more likely it is to get the attention of the publishers. But it’s not required to have a pretty prototype. If you used images from the Internet to pretty up your prototype, don’t worry about submitting it to the publisher that way as they all know the art is just a place-holder and it can even help set the tone for your game.

Q: At what point should I submit my game to publishers? What type of play-testing is needed?

A: To steal a phrase from the software industry: “When it’s ready”. Let me be more clear- when you feel you’ve done everything you can to make it a great game and would like the final help of a publisher and developer to polish the game for the market. This means your game should already have gone through blind play testing – which means handing it over to a group of people you DO NOT KNOW and saying nothing or not being there while they play the game. Do not trust the feedback of your family or friends or employees. Do not waste the Publisher’s time by sending something that isn’t polished and fully tested.

Q: Which publishers are open to hobby game submissions? How should I make that submission and what should I include? What if I want to submit my game to Hasbro? Should I pay an agent?

A: This varies too much to just make a list, but in general if their website has submission instructions then they are probably open to submissions and you should follow their instructions to the letter. Many medium sized companies only develop games from within or hire people they want to work for them. Large companies typically cater to the mainstream board game market and use Agents to weed out the submissions. If you want to get a game in front of Hasbro for example, you need to pay an Agent $500+ to put you on a list that they submit to the executives there. My opinion is that it’s not worth the bother, but that’s me. Plus many Agents out there just in the business of telling you your game is nice and collecting money from you to do that. Best thing you can do is to talk to a publisher at a convention and ask what they are looking for and how to make a submission or setup a demo meeting. Publishers are busy people and if you show them the game it saves them a lot of trouble reading rules and finding players. Sometimes a publisher can hang on to your game for more then a year and maybe not even have played it.

Many publishers are fine with a simple email asking if they are interested in your game. Just make sure you summarize what makes it special in 1 paragraph and include a picture of the prototype if you can.

Q: My game is based on an IP, how hard is it to license? Will I have to change it all?

A: This is a big no-no… don’t do it. The chances that a small company in our industry can secure a good license to use with a game are small. The chances that you as a designer could find a publisher willing to hunt down a license for your specific game is probably NIL. Games with licenses usually happen after the licenses is obtained and then they go looking for someone to make a game out of it (which is why most of them suck). So don’t pigeon-hole yourself as a designer and make something based on an IP that you have no clue you would ever be able to obtain.

Q: I made the next greatest collectible card game (CCG)…

A: STOP! Hold right there. The worst thing you can ever do (if you want a publisher contract and money) is to create a game that needs to be a CCG. I’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years, I own multiple game stores, I talk to hundreds of retailers, I know the distributors. They all treat CCG as the plague of death. What makes you think you can do better than the dozens of failed CCGs that had large licenses and million dollar budgets? As a retail store owner I do not want to spend $50 on a box of boosters to MAYBE sell just a couple. As a consumer I don’t want the prospect of yet another money pit of a hobby. So please, just make your game in a box with a static amount of cards.

Q: I have this great game and some expansions are already in the works. When should I print the expansion?

A: Most games in this hobby industry don’t sell past their first print run. If your game doesn’t sell out of its first print run there is not going to be a need for any expansion. The economics just don’t make sense. So, if you have good expansion ideas, that’s nice – but try to include most of them in the base game or use them as stretch goals on Kickstarter.

Q: I hear I need to make my cards in quantities of 54 or 108 to save money, do I need to come up with more card ideas?

A: These days this really isn’t much of an issue and you really shouldn’t design with these counts in mind. Many printers have dynamic die cut machines for cards and even if they don’t, they’ll figure out the best way to do the setup. However, you might have room for 1 or 2 more cards after talking to the printer, so you could squeeze in some last minute promotional cards for Kickstarter and Conventions.

Q: Do you recommend designers use Kickstarter to publish and ship their own games?

