Two months ago, the Gamefound pledge manager service–which is partially owned and operated by a game publisher, Awaken Realms–announced that it would soon be adding a huge feature: A full crowdfunding platform for tabletop game creators. I wrote about some of the highlights of the announcement in October.
Now Gamefound has launched with ISS Vanguard, and here’s where the project stands on Day 5:
I’m going to dive into a few of the features of the platform so you can decide if Gamefound is a good option for you.
Stretch Goal Integration: This is one of the biggest differentiating features on Gamefound. Stretch goals are built into the platform for creators to modify as they wish, and the progress of the current goal is shown right at the top of the page (see above image).
Marcin at Gamefound sent me some screenshots of the stretch goal editing options (manual and automatic):
Jump-to Menu Sidebar: My second favorite feature–something I didn’t know I wanted until now–is the left sidebar menu. You can click on any of the links here to jump to the part of the page that interests you. Given the length of project pages, this makes navigation so much easier.
Marcin shared with me another screenshot showing how creators set up each of these sections. You can modify pretty much anything: Which sections to include, their names, their order of appearance, etc. And you can work on a section but mark it as “unpublished” until you’re ready to showcase it.
Reward Sidebar and Add-Ons: Even though there are currently 2 reward levels, the right sidebar only shows the featured reward (you must click on “choose rewards” to see the other). I’m guessing this is a choice made by Awaken Realms and that a creator could choose to include more rewards in the sidebar if they wish.
Also, you can offer add-ons within the campaign, similar to Kickstarter’s recent update.
Launch Notification Discount: One intriguing capability that’s not apparent on the project page is that Gamefound has a built-in way for creators to offer a discount to anyone who signed up for a launch notification, which seems like a great way to encourage potential backers to both sign up for the notification and actually back the project. I received this in my inbox on the day that ISS Vanguard launched:
Comment Threads and Upvoting: I really like that comments are threaded and can be upvoted so backers can essentially “vote” on various ideas with the click of a button. It’s also nice that hashtags are integrated into the system.
Overall, these features showcase the care and attention that Gamefound put into their platform…and this is just for the first project! I look forward to seeing how they evolve when a few other creators try it, and I think it could be a viable competitor to Kickstarter when it’s ready for a full rollout.
There are a few elements I’d like to see as part of that evolution:
- Remind me or follow along: There’s currently no “remind me” button to notify me when the project is drawing to a close. In addition to that, I’d love to see a way to follow a project (i.e., receive the project updates in my inbox). It’s essentially a more involved “remind me” option that I think would lead to me backing the project sooner, as I’d get more and more excited every time I see a new update. I think it would be important for those updates to make it very clear to me that I haven’t yet backed the project.
- Kicktraq integration: Kicktraq is a great website for tracking crowdfunding campaigns (BackerTracker is great too). There’s something appealing and helpful about their graphs and charts, so it would be nice if Gamefound projects could be tracked there too.
- Friend-backed notifications: 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, and I consider this to be the killer feature of Kickstarter. I think it could be a huge asset for Gamefound creators as well.
Those are my thoughts about the new Gamefound platform! I’d love to hear your thoughts on the platform in the comments below.
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33 Comments on “Gamefound’s First Launch: Is This the Future of Tabletop Game Crowdfunding?”
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I am carefully considering “Gamefound” as an alternative to KS, or a companion… to launch my project. Where I come from it is not uncommon to launch projects in more than one platform.
It is probably a nightmare for the creator, but it is also a way to gain additional visibility, the overwhelming offer of new projects in KS, may be a barrier for smaller independent projects.
All that is great. But you know what I’d like to see, from a creator’s perspective? Letting me do a campaign on top of my Kickstarter’s campaign, like you can run an IndieGoGo and leave it on demand. That way, you could secure your funding goal from Kickstarter for the main language (let’s say, English version), then run another campaign on Gamefound for 2 reasons:
1. more language versions,
2. use of 1 pledge manager for 2 campaigns.
