STOP the Kickstarter Madness

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**BrassScorpion**

Who has Kickstarter fatigue? There are so many of these now I almost never look at them. And as is pointed out in the following article they usually completely bypass game stores so they do not help and possibly hurt our favorite places to hang out. Enough with the Kickstarters already!

http://blog.spikeybits.com/2013/09/stop-kickstarter-madness.html

STOP the Kickstarter Madness
Posted by Chris Michaels
at 10:05 AM September 11
A few months ago, a Kickstarter by PoweredPlay Gaming set out to develop plug and; play LED lighting kits for wargames, minis and hobbies.

The project was 350% funded in June, and the tech has already delivered to all of its supporters - not only on-time, but with extra bonuses for their one week delay.

While one could say that this should be the model for Kickstarted projects, there seems to be a big miss for a lot of companies and sole-proprietors who are using the platform or plan to do so.

Kickstarter used to be a place where startups would look to test the audiences, help get funded and celebrate innovation. Today, there's still a big population of projects that hold true to the original ideals of Kickstarter, but often we see well-established companies now using it as a 30-day marketing tool to pre-sell their product (CoolMini) and make you wait for up to eight months (Reaper) before even being able to deliver on product.

While PoweredPlay's project isn't the penultimate example of a 1000% funded project, there are some basic things that the company did right (and what they did wrong in their first attempt) which project owners could learn.

Be Ready to Launch
The biggest failure for Kickstarters and the one that ticks off supporters the most, is not being able to execute immediately after the project closes. Have quotes in-hand from vendors, have backups, and test the quality. That way, when you get the funds, you can have the fastest turnaround possible.

Keep It Simple
Don't over complicate your rewards structure, and only deliver one product. This killed PoweredPlay's first attempt. The more products or intertwining reward structures, the more difficult it becomes for supporters to follow or make up their minds. Also, keep the title easy to find. Kickstarter's search engine sucks, and if your keywords aren't in your title or 120 character description, you'll be lost.

Market Early
Even if you're a startup, and want to use Kickstarter as a marketing tool itself, be sure to be active for at least a month ahead of time promoting your idea - and subsequent Kickstarter plans. Give people a firm date and time to start following, remind everyone for the week leading up to launch and provide direct links when you get them from Kickstarter.

Over Communicate - But don't over do it.
You want clarity in your development process, stretch goals if you've set them, incentives for people to up their pledge. This goes for the active project and after you close. Be sure you communicate through updates, comments and be responsive. Just be sure that you don't become a spammer with multiple daily updates (unless it's major milestones). Also, you'll want a good pledge manager with clear instructions (Kickstarter's platform is so-so) to supporters to make customization, top-off's and/or purchase add-ons.

Kickstarter can be great, but it's becoming over-saturated and people are becoming less interested by regular delays, lack of shipments, and the unreliability of project owners to deliver as promised. If you're planning your project, good luck, but just be sure you're really ready to go before you have a failure to launch.

Editor's Note (MBG)
From a retailers perspective there is nothing we HATE more than Kickstarters that do not help the brick and mortar stores out at all. We get a ton of questions like are you going to carry XYZ product, and often times the answer is a resounding no. Why would we carry a product that is so readily available and oversaturated on Kickstarter, that no one will buy it when it releases to stores, unless they lived in a cave when it was up for funding?

IMHO if you going to blatantly poach from gaming stores' customer base, you should give something back to them.

It seems like it would be easy to do to... Just offer like special figures that can't be obtained on Kickstarter, OR perhaps give stores the chance to purchase MEGA Kickstarter deals to pledge and then collect the funds from their customers so the money trickles down the right way to the developers and everyone gets their cut.

If Kickstarters/ crowd sourcing is the future of gaming, I hate to think about the future of the friendly local game store....

**pretre**

BrassScorpion wrote:
Who has Kickstarter fatigue? There are so many of these now I almost never look at them.

You found the problem and the solution all in one!

**PhantomViper**

pretre wrote:
BrassScorpion wrote:
Who has Kickstarter fatigue? There are so many of these now I almost never look at them.