A: There is a simple answer to this: do you want to start a business, hire freelancers, learn how to make mechanicals, run a Kickstarter campaign, deal with customs and shipping, have tons of boxes in your home, stay up late packing, and risk losing a lot of money? Or do you want to design games? If you choose the latter, then find a publisher to help you get your game out. It’s a lot of work to bring a game to the market and you’ll find yourself not having time to make games anymore. I suggest you read my blog post, “10,000 Feet to Publishing a Board Game”

To share ideas and help other designers, join our Facebook Card & Game Designer Guild

We’d love to see you at our Designers event in March: http://www.Protospiel-Milwaukee.org

So you want to start a board game company? I could go into a page of details of each of these bullet points below (and maybe I will in the future), but for now I wanted to just take the 10,000 foot view of what it takes to make a hobby board game these days. I have done this now for over 14 games. This process can take 1 year to complete. Printers take 60-90 days and overseas shipping takes 21-30 days.

• Accept or Create a game design
  • Typical contract to a designer is 3-5% of MSRP. 5-6% of Wholesale. 20-25% of Net Profit.
  • Some publishers pay a signing bonus but not many.
  • There should be a clause to get the game to market within 2 years
• Develop & Streamline that design
  • Get outside help to polish the game
  • Remove excess rules or those that break rules where possible
  • Remove fiddly bits or sub-games
  • Try to attend a Protospiel event to get good feedback from other designers
• Blind Test the game
  • Have people you don’t know play the game without your help
• Hire an artist
  • This will only be the raw art, a Layout designer will plug into the game design
  • Box cover $100-300
  • Game board $100-200
  • Cards $15-25 per (low detail)
  • Everything needs to be done in 300dpi & CYMK color.
  • Use resources like Elfwood and Deviant Art to find artists.
• Hire a manual editor / writer
  • Designers can’t write manuals. Get a professional to help.
  • Manuals are printed any size but in 4 page counts.
  • 100-150 gsm, 4/4 color, CYMK
• Hire a Layout / Manual designer
  • To make your artwork pop
  • To make icons and rules clear
• Producer and Project Manager
  • Someone to organize all the staff, manage the logistics, and keep people on task
  • Most likely this will be you. Get some tools to help you.
• Create components spec sheet
  • Printers will want to know thickness and finishes on all bits
  • Cards are typically 275-300 gsm of CARD STOCK (a multilayer stock)
  • Boards/Tokens are typically 1mm-2mm thick with a Linen finish
  • Wood bits are typically around 8-12mm in size.
• Get bids from printers
  • Every die you make for tokens is going to have a $300 setup cost, try to share 1 die.
  • For a plastic figure you need to pay for a mold which is $3000-5000 setup fee.
  • Custom dice are usually not worth the costs, try stamped or stickers
  • Card sizes – EURO: 59x91mm, 44x67mm – USA: 63x88mm, 57x87mm
  • Don’t forget extra zip lock bags and the e form to hold stuff from moving.
  • Don’t get talked into printing more than 1500-2500 copies.
  • Player boards will warp if printed on only one side, always worth the extra cost to do both.
  • Watch out for short cuts, humidity problems, just poor quality control from China
  • Ludo Fact in Germany does good work. Here is a video of them.
  • PandaGM.com is out of Canada and overseas a China printer for high quality
  • Do not pay for safety testing from the printer as it’s just a racket to rip you off. Most games do not need this, but if you are targeting under age 13 you may have to.
• Set your Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price
  • A simple formula is to take your total printing+shipping+fees and divide by the # of games and multiple by 5 or 6 to get the MSRP.
  • Simple 1 deck card game should be $9-19
  • Light family or casual or party games should be around $20-39
  • Typical 3 pound 12”x12” board game has a value of about $50-60
  • Big box or heavy components games can go as high as $99
• Setup a Kickstarter campaign page with rewards & stretch goals
  • As a publisher there is never a reason NOT to run a kickstarter campaign – so do it.
  • Setup your Amazon payment account right away, don’t wait. Even though the KS site says you’ll get your money 1-2 weeks after your campaign, it’s actually delivered the night the campaign ends.
