Today I’m mostly going to focus on Gamefound’s exciting announcement, but there are a few other options I’ll mention as well.
To be clear, though, Kickstarter is still awesome. My company–like so many others–wouldn’t exist without the Kickstarter platform. It was an amazing way for me to learn the ropes of starting and running a business for the first few years before I moved on to other methods in 2016. Kickstarter continues to be a great way to gauge demand, improve the product, build community, raise funds, generate awareness, and optimize worldwide shipping (and more).
But Kickstarter isn’t the only way to accomplish those goals. Below I’ll mention 3 other methods, followed by a deep dive into a new platform that may have the greatest potential to be a true Kickstarter competitor for tabletop game creators.
- Hasbro Pulse: This is Hasbro’s version of Kickstarter, which they’re currently using to fund the HeroQuest reboot. It’s unlikely that pulse will ever be available to other creators, but I think it’s interesting to see that Hasbro valued the KS model enough to make a proprietary version.
- CraigStarter: For his Kissa by Kissa project, Craig Mod created a template to run a Kickstarter-like campaign on Shopify. I really like how it takes the funding progress bar concept to a new level by applying a progress bar to each stretch goal. Craig offers this video explaining how to implement this concept.
- Stonemaier Method: This is much more of a technique than a platform. The key difference here is that instead of taking loans from backers and asking them to wait 6-12 months to receive a tangible benefit, we simply produce a new product, freight ship it to fulfillment centers, announce that it exists, and ship to customers within a few weeks after they place preorders. As detailed here, we can still implement all of those core benefits of Kickstarter while using this technique.
Let’s move on to a full-fledged alternative to Kickstarter for tabletop game creators: Gamefound. Over the last 4 years, Gamefound has joined BackerKit, PledgeManager, and CrowdOx as a major option for managing backers post-campaign.
They’ve decided to take everything they’ve learned and expand the Gamefound platform to be more than just a pledge manager, starting with the ISS Vanguard project from Awaken Realms (a company closely associated with Gamefound, and one that’s had major success on Kickstarter). As announced here, they’ll soon proceed with a closed-access adoption period, and then make the platform available to other creators.
Here are some of the highlights of the Gamefound crowdfunding platform:
- Robust comment section featuring hashtags, threaded replies, and sorting options.
- Built-in stretch goal system including a progress bar for the current goal and a handy chart for each backer to show everything unlocked that applies to their pledge. I think this will work well if creators can still add/change stretch goals on the fly.
- Integrated add-ons at the point of pledge. Kickstarter has avoided looking like a store, but this will be a welcome addition on Gamefound.
- Visual reward listings that show images for each element of the rewards backers are considering.
- Campaign wizard to help guide newcomers. I picture this being like the now-retired Microsoft paperclip, but hopefully much more helpful.
- Smooth transition from campaign to pledge manager. This is a huge asset, making Gamefound an all-in-one solution for creators.
Will it work? I have no doubt that it will function, as Gamefound has a proven track record as a pledge manager.
Perhaps a better question is, “Will people use it?” To that I’ll say that I think it has a decent chance, largely because Awaken Realms has a huge audience of people ready to support their campaigns, and I’m guessing Gamefound will choose other major creators for the other early-adopter campaigns. Also, it helps that 300,000 people already have their information saved by Gamefound’s pledge manager, providing a low barrier to entry for those potential backers.
I think the following variables will play a role in its success:
- Friend-backed notifications: I think this has become one of the most invaluable features of Kickstarter. If I follow someone on Kickstarter and they back a project, I get an email telling me about it. I’ve backed so many projects as a result. If Gamefound can implement something like this, I think their chances of long-term success significantly increases.
- Price: The 10% revenue cut taken by Kickstarter/Stripe is significant the more funds you raise. Awaken Realms has raised around $4 million each for several projects; if they were only paying 3% in credit card fees, they would save nearly $300,000 per project. I’m curious to see how much Gamefound charges, and I’m guessing it will be less than Kickstarter.
- Toxicity Moderation: I don’t visit Kickstarter comments very often, and I think it’s good for backers to hold creators accountable…but I’ve heard from some that the level of toxicity on some perfectly fine projects is out of control. I wonder what types of tools Gamefound will provide backers and creators to address this issue.
