Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Would you please give it a rest!

Give us at least until December to replenish our coffers. Seriously, a lot of us would love to support your products and help you bring them to the market, but we are all tapped out. If you could just hold onto your kickstarters until, say, December 1st (or better yet, the 15th!), we promise to share our sweet holiday cash with you. Thank you.

It's difficult for me to even think of a miniatures company who hasn't had a kickstarter in the last few months. I guess the only ones left are Spartan, Heresy, Hasslefree, Mantic (TWO of them?), Defiance, Wargames Factory, Games Workshop and Privateer Press. And I'm pretty sure at least two of those companies are going to do a kickstarter too soon.

Every single company does kickstarters! Argh! Except for these seven I'm going to list now...

Hm.

I was avoiding responding to him. You know, don't feed the...

In some ways I agree and in some I don't. There has been an awful lot of Kickstarter projects in the wargaming world this year, a huge increase on last year and it does seem that more and more people are jumping on the wagon. Just look at the News & Rumours pages and we've had, Zombicide, Reaper, Dwarves, Leviathans, Sodapop, Tentecle Bento, some computer game (can't remember), Sedition Wars, Dreadball (whatever that is), Redbox Games and that's just in the last few months. Not forgetting Indigogo (similar to Kickstarter) with Studio Minature Zombies, Diaramas..... Having said that, you, the individual are presented with a choice......

You don't have to fund every single Kickstarter. If all these companies released their products at the same time if you couldn't afford it, you wouldn't be rushing off to buy them all.

I think its a good thing. As a avid wargamer and hobbyist, there is so much stuff to choose from that's not 'GW', its a great time to be in the Hobby. I'm so into all the other stuff at the moment (Sodapop, Kingdom Death, DUST, Firestorm Armarda) I haven't even bothered picking up a new 40k rule book. 2 years ago that would be unthinkable for me.

Coming to a desk soon I've got Sedition Wars and after than Relic Knights to look forward to.

I'm a bit more selective with my Kickstarter support. Even so, I've still dumped money into three of them.

I think that crowdfunding may have jumped the shark. At this point it seems to have evolved from "interesting projects that required non-traditional funding" to "the virtual version of the guys I step over in the subway, hitting me up for pocket change".

I think crowd funding is just beginning. It's been done enough and the data is in and people can now make a successful project if they do their homework.

As long as the threads here are properly titled, there's no reason to click on them if you don't want to hear about more KS or Indiegogo projects.

As for the OP, I think it's a personal thing in terms of when one has available hobby money to pledge. You might be tappd out right now, but if you take a look at the Reaper Kickstarter, I think you'll see that lots of people are not.

We should be so lucky to have a constantly rotating batch of Kickstarters throughout the year that get funded and add new products to our hobby.

I think the trend will continue and we'll see more miniature related crowd funding in the months and years to come.

I'm just waiting for a kickstarter for a small independent mini company that needs money to fight against GW strong arming them into folding up shop.

That said, I think that kickstarters could be useful to a company like GW for niche markets or armies.

It would be an easy way to gauge interest in getting older armies updated. Bretonnians, Wood Elves, Sisters of Battle. All of those could have kickstarters set up with relative ease, and if the people decide to fund it, then it gets moved up in the release schedule, or is developed outside the current schedule.

I'm sure that if Wood Elves had 100k in preorders that GW would be willing to move faster on them.

Instead, GW won't do that. They'll continue to pump out power armor like it's going out of style while simultaneously nerfing every WFB army's magic item selection.

Great post frozenwastes. I can't understand all the negativity toward crowd funding. Nobody has to participate, but its nice to have these options out there for those who do wish to participate.

I read the OP as not so much having a complain about them existing, but the fact that there are so many he'd like to contribute to if they were coming up in a slightly less relentless torrent. So not so much negativity, as wishing they would be spaced out a little more. I do think that there's a risk of saturation point and I wonder if some of the current crop isn't an attempt to get in before that point is reached.

I imagine it'll be like all new things. A big boom and then settle back down to a sustainable level.

I want to see more like this one:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/138453512/fractured-dimensions-orc-warriors?ref=live

Just a one person operation wanting to make masters and moulds for some new metal orcs.

I think that these kind of projects can easily appear over and over again indefinitely.

Now take the Reaper or Sedition Wars Kick Starters (or to a lesser degree the Mantic one) and I'm not sure how sustainable that is. Can we really have a $100 sweet spot contribution Kickstarter that goes into the hundreds of thousands every month?