I congratulate the GF team for making it a decent opponent (read: rival)
Gamefound has the potential to provide some serious competition to KS, although it is far too early to reliably analyze any emerging patterns.
As a so-called “super backer”, I am but one of a legion of gamers that have gradually become dissatisfied with the KS platform. Creators continue to flock to KS and tolerate the 10% utilization fee because there really aren’t other, viable choices (I think even less of Indiegogo). KS has failed to innovate or even provide basic improvements to their site because the lack of competition has not compelled them to do so. That has set the stage for disruptions in the accepted crowd-funding model, and we’ve already seen other boardgames publishers like Hasbro launch their own sites (Pulse) to avoid third-party fees and maintain control over project communications and data management.
Even if Gamefound never upsets current market share, perhaps its presence is enough to rouse KS from its torpor. TBH, KS has other problems as well, including being subject to a federal investigation into NLRA violations. Gamefound’s integrated and free (for now) service may appeal particularly to first-time creators on a limited budget, and the site enhancements may attract a growing number of backers who use KS mostly out of habit.
I think it’s appropriate that Awaken Realms inaugurates its fledgling site with their own project ISS Vanguard (which is nearing $2.5 million as I write this comment). For GF to really succeed though, it must appeal to a spectrum of creators across a broad range of funding goals. I am also curious to see if GF gains enough popularity that some of the well-known reviewers opt to use the platform (Tom Vasel & the Dice Tower team has usually relied upon KS). If that happens, then there’s the potential for a virtuous circle that draws even more backers and creators to Gamefound.
None of this spells doom for KS (since the projects hosted there extend far beyond boardgames), but it is certainly a wake-up call for a company that has shown little enthusiasm for improving its services to its frequent users. I consider KS to be the “Comcast of crowdfunding”, and I’m both excited and curious to watch future developments as Gamefound matures into a worthy competitor.
One feature I’d like to see is the ability to filter games by it’s availability, whether it’s an active campaign, one that ended, one with a late pledge, or one that’s completely done including the manager.
ISS Vanguard piqued my interest as it provides both card-use and dice. What really sold me was the presentation, much of which you pointed out above. As a KS project a few times over, GameFound seems to have several great items which separates it from KS and unless KS picks-up their game (no pun intended) and implements many of these changes to make things easier for both the creator and those viewing the various projects, I see projects slowly gravitating to sites like GameFound.
Cheers,
Joe
I don’t really have any interest in ISS Vanguard, but having been signed up to Gamefound from a previous Kickstarter project, I got an email with a $5 discount code… which is definitely a nice touch to get people along to their new platform. Certainly wasn’t expecting that!
In answer to Malachi’s concern about less intense boardgamers, I am a small-time gamer, looking to grow my collection (only with games we would actually play more than once), and this platform is much more appealing to me. When I go on KickStarter, it is only because of a friend’s project, and I have felt overwhelmed with the offerings, even the game offerings, and reluctant to jump in. I think I’d be more comfortable with a platform dedicated to boardgaming, and hopefully it would enable different search functions to find the types of games I am interested in.
I think that’s an excellent point, Cindi. While a variety of options can sometimes be a good thing, more isn’t necessarily better, and I typically prefer a focused approach rather than a one-size-fits all approach.
Left sidebar is easily my favorite feature. It’s smooth and snappy and it works well. I’ve definitely never seen anything like it in other crowdfunding sites, and I’ve seen few navigation bars that work like it on any sites at all. It’s very well done.
Kicktraq integration is an interesting thought, but I’m not sure I want something like that to actually be a part of the product, unless they can expand it to support different sites. On my home computer, I have Chrome plugins for both kicktraq and BackerTracker. If they can duplicate that functionality, neat, but otherwise I’d probably prefer them to just leave it out.