  • Setup 80% of your Kickstarter page and submit it for review. You can update it more later
  • Make sure you have a $20-$30 item to buy as that’s the most popular buy-in
  • Make a video even if it’s just a simple iPhone introduction. Keep it short < 3 min.
  • Run your campaign for about 30 days not much longer. Start and end dates should be chosen based on typical employer pay days.
  • Stretch goals should contain upgrades to bits or special cards but no new rules. They should not be required to play.
  • People will pay $10-20 extra for signed copies. They will pay $25-50 extra for the ability to add content to the game in some form.
  • Good a la carte items are pins and t-shirts.
• Market & Manage Kickstarter campaign
  • Social networking and having a base readership BEFORE your campaign starts
  • Post updates regularly (1-3 times a week)
  • Run contests to give things away and draw attention to your KS page
  • Add yourself to the KS announcement thread on BoardGameGeek.com.
  • Get interviewed on websites and podcasts
  • Get a review of the game done, if possible by a third party
• Pay Down Payment of 50% plus setup fees
  • You’ll need to wire the fees to the printer. Your bank with charge you $20-40 for this.
• Build any 3D objects for the printer
  • Hire a sculptor ($300-500)
  • Create water-tight 3D model
• Build Mechanical Files for the printer
  • Mechanicals are the files with bleed and all items positioned on a die with die lines, etc.
  • Sounds easy but it’s a bit of a pain. Most require 3mm bleed around everything and some tokens will require 5 or 6mm. The box cover and main game board will probably require a 10mm wrap-around bleed.
  • Make sure the back cover has a UPC (you can buy them for cheap online), Age range, Play Time, a chocking hazard warning, and NO PRICE. Put an E symbol on the box if you want to sell in Europe. If you make a game for kids under 13, you’ve got a lot of other hassles to deal with from the child protection laws recently passed.
• Solicit product to distribution & retailers
  • You’ll get 40% of MSRP if you sell direct to a distributor and they will want free shipping
  • You’ll get 34% of MSRP if you sell through a fulfillment house and are listed in many distributors
  • Direct sales to retailers will be at 50% of MSRP and free shipping.
  • Gamesalute.com also offers some solutions for those only wanting to print 1 game.
  • Using a fulfillment company like ImpressionsADV.net or PubServInc.com is highly recommended
• Get “white box” sample from printer
  • Details all components and physical materials so you know what you’re getting
  • Mailing will usually be a Fedex box and cost $100-300 for this. It’s worth it.
• Pay final printing and shipping bill
  • The printer will not ship until you do.
• Arrange shipment / customs to warehouse
  • Shipping overseas is by volume and will cost you about $3000-4500
  • Once in the USA you need someone to deliver the product, most printers will help you but it might cost you a few hundred more as could customs fees.
  • Storage at a warehouse can be free or up to $15 a month for a pallet. About 300-600 games fit on a pallet. If you have no warehouse be prepared to fill your garage, hallways, basement, and more.
• Ship out Kickstarter copies and add -ons
  • This will probably take you a week to get done, be prepared by ordering boxes ahead of time
  • Remember all those add-on a la carte menu things you offered – you’ll regret that now!
• Sell to Distributors
  • If you don’t have a fulfillment company working for you, you need to contact distributors yourself. ACD, Alliance, GTS are some of the larger US ones. Esdevium Games and Brave New World are big in the EU. Lion Rampant in Canada.
  • http://www.impressionsadv.net/index.php?p=distributorlist
• Accounting
  • Don’t think the fun is over, you still have to make all the royalty and tax payments
• Continue marketing and convention support
  • Create a webpage to promote and direct sell the game (only at MSRP).
  • Give out review copies to podcasts and video reviewers
  • Post and run banners on BoardGameGeek.com
  • GAMA Trade Show (Spring – Las Vegas) : Show for meeting retailers
  • Origins (Early Summer – Columbus) : Good show to demo at. Hookup with the CABs there
  • GENCON (Late Summer – Indianapolis) : Biggest US event and great vendor hall
  • Internationale Spieltage (Fall – Essen, Germany) : World’s largest consumer show
  • BGG Con (Fall – Dallas) : Great exposure for demos