Eventually. If crowd funding gains ground with people. Right now? Not sure.

But I'm more than happy if we have a lot more like the Fractured Dimensions one where it's just a small amount to pay for a particular project (in this case, 16 miniatures in 4 packs of 4) where you can contribute less than $10 and still walk away with a physical thing.

 Ouze wrote:
I think that crowdfunding may have jumped the shark. At this point it seems to have evolved from "interesting projects that required non-traditional funding" to "the virtual version of the guys I step over in the subway, hitting me up for pocket change".

I dont see it that way. I have never had a homeless person send me a comic book, a movie, an RPG book or a board game.

People on kickstarter dont trade on money, they trade on reputation. If they dont have it they generally get a chance to establish it.

They also get every chance to ruin it, and every kickstarter i have backed is doing an excellent job of keeping me informed on their progress, and getting me my items in a respectable amount of time.

Hardly anything like your homeless person analogy.

One of the main issues is people basically 'selling' a game and rules mechanics for a game that doesn't actually exist yet and they want me to fund the development of the ruleset and a start set of figures... Also, Figures which don't exist that if I pay money someone will get off their butt and go sculpt it up. I am buying figures sight-unseen for sculpts that may not even be good.

We have dozens of companies making new figures every day, and if I don't like the rules or like the look of the model, I can make informed decisions...

I don't see how I can pre-order 2 years in advance non existent models for an undeveloped game I don't even know if I want to play yet.

I predict when people gave up 300$ for a kickstarter whose rewards won't materialize for 2 years start getting impatient and some of these kickstarts don't actually produce anything (as they have no legal obligation to) there will be a massive backlash and then a massive dry-up of good will for these types of projects.

 pretre wrote:
I was avoiding responding to him. You know, don't feed the...

But then couldn't resist it?

You obviously misread the OP and jumped straight in to get a snarky post in. Bad form, old chap, bad form.

nkelsch wrote:
One of the main issues is people basically 'selling' a game and rules mechanics for a game that doesn't actually exist yet and they want me to fund the development of the ruleset and a start set of figures... Also, Figures which don't exist that if I pay money someone will get off their butt and go sculpt it up. I am buying figures sight-unseen for sculpts that may not even be good. ...

I don't see how I can pre-order 2 years in advance non existent models for an undeveloped game I don't even know if I want to play yet.

Natural selection is going to help in this matter. Take the Fractured Dimensions Orcs Kickstarter, for example. The figures are sculpted. The Kickstarter opened with greens and is for funding for master and mould making. The delivery times are short, the dollar amounts were small and things were rapidly funded.

Big bloated kickstarters where most of the work hasn't even been done yet are the ones that are going to eventually have trouble getting funded. As more and more good kickstarters where the backers can immediately see what they get and that the work is already being done will take funding away from the dogs.

I predict when people gave up 300$ for a kickstarter whose rewards won't materialize for 2 years start getting impatient and some of these kickstarts don't actually produce anything (as they have no legal obligation to) there will be a massive backlash and then a massive dry-up of good will for these types of projects.

I don't know if it'll crash, but I think it'll continue to expand and then contract to a more sustainable level, with the quality kickstarters getting the funding and the pie-in-the-sky ones getting ignored.

People keep talking about a total non-delivery happening and poisoning the well for everyone as the first big "kickstarter scam" shakes everyone's confidence in crowd funding. I think it's bound to happen that a non-delivery of goods will eventually happen, but I think the nature of the pitch/presentation and pledge system will keep that from being a regular event. You can get a pretty good sense in a campaign whether or not there's any real meat there.

edited for bbcode tag errors

nkelsch wrote:
One of the main issues is people basically 'selling' a game and rules mechanics for a game that doesn't actually exist yet and they want me to fund the development of the ruleset and a start set of figures... Also, Figures which don't exist that if I pay money someone will get off their butt and go sculpt it up. I am buying figures sight-unseen for sculpts that may not even be good.

We have dozens of companies making new figures every day, and if I don't like the rules or like the look of the model, I can make informed decisions...

I don't see how I can pre-order 2 years in advance non existent models for an undeveloped game I don't even know if I want to play yet.

I predict when people gave up 300$ for a kickstarter whose rewards won't materialize for 2 years start getting impatient and some of these kickstarts don't actually produce anything (as they have no legal obligation to) there will be a massive backlash and then a massive dry-up of good will for these types of projects.

Most of the kickstarters i have backed already have progress shown, and either have been released on time, earlier than on time, or are tracking along to do so. The best kickstarters already have sculpts done, and great plans that inspire you to want that product to be made, before you pledge.

