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Is it me or have the miniature kickstarters slowed down? Last year there were a lots of big kickstarters, it seemed to have slowed down or has the funding market become saturated?

You have to stop buying and start painting sometime.

Gaming wise, theres nothing interesting right now or they are blatant pre-orders for yet another game system.

Theres plenty happening in other sectors though.

there have still been plenty for me both big and small

The wargaming market has become saturated, so the manufacturers switched to boardgames with miniatures. Lots and lots of miniatures. The recent Dark Souls KS garnered over 5.5 million USD, for example.

Maybe everyone that used kick starter can now stand on their own. No longer needing strangers to risk money for their own business ideas, they reached a level where they can risk their own capital.

And maybe kick starter is not the greatest business plan. It is debt. Not money you owe, but products and labor. Getting paid in advance reduces your motivation to produce, and if you also spend all the money it has got to be very difficult to find the time and energy to make things. It is easy to forget money that is long gone and it must seem like you are working for nothing.

If you miscalculate or run in to complications it can become a disaster. I actually read about these episodes to learn what not to do.

Some people have failed so massively that the gaming community is now toxic for them. If they showed up on forum or a convention they would be savaged. Some rightly so. The ones I know of seem to suffer from ludicrous optimism and delusional self assessment. They thought so highly of what they were going to do they simply were caught off guard when things went bad and could not recover. Every business start up needs some optimism, but it has to be tempered in reality.

I am primed to do a kick starter. I worked 6 years building infrastructure and learning process. Also working long hours to pay for equipment and software. But now that the time is here I can not think of a need to kick start. I just need to keep busy and things are going to keep moving along.

I do agree that many companies got their one-shot and either delivered, or are being lambasted to this day.
It certainly seems to be an "all or nothing" affair where dragging things out curtails any further use of Kickstarter.
I must admit some stuff that came out of Kickstarter were quite exciting but not without some drama:
Kingdom of Death (Many delays but I swear oh so worth it!)
Zombicide
Mars Attacks
Ghost Busters
Ogre
To name a few.
My own involvement with "Robotech RPG Tactics" was almost enough to get me to swear-off Kickstarter forever.

Kickstarters aren't that cheap a source of funding really. The funding site takes something like 10% (last time I looked) then you have to offer something to the punters at a discount to make it worthwhile for them, so that is another 10%. I don't think business loans from a bank are that expensive in comparison. Also the "interest" you are paying with a kickstarter has to be paid straight away, the site fee is taken as you get the money and the punters discount comes into effect when you deliver which is also when the total capital raised has to be repaid. With a bank loan your capital repayment can be stretched over years and you effectively aren't paying the interest until the last few months.

Crowdfunding platforms overcharge for what they do. They could do that while the novelty factor overshadowed the reality of their offering, but that could be wearing off. At some point they might revise their fees to make them more competitive with banks.

Have you looked at the cost of distributing? Kick starter avoids that by selling direct.

I talked to a distributer once. They wanted 60% off plus free shipping, which could easily have taken another 5-10%.

I think that business model is changing as more companies are looking to sell direct. Even with 20% fees on e-bay or other sites it still leaves more money for the producer. So from a sales standpoint kick starter beats trying to get distributed through your LGS.

But as a loan I agree it is costly. The one bonus is there is no backing for the loan. You can simply walk away. Look at the Peachy Printer 3D printer kick starter. The guy simply built a house with the money and said- "Sorry." Sure he made some people mad but he got a free house. I talked to lenders about getting credit for my business and it always came down to me securing the money with my home. In fact I spent a couple of hours showing my workshop to a bank manager and he was extremely impressed with all the paid for assets I had accumulated. (he was also a gamer/model builder) But he still wanted to only loan me money if I secured it with real estate.

I guess it is easier to have people on the internet mad at you than it is to find a house after you lose one.

My personal dislike for kick starter has been chronicled on numerous blog posts. It just seems to be not a good way to treat customers. Running a business requires a certain level of responsibility and kick starter simply gives a business too much of a reward while allowing them to walk away if anything goes wrong. It also shifts the loss to the customers, even though each individual shares a small amount of the loss.

The other thing that frustrates me about kick starter is how easy it is to massively overstate your position. I know from inside info that this happens. People simply grossly misrepresent the condition of their company and its abilities.

There should be some sort of verification before kick starter collects hundreds of thousands of dollars and sends it to a post office box.

