A few days ago I delivered some difficult news to a creator whose project was struggling to fund: At some point, I said, you might consider the possibility that people simply don’t want the product. No creator wants to think about that or give up a product on which they’ve spent so much time, effort, […]
Recently I again tweaked our preorder method with the long-awaited expansion for Euphoria, Ignorance Is Bliss. Today I’ll share the steps I went through to run this preorder, including commentary on changes I made after learning from Wingspan. Backwards Planning To plan ahead for a preorder and new product release, I typically pick an ideal […]
A few days ago I learned from creator Gil Hova about a Kickstarter tool that I had never heard of. It’s run by BackerKit, and it’s called BackerTracker. The basic idea is that you can look up any Kickstarter project and see a fairly accurate trendline as to the total amount the project will raise […]
Today I have a few videos to share from my Dice Tower crowdfunding series. These short videos summarize the key points from my blog about relationships, current backers, and social media. You can find the previous videos on this website or mixed in with my game design videos on YouTube. What ideas in these videos do you agree […]
If you’re in the game industry, you’ve probably been asked this question a few times over the last few years. I hear it the most from people outside of the game industry, to whom I feel a certain responsibility to include and inform in the most accurate way possible. So over time I’ve accumulated a […]
Last week I posited a theory that I hope isn’t true: A Kickstarter creator’s chances of successfully funding a project significantly drop if they haven’t reached their funding goal in the first 48 hours, to the point that it almost seems necessary to fund within that short amount of time. Fortunately, there are at least a few […]
When Elizabeth Hargrave sat down with me at Gen Con 2016 to pitch Wingspan to Stonemaier Games, I was just looking for a good game, and I got one. But I also got lucky, because despite our focus on inclusivity, we weren’t doing everything in our power to attract a diversity of designers. I was […]
In my opinion, one of the best ways your project page can entice potential backers is to show that the campaign has reached its funding goal. For years I’ve talked about this in various ways in relation to selecting your funding goal, preparing for the final week, momentum, etc. In recent years, we’ve seen creators […]
My favorite way to market our products is to get them to the table more often. Your table, my table, the tables of reviewers, ambassadors, etc–any table will do. The more our products get to the table, the more they’re exposed to people. This is a big part of the reason why we support our […]
A few days ago, a creator reached out to me with an compelling message: Wesley Woodbury of FunDaMental Games sent me a list of 3 unique elements of his current Kickstarter campaign, Legends of Novus. I have an open invitation for creators to do this, but few follow through, so I thought I’d dig deeper […]