You can read the full Gamefound announcement here. As a backer, I look forward to trying their crowdfunding platform. As a creator, I’m happy with the Stonemaier method, but it’s possible I might consider Gamefound as a platform for that model, as they don’t seem to have Kickstarter’s restriction regarding creating something new versus selling something you’ve already produced.
Is there anything in the article I missed? Are there other factors that you think will play into Gamefound’s success? What do you think about using Gamefound as a creator or backer?
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23 Comments on “4 Intriguing Alternatives to Kickstarter”
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My biggest problem with Gamefound is the payment options. For some reason, my bank does not play well with Gamefound. If I have already paid for everything except shipping on Kickstarter, it works fine. However, if I add a bunch of stuff post-campaign, I have extreme difficulty getting a payment to go through. Hence why I had to punt on one of their latest campaigns – I tried for over a month to pay through Gamefound but no luck at all.
And soon there will also be the Gamefound platform launching with the ISS vanguard as the First game. Surely a free platform with no commission and a built in Pledge manager must be an attractive proposition?
Absolutely! Though the crowdfunding portion of the platform won’t be free to creators.
lol, I guess I should read all the article before commenting rather than just the first paragraph.
How come nobody ever mentions Indiegogo? Seriously, they seem to be very populär and the functionalities seem to be in place, so what’s the matter?
I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve mentioned it past articles: https://stonemaiergames.com/drip-vs-patreon-vs-kickstarter-vs-indiegogo-vs-shopify-a-choice-for-ongoing-content-creators/
Thanks for sharing this. Without it I wouldn’t have known about the HeroQuest reboot! Nostalgia is strong. Hard to resist the urge to buy some of my treasured childhood memories in a box.
How does the stonemaier method differ from stand retail with a pre-order component?
Feel free to read the article I linked to for the exact way we do it, as the combination of techniques we use make our preorders feel like a Kickstarter…that delivers within a few weeks. The closest comparisons I’ve seen were Forgotten Waters and Mechs vs Minions, for which the publishers accepted preorders very close to shipping the games. The created a spectacle–I think that spectacle is often missing from new game releases (including Kickstarters when the game actually ships and reaches retailers).
Long time no see, Jamey! Very interesting topic.
I will stand to the following
“they don’t seem to have Kickstarter’s restriction regarding creating something new versus selling something you’ve already produced”.
That is a policy many would take advantage of. Kickstarter was meant to be for lots of different categories, to inspire innovation hence the restriction. I guess Gamefound is targeting the Gaming crowd, who are mainly focusing on getting the product, or its 2nd revised enhanced deluxe all-in Adamantium edition with sugar on top. They also are a subset of the Kickstarter crowd, so the 300k people are not insignificant: they are TARGETED audience.
As for the rest of the functionalities, I wouldn’t mind using them IF they offer a way for Greek (read: national) creators to also use it.
I hope their built-in system to setup the campaigns and do updates, fonts, uploads etc is decent.
I also pray the backers will have a permanent FaQ somewhere in plain sight so that you don’t need to explain basic stuff, like how to back a project or how to get a refund.
WIll it have the all-or-nothing PLUS flexible funding options, like Indiegogo? Will it support other currencies than USD? Will it let me set responsibilities to others(collaborators) ? WIll it have a “X created, Y backed” record too? WIll THAT be enough or any backer could rate said creator with stars, like on eBay/Aliexpress for credibility?
Sorry for the long post, I am also curious for the results because 2 days ago Kickstarter announced Greece, Poland and Slovenia as eligible countries to use their platform and starting to count the positives, I will have to wait till Gamefound proves a rival enough.
Hi Harry! Thanks for dropping in. :) I like your points about localizations, easy setup (it sounds like they’re going to focus on this), and the funding options. For Stonemaier, it would be cool if they let us set a quantity maximum since we would only use this on products we’ve already printed.
Sorry to bring that up, but is there a way to track Gamefound campaigns? I tried to copy the link of ISS Vanguard on Kicktraq, but it didn’t work. Soooooo, any alternatives?
I’m guessing they’re just too new to be tracked on Kicktraq, but that will probably change soon.
Ultimately I think it will come down to whether or not the new platform can attract enough footfall to pull in creators. Its great to have major creators like Awaken Realms who literally bring their own crowd to a campaign, but the vast majority of the day to day projects on Kickstarter do need the backers that Kickstarter brings to them more than the other way around. 300,000 Gamefound users sounds like a lot, but Kickstarter has over 18.5 million previous backers, and if they charge 7% more that’s not a huge price for access to 60 times as many customers.
