Your game needs to be 90 – 99% complete – enough to where backers know what they’re getting but not so much that they can’t influence you at all.

You need to give your backers a little bit of room to influence your game. That means it’s not quite a pre-order system, though it sometimes feels like it. Since you are asking for funds before you manufacture your game, your backers will need to wait a few months before they receive the game. How done is done?Īnother thing you need to keep in mind about Kickstarter. While I made cosmetic improvements to the campaign page and quality improvements to the game, the main difference – by far – was audience size. I failed at Kickstarter my first time, spent six months building an audience and improving my game, and I was able to succeed the second time around.

You have to make people care about your game and want your game or else you’ll wind up one of “ 14% of projects finished having never received a single pledge.” You have to make people know you exist before you start a Kickstarter. Kickstarter is useful because it comes with a built-in stopwatch and because the name is bigger than Indiegogo or any other crowdfunding site. Kickstarter works because it is a time-limited campaign that takes place in a public venue which board gamers trust. If no one is looking, if no one cares, and no one wants what you’re selling, Kickstarter won’t solve the problem. Kickstarter only pushes people to take action. Kickstarter is near the end of the process. I’ll go ahead and summarize my feelings on Kickstarter once more since this is so crucial to your success. Last week, I wrote A Crash Course in Board Game Marketing & Promotion that goes into a lot more detail, which I strongly encourage you to read. Kickstarter is the last step in a long process. Trust me, it will save you some heartbreak. After all, if a guy can get $55,492 for making potato salad, your artisanal board game is all but certain to get funded at like $8,000, right? A lot of people cling tight to the old myth that you can simply start a campaign with a good idea and get funded. Kickstarter is not a magic money machine. This guide is intended to help you get going when you’re not even sure where to start. You’ll need to solve problems on your own. You’ll need to do a lot of your own research after you read this. It’s going to be an overview of everything you need to know in order to succeed on Kickstarter at the first time. That’s why I’m here: I want to help you succeed in getting your board game project funded on Kickstarter the first time you try. If you’re a first-timer, it’s really hard to break into.

c) developers who have done a ton of research and know what they’re getting intoįor these reasons, Kickstarter is a lot harder than it looks.

b) repeat campaigners who have already succeeded.

a) representing established companies who use Kickstarter effectively as a pre-order system.

A lot of tabletop game Kickstarters, however, come from people who are: A surprisingly high 55% of board games managed hit their goal, which appears incredibly optimistic for entrepreneur hopefuls.

Sure, tabletop games made $113 million on Kickstarter in 2016. Yet up close, this initial impression almost entirely wrong.

That is how it works when you look at it from a distance. “You mean you can put your business idea on there and people will just pay for it? OMG!” Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

Kickstarter board games