Pay What You Want for This Kickstarter Project

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a pay-what-you-want crowdfunding campaign. It’s such a fascinating model–let each backer choose how much the reward is worth to them–but for such a fluid approach, it requires meticulous planning and careful execution.

There is such a campaign currently on Kickstarter, Bagh Chal: The Ancient Game of Nepal. For your choice of $1 or more (plus $3 shipping charged later via a pledge manager), you get a final copy of a nice-looking 2-player game.

Tamas and Krisztina from Lemery Games offered to share their insights as to why they chose this model, how they implemented it, and the results so far in today’s guest post, which also includes a few questions and answers from me at the end.

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Assumptions before launch:

1. Most Backers would pledge a fair amount. We’ve been involved with the crowdfunding space for the past 2 years, ran our first successful Kickstarter last year (Chili Mafia), and have fostered a great relationship with our Backers. Based on our experience, the crowdfunding community values games and their Creators so we trusted them to pay what the game is actually worth to them.
2. We could rely mostly on word of mouth, as the campaign is offered at a very accessible price point.

Foreseen challenges and how we prepared for them:

1. Making Backers understand how the ‘Pay what you want’ works. We made a complete section about this in the first part of the project page, and made a video about how to pledge. Also included this in the FAQ section.
2. Receiving low pledges. From what we’ve seen with digital ‘pay what you want’ rewards, Creators usually give an idea for the suggested price under the pledge level description. We wanted to give complete freedom for Backers to decide on the price, so we didn’t include such a suggestion. Instead, we revealed the game as an add-on further down the page, with a specified price, so if Backers were really interested to learn more, they could get an idea about the game’s price.
3. Gaining Backers’ trust. We were concerned that for some Backers the deal might sound like it is ‘too good to be true’, and they might have the impression that it’s risky. We used clear communication, and built on our previously successfully fulfilled project to show our trustworthiness.
4. Receiving questions and comments 0-24. Due to the nature of the campaign we prepared for a ton of questions. So we tried to include as many answers as we could in the FAQ, and we took some days off from work so we can be available day & night. We received a lot of great questions and nice comments but not so much that we couldn’t have handled.
5. The hype might stop after a few days. We prepared for a slow-down after the first few days, as we agreed not to allocate a high marketing budget to keep the costs down. We asked several content creators to help us with preview videos, scheduled posts and shout-outs. We also hired a freelancer from Fiverr to help us out with promotions mid-campaign.
6. Shipping. Shipping was the key deciding factor whether we could go for the ‘pay what you want’ model. If shipping were more expensive than what Backers would ideally be willing to pay for the game, it would probably have had a negative impact on the campaign. So we played around with the components until we ended up with a game that’s 1.4 ounces (40 grams) in weight and fits into one’s pocket. This allowed us to offer a $3 worldwide shipping price.

What went well:

1. We managed to reach a wider audience than for our first campaign thanks to the accessible price point. So, we are on the right track to meet our original goal of raising awareness of a nearly extinct game.
2. The average pledge amount is what we planned for. The current average pledge amount is $10.54, which is very close to what we were aiming for.
3. Backers tend to spread the word voluntarily. We assume this is due to both the high accessibility and the good cause the campaign represents. We’ve seen several Tweets, Instagram stories, YouTube content creators picking up the campaign without us even knowing about it. We’ve even seen foreign board game websites talking about the project.
4. Building the community. We believe, we managed to go further than simply giving our Backers a game at an accessible price. At the end of the day it all comes down to how Creators engage with Backers. For instance, we held Tabletop Simulator tournaments, and also offered a complimentary Bagh Chal copy to those who help us translate the rulebook into their own languages. So far, 34 Backers volunteered to help with 19 languages!
5. Cancellations. Probably it’s due to the nature of the campaign that cancellation rates are between only 2%-2.5%.
6. Conversion rate. For Chili Mafia our conversion rate during the campaign was 16%-17%, however, for Bagh Chal it’s currently already at 27% mid-campaign, which we believe is quite high.

Lessons already learnt:

1. Backers will eventually set the price for the game. Now, this can either be good or bad depending on the purpose. If a Backer comes to your campaign and sees that the average pledge amount is above what they would be willing to pay for your game, it might scare them away. However, this is also an opportunity to see how much the game is worth to Backers. Based on our experience, early adopters (including Backers from a previous campaign of yours) tend to pledge more, so expect the average pledge amount to drop by around 10% after the first week. In our case, the average pledge was around $11.8 over the first couple of days, and currently it seems to be stable at $10.54.
2. Even if a Backer pledges the minimum $1, they might add more stuff in the Pledge Manager. You shouldn’t get disappointed after receiving some low pledges. We’ve learnt it from the comments that many of our Backers paid the minimum amount only to get access to the Pledge manager, where they are planning to get add-ons.
3. We could have tried to allocate more budget for marketing. We believe that this campaign and the game itself would be appealing to even more people around the world and we could have tried to work together with more content creators and even an agency to help us spread the word. We will certainly consider this in the future for similar campaigns.

