I like the idea of that smaller version of Spirit Island. And I love Spirit Island. Probably one of my most played games. Capping the player count at three is just the correct decision for that game, even for the original kickstarted version. Playing Spirit Island with four people, in my opinion, makes a fun, complex, but fast moving puzzle of a game into a massive slog.
Definitely agree with you about kickstart, collecting, and shopping. I think many people, especially at first, fall into the collecting trap (happened to me!) as well as the shopping habit (kinda sorta happened to me).
One thing, too, that kickstarters have led to is filling a game with expansions before it's been properly playtested as a base game. It's rare for a design to be 100% finished when a kickstarter goes live, which is why backers sometimes fill their collective diapers over the smallest possible changes to the game they backed. But because the core design isn't completed, every promised expansion just doubles down on a foundational problem. But because shoppers expect their kickstarter to be full of expansions and exclusives, you have games that ship in fifteen boxes where, a year later, players come to the conclusion that 5 of the 7 expansions are best left on the shelf.
For all the complaints within the hobby about Jamey Stegmeier (I like him! though he's never made one of my favorite games, I do enjoy playing most Stonemeier games), I do think he does a good job of incrementally adding to his games. To use Tapestry as an example, he could have promised to ship it with 4 expansions right off the bat, but instead he gathered tons of data from players as basically a massive playtest to drive the development of the next expansions.
Spot on, and the reason I don't buy as many games as I used to. Give me a well-made game (not cheaply but also not overproduced), with plenty of replay value, for $50-60, and I'm a happy man. It feels like market forces are pushing that sort of game out, which sucks. Don't know how we correct for that without voting with our wallets. It's the reason I don't Kickstart, despite how tempting it is at times.
Cracking piece Klaus. As someone who is much deeper into this particular world, it's always brilliant to get the perspective of a thoughtful observer who is a huge tabletop fan but is more outside the hardcore BGG or Kickstarter audiences. There are very few people *not* in those groups who'd write in this level of detail on this.
There's definitely an early adopter problem. The people you can reliably sell to as a publisher are collectors - especially as an indie business (basically not Hasbro or Asmodee companies). They'll buy so many new games, you can always get to them relatively easily and convince them to buy your new, relatively niche thing.
Getting to the relative 'normie' boardgamers is so much more expensive from a marketing POV and requires extensive distribution relationships in place (except perhaps for a couple of very interesting companies like Underdog Games - check them out!). These relationships are hard to build until you have several successes under your belt. Even worse, margins at distro are *terrible* anyway. You get 40% of the MSRP as a publisher. If your manufacturing costs are 20% (which these days can be hard to achieve), you make 20% MSRP per unit. Compare that to KS where the product might be offered as 90% of MSRP for the same manufacturing cost. Essentially each KS sale is worth 3x each direct sale.
Add this altogether and the niche collector market - the kind of person that will spend a lot of money on a deluxeified game 18 months ahead of actually getting it - looks like the much tastier target. Consequently all games move in this direction. If the game gets successful beyond this initial launch audience, it'll tend to stay at least somewhat deluxe - unless a specific "basic" version is launched.
I really appreciate responses like this. I didn't know about the massive gap in margins, though it makes sense. I just wish publishers would go to Kickstarter with the smaller version and then release the 15 gold-plated expansions in a later batch. I think it might be a bit of a prisoner's dilemma; the first publisher to do that would lose money, but the whole market and industry would be larger if everyone went about doing more of that.
But there's a second point I meant to make here, and I'm not sure if it came across well enough in the article. I think these Kickstarter/Gamefound power users like shopping - as in, they like the process of buying things. That's why I used the term shopping rather than collecting. People like backing in on Kickstarter, following the updates, waiting for everything to come in the mail, punching out the chits, etc. People enjoy that process, while it's a headache for non-shoppers.
I'm a shopper too - just not for board games. I'm on the mailing list for two Candle companies. I love pouncing on a sale, not to mention just going into the stores and smelling everything! The process of buying is part of the product.
I followed the Gamefound for Castles of Burgundy. They had user polls for how to make the material! You could sign up to Beta test. They had weekly updates including a surprise expansion. That's a whole shopping experience. It's a fundamentally different product from someone who just wants to play the game.
My favorite coffee shop sells whole bean coffee. Why don't I just buy that, make it at home, and drink it in my house? Because I like the whole experience of going there and that's just a different market from someone who just wants to get their morning caffeine in.
I definitely think you're onto something there with the idea of "the shopping experience". That's certainly part of it - and its an aspect of it maybe not as understood as it could be. I find your comparisons to candle shopping or getting a coffee quite apt and food-for-thought for me.
But in my experience a lot of these Kickstarter customers really do conceptualise themselves as collectors. They often know quite a bit about games and want to own things with both novel mechanics and components. They tend to perhaps, value the physical production more than the general gamer. But like most collectors, the joy is partly in owning unusual or scarce things - hence the power of "Kickstarter exclusives". They bemoan not being able to play them all... and even beat themselves up about it. There's a strong argument to be made that that's not healthy. Perhaps ultimately it *is* shopping. But I think to truly understand the phenomenon, there is something more to the psychology of it all.
The Kickstarter exclusive thing hurts my soul. A friend bought the retail version of Project L, a tetromino game. It's fun, but it lacks a clear "hook."
We played the full Kickstarter exclusive one at a convention, and that version has multiple hooks that make the game unique and interesting!
So the full experience is is locked behind a kickstarter that ended years ago. This just makes the whole medium, like, hard to take seriously. Imagine this sort of thing in novels, albums, or movies. It's just bizarre.
