Cult Of Games XLBS: Has Kickstarter Forgotten Its Roots?
October 29, 2023 by avernos
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Happy Sunday CoGs and OTTers!
I’ve backed a number Crowdfunding projects but I’m done with them now. I’ve probably painted a 3rd of the many miniatures I’ve got and played less than half of the games I’ve funded. I recently funded By Fire and Sword 2 and paid almost as much in postage as I did in minis. It looks great but…..Will I ever paint the minis? Will I ever play the game? Probably not.
@avernos for the white, doesn’t John have some gundam paint pens? Wouldn’t do they do the job?
No he has markers for the gundams. The thinnest nib paint pen is too thick for what I need and have a poor application for miniatures
Shay talks 40K,
You spelt ACW wrong
I’ve only backed 2 kickstarters Fire and Sword 2 and Gangs of Rome 2. Nearly quit the Fire and Sword one because of the endless emails and they started to annoy me and the pledge manager thing confused me
I’m mostly done with kickstarter. I now actually cancel pledges when the project gets too big. I don’t want a million miniatures. I don’t want to play a game that has a million miniatures. I don’t want a game that is so big that there is no retail shelf in the land big enough to stock it – so I have to have everything in the range now and find somewhere to store it. I also don’t want to have to pay £200 shipping for the privilege of that burden.
The little guy is still out there, doing it the right way, but they get drowned out in the tide and (to Justin’s point) you have to already know about them to know about them. It is that way but it shouldn’t be.
Mythic Games managed to kill kickstarter for me and I suspect many others. I could write a book on the scummy way they have treated the customers and even their own staff by all accounts. I wish it was near and end of my pain but we are being blackmailed again over wave 2 of the darkest dungeon after they promised once we paid the ransom fee for wave 1 would not have to pay more.
The process with them caused stress and outright anger months and months of chasing them up. To this point I still dont know if they are going to go bust before we get wave 2.
I just dont trust kickstarter it is certainly not worth the stress, time and effort to back these projects for me. Its a shame because because I do see some really cool projects that I would have backed.
I agree with Gerry and Warran, KS is a glorified pre-order system for most companies and most backers are just looking to get a good deal fast without looking for the success or the future of the project or the company.
I backed the BattleTech mercenaries KS, because it gives me the chance to get the mechs and vehicles easily as I am not able to get them through my local game store and for the online store I buy on, it will take very long. This KS literally feels like a pre-order but the creators don’t want to give too much as to not undercut the retailers and they said as much. Still I saw a lot of backers complaining that the deal wasn’t good enough and they weren’t going to back it.
I am now looking at Acheron’s fall on Gamefound and there as well I am seeing people complaining that it isn’t a good deal and they need to add stuff and make changes and the funding hasn’t even started yet.
Kickstarter is what we as customers allow this platform to be. And it’s a perfect FOMO machine. I’ve stopped pre-financing the projects of large companies there and am only interested in projects that barely clear the hurdle to production – that’s what it was intended for. And I go the WARZAN WAY – I make my own hobby stuff things – inspired by you – thank you for that. Great show – great discussion – like that kind of content. Happy Sunday –
PS: On a side note Mythic Games – where the hell is my HEL
“Kickstarter is what we as customers allow this platform to be” – Amen sir, amen.
Happy Sunday XLBSers and COGz.
A bit of dirty down @avernos Gerry?
Modest you are so modest Gerry.
Shay that’s a compliment Gerry has he talked to you girlfriend !?!?
It’s all the pampered prats living off their family money that need a slap with reality to see the new game’s in their mind and think about the new figures/game.
Ooh Trench Offensive! As I have the WW1 Brits for A War Transformed, this is very relevant to my interests *showers upvotes on @warbossd*
Gerry give some to Ben he’ll paint them up for the guy?
Fab show guy’s.
I vote Gerry as the new crowdfund king ? squirrel.
The customer is always shite?
Happy Sunday.
Thanks for the golden button, and I’m sorry Ben missed it, lol. Also congrats to the other two golden button winning projects.
On the positive side for kickstarters I’ve backed a few smaller ones that are just looking to fun actual production or get the moulds made. Midlam do this often with their only stretch goal being one extra miniature that they’ve already planned for. The pictures of minis aren’t painted and often they are just the photos of the greens. It’s this kind of kickstarter I’m very much behind. Other examples would include the Folk Horrors, and Osmoticmeld (Ian Miller), where they just wanted the money to make the moulds and cast the miniatures. Come to think of it, the Folk Horrors didn’t have any stretch goals and you had to buy the whole set, no option for just one or two minis, despite people asking in the comments.
00:00 Happy Sunday
01:30 Baby Gone 5
02:45 A billion suns with many scaly bits
09:45 fingernails and chalk boards
10:15 Battle the Boing Boing
11:25 something trippy… getting stoned together!
13:30 Scanning stuff? Oh noes!
16:00 fwiends!
16:40 I did what who know?! You can’t prove anything XD
19:45 that spaceship is pissing down on us!
21:40 …
22:00 @shayott just sitting there and staring into the abyss.
27:00 HE SPEAKS!
30:00 the game is full of bugs
31:30 Industrie awards… like the one that Micro Art Studio just now got from 2022? (They’ve shown it on their facepage on 26th October) XD
31:40 Buuuuurn!
35:00 MAAAAAAAAAAAA EYES!