Some other data that came to mind, and you might want to share are the following:

• We had 253 pre-launch page followers upon launch.
• The returning Backer rate from our Chili Mafia campaign (with 8 days still left from the campaign) is at 16%, that is 121 out of 741 Chili Mafia Backers returned to support us again.

When to consider a ‘Pay what you want’ campaign?

1. If your goal is not to realise profits, but to either raise awareness or expand your community. If you are doing a good job you might as well attain both.
2. If you are offering a relatively low-ticket game, so you can minimise the risk. You don’t want to end up selling a $50 game at 5 bucks.
3. If you are prepared to manufacture your game even with some loss. Best to originally prepare for some loss, and then have the pleasant surprise of breaking even. You don’t want to end up cancelling your project just because Backers didn’t pledge as much as you imagined. You have to think about this as an opportunity to connect with Backers (potential long term supporters) and to validate your game on the market.

It’s amazing to see how many enthusiastic fans you get by doing a ‘Pay what you want’ campaign. If you take into consideration the above points, and are ready for a unique challenge, this approach to crowdfunding is definitely something to consider. In case you’d like to learn more, feel free to reach out to us at hello@lemerygames.com, and we’ll be happy to help.

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Tamas and Krisztina covered a lot of interesting points here, and after I read through them, I had a few follow-up questions

Did you consider telling potential backers the landed cost for the game (manufacturing + freight shipping) and/or how much you think the MSRP for the game should be, just to set a starting point for backers to think about for their pledge?

Great question! We thought about this, but decided not to influence Backers’ decisions by it, as we wanted to keep the ‘pay what you want’ nature of the campaign as much as possible. Another thing to mention is, we really didn’t know what to expect from the campaign. This is also because we are a small publisher who is constantly learning, and as landed cost also depends on the manufactured quantity, we thought Backers might misunderstand and pledge close to that amount. And, that does not cover platform fees, graphic design and many other costs associated with getting the game to a Backer’s doorstep.

We do have the $12 price for the game as an add-on. The MSRP is $15, which we planned to communicate post campaign. This way, we believe Backers still get the full ‘pay what you want’ experience, not over-pledging the $12 mark, and certainly getting the game cheaper than the future MSRP. However, for a future ‘pay what you want’ campaign we already considered showing a pie chart for full transparency of costs to see what difference it makes.

Did you consider sharing and updating the average pledge on the project page during the campaign to help backers see how much others are pledging? [JAMEY: Part of the reason I’m asking about this is that as much as I like the “pay what you want” model for applicable projects, I think backers may sometimes struggle to know what they “should” pay, as we’re so used to the creator telling us the price. I understand Tamas’ desire to not sway backers, but I wonder if providing a few data points–like the landed cost and the average pledge so far–might actually have been helpful to backers.]

We honestly haven’t thought about this. We assumed that Backers could easily get the idea from the Backer count, and the amount pledged if they wanted to. Again, if we included this in our communications, we might be losing the ‘pay what you want’ nature of the campaign, as Backers might feel that it’s the expected amount to pledge.

How many $1 pledges have you received?

We currently have 8 $1 pledges who pledged without a reward, and 142 pledges who pledged $1 for our ‘pay what you want’ reward. This is high! Our assumption is that many of these Backers will go for add-ons.

What are a few of the highest pledges you received?

Among the highest pledges we had a $51, and a $30 pledge from friends and family, but actually most came from Backers we don’t personally know. A couple of $30s and $31s, $36, $37, $40, $51, $69, and finally the highest is $70 (the latter 2 could be the result of our 10-game bundle which will cost $69 as an add-on).

Were there any other campaigns you’ve followed/backed that used this model and inspired you?

We did take a look at several ‘Pay what you want’ campaigns, but all of them offered digital rewards like 3D print files, and we also found that they mostly had multiple pledge levels. We wanted to make ours super simple by offering only the ‘pay what you want’ reward, and allowing Backers to upgrade or get more copies in the pledge manager. Some examples we found: Egyptian themed 3D printables, Village House STL files, Desert Suburb 3D printable STLs. Not a ‘pay what you want’ campaign, but the project that inspired us in the first place is the ‘Clash of Decks’ campaign that offered their game for free with a 2-euro shipping price. We wanted to make Bagh Chal similarly accessible.

[JAMEY: From years ago, there were the Coin Age project and Where Art Thou, Romeo project.]

If you have a project in the future that meets the 3 elements you mentioned, would you use this model again?

Definitely!

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Thank you so much, Tamas and Krisztina, for sharing this information! I found it fascinating. If you have questions about their experience with the Bagh Chal pay-what-you-want project (which is live through July 26), feel free to ask in the comments below.

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