Recently, both Kickstarter and Gamefound released statements regarding their visions of the future of their crowdfunding platforms. I was struck by the fascinating difference in purpose between the two visions. Here are some key excerpts from the articles:
Kickstarter (full article): “As a first step, we’re supporting the development of an open source protocol that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter’s core functionality. This will live on a public blockchain, and be available for collaborators, independent contributors, and even Kickstarter competitors, from all over the world to build upon, connect to, or use.”
Gamefound (full article): “Our mission is to accelerate the creation and delivery of great games by providing automation and tools…. We want to make sure backers know what they are backing, when to expect their product, what are the risks, and so on…. We want to create tools that will help you plan and execute logistics, automate invoices and create modules that will simplify worldwide tax settlements. We want the backers to discover games they’ll love and let them keep up with the growth of those projects…. Just to give a few examples of what’s on our roadmap: notifications and mentions in comments, following other backers, prioritization of updates, and better ways to interact back and forth with the creator.”
Kickstarter seems focused on underlying technological infrastructure while Gamefound is focused on providing a better experience for backers and creators.
Analysis
This distinction comes with a few caveats: First, Kickstarter has been around for 12 years now, while Gamefound as a crowdfunding platform launched almost exactly 1 year ago. They’re at very different stages of their platform lifecycles. Second, Kickstarter released their vision article first, so Gamefound’s statement was at least partially an indirect response to Kickstarter.
That said, though, as a former crowdfunding creator and a current crowdfunding backer, I’m significantly more interested in Gamefound’s vision of the future. Even putting aside the blockchain debate (listen here to Jason Perez and Geoff Engelstein or read Board Game Quest here), Kickstarter seems to be focused on a problem that users don’t have (and won’t even notice after Kickstarter “solves” it).
Over the years, Kickstarter has been slow to make user-facing changes. Sometimes that’s a good thing–“slow” also means “intentional.” I really do think that Kickstarter listens to users and deliberates carefully instead of jumping on trends. And perhaps decentralizing their platform will allow developers to offer apps and extensions to any creator–I have a dozen extensions running on Google Chrome right now that might not exist if Chrome didn’t offer that option to developers.
But in the meantime, Kickstarter has plenty of user-facing improvements they could make that would immediately help both backers and creators. Ed Baraf of Pencil First Games has a great video about some of those improvements.
So while Kickstarter is fiddling with blockchain, Gamefound is actively committed to making their platform better. The thing that stands out to me the most about their post are the specific examples they provided, especially the ability to follow other backers (the big advantage Kickstarter still has) and their VAT solution.
Is It Too Late?
I don’t think it’s too late for Kickstarter–they have a proven platform that has helped thousands of creators bring their projects to life (and brought joy to millions of backers). But the stark difference in visions of the future makes me think that this is an opportunity for Kickstarter to take a good look at their mission and how they’re accomplishing it on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, congrats to Gamefound for a great first year of crowdfunding, and I look forward to their backer- and creator-focused approach in 2022. I’d love to also see Game On Tabletop’s vision for the future!
What’s your perspective on the difference between these visions?
Also read:
- To Kickstart or Not to Kickstart: The Top 10 Reasons to Launch a Product via Crowdfunding
- Gamefound’s First Launch: Is This the Future of Tabletop Game Crowdfunding?
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16 Comments on “The Fascinating Difference Between the Future Visions of Kickstarter and Gamefound”
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It’s interesting to see how a crowdfunding company’s origins really do make a difference in how they approach their future. Kickstarter is a tech company and have made tech the focus of their future, while Gamefound started as a pledge manager and makes taking care of creators and backers as their focus for the future.
There is a new crowdfunding platform out called Crowdfundr that was started by ConnectionPoint, a 12 year old company that specializes in social good crowdfunding. Their focus is on giving the maximum amount of flexibility to creators and publishers to run their projects the way they want – and for free.
Thanks for sharing that information about your company, David!
[…] The Fascinating Difference Between the Future Visions of Kickstarter and Gamefound […]
Thanks for another excellent article! One big failing that Kickstarter has really failed to solve ( they’ve slowly done a little to solve it) is there are so few countries that are actually supported from a creator perspective: many democratic countries are simply not accepted as “creator countries”. I think the list has grown to over 20 countries, but that took ages…
As always a well-blanced article (the comment section is also a great read). It’s timely for me as our design team are currently weighing up whichvway to go.
Gamefound has so many more user (publusher/backer) friendly features and is improving rapidly. I think part of that is they can customise their site specifically to the TableTop industry while KS is hamstrung by having to cater to a wide range of products.
We will wait until the storm passes and decide from there.
Thanks again for your continued content, Jamie.