38:00 Splatterfest!
41:00 Tombstone! Streaming on Disney+
44:30 Get it done. Set and forget! Fire for effect!
49:00 Dragon!
54:00 Wetlands!
54:30 Complaint? Who? Why? Where?
55:00 Yes. They did. Or rather companies did.
59:00 *bird sounds*
1:02:00 just look at all what Morgue Miniatures did. That’s perfect. “We want these minis. We need X money to make them.”
1:05:00 That site what judges peoples paintjobs?
1:08:30 WE WANT THE DWARVES! They look brilliant!
1:10:45 Outch.
1:11:11 HELP! End it now! Please!
1:14:00 nom noms?
1:15:00 Soup backers?
Yeah… KS is a nice thing. If you ignore all the monster big ass projects made by companies.
Now: CAKE!
Great show. It is always difficult to avoid being continually negative when coming at these sort of industry commentary topics, but I for one absolutely lap it up. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Warrens editorialising on industry insights was the thing that drew me into Beasts of War right at the outset.
On the topic itself I agree totally with Gerry’s assessment and have commented on ‘negative trends’ myself. The tragedy is, I don’t see anyway to fix the problem.
As long as the platforms get their pound of flesh and you aren’t committing fraud or selling banned or prohibited items and services, they will just let creators do whatever campaigns they want.
The only possible agent of change as I see it is us, the customers. I see similarities with the issues with Games Workshop direction. If we want this sort of thing to stop or change we have to stop handing over our money those that really are misusing a business model.
Perhaps those that report and comment on our industry need to step up and be more critical too. Although with revenue being tight in our sector I imagine big YouTube channels and blogging sites will not turn away ‘sponsored’ content from the ‘big firm X’s newest campaign on ethical grounds.
I totally agree with the sentiment that, this funding model is changing the nature of business in the our sector. Games Workshop built their initial success by reinvesting in staff and creative ideas with profits from success to get where they are now. I think that current crowdfunding is gonna cause a whole wave of ‘Ponzi-like’ scandals that will maybe be the change we need. Early signs from the board game sector of companies squandering backers money and trying to create new campaigns to pay for the previous campaigns funding shortfalls are perhaps an indicator that things will have to change.
I agree with everything Gerry and Warren are saying about Kickstarter — its tabletop gaming space has been dominated by companies that are clearly well-capitalized enough that they shouldn’t really need Kickstarter at all.
Another major problem I see with it is that it has become a closed system, with companies using tried and true marketing methods (lowballing the starting amount so they can say “funded in 10 minutes,” parting the game elements out into stretch goals, etc.) to the point that most Kickstarter campaigns are incomprehensible to anyone who’s not already experienced with the platform. Marketing solely to “superfans” in this manner is effective in the short term but ultimately not sustainable — you will lose a certain number of your dedicated customers to attrition over time, and you’ve shut out most newbies by making the barriers to entry too high. You just can’t sustain a customer base without turning over new customers to replace the ones that drift away.
The “extinction event” that changes things will likely be a combination of more high profile implosions, and just diminishing returns as the market becomes increasingly oversaturated and the shrinking customer base is spread too thin. We saw something similar in the collectible card game boom of the early ’90s — Magic came along with an innovative and successful concept which spawned tons of imitators who eventually found themselves competing for ever-smaller pieces of the marketplace, and doing that mainly by marketing to their existing superfans rather than making easy entry points for potential new customers.
Not watched the show, yet (my playstation doesnt have any sound on the websites videos so have to watch it on a tablet which is recharging) but think I agree with Gerry is as above, I do have two , both for Catalyst at the moment. Think it has become a pre-order outlet. In addition many have gone Kickstarter only, with no post retail (not the case with the Catalyst ones) as in general most of the potential buyers have brought it in the kickstarter and potential retail sales are slim to non existent. I know of one retailer who generally avoids kickstarters and kickstarter initiated games for that reason(again Catlyst in ex exempt as he generally struggles to keep them in stock ).
The other reason in fact is one that I imagine puts off most retailers, in that you can tie up a substantial amount of your capital (in there case) and shiney money in punters cases .I for instance have over £300 tied up in the two I’m in (I did have around £550 but have jsut had one delivered) , Imagine some out there have way more
My favorite bit was when Warren said, “they’re hungry for it” as a pun on the food stuff and it totally flew over Justin’s head
Covid was the disaster for KS. Suddenly increases in freight costs bankrupted both projects and companies. Waiting it out only led to storage costs. I have at least four KS, two from Blacklist, and two from Mythic, which are pretty much a loss, and that’s $500+ dollars. (Of course, if you really want to lose money, try the stock market.)
Except from “whitelisted” companies like CMON, Archon, and Reaper, I’m seeing fewer miniature-laden plasticrack KS projects, so maybe KS companies are no longer interested, either.
Last year, the holiday retail sales were pretty darn good, and I’m not seeing why Miniature Market, Noble Knight, and the other OLGS’s won’t be strong alternatives to KS.
Good show and good grumble. Yes, I agree that Kickstarter has moved away from what it was meant for (or the people using it have, anyway). If I might add to the grumble: I’m severely annoyed by the amount of STLs on there and how much coverage such projects get in general. As far as I know, most people do not own a 3D printer and probably won’t for the foreseeable future.
SUMMER ROAD TRIP!!!!!! HELLL YEAH!!!