3 Crowdfunding Videos About the Funding Goal, Rewards, and Early Birds – Stonemaier Games

3 Crowdfunding Videos About the Funding Goal, Rewards, and Early Birds

It’s video day on the blog! I’ve added 3 new short videos about Kickstarter, crowdfunding, and entrepreneurship to my YouTube channel. You can find the previous videos on our website or mixed in with my game design videos on YouTube. The corresponding written entries are in the description of each video (click through to YouTube to see them).

What do you agree or disagree with in these videos? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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13 Comments on “3 Crowdfunding Videos About the Funding Goal, Rewards, and Early Birds

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  1. Thank you Jamey for sharing your experience and ideas with the community. You are an inspiration and invaluable resource to those of us navigating through crowdfunding and TT design in general.

    I’m in the midst of strategizing our reward tiers and stretch goals and I found your video very helpful.
    My question is how do you feel about reward tiers that engage backers in some aspect of the design (design a custom track, bike, etc.)? I am calling these “”Contributor”” levels but unsure what monetary value…I think somewhere in the “Epic Level” but I’m an unknown in the marketplace so just not sure.
    Thanks again for sharing your knowledge with the community and for any insight you may have.

    Yours at the table,
    Jeff” jefffennel@yahoo.com Jeff Fennel
    bike, etc.)

    1. Thanks Jeff! My first recommendation would be that the furthest you go with these reward levels is to let people name aspects of the game that you’ve already designed. The reason for that suggestion is that potential backers may be concerned about half-baked ideas from designer-backers that might decrease the quality of the game.

      Whatever you decide to go with, given that you’re a new creator, the added monetary value is pretty low–maybe an extra $20-$25 at most.

  2. Thanks Isaac! That’s true, the videos are too short to provide in-depth detail about various topics.

    The main functions of a distribution broker are to warehouse your games, handle communications and transactions for distributors, and ship games to distributors when they place orders. Because shipping depends on how much distributors order, it’s almost impossible for a broker to even estimate how much it will cost. Rather, the costs you want to get from brokers are (a) their per-unit-sold fee and (b) their warehousing fees.

  3. I love you videos Jamey. They are short, to the point and are super motivating as I go each day working toward my project. On the flip side, that first video on calculating funding goals is so brief that it barely touches the shipping cost element. I realized that my funding goal needed revising after reading your piece “Board Game Supply Chain”

    The idea that there is a distribution broker initially blew my mind. But that leads me to wonder, should I contact a distribution broker to find out their cost and how much they charge to ship each item? And do I need to decide on a broker before I can determine the cost of freight to get it to them? Honestly these questions seem to snowball.

  4. Is it possible for a creator to “not be investing a ton of money in something nobody wants” anymore (if they want their game project to be taken seriously and it requires a lot of funding)?
    A few years ago I recall a lot of game projects being on the level of “here’s my idea and concept art” — but now the game category features projects that show all the final art assets, finished looking prototypes, reviews of gameplay with finished looking components, and super-polished project videos. I’ve seen creators talking about taking out a second mortgage to fund the game design and art and I’ve seen numbers mentioned like $50K already invested in their game before it even hits KS. Plus huge advertising budgets are expected during the KS.
    One either goes along with this and takes these risks to appear in the top tier or their project automatically looks second rate.
    Things might work on some level without a huge pre-investment, but it seems like most of the recent biggest funding game Kickstarters were launched with a large investment (or a huge pre-existing audience who were eager to buy). I think this changes how one needs to approach Kickstarter if one doesn’t have a lot of money to put at risk.

    1. Eric: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I actually don’t think there was really ever a time that successful projects were being funded if they were still at the idea stage. However, you make some great points about the budget.

      As for the pre-KS budget, I think it depends on the product and on the creator. I genuinely believe that it’s possible to get a project off the ground on a budget of $1000. That gets you a few representative pieces of art and graphic design. Most of the resources that help creators build passionate audiences are free. Extra money does help, but I think it’s possible without it.

    2. We have a client spending $1800.00 to make prototype samples (no new plastic mold charge involved.). Before he made prototype, he had spent 2 years working on the games. And then he made a lot of changes on the artwork to make new prototype samples again. Those prototype samples were given for review and play testing only. I am sure he spent more on artwork and events.

  5. Hi Jamey, may I take this chance to ask your ideas about Fear Pong made by Cut.com pls? Cut.com has 270+ million fans, I am wondering why the game is over 2500 only. Tks.

    1. Annie: That’s a good question. There might be various reasons under the surface or behind the scenes that I’m not aware of, but here are my two general thoughts:

      1. There is a gap between being entertained by the videos and wanting to play the game. It looks like there are a lot of people who have fun watching the videos, but they’re happy leaving it at that.

      2. People can’t actually envision themselves playing this game. I think that’s important for any game–we have to believe that we’re going to play it at some point. It’s quite possible that simply isn’t the case for this game.

      1. Hi Jamey, thank you for the answer. Maybe the group of fans are different from group of games. We still remember how Cards Against Humanity was
        popular before.

  6. Hi Jamey, I like your posts because you always have hardcore systematically. I read someone talking about group shipment for KS games today. Many people said No to group shipment because it’s hassle. The KS campaign of Fantastic Factories has a level for retail pledge. But he was hesitated for group shipment. It will be a good idea to talk about group shipment with the backers alone.

  7. I’m with you on early birds. I dislike them very much and they leave me feeling left out so I don’t back. Same goes for removing items for late pledges. I thought your “everybody gets” solution for funding by a certain time frame was brilliant and is now a part of my strategy platform. Don’t leave any backer with a sour taste and make them feel welcomed to the party. Great ideas!

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