There is another distinction to be made between the two platforms. Kickstarter is used for a much wider variety of projects, not just boardgames but other physical and etherial projects – just take a look at their categories like Art Comics Craft Dance Design Fashion Film & Video Food Journalism Music Photography Publishing Technology Theater. I’d guess a majority of projects on Kickstarter do not have to worry about international shipping, VAT charges, container booking, ocean transport and customs clearance – so KS doesn’t care about those aspects. Gamefound is primarily focused on boardgames in particular which almost always include those elements, and it seems their new gameplan is designed to address those specific needs. Their first major crowdfunding project (ISS Vanguard I believe) has not even fulfilled yet so it is hard to make a comparison. Although there have been some hiccups in the interface, they have mostly been addressed and are better than at launch. Yes, it is different than KS but in some way so much better for the boardgame sector.
Kickstarter also has NO ACCOUNTABILITY for creators that do not deliver as promised (aside from project delays that are sometimes unavoidable). Although it is too early to say whether Gamefound will implement some measure of accountability for their projects, let’s hope they give it more thought.
I like how you put it here: “Kickstarter seems to be focused on a problem that users don’t have (and won’t even notice after Kickstarter “solves” it).”
Kickstarter is the 800lb gorilla in the room, but is causing competition to be more readily embraced and effectively reducing its’ market share by leading its’ customers to places they don’t understand (and thus, are hesitant to go there).
This might be received differently if Kickstarter had backer trust. Kickstarter has not been doing a good job looking out for the interests of its userbase, and Gamefound basically came in and promised meaningful changes that matter to that userbase.
The opportunity for a backer is clear — In our marketing efforts for clients, I have seen excellent ROI for Gamefound campaigns. Kickstarter users are more than willing to back Gamefound projects, and it is my experience that first-time backers are more likely to back on Gamefound than KS due to its’ sensible user interface.
The key is the true “consumer” to Kickstarter is quite hesitant to change platforms — this is, of course, the creators/publishers. If we had major publishers make the switch, you’d see them bringing their audiences to Gamefound, too. Minor publishers would almost certainly follow.
I foresee a splitting of the organic traffic advantage Kickstarter has enjoyed over Gamefound within a year or 18 months. Upon adoption by more major publishers, advertising and influencer marketing is going to me all that much more critical to let people know about your project, since it will be less frequent that the majority of folks will find a campaign via discovery.
The Gamefound vision is certainly much more compelling and user-focused.
Collecting VAT through the pledgemanager and paying to national authorities as they aim to do should be a significant improvement for both creators and backers. Hope they manage to live up to their ambition on this.
One of the most important things I learned in college about Systems Design was the Top-Down model. Basically you start with the business need (in this case, perhaps the customer need) and then work down the model using the next layer to satisfy the needs of the previous. It’s all too tempting to hear about some new technology and then try to find a business need for it. I’m not sure if that’s what Kickstarter is doing here, but it sounds like Gamefound is starting at the top with their philosophy. For reference, the layers are Business > Application > Data > Network > Technology.
Terrible move from KS. Neither they nor anyone else seems to understand what they are doing or why. May as well just hand your competitor market share.
When the whole industry gasps / laughs or looks confused when you reveal your master plan, it’s a sign you need to rethink!
Thank you for this article!
I really love the direction in which Gamefound is going. I read that they even want to go as far as giving the creators ways to make importing and shipping way easier. That would be a huge help to let indipendent creators simply make great games and not worry about shipping and importing etc.
Looking forward to this very much!
I don’t understand what Blockchain will do for Kickstarter – isn’t it more for Payment processing and “public” verification/archival of transactions? To me, it’s like a peer-monitored trust system for transactional details (I guess pledging/cancelling a pledge/etc)?
I think Kickstarter should work on their customer service and holding creators accountable. My opinion is that they are of the “We got our cut of the money, we don’t care anymore” as opposed to enforcing their rules on creators. They clearly state that “rewards aren’t guaranteed, but creators must regularly update backers”, yet there is no such enforcement to make the creators update backers. (As a creator, they should WANT to update backers, but far too often, many don’t). I’ve seen a number of them absolutely ruin their brand by going silent instead of presenting unpleasant news of delays. But Blockchain isn’t gonna solve any of that.
Hey, Jayme, just curious: what have you backed recently?
The last few projects I backed were: Bah Humbug, Woori Show, Honey Buzz: Fall Flavors, Marvel Dice Throne, Mythwind, Divinus, and Lands of Galzyr.
Gamefound has quite a ways to go to even match Kickstarter’s current functionality. I backed a big game on it this year and found the experience very frustrating compared to Kickstarter. So it’s no wonder why they’re focused on practical usability: they need to.
Having said that, I have no idea what Kickstarter is thinking here. Why even announce this?
I really believe Gamefound will succeed. I also backed a couple of projects there and still the plethora of information they have ingrained in their system doesn’t necessarily make pledges and add-ons easy to grasp and understand.
Still, the big advantage is that Awakening Realms is eating its own dog food here and I believe they will always try to solve real problems and not imaginary ones with buzzwords like blockchain.