In general it's not that bank loans are expensive,

it's that they are so hard to get (unless as Ken of York say they are secured on property worth much, much more than the value of the loan)

I think the project that are most at risk for going wrong are those where the person running them just has an idea (or IP) but isn't able to do any of the stuff needed to make the final product

so if things go wrong, quotes from contractors aren't honoured, shipping getrs more expensive etc the creator has nothing to throw in (except cash which they may not have) to help fix the problems,

if they can do some of the stuff (eg art, sculpting, casting, etc) then they at least have the chance of throwing in more time for less money to put things back on track

for example the recent Midknight Heroes KS could have been in real trouble when the caster turned round and massively raised the price they'd quoted so the funds from the KS would have not been enough, fortunately Trollforged stepped in with casting prices that did work but if they hadn't the project would have failed (or taken forever to complete)

I would say if your strong suit is marketing: kickstarter is your thing.

The trick is being sure of how the product will get made with plans as a sliding scale if interest is greater than planned.

It is a fine form of market research as well.
If you are wildly successful on backers it shows demand is good.

I think to give kickstarter an "honest" go you would have to look at all the "hidden' costs like KS's take on the funds as well as shipping costs and terms with "Backerkit".

If you are the average Joe with a fantastic idea, it could get overwhelming in a hurry if you did not do your homework.

On the plus side on being a "creator" it looks like you can be useless and there would be few repercussions unless you are stupid (criminal) about how you use the money.

Costs aside do you think the kickstarter miniature peak has gone? there are a few small ones, and a few big fantasy games, but i have been watching the news thread, and there hasn't been a big miniature kickstarter the last few weeks, i also notice the current relevant ones are mostly fantasy.

I wonder if "we the people!" are Kickstarter fatigued or that most companies have gotten out of kickstarter what they wanted, or maybe we are just between lull's, or they are all on their Caribbean islands bought with our money!

My personal opinion is that kick starter has done significant damage to the industry that is going to take some to sort itself out.

Right now there are a lot of customers looking at years of painting stacked all around them, while small companies are struggling to deliver the products they promised, and others are lamenting the wreckage to their business that is left.

I had a friend once tell me that about 5 new companies were being launched per week at the height of the kick starter frenzy.

It has long been apparent to me that eventually there is going to be some sort of consolidation, with some merging and others simply going away.

So yes, I do think the peak is over. During the high point every thing was funding. My personal moment of confusion came when I saw that flying assault butts https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grimdarkforge/miniature-wargaming-flying-assault-butts were over funded.

I simply stopped trying to understand.

I remember when half the threads on News were KS related and some people were asking that a separate subforum be created for KS because all the 'real news' was being drowned out.

So yeah imho the KS craze has died down.

 Talizvar wrote:

If you are wildly successful on backers it shows demand is good.

I'm not even sure of that. it just means a small niche of people rally wanted it. By the time you hit retail, the actual buyers may have all ready been tapped at big discounts during the KS.

Isn't that what happened for Robotech and All Quiet? All the people interested in that sort of thing bought in on the KS so there were very few retail sales?

Yeah, I think part of the problem with Kickstarter, beyond its uses by established companies, is that if you actually have a good idea fthat needs some kickstarting before it can be brought to market, you're better off going the conventional route. I think Kickstarter is for people that don't know how much they don't know about business.

It's a great pre-order gimmick, get your exclusives high while it's here. Knowing you capped the profit before launch, made others pay for it with all the risks, interest free sounds business friendly to me.

Quite relieved actually - ran out of room ages ago and still lots of stuff to be delivered!

 Easy E wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

If you are wildly successful on backers it shows demand is good.

I'm not even sure of that. it just means a small niche of people rally wanted it. By the time you hit retail, the actual buyers may have all ready been tapped at big discounts during the KS.

Isn't that what happened for Robotech and All Quiet? All the people interested in that sort of thing bought in on the KS so there were very few retail sales?

most definitely with RRT most of the backers were there for the game, the nostalgia and or the unseen, after that it is a niche market within a niche market which had potential except for the bungling of PB, now AQotMF still has potential and now that MM will be behind it, it still has possibility, will it do great? who knows, but it can't be as bad or worse then RRT.

I think part of it is that as companies got more experienced - KS got less enticing.

They are usually good deals still - but now you have to pay for shipping generally, and they don't drown you going overboard with freebies and stuff like the early big KS did.

And yeah - part of it is people who were frequent backers looking around and seeing "god, I have more stuff than I can ever even begin to paint before I die."

I went nuts on the KS in 2012 when they were big - but toned it a down a lot in 2013. The last 2 (2 1/2 now) I have only done 1-2 gaming KS a year. Which even that is overloading me with crap.

I've branched out into non-gaming KS some too though - it's all the fun of KS and getting stuff - but without the guilt/dread of adding 2 years worth of stuff to my painting pile.

another reason KS miniatures might be slumping is because miniature KickStarters are not doing as good which can be because of the default of miniature KickStarters, lets face it out of all game types you have a good chance of a miniature KS not completing as opposed to other game types.