You found the problem and the solution all in one!

Now look at that! You made me go and agree with pretre, I hope you're happy with yourself!

If you don't like KS, then don't support it, problem solved.

**pretre**

PhantomViper wrote:
You made me go and agree with pretre, I hope you're happy with yourself!

Is there no end to the atrocities committed by BrassScorpion!!!

**OverwatchCNC**

How dare people create products that people want and then give them a way to get them! I am offended.

Solution: don't kickstart anything. I haven't.

**squall018**

Yeah, I feel like the best way to do deal with something you dont' like is to just ignore it. I am over kickstarter myself, but it doesn't bother me as I just don't look at it.

Problem solved!!!

**Bossk_Hogg**

When gaming stores start ponying up money to develop products, they might have a point. This just feels like mor whining from a dying business model that's refused to adapt (by and large. Some gaming stores arent run like crap and actually are sensible enough to have an online presence and discounts in order to compete. Miniature Market, The Warstore, etc). Most of the gaming stores around me at least are just a place to buy things, so its not like they offer anything beyond saving me a few days on shipping.

This guy's whining about some little lights he probably wouldnt have stocked in the first place. The exact kind of small project that depends on KS for the cash to develop and produce its product. Many projects wouldnt have seen the light of day had not the creator's established the demand up front. Low Life miniatures is a perfect examplehttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1359565526/low-life-miniatures of a garage project the creator couldnt afford to take the risk himself. If it were up to them to product the minis and then hope they could get a decent distribution deal to actually sell some product, odds are they woldnt have been sculpted in the first place. Kickstarter gave us the chance to see some products that never would have made if the creators had to go to a bank and try and explain why they want to make little metal twinkie monsters to some suit in the futile hopes of geting a loan. It lets the consumer actually vote with their wallet on what gets made.

So what about the big boys. Well, CMON is essentially its own retailer, and from my understanding, a distribution point of some smaller brands (Deep Wars, Kingdom Death, etc). Most of this stuff wouldnt hit a store shelf in the first place, which lets be honest, is probably full of Warhammer, warmahordes and maybe some malifaux/infinity,etc in a corner. So this impacts Joe Gamestore how, aside from in theory? Reaper's bones kickstarter was a friggin godsend to retailers, expanding their line of impulse buy SKU's. That 20% off online discount doesnt really seem impressive when you're buying a $2 figure. Any retailer refusing to carry these bones because a while ago, a tiny slice of their potential customer base got one of each figure kind of deserves to fold.

**Kilkrazy**

I think some shop owners want people to Kickstart products then put them into retail to sell them.

Unfortunately the business model is basically that the Kickstarter company gets probably 90% of its sales in the form of pledges, before the product ever goes into production. This does not allow them to put anything into retail.

It might work in cases where the Kickstarter is used to launch a new game or line of models, which then gets expanded by more conventional means and sold through retail.

Personally I am also fed up with Kickstarters and I don't look at them any more.

**nkelsch**

I have been super annoyed that KS have begun selling products via stores and direct sales at conventions when pledgers are waiting 2+ months for their stuff.

Once the company has inventory they want to begin selling it by any means opposed to fulfilling the pre-orders.

Considering I can seemingly get my KS product faster by not pledging, seems like I should not support KS as a pre-order model, simply for stuff which won't exist otherwise.

**pretre**

nkelsch wrote:
I have been super annoyed that KS have begun selling products via stores and direct sales at conventions when pledgers are waiting 2+ months for their stuff.

Once the company has inventory they want to begin selling it by any means opposed to fulfilling the pre-orders.

Considering I can seemingly get my KS product faster by not pledging, seems like I should not support KS as a pre-order model, simply for stuff which won't exist otherwise.

This is annoying. Although you do get the product cheaper than retail most of the time, which is nice.