I like the idea of that smaller version of Spirit Island. And I love Spirit Island. Probably one of my most played games. Capping the player count at three is just the correct decision for that game, even for the original kickstarted version. Playing Spirit Island with four people, in my opinion, makes a fun, complex, but fast moving puzzle of a game into a massive slog.
Definitely agree with you about kickstart, collecting, and shopping. I think many people, especially at first, fall into the collecting trap (happened to me!) as well as the shopping habit (kinda sorta happened to me).
One thing, too, that kickstarters have led to is filling a game with expansions before it's been properly playtested as a base game. It's rare for a design to be 100% finished when a kickstarter goes live, which is why backers sometimes fill their collective diapers over the smallest possible changes to the game they backed. But because the core design isn't completed, every promised expansion just doubles down on a foundational problem. But because shoppers expect their kickstarter to be full of expansions and exclusives, you have games that ship in fifteen boxes where, a year later, players come to the conclusion that 5 of the 7 expansions are best left on the shelf.
For all the complaints within the hobby about Jamey Stegmeier (I like him! though he's never made one of my favorite games, I do enjoy playing most Stonemeier games), I do think he does a good job of incrementally adding to his games. To use Tapestry as an example, he could have promised to ship it with 4 expansions right off the bat, but instead he gathered tons of data from players as basically a massive playtest to drive the development of the next expansions.
It's like Cones of Dunshire. "Punishingly intricate."
Spot on, and the reason I don't buy as many games as I used to. Give me a well-made game (not cheaply but also not overproduced), with plenty of replay value, for $50-60, and I'm a happy man. It feels like market forces are pushing that sort of game out, which sucks. Don't know how we correct for that without voting with our wallets. It's the reason I don't Kickstart, despite how tempting it is at times.
Cracking piece Klaus. As someone who is much deeper into this particular world, it's always brilliant to get the perspective of a thoughtful observer who is a huge tabletop fan but is more outside the hardcore BGG or Kickstarter audiences. There are very few people *not* in those groups who'd write in this level of detail on this.
There's definitely an early adopter problem. The people you can reliably sell to as a publisher are collectors - especially as an indie business (basically not Hasbro or Asmodee companies). They'll buy so many new games, you can always get to them relatively easily and convince them to buy your new, relatively niche thing.
Getting to the relative 'normie' boardgamers is so much more expensive from a marketing POV and requires extensive distribution relationships in place (except perhaps for a couple of very interesting companies like Underdog Games - check them out!). These relationships are hard to build until you have several successes under your belt. Even worse, margins at distro are *terrible* anyway. You get 40% of the MSRP as a publisher. If your manufacturing costs are 20% (which these days can be hard to achieve), you make 20% MSRP per unit. Compare that to KS where the product might be offered as 90% of MSRP for the same manufacturing cost. Essentially each KS sale is worth 3x each direct sale.
Add this altogether and the niche collector market - the kind of person that will spend a lot of money on a deluxeified game 18 months ahead of actually getting it - looks like the much tastier target. Consequently all games move in this direction. If the game gets successful beyond this initial launch audience, it'll tend to stay at least somewhat deluxe - unless a specific "basic" version is launched.
I really appreciate responses like this. I didn't know about the massive gap in margins, though it makes sense. I just wish publishers would go to Kickstarter with the smaller version and then release the 15 gold-plated expansions in a later batch. I think it might be a bit of a prisoner's dilemma; the first publisher to do that would lose money, but the whole market and industry would be larger if everyone went about doing more of that.
But there's a second point I meant to make here, and I'm not sure if it came across well enough in the article. I think these Kickstarter/Gamefound power users like shopping - as in, they like the process of buying things. That's why I used the term shopping rather than collecting. People like backing in on Kickstarter, following the updates, waiting for everything to come in the mail, punching out the chits, etc. People enjoy that process, while it's a headache for non-shoppers.
I'm a shopper too - just not for board games. I'm on the mailing list for two Candle companies. I love pouncing on a sale, not to mention just going into the stores and smelling everything! The process of buying is part of the product.
I followed the Gamefound for Castles of Burgundy. They had user polls for how to make the material! You could sign up to Beta test. They had weekly updates including a surprise expansion. That's a whole shopping experience. It's a fundamentally different product from someone who just wants to play the game.
My favorite coffee shop sells whole bean coffee. Why don't I just buy that, make it at home, and drink it in my house? Because I like the whole experience of going there and that's just a different market from someone who just wants to get their morning caffeine in.
You are more than welcome! Happy to illuminate.
I definitely think you're onto something there with the idea of "the shopping experience". That's certainly part of it - and its an aspect of it maybe not as understood as it could be. I find your comparisons to candle shopping or getting a coffee quite apt and food-for-thought for me.
But in my experience a lot of these Kickstarter customers really do conceptualise themselves as collectors. They often know quite a bit about games and want to own things with both novel mechanics and components. They tend to perhaps, value the physical production more than the general gamer. But like most collectors, the joy is partly in owning unusual or scarce things - hence the power of "Kickstarter exclusives". They bemoan not being able to play them all... and even beat themselves up about it. There's a strong argument to be made that that's not healthy. Perhaps ultimately it *is* shopping. But I think to truly understand the phenomenon, there is something more to the psychology of it all.
The Kickstarter exclusive thing hurts my soul. A friend bought the retail version of Project L, a tetromino game. It's fun, but it lacks a clear "hook."
We played the full Kickstarter exclusive one at a convention, and that version has multiple hooks that make the game unique and interesting!
So the full experience is is locked behind a kickstarter that ended years ago. This just makes the whole medium, like, hard to take seriously. Imagine this sort of thing in novels, albums, or movies. It's just bizarre.
Oh no - the *gameplay* exclusive! Truly a unique KS horror. Indeed - you'd never see this in the novel.
But you do see it exists as DLC in the world of video games.