Now in your hypothetical, the release is 2 years later, and they dont even have sculpts yet. I wouldnt back that. In fact a whole lot of people wont back that. We had an indiegogo like that advertise on dakka a few months back, and people simply told him how to do it better and he was not funded.

That is the beauty of crowdsourcing.

Now you say you predict that the money will dry up when people get stung, and i disagree. I simply think that the people that will be getting crowd funding 5 years from now will be the people who have shown they can deliver. Again this is a reputation thing, if you can deliver or show that you can deliver (lots of kickstarters have short form resumes on them now, or at least links to previous projects) you will be funded. All you have to do i expect, is fail ONCE on kickstarter, before that is no longer open to you.

Now i only got into kickstarter in 2010 because of a small project called early dark. Now that project got to me simply because i was enthralled by the idea. They have delivered

Other games i have backed:

Blackwater Gulch : Already had greens. Already had rules. Had great stretch goals. The project owner has excellent communication. Regular updates. Poised to deliver on time.

Zombicide: Already had miniatures, already had rules, great stretch goals. Fairly good communication. Dont like that they are selling copies at gencon when they havent even posted mine. But still poised to deliver on time.

Run out the guns: Already sells many of the rewards. Using kickstarter so he can afford to make plastic cannons to go on his excellent wooden ships. Great communication.Still early days. Probably going to deliver on time.

So i guess my point is that nobody is saying hand your money out to everyone on kickstarter, but it is pretty easy to tell which projects will be finished, and which ones will tank. I have also backed a ton of movies, computer games and comic books, and i am getting regular updates on all of them, and am very happy even with the products that arent in my hands yet.

Now i get the feeling you may have been referring to the Kings of War kickstarter. I wasnt able to get in on that one, but i preordered the book after the kickstarter, and i already have it. That was the core goal of that kickstarter. With all of the various stretch goals, i believe mantic has properly managed expectations with those ones, making sure that people know that some of the further away stretch goals are in 2014/15 territory.

All in all kickstarter is here to stay in my opinion.

I've looked at the Kickstarters for companies that interest me. I've ignored the others.

If someone makes a good product but I missed the Kickstarter, that's ok. If it's a good product, I'll buy it when it's available.

Don't feel pressured to buy something just for the freebees if you can't really afford it.

It's an interesting question.

The FLGS loses sales from the people who have funded the kickstarter, and potentially stands to lose out if it stocks the 'new hotness' that fails to sell.

To me Kickstarter at present is a cross between the dot.com bubble and that scheme run by Wargames Factory where if 1000 people got together they would make Werewolf Nazi Dwarfs on Segways or whatever those 1000 people wanted.

frozenwastes wrote:
Natural selection is going to help in this matter. Take the Fractured Dimensions Orcs Kickstarter, for example. The figures are sculpted. The Kickstarter opened with greens and is for funding for master and mould making. The delivery times are short, the dollar amounts were small and things were rapidly funded.

Big bloated kickstarters where most of the work hasn't even been done yet are the ones that are going to eventually have trouble getting funded. As more and more good kickstarters where the backers can immediately see what they get and that the work is already being done will take funding away from the dogs.

The Fractured Dimensions is the type of Kickstarter I like to see. Basically these models would never exist for multiple people otherwise. And if people don't want them, the sculptor can just be happy with his personal models and nothing is harmed.

I really dislike when it is being used as a pre-order engine for commercial businesses or selling 'vaporware' where if we give them 50k they will then sculpt it and produce it. buying a non-existent figure sight unseen. Blows my mind that people are willing to do that and I feel like we are due for a hangover when many of these models get made and look like garbage.

I don't know if it'll crash, but I think it'll continue to expand and then contract to a more sustainable level, with the quality kickstarters getting the funding and the pie-in-the-sky ones getting ignored.

People keep talking about a total non-delivery happening and poisoning the well for everyone as the first big "kickstarter scam" shakes everyone's confidence in crowd funding. I think it's bound to happen that a non-delivery of goods will eventually happen, but I think the nature of the pitch/presentation and pledge system will keep that from being a regular event. You can get a pretty good sense in a campaign whether or not there's any real meat there.

But we have had independant companies not deliver pre-orders and people get 'pissed'. So instead of taking your money and delivering a product late and getting people pissed. I can now take your money, deliver a product whenever I want because it doesn't exist and people think it is awesome?