**timetowaste85**

Things like Dreadball are on their third print run, outside of KS, right? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume there are a bunch of game stores selling it. I'm sure it isn't JUST being sold off the Mantic site in print runs of 10 copies at a time. KS works for some things, and other things it doesn't. It's just like everything else in life. I don't know anything that works 100% of the time, without fail.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

If gaming store owners were more willing to give new stuff a chance maybe all these game creators wouldn't have needed to go to KS

some really small stuff on KS will genuinely grab up most of it's market share and leave nothing for stores

but most will not.. the really big CMON KS projects tend to run around 5000 backers

Honestly are 5000 people world wide expected to support the gaming store business, that's just daft

Stores need to embrace KS, keep an eye on it, look for new trends, back stuff where they think the exclusives might have value (then they can fleece folk on eBay)

good example of KS projects with still plenty of cash to be made by stores are Zombicide and Dreadball both of which have outsold the KS numbers several times and continue to sell well

Others have not done so well like Sedition Wars (I still like it), but rules issues and QC problems have hit it pretty badly... but this would have happened even if it had gone out direct to retail, except store owners would have had to deal with the requests for refunds

**Brother SRM**

I just remarked in the Mars Attacks thread earlier - Mantic, a company that definitely has some level of money, is doing a Kickstarter for a game based on an existing intellectual property. Why does this need Kickstarter money? Why don't they just have pre-orders available on their website? Why was there a preview for a Kickstarter for god's sake?

Kickstarters for little companies, like the dude who just used it to make those stick-on camo patterns, are cool. Those serve the purpose of the platform. When companies that actually make money and have a built-in fanbase use it, it seems kind of skeevy.

**pretre**

It keeps them from having to get short-term loans to finance costs. Not sure that I agree with that use, but it is an interesting idea.

**timetowaste85**

Mantid stuff was also not selling well in my semi-local game stores, and while I can't speak for the rest of the world, my stores were not at all negatively affected by their Kickstarters, because they already weren't selling much, if any, Mantic product. Mantic is just continuing the KS craze because it works for them, and better than their previous attempts in LGSs.

**fishy bob**

I'm also sick of Kickstarters, and I ignore them. I probably miss some projects that'd be cool to back, but I prefer that over having to look through the oceans of "THESE MINIATURE CHICKS HAZ BIG TITTIES ROFLULZ!!"-projects.

**pretre**

Yeah, being a very niche product already, selling directly to that niche is helpful.

**edlowe**

There must be loads of projects and figures out there which would never have seen the light of day if it were not for ks. Im sure mantic are quoted somewhere as stating that if not for ks then dreadball would only have a couple of teams and nowhere near as developed.

It all comes down to supply and demand, if there was no demand there wouldnt be so many successful ks out there.

**Saldiven**

My biggest pet-peeve with Kickstarter is the number of well-established existing companies that should have investment capital available who instead of using that capital to expand their line choose to go through Kickstarter to get the public to pay them up-front for the entire cost of producing that new line plus profit margin.

The worst part about it is that these larger, name-recognized, already successful Kickstart campaigns drown out the small start-up companies that really need the assistance of crowd funding in order to get their foot in the industry's door.

**hotsauceman1**

I never understood the Hatred of KS my FLGS has

**timetowaste85**

My FLGSs actually back Kickstarters. Lol. Some, anyway. I know of two places that did and have no issue with them.

**ironicsilence**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
I never understood the Hatred of KS my FLGS has

the sense that i got from my FLGS is that the people that are interested in buying the product often get it through the kickstarter, so there is a lot of buzz around a product but by the time it makes it into a store the people that are excited for it already bought it. I think its also hard for a FLGS to figure out what the correct stock level is for a KS game since they have no way of knowing how much of the buzz for the game already backed it which could result in the store having a decent amount of slow moving stock

**RiTides**

The article quoted in the OP isn't saying "enough with the Kickstarters", it's saying how to do them well!

**Pacific**

I think the market will start to balance itself eventually.. as the 'shiny new thing' everyone jumped on them immediately, although I can see things fading out a little. Unless something comes along that literally people can't avoid, I would be very surprised if we get too many more multi-million dollar KS'es for wargaming at least.