To share ideas and help other designers, join our Facebook Card & Game Designer Guild

We’d love to see you at our Designers event in March: http://www.Protospiel-Milwaukee.org

2012 saw Target and Toys R Us enter our turf to join the likes of Barnes and Noble and others already encroaching on our domain.  The worst part is that Target and others are getting some EXCLUSIVE deals from publishers. Star Trek Catan and the $9.95 Fluxx at Target for example. Target now sells Ticket to Ride, Catan, Pandemic, and more bread-and-butter games from our industry. Add to that their Christmas sales that broke minimum price deals that we as a game store would be cut off for doing ($29.99 Catan) and their having stock when we couldn’t even get the games!

Which brings me to the Distributor Exclusive deals that happened this year with Z-Man, Mayfair, Days of Wonder, Wizkids, and others. They told us this would be good for the industry, they told us this would help them keep product in the warehouse (and thus on our shelves), they told us …

What happened? We couldn’t restock games for most of the 4th quarter. Games like Ticket To Ride (Days of Wonder), Pandemic (Z-Man), Catan (Mayfair) even ran out. To add insult to injury, the cost to stock these games slid higher.

So if all the exclusive companies are now costing us more, hard to stock in our store, are being sold in big box stores, how again is this good for our hobby industry?  Target has just announced it plans to match Amazon pricing – so I guess I’ll start restocking from them instead of our distributor?

This industry’s distribution system is seeming more and more broken every year. And now we have to deal with Kickstarter selling direct to all our customers (How many people who bought 250 miniatures direct from Reaper do you expect in your stores this year?)

So knock off the lies folks. We know you’re doing these exclusives to help your company so stop telling us something different.

Crowdfunding Google+ Group
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/118380390691616458392

BoardGameGeek Kickstarter Forums:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/forum/915012/kickstarter/general
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/746926/kickstarter-announcements-thread

Quora kickstarter category
http://www.quora.com/Kickstarter

Funding the Dream podcast:
http://www.buzzsprout.com/4646
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epvJtKthsCo&feature=youtu.be

KickstarterHQ and the affiliated pod cast:
http://kickstartershq.com

Richard Bliss
Kickstarter & Facebook – Making them work together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcC4ikB-UE&feature=share

Crowd Funding Planning
http://www.crowdfundingplanning.com

Conversations with Kickstarter project creators
http://kickstarter-conversations.blogspot.com/

To share ideas and help other designers, join our Facebook Card & Game Designer Guild

We’d love to see you at our Designers event in March: http://www.Protospiel-Milwaukee.org

(REPOSTED FROM KICKSTARTER CONVERSATIONS)

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  This time I am joined by James Mathe of Minion Games who has brought us a new board game for Kickstarter called Hegemonic.  Thank you for joining us today James!

Thanks for reaching out to us for this interview. We appreciate your support.

Well let’s dive right in and point out that this is your sixth Kickstarter all of which have been delivered and can even be found on regular store shelves is that correct?

Though we’re still waiting on final delivery of the Manhattan Project expansion, that is more or less correct. The games are on store shelves and in distribution and at online stores. We have made games before this but with the use of Kickstarter our risks have greatly been reduced. We no longer make any games that lose money as we have the preorders and marketing from Kickstarter. So look for our 7th and 8th to come this year at the latest!


What’s it like being a Kickstarter veteran?  I’m not sure how many others out there can admit to having as many successful and fully completed and fulfilled Kickstarters as you guys.

It’s not like being famous  It does feel good though as we now know we can get some great products to the market that we might not have had the chance to do in the past. I do get asked a lot of questions from people and I gladly reply but there are many online resources for people to learn most all I know today. I may have some more specifics as far as card/board games go.

Kickstarter isn’t the first time you’ve been at the head of the pack on this whole online thing is it?  I didn’t realize how many of your sites and services I’ve used until I read your little bio (RPGnow comes straight to mind).  You really have been at the forefront of gaming and the internet haven’t you?

I guess you can say that. I’m someone who enjoys creating things new and original, whether that’s a business or a game- I enjoy the challenge and pride of doing things not done before.