While the interface on a large monitor seems to be decent, I’m not at all happy with the interface on a smaller monitor. The header bar at the top doesn’t display anything useful, the sidebar is hidden until you click a button to expand it, the pledge tiers don’t display on the right, and, probably most obnoxiously, there’s a large “BACK THIS PROJECT” button taking up even more of my already limited vertical real estate. This might be an issue specific to ISS Vanguard, but the graphics they use are so big that I can’t see a whole image. I know I’ve seen this on other crowdfunding sites, but it’s much worse when there are additional things taking up vertical real estate. The links to ‘your pledge,’ comments, FAQ, updates and the project don’t display once I’ve scrolled down. Instead, they fold up into the large and mostly empty header. You can see all (or at least most) of these issues in this screenshot. https://i.imgur.com/GGBWbPT.png
Overall, while some of these features are nice and snazzy (hello, left navigation bar), I’m so annoyed by the experience that I have little interest in continuing to use the site.
Maybe it is me that I am used to KS, but I find that the navigation bars on the right and the purchase option on the right…well, make the screen for content really small.
This may be partly because of the ISS campaign, but that page is so full of pictures that it is actually hard to find content. What is the game about? I need to scroll for a while until I find things.
Again, this is part due to the way that ISS campaign was designed, but I feel that the core UI of two side bars strongly leans toward lots of scrolling.
I also personally hate “stretch goals” that are unlocked on a certain day. Those are not stretch goals at all (just releasing info on things that are added)…which again makes it hard for me to know what is included where (and since there are two waves) when will it be shipping.
Again, part of the errors are because of how the campaign was made (not so much about the pledge manager), but clearly some core issues are there
I have a pretty wide monitor, so that isn’t an issue for me, but I can see how it might not work on a laptop or a tablet.
There is actually one more change I would want to see in the Gamefound system about its email notification on updates. Right now, we will receive an email about its update, but the email would only have the title of the update and not the body text, and we would need to click on the link to open a new page to actually read the update. I actually prefer Kickstarter’s email update where we can read the entire text in our email. I suppose Gamefound’s way would let them better track their audience’s interests on each update, but I can see that I would probably skip a few future updates simply because I don’t want to open a new page in the bowser and close it afterward.
I agree–the convenience of email is being able to see the entire update in the email itself.
Indiegogo has sort of the opposite issue – all the content is in the email update, but also too much cruft. I’m not really sure why they do it this way.
I backed the Kingmaker anniversary remake on Game On Tabletop. Updates for that campaign come in tiny emails like you’re saying Gamefound apparently does… but I’m not sure if this is a GOT feature or a Paizo thing. It’s definitely less convenient, and it’s very much something I will consider when seeing more projects on GOT and Gamefound.
On the other hand this will allow a creator to fix typos and mistakes noticed after sending that update. Everyone will see the most up-to-date version of the update rather than the original version in the email.
I bet it’s a way to increase visits to the site and thus climbing in rankings on Alexa-like sites. It’s different when you see a site
Global Rank
102.488
United States Rank:
24.858
in comparison to
Global Rank
756
United States Rank:
383
Today’s ranking:
Global Rank
101.972
United States Rank:
23.986
I am confident that each daily update makes it climb 500 places global and 1000 places US, so with 14 days left it will become more popular in search engines, and more Google-ad friendly.
On the other hand, My AdBlock add-on has 28 number of items blocked on Gamefound, whereas 0 on Kickstarter. Maybe there’s something there..
Nearly a year later but I’m blocking just two GameFound items but a whopping 16 on Kickstarter. Using FF + DDG + AdBlockPro + PrivacyBadger.
GameFound looks like there sre a bunch of cool features to help creators but as a Pledge Manager combined with the funding mechanism, will the creators be limited such that we ard locked into using GameFound for the pledge manager? What if you will wanted to use your own Pledge Manager or a competitors?
Jason: That’s a great question. I’m pretty sure it’ll be easiest for creators to use the built-in pledge manager, but perhaps Gamefound will allow you to export the data and use other pledge managers instead.