Asterios wrote:
another reason KS miniatures might be slumping is because miniature KickStarters are not doing as good which can be because of the default of miniature KickStarters, lets face it out of all game types you have a good chance of a miniature KS not completing as opposed to other game types.

That makes no sense, miniature is the least risky because you only have to supply miniatures, boardgame, wargame or electronics have more risks because of there are many parts to be managed, the reason why some miniature kickstarters
failed is mostly because of the inexperience of the Kickstart owner (or scamming) or they went overboard with the add ones with calculating the impact.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

Asterios wrote:
another reason KS miniatures might be slumping is because miniature KickStarters are not doing as good which can be because of the default of miniature KickStarters, lets face it out of all game types you have a good chance of a miniature KS not completing as opposed to other game types.

That makes no sense, miniature is the least risky because you only have to supply miniatures, boardgame, wargame or electronics have more risks because of there are many parts to be managed, the reason why some miniature kickstarters
failed is mostly because of the inexperience of the Kickstart owner (or scamming) or they went overboard with the add ones with calculating the impact.

notice I did not mention electronics, but games in general, and over all the most money lost on game Kickstarters that failed to deliver is definitely with Miniature games, furthermore more miniature games have failed to deliver then even electronic games, furthermore one of the biggest games that have failed to deliver were a miniature game created by a company with 30 years plus of game experience.

furthermore Miniature games are more highly risky then any computer game.

the largest Video game that failed to deliver i've seen on another list was Clang which funded for just over $500K meanwhile the game I mentioned above RRT raised over 1.4 Mill dollars and have only delivered half the promised product, big difference between RRT and Clang was Clang admitted the game was dead. meanwhile RRT has not.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Is it me or have the miniature kickstarters slowed down? Last year there were a lots of big kickstarters, it seemed to have slowed down or has the funding market become saturated?

for me- Between absolute saturation point, and dismal follow-through, Kickstarter has run its course.

I can't speak for everyone else, but my negative to positive experience has topped the tank.

Worst thing about it- some of the projects are actually quite good. Its the fact that the results seem to always have a caveat to them.

There was probably also a lot of people with pent up ideas and no funding to get them to the masses in the early days. Now that load is blown, miniature kickstarters have slowed.

I find Kickstarters in general seem less prominent nowadays. Probably because the initial "gold rush" phase has ended and it has become just another monetization method.

Also a big issue is the number of Kickstarteed games that failed to really take off at retail at all.

I mean as successful as Mantic has been, they are still direct only with support for the games shifting to the next big campain.

Cmon seems to have the same issue

Guuildball seems to be the big exception to this, but Steamforged seemed to be pretty smart with the follow through and support for the game.

Add the smaller games that have started in the industry without kickstarter, and the market just isn't big enough to support that many games, so a game need way more support and promotion than just "We had a big Kickstarter".

At origins, I had one game company tell me that it was the stores falt a game I kickstarter never took off, because they never pushed the game enough. I was thinking "Isn't it your job to push and promote your game?"

Asterios wrote:
furthermore Miniature games are more highly risky then any computer game.

the largest Video game that failed to deliver i've seen on another list was Clang which funded for just over $500K meanwhile the game I mentioned above RRT raised over 1.4 Mill dollars and have only delivered half the promised product, big difference between RRT and Clang was Clang admitted the game was dead. meanwhile RRT has not.

Clang didn't deliver at all. RRT delivered something.

Compare with Godus

In general, only 1/3 video game KS deliver - that's far worse than minis gaming.

More:
http://kotaku.com/12-successful-kickstarters-that-never-delivered-1687019268

 Digclaw wrote:
Also a big issue is the number of Kickstarteed games that failed to really take off at retail at all.

Spoiler:

I mean as successful as Mantic has been, they are still direct only with support for the games shifting to the next big campain.

Cmon seems to have the same issue

Guuildball seems to be the big exception to this, but Steamforged seemed to be pretty smart with the follow through and support for the game.

Add the smaller games that have started in the industry without kickstarter, and the market just isn't big enough to support that many games, so a game need way more support and promotion than just "We had a big Kickstarter".

At origins, I had one game company tell me that it was the stores falt a game I kickstarter never took off, because they never pushed the game enough. I was thinking "Isn't it your job to push and promote your game?"

I think a lot of small or starting companies that use Kickstarter fail to understand the importance of marketing, when a kickstarter finishes they need to get the message out to the people that didn't use the kickstarter.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I find Kickstarters in general seem less prominent nowadays. Probably because the initial "gold rush" phase has ended and it has become just another monetization method.

in other words the newness of it has worn off and it is just viewed as another pre-order, fraught with more issues and problems?