So enough about you let’s get down to the good bits, the game!  You bill Hegemonic as a “4x Space Board Game” which means a lot to a Master of Orion fan like myself.  Can you give us a brief rundown of the game?

The game is a unique take and feel on the category. Twilight Imperium and Eclipse being some of the most popular ones to date. With Hegemonic we aimed to make a game where all three power types (Industrial, Political, and Military) all had a viable path to victory. We wanted a game that wasn’t about just the building of a war engine to conquer the universe. In Hegemonic your goal is area control. You want to be in control of the universe and that universe isn’t just stomped under your military boot. You can call on Alien Factions to help you in a political conflict to take over a system. Or you can spread quickly with your corporate greed to buy out systems you desire. In the end (of each round) it’s all about what progress you’ve made in exploring and controlling new areas of the universe.
How do you avoid “analysis paralysis” in a game this complex?

We use some mechanics like simultaneous action reveal which limits your choices of what you can do each round and thus limits the number of actions of others you must worry about. In the end it’s all about control of an area so when you find yourself pondering too many paths – you can back yourself out of that hole by just concentrating on what actions will keep or give you more area control. The rest doesn’t matter.

So how does your game differ from Eclipse which seems to be the one I hear you compared with the most?

In Eclipse you are mainly concentrating on technologies and ship building to help your random dice beat up the poor Alien races and maybe another player. Hegemonic doesn’t even have dice and you can only ever have 3 fleets or 3 agents. So there is no massive build up. There are no wildly random outcomes of battles. This is probably the most Euro style game of the three.  Really the only similarity of this game and Eclipse is the player boards and the way resources are managed, which were actually developed before Eclipse ever came out.

Now the last big space based board game I bought and loved was Twilight Imperium.  My biggest issue was how long it took to play which caused it to be played rarely.  How does Hegemonic compare in time and complexity to TI? Does the simultaneous action selection process speed things up?

In TI3 you are mainly focused on building a war engine to obtain systems to give you more political power to help change the outcome of the game. Alternate goals are draw from a deck which can randomly change your goals. In Hegemonic you have a fixed goal from start to finish. Low amount of randomness allows for you to plan your moves. The role selection helps limit the amount of actions each round to keep turn times down. So a typical game of 4 or 5 players of Hegemonic is about 3-4 hours. That’s long, yes. But it’s much better than the 6+ hours of TI.

I understand this game has been in development for a long time, how long does it normally take to design, test, and then bring a game up to pre-production Kickstarter time frame?

A typical game that comes to us has been in development for about 1-3 years. At the time we get the game we take another year of development to get it to a print ready state. Some people are talented enough to make something as pretty as this game by the time they bring it to us, and in this case Oliver had taken it mostly there when we got our hands on it. So we’ve spent the last 6 months streamlining the game. It then takes about 1-2 months to deal with Kickstarter and 90-120 days to get the game printed and shipped back to the states.

The plastic pieces seen in the prototype are offered as an $80,000 stretch goal, so what material are you planning to use for the pieces normally?  Wood? Plastic?

The shapes were kept simple so that they could be made of wood that is painted. That’s what we’ll do if we don’t reach this stretch goal. It costs about $5000 for moulds for the plastic bits and that’s the big cost that doesn’t make sense unless we sell enough copies of the game.

I think that many folks have no real clue just how expensive a board game is to physically make, especially when they’re coming from the video game side of Kickstarter.  Your interview with the Penny Arcade Report talks about how you’ve slowly raised the goals of your Kickstarters to accurately reflect the true cost of publishing a full run of these games.   Do you have to shake your head or just hope for the best on some of these other first time projects who end up with cost overruns or delays because they’re not as experienced in the realities of getting a board game published?  Do you reach out to some of these other guys and say, “Hey you’ve got a great idea here and I wish you the best but you might want to double that goal to cover the true cost?”