Other communities have been through this with Kickstarter ad a much faster lifecycle and I have seen it before. People splash out hundreds of dollars, first the scams are found, then the vaporware are found, then the anger over the 'long time' as they didn't realize 6 months was 6 months and then the final product is inferior to what people wanted and there is anger and distrust.

I also feel like the commercial businesses selling vaporware models as pre-orders are sucking the funding out of the room for the real people who need funding or else the mini will never exist where these commercial larger companies will make the minis regardless, they just found a way to scam people out of pre-order money to ship dead inventory on the shelves and fidn a way to not have sales based upon how bad the sculpt is as people have basically paid for it before seeing it. It de-incentivises companies to make good sculpts and we know there are loads of bad sculpts out there.

GBL wrote:

Most of the kickstarters i have backed already have progress shown, and either have been released on time, earlier than on time, or are tracking along to do so. The best kickstarters already have sculpts done, and great plans that inspire you to want that product to be made, before you pledge.

Now in your hypothetical, the release is 2 years later, and they don't even have sculpts yet. I wouldn't back that. In fact a whole lot of people wont back that. We had an indiegogo like that advertise on dakka a few months back, and people simply told him how to do it better and he was not funded.

It is not Hypothetical... it was like a 2 month Dakka front page kickstarter. They raised like hundreds of thousands of dollars by promising rewards which mathematically don't even seem possible by people getting 700$ of models for 250$. All for models which barley even have concept sketches. People were foaming at the mouth to buy these non-existent models from a company with a proven track record of substandard and inferior sculpts. Now they are selling rules for a non existent game. And there are valid Kickstarters out there with real rulesets and real physical models which go ignored as these larger companies are choking out the value per dollar. People are like "why should I support this dude get these very nice demons cast and I get 5 demons for 25$ when I can go to this crazy company and buy these non-existent demons and get 20 demons and a bonus mummyman for 25$. The issue is now big company who can leverage much larger runs and technology can undercut indy developers and what we see is a starvation of indy kickstarters and less choice and options out there. And I feel like people who are not looking at Kickstarter the right way and are looking at it as a way of online shopping are going to be upset in the next few months as things progress.

Every other community went Kickstarter crazy, got burned, had an anger hangover then it levels out... I feel wargaming is getting ready to crash soon in the kickstarter arena.

 marielle wrote:
It's an interesting question.

The FLGS loses sales from the people who have funded the kickstarter, and potentially stands to lose out if it stocks the 'new hotness' that fails to sell.

Welcome to retailing in the age of the internet.

The LGS doesn't have an inherit right to exist. Many have figured out they need to offer something more other than a place to buy things. I chose to make a minimal contribution to Reaper's kickstarter because I'm going to buy all the Bones miniatures from my local store as they come out. I'll end up paying more per miniature and may have to wait for certain miniatures to become regular releases that will be shipped to backers earlier than they'll be released.

It's because the LGS is offering something above and beyond just being a place to buy things. Gaming space, terrain, wi-fi, organized events, etc.,.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@nkelsch - I'm hearing a lot of hypotheticals and non-specific claims without identifying the projects you are talking about. I'm not seeing anyone else in this thread or anywhere else expressing what you're on about. Care to elaborate with real details? Links would be good to include as well.

The numbers are in. For all the big projects that go into the hundreds of thousands like Reaper or Mantic did, Kickstarters get funded more often when they are smaller, more modest projects. Your claim of bigger companies sucking away the money just isn't lining up with reality. The smaller and more modest projects are now more likely to get funded, not less.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://blog.echen.me/2011/04/25/kickstarter-data-analysis-success-and-pricing/

You can find lots of people doing data analysis of crowd funding. Things simply aren't going in the direction of it being a pre-order platform for established companies at the expense of indie projects. Smaller projects are getting funded more often and pledge levels at around $20 or so as the sweet spot on the average out perform the $80+ ones that the big wargaming ones have happened to have.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 marielle wrote:
It's an interesting question.

The FLGS loses sales from the people who have funded the kickstarter, and potentially stands to lose out if it stocks the 'new hotness' that fails to sell.

Welcome to retailing in the age of the internet.

The LGS doesn't have an inherit right to exist. Many have figured out they need to offer something more other than a place to buy things. I chose to make a minimal contribution to Reaper's kickstarter because I'm going to buy all the Bones miniatures from my local store as they come out. I'll end up paying more per miniature and may have to wait for certain miniatures to become regular releases that will be shipped to backers earlier than they'll be released.

It's because the LGS is offering something above and beyond just being a place to buy things. Gaming space, terrain, wi-fi, organized events, etc.,.

