A few days ago I received an e-mail from a reader who had a really great question, something I haven’t discussed on the blog. He mentions a project that’s rooting for and wants to back, but as an experienced backer, he sees a number of red flags on the campaign. Here’s an excerpt from the […]
I’m on a crowdfunding panel this Wednesday at a St. Louis Publishers Association event (full details are at that link in case you’d like to attend). It’s a unique event because we’ll specifically be talking about crowdfunding campaigns for books. So in the spirit of this upcoming discussion, I thought I’d let you in on […]
When I set out to launch Viticulture in August 2012, I needed some up-front funds to create some of the art and graphic design for the game. Viticulture has become an extremely successful product for Stonemaier Games, but at the time we didn’t know if it would even fund on Kickstarter. Any funds invested in […]
One of the formative moments for Stonemaier Games happened a little under 3 years ago when two companies reached out to me with similar offers: They wanted to make foreign-language versions of our games (one in Asia, the other in Europe). Today I’m going to talk about the various benefits and options creators have for […]
I work from home at an adjustable standing desk, alternating between sitting and standing throughout the day. Like clockwork, whenever I adjust my desk to stand up for a while, I’ll turn around to find that one of my cats (Biddy) has taken over the chair. This is cute and adorable for about an hour, […]
In this series, I highlight some of the interesting choices made by current crowdfunders regarding their project’s reward levels, stretch goals, and overall campaign design (the projects themselves, not the content or product). This isn’t an endorsement or promotion. Game of Energy The thing about this project that caught my eye is the use of animated gifs to […]
Two years ago, I was faced with a dilemma: Should I continue to use Kickstarter’s built-in survey, or should I start using some of the more robust third-party pledge managers like BackerKit, PledgeManager, and CrowdOx. When I thought about it, I realized that what mattered most to me was creating the best experience for my backers. So I […]
I was the featured guest on a podcast on Sunday, and it completely redefined the way I view podcast appearances, both as a guest and a listener. Here’s some context from those two perspectives: I’ve had the honor of appearing as guest on many different podcasts. When I’m a guest, usually the hosts ask me […]
At Gen Con last week, I had an interesting conversation with a game designer and future Kickstarter creator. He posed a question that completely stumped me, so I thought I’d share it here. The numbers below are hypothetical, but they roughly represent the actual scenario. [Update: The designer, Denny Weston, has revealed his product with […]
Last week I wrote about the process and emotional toll of shipping Scythe. In this second and final post about that campaign, I’m going to discuss and rate each of the fulfillment companies we used to ship Scythe to backers within each region. Before I get to the ratings, I’m going to share the e-mail […]