My worry would be that the new platform will therefore only be attractive to bigger name campaigns and that pulling them away from Kickstarter will cause smaller independent creators to suffer due to loss of footfall. If the upshot is that massive campaigns who can afford not to have the KS crowds get a 7% discount while smaller creators get fewer backers seeing their projects I’m not certain that will be good overall.
I hope that it results in Kickstarter stepping up their interface and customer support, but its already not the only crowdfunding platform and its other rivals didn’t make it change anything so I’m not sure why this would.
Glenn: That’s a great comparison between 300k and 18.5 million–it’s a big difference! :) As you said, I’m curious to see if Gamefound attracts smaller creators/projects in addition to some of the big ones.
As I wrote above, yes 18.5m >300k indeed, but think how many of those 18.5million back games. As an interection of interests, they are less, I wish I knew exactly how many, but 300K game pledgers seem better than 18,5million random pledgers. I compare it with a random selected mailing list : you have 28,390 subscribers, they seem fewer than Gamefound’s but those 28,390 are all interested in your products.
That’s true. I wonder how many backers on Kickstarter have supported 5+ tabletop projects–that might be a better number for comparison.
Its very hard to tell, but according to their stats the games category on Kickstarter accounts for 1.4 billion of their 5.3 billion overall. Tabletop games are the largest part of that category as I understand it, but if they’re roughly 50% of the games category then that’s around a tenth of all the money raised, assuming that roughly crosses to backers then that’s 1.8 million tabletop game backers. Even if it were half that, and I realize that’s barely more than guesswork, its still a considerable number more than 300,000.
Even if it were half that again, I’m also not certain that 300k tabletop games fans are better for all creators than 18.5m more general users. Creators of family, party and mass market games benefit from a wider pool. Exploding Kittens would almost certainly pick the 18 million over the 300,000. In addition, many games are based on other properties such as graphic novels or computer games, those tabletop games would, I think, far rather have a platform that features graphic novels and computer games. Frostpunk: The Board Game which is currently doing very well would no doubt rather be able to easily mobilize computer game fans.
Aside from any of that, will Gamefound actually be able to utilize those 300k users in this new venture? In the EU if you significantly change the nature of your business like this you’re required to re-request permission to continue to use people’s details. Even if that’s not a requirement for them here, a part of those 300k people have never agreed to be charged funds by Gamefound in the past, its not a given that they will in the future. Even the people who have agreed to have Gamefound charge them for delivery on projects they backed on Kickstarter aren’t certain to also agree to have Gamefound charge them directly for a whole project.
I do wonder how Kickstarter will now deal with their connection to Gamefound, and how having that connection broken, if it is broken, will effect Gamefound.
Gamefound IS Awaken Realms, hence why they always use it. As a pledge manager it is free as far as I know, not sure about the expansion into a fully fledged crowdfunding platform though.
Legally I think they’re different entities, and I think Gamefound now has a separate team from the game publisher Awaken Realms. But you’re right that they are very, very closely tied together. And you’re correct that the pledge manager is free, but I doubt the crowdfunding platform will be.
Great article as always, thanks for sharing! Just a couple of comments. I’ve been a Kickstarter user for over 5 years now and I’ve seen very little innovation from a consumer standpoint. In addition, the number of projects that I’ve been burned by over the last several years has unfortunately grown, and each of those situations, Kickstarter never stepped in nor provided any assistance to the consumer. In my opinion, they’ve went all in on the creators and did very little for the consumer.
With that being said, there are two publishers that have always given me an all-around amazing experience (from Kickstarter, to fulfillment, to quality) and that is Stonemaier Games and Awaken Realms.
What’s nice about Gamefound (which is exclusively used by Awaken Realms for everything post Kickstarter) is that they incorporated Gamefound into their entire process from pledge management, to cross selling, to customer support. This creates a great customer experience.
Bottom line is, competition is rarely bad when it comes to the consumer. Although Gamefound will not force Kickstarter out of the industry, I hope it forces Kickstarter to increase their concentration on building out the consumer experience, and not just act as a “store”.
Thanks for all of the great articles and YouTube videos, I always look forward to them.
Thanks!
Matt
Thanks Matt! These are great points about how Gamefound is built around the idea of providing a positive customer experience, so I can see how their project platform would continue to do so (and inspire Kickstarter as well).