Indeed but it is not something I see many people considering.

I'm not so sure that Kickstarters really do drain funds away from purchases at other stores. The first premise I don't accept is the zero sum nature of hobby budgets. Some people are the type that spend only a certain amount per month and a Kickstarter they contribute too means they spend less at the local shop.

However, i think a few decades of consumer debt usage data shows that most people plan way, way less than that when they buy things. I think most people buy what interests them and then only count the money if things get tight or painful.

I don't really see the issue with crowd funding.. Who cares if there are a lot of projects? I'm basically spending the SAME amount of money if I were to wait and buy it in a store.. yet I'm not getting any of the bonus rewards.

If you're going to spend the money anywhere when the product is released, it's pretty irrelevant when the money is spent. Some of these projects would never be released otherwise.

If prepaying gets me some plastic dreamforge titans then it's a good deal to me.

I cant help but think that the stupid amounts of success reaper is having right now with kickstarter is pushing more companies to it. Companies that might have been on the fence about doing it or might have had something planned for farther down the road. I have to believe we are going to continue to see a big influx in kickstarters as right now is a great source of income to get stuff moving and companies are going to want to jump on it while its hot

Hmm looks like a pre order system. I cannot believe the CMON and MANTIC KS's are anything but attempts to generate profit from supposed development funds.

So I just took a look at the Reaper KS for the Bones figures.
1. Holy crap well over 1.3 million dollars OVER their goal of 30k.
2. Holy crap have you seen how many minis you get for $100?
3. Holy crap have you seen how great those minis look?

I'm quite pissed that I don't have the money to buy into it right now.

I think the format that Reaper has used would do well for any number of minis companies, small or large.

nkelsch wrote:

It is not Hypothetical... it was like a 2 month Dakka front page kickstarter. They raised like hundreds of thousands of dollars by promising rewards which mathematically don't even seem possible by people getting 700$ of models for 250$. All for models which barley even have concept sketches. People were foaming at the mouth to buy these non-existent models from a company with a proven track record of substandard and inferior sculpts. Now they are selling rules for a non existent game. And there are valid Kickstarters out there with real rulesets and real physical models which go ignored as these larger companies are choking out the value per dollar. People are like "why should I support this dude get these very nice demons cast and I get 5 demons for 25$ when I can go to this crazy company and buy these non-existent demons and get 20 demons and a bonus mummyman for 25$. The issue is now big company who can leverage much larger runs and technology can undercut indy developers and what we see is a starvation of indy kickstarters and less choice and options out there. And I feel like people who are not looking at Kickstarter the right way and are looking at it as a way of online shopping are going to be upset in the next few months as things progress.

Every other community went Kickstarter crazy, got burned, had an anger hangover then it levels out... I feel wargaming is getting ready to crash soon in the kickstarter arena.

I am going to assume you are talking about Mantic? Please correct me if i am wrong, but you are way off base if you are.

Now the game they are selling is not "Non existant" hell i play it, and so do lots of people. It was also the core goal of that kickstarter. And it is also done.

On top of that most of their reward levels involved existing miniatures and the Rulebook. So as it is most backers are recieving rewards now.

Now, i think you have been referencing the stretch goals, where mantic has placed their concept art up on their kickstarter, and offered extra plastic miniatures based on that concept art per milestone crossed.

Mantic properly positioned these models as "In Development" and stated that they may not be produced exactly as they appear in the concepts. This was handled well, they have preempted the possible negativity. Managing customer expectations is a pretty basic customer service strategy, and in this case was well executed.

On top of this, if you read the comments section of the kickstarter, there is a significantly larger percentage of people praising mantic miniatures. So opposite to your personal opinion that mantic miniatures are of low quality, many of these fans like how they do things and are unlikely to be disappointed.

All of this together, points to, IMHO a successful kickstarter, start to finish. If i missed anything please enlighten me.

 Slinky wrote:

 pretre wrote:
I was avoiding responding to him. You know, don't feed the...

But then couldn't resist it?

You obviously misread the OP and jumped straight in to get a snarky post in. Bad form, old chap, bad form.

No, I got it. I just didn't think 'I ran out of money, so slow down on all the cool stuff.' was really needing of its own thread.

Gotta love Dakka/nerds:

People rage endlessly day after day about how evil/stupid/etc. GW is for not letting anyone know what is coming out, and yet when companies tell you exactly what they want to release and give you a chance to help make sure what you want will come out people again rage...

Good times.

The death throws of the IPO. Get public funding without losing ownership... brilliant!