I try to offer help where I can and I post in a lot of places on the net to help people who are willing to help themselves. If someone has no clue about the true costs of making their game when they setup their kickstarter, I’m not sure that anyone is going to be able to help them at that point. A game is going to cost anywhere from $15000-30000 to create 1500-2000 copies. If they are way under or way over that, I would definitely question their ability to understand what they are doing.

The only people I roll my eyes at are those people who still think a roll and move game that has the look of Monopoly or Candyland has any chance in hell of being supported. You’d be surprised how many of these show up on KS.

So your shipping section mentions this is going to be a heavy game. A seven pound game, with just tokens and board pieces, but still costs $75 retail? There aren’t even any cool looking and fancy miniatures. I know I have a hard time justifying these prices and such to the uninitiated, how do you as a salesperson do it?

I own several game stores and I see the price of a typical gamer’s game is around $50 but they have been edging up to 55 and 60 lately. TI and Eclipse are both $100 games. Much of this has to do with the fact that at the end of the day we, as publishers, only get about 36% of the MSRP in our pocket to pay for the production and printing costs and hopefully a profit. Usually we need to sell 800-1000 copies of a game just to break even, yet the average new game sells only about 500 in distribution. So that’s again why Kickstarter is so important to us, we make about 3 times as much money on each copy sold so we can discount it a bit and include shipping — but then retailers get mad at us for doing so. It’s a fine line to walk.

Anyway, as for the figures/bits, if we get enough support we would consider actual miniatures or at least more detailed 3d models to be used… but it’s up to the support we get as they add costs and our game is NOT a $100 price point.

How different is your production process from other Kickstarted games like Kingdom of Death: Monster which is full of miniature add-ons, or Gunship: First Strike which I’m still currently waiting on my copy because they went the China route?  From the uninformed point of view it seems you’re offering less but asking more.

I don’t know the details of those products or the deals or printers they are working with. We however have been burned before by working with low price china factories direct so we won’t do that. We’ll offer a high quality game, but we need to work with high quality printers in the process. I do not look at the current bits as a negative – they work with the euro mechanic concepts we have and are meant to be this way. Again, we might consider an upgrade to actual modeled miniatures if we break the 100k mark where we would be able to make up for the costs of doing such in the volume sales.  I’ve done this many times and I know what we need to make money. Many kickstarters in the past have over-promised with many high end stretch goals and made very little or even no money on their kickstarter projects. I’m being realistic with all of our goals.

One of the keys of a successful Kickstarter project is backer participation.  How do you engage your backers?  What kinds of things do you have planned for updates?  Interviews?  Videos?  Stories from the project?

We have contests on Facebook and we do interviews like these. We reach out to media sites and send out demo copies to a few key reviewers. We will be posting those review videos in mid January. We are planning a BGG contest the week of the 11th. We constantly tweet and post about our project whenever and wherever we can. We also have a large mailing list. Oliver will also be posting a designer blog to BGG. Social Networking (and having one in place beforehand) is key to the success of your Kickstarter project.

What kind of media attention have you received with your project?  How are you spreading the word?  Facebook?  Twitter?  Google+? Youtube?  Advertising?  Are you using Kicktraq to help things along?

All of the above and all things we can think of and more…  It’s all about exposure anywhere and everywhere when it comes to promoting your live kickstarter project. Get people review copies before you start your campaign so they have time to make a review video. So far the fact that we have promoted that this is our 6th kickstarter (something only a few other companies can state) is what has gotten us some reach outside our industry this time around. Kicktraq is automatically tracking us and we try to mention it and I think it’s helping but it’s hard to tell directly and we’re not paying for ads on their site directly so I don’t know if that’s viable or not. But it is a great service to watch your campaign grow.

Do you have any tips/advice would you give to anyone looking to start a Kickstarter?

Sure, make sure you do your research before you start. Make sure your product you wish to sell is mostly done already and you show some sort of demo of it. Make sure you have a social network in place before your campaign is live. Build excitement and followers by posting about your project before it starts. If possible try to reach some media outlets inside or outside your normal market – this is one of the best ways to get a boost to your campaign. Make sure you plan for over success and cost out all your stretch goals.