**silent25**

If a FLGS is complaining about a KS stealing customers, I doubt they would have gotten those customers anyways. The people who back these KS are already active on the internet and a large number of them would have just bought the product through an online store at a discount anyways. The owner of my FLGS has openly stated he doesn't carry certain products or lines because the crowd that plays it doesn't buy much from his store anyways.

There has been some talk that Reaper killed their B&M sales with their KS. While anecdotal, the gaping holes in the Reaper wall at my FLGS less than a week after it came out in retail disputes that.

Mantic isn't carried by any of the LGS in my area because they openly complain about sales Mantic had through their online stores. It wasn't even the KS, just regular sales that are already below wholesale for what they pay.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

Mantic usually passes on the sale savings onto their retailers as well (for example the one they're having now as posted by Scarletsquig)

Not sure if they do the same to their distributors ?

(or whether said distributors get the discount but just keep the extra and don't pass it on the the LGS)

**morfydd**

i dunno Kickstarter has a place I don't need everything that shows up on it and tons of stuff is available that otherwise would not have seen the light of day without it ..
That being said I do not peruse thru it looking for stuff to back on a regular basis ..I go mabey once a month to a couple of areas and see if anything is there I have a desire for ..

**Forar**

My main issue with Kickstarter is how the community has come to just accept that successful projects will be delays. Not only accepted, but expected even. As though giving someone hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to just deliver the end result, y'know, whenever, is a totally cool business practice and something consumers should just live with.

I understand that delays happen, that there are unforeseeable issues that can arise, but part of being a professional is being able to judge time lines and accounting for as many contingencies as possible. Falling behind by a week or three is one thing. Multiple months or even quarters of a year indicate issues.

Sometimes it's tied to a massive swell in the scope of the project, or unexpected popularity, but if they did their homework up front and have a good grasp of the realities of production of their original target, surely they can extrapolate an update of some sort from there.

As for FLGS, that's a shame, but it also seems short sighted. Even if a KS blows up to huge proportions, if it's REALLY, truly a draw, those 2k or 5k or even 10k backers worldwide shouldn't represent the entirety of the community. If the products won't sell at MSRP (especially in comparison to the massive discounts found in many gaming KS campaigns) that could be indicative of issues with the lines business model, but it's a risk run by all gaming lines. Some do better than others, some are flashes in the pan, others end up dead on arrival.

My friends and I just bought into the Robotech Tactics KS earlier this year, and their pledge manager finally closed today. If the game proves to be as much fun as we hope it will be and the models are of high quality, I highly doubt the dozen or dozens of backers here in Toronto will account for "90%" of the interest and potential sales. Even with 800 models coming in between 3 of us, there'll almost always be room for another pack of This, and two more packs of That, etc, etc.

I have had reservations about even small/mid sized companies using it as an elaborate pre-order service, but on further inspection, I don't really see the problem. The nature of a KS campaign allows for a gradual ramping up to meet demand. As more people commit to buying in, they're able to wrangle a better deal/price per unit via economy of scale, and thus can pass that savings onto the people buying in, through more figures, new sculpts, expanded scope of a game, etc, and it's all visable, in terms of backers and proposed funding, rather than having to set that up to some degree on their own site, or just have it in the background. Basically, why re-invent the wheel? The system is there, and if people want in and have the available disposable income, why not go with it?

As has been oft noted in this thread already, if it's not for you, that's totally your prerogative. But what we might be seeing is an evolution of the concept of a pre-order, and while there are risks and valid issues and concerns to address, that falls on the community and the sites themselves to address over time.

The site itself may die off or be replaced by something else, but considering the amount of money being offered and exchanging hands every day or thereabouts, I suspect crowdfunding (and even crowdsourcing, as some campaigns do) is here to stay.

Edit: oh, nice of the OP to mention Powered Play though. I missed their campaign, thought their product looked amazing, and a local store is apparently now carrying it. Might just have to swing by and pick some up in the next week or two.

**Alpharius**

Is this another Swoop and Poop by BS?

It looks, and smells, like one.

Pretre summed it perfectly in the second post.