I do wonder how Game Found will be for smaller projects from more minor creators. Kickstarter brings a huge amount of traffic, traffic that is more important the smaller a project is. I’d like to see a project that funds successfully at £10k with little up-front investment over one that hits 2 million with a major campaign behind it before I was confident that the site would be the way forward. I think that a major area that Game Found could really compete with Kickstarter that would really matter to backers would be in protections if things go wrong.
My biggest problem with the Game Found website personally is how projects are browsed. On Kickstarter the “Sorted by Newest” option is the first place I go, the algorithms and such are important for ongoing success, but nothing is close to being listed top of the page on those first few days. At the moment there are 289 projects on Game Found to Kickstarter’s 26,346 projects, but I’d still like to know where my project would be listed in those 289, and if Game Found is going to be anything close to a rival to Kickstarter something to let me know that I wouldn’t be buried even on launch day next to something like ISS Vanguard.
Glenn: That’s a great question about Gamefound’s sorting system. Currently, though, you’re sorting through their pledge manager, not their active campaigns (of which there is only 1). I don’t think they’ll be adding a substantial number of other active campaigns for quite some time.
That’s a good point, but is the sort of structure that it might be a good idea to get in place before its needed rather than after. In the end, if Gamefound is going to be anything like a realistic contender to Kickstarter’s crown it will need to open itself to creators a little more generally. It should be interesting generally to see how they handle it.
So far I love the look of it and the ease of use (especially the left sidebar), and competition for Kickstarter is a great thing. However one concern I have, which is more to the publishers and not necessarily the system used, is that I wish more crowdfunding campaigns would focus on telling me the pitch of the game as well as the rules to play. Instead most campaigns focus on the stretch goals first, the components second, with the rules coming in third or sometimes relegated to a link towards the bottom of the page.
Some of this could be personal preference and I know they focus on what sells, but I need to learn about your game before I care about stretch goals.
I can totally see that! For that reason, I like that Gamefound lets creators arrange the project page (via the left sidebar) however they want. Kickstarter does this too, but without the sidebar to aid creators and backers with the organization.
I like these features a lot, but as a creator this makes me a bit nervous.
Having run two successful $100k+ KS campaigns myself I’m fully aware that for the most part, you bring the backers and Kickstarter just scaffolds that with their own audience. However, in both campaigns I had 60% or more of my backers come from Kickstarter itself. I think this was because the audience I brought helped fund us super quickly, and because of that KS’s algorithm favored my campaigns, driving more “strangers” from KS directly to back my projects.
Either way, 60% is a LOT of backers. I don’t know what the traffic numbers are for these sites but I have to imagine Gamefound pales in comparison to KS, and will for a very long time, maybe forever. So I wonder if Gamefound takes off, if us creators will be faced with a choice of lower total additional audience by going with GF or a lower additional board game audience on KS due to GF splintering their attention. Sure, lots of people will be on both platforms. But still – I’m nervous! I have another campaign launching next summer and I’m keeping a close eye on all this.
I also wonder if GF’s board gamer audience will mostly be heavier hobby gamers. My games lean more light / medium-light weight, and it may be that GF is just not the place to attract more gamers to those types of games. We’ll have to see when more publishers try it out.
Gotta say, aside from these features you mentioned Jamey the other thing that is really appealing about Gamefound is that they are already a pledge manager, so that part would be built in. Having one less platform to manage during and after a crowdfunding campaign would be amazing.
These are good points, Malachi. Of those Kickstarter referrals, how many of them are from “friends who backed” notifications? As I mentioned, I think that’s their killer feature. I just don’t know how many people are really scrolling through Kickstarter to discover projects–I bet most of them hear about the projects somewhere else, go to Kickstarter, and type in the project name (for which Kickstarter takes credit as part of that 60%).
I do agree that Gamefound could end up more focused on serving hobby gamers.
very interesting! i’ve never heard of gamefound, but will definitely have to check it out for my next kickstarter!
Hey Jame! Have you used biggercake.com for tracking campaigns? IMO it outshines kicktraq for information and visual appeal!
Thanks Brendan! I’ve seen it a few times, and I agree, it’s great!