The website that gives so much creative and entrepreneurial freedom in the use of a direct-to-market framework that cuts out the veiled secrecy of middlemen. If an individual likes something they see, they can vote with their dollars for who becomes the next undisputed king of kickstarter (wait...you don’t vote for kings?). With this public funding comes a dark reality...people want more for less. Whether in the form of super limited early bird pricing, shorter wait times, or the never ending onslaught of stretch goals, consumers expectations have reached an untenable level.
In order for a kickstarter to be a hit it needs to knock the previous king off his throne through historic sales figures. Because if a game doesn’t get excessive funding it will fail to deliver locomotive levels of hype which in turn will scatter critical attention, leading to poor reviews and restricted retail sales. Or so it would seem if you spent any time looking at the new hotness on every BGG forum post. So how do independent creators go about vying for precious eyeballs, they overpromise and underdeliver of course!
Most kickstarters begin with fairly humble intentions and a limited, well thought out product. But as projects near their initial goals consumers feel deserving of an added incentive for bathing creators in unnecessary buckets of coin. Invariably this leads to unwanted/unplanned/unachievable elements that serve to further complicate/confuse/conflate the final product that consumers get. This is not a phenomenon isolated to the games section of kickstarter but more of a generalized timetable for burgeoning projects. Funding begins. Super early bird tier sells out. People complain about missing super early bird. Creator makes secondary early bird tier. People complain about missing early bird tier. Creator wants to continue to incentivize funding so they throw in a bonus card. And then a mini fig. And then a whole secondary set of metallic embossed coins. And a hand signed replica of the declaration of independence telling backers where to find the long lost treasure of the Freemasons. Okay so maybe that last one was a little too Nic Cage for your tastes. Ultimately these stretch goals lead to added manufacturing time and cost which compounds into missed shipping dates which push pre-ordered crowdfunding past retail distribution in worst case scenarios.
Again cases like this are the darkest timeline and should not be given priority over every other crowdfunded experience that would have never even existed without the platform. But issues with running successful campaigns manifest themselves in the way consumers perceive value and how much should be expected from the start of every subsequent project. In the same way moviegoers assume there has to be a post-credits scene after every superhero film, funders assume that every project should ship for a flat cost, include all additional stretch goal content, and arrive before retail.
This is the untenable level of expectations that I am talking about.
In my most recent experience of backing the oft OOP economy building engine that is Container, I had the distinct joy of pre-ordering a copy of the 10th Anniversary Jumbo Edition!. I had seen enough reviews of the original 2007 hit to know it was something I would want regardless of if it came to retail or not. After hearing of the enormous weight of both the gameplay and the game pieces I was willing to part with an equally enormous weight of coins for the game and it’s shipping. Upon the release of the kickstarter backers discovered the game would only come with 85 of the original 100 containers making gameplay slightly shorter than originally intended. The creators tried to console backers to no avail by saying they had playtested to arrive at this reduced number as a more enjoyable way to play the game. Initially I understood the frustration expressed by backers as they would not have the entirety of the game they thought they deserved. But as I continued to read disparaging comments and threats of never backing another game produced by the creators it became clear there was a disconnect. Not only did backers want the 15 missing containers, they wanted them included in the base game’s packaging, and if not in the packaging shipped separately for no additional cost. Ultimately the company caved and allowed backers to make an additional pledge to ship the missing pieces separately bringing a preventable miscommunication meltdown to a close.
While writing this piece, a similar situation came up when another campaign I helped fund (Beasts of Balance Battles) hit all of its pre-planned stretch goals before the campaign ended. So while every backer cried out for more free stuff, the creators calmly explained that they could not reasonably promise any more free content without compromising the quality or timeline they set before crowdsourcing. This open and direct feedback addressing the realities of how a kickstarter can quickly go of the rails led to some remarkable feedback. Backers extolled this mature decision of knowing the company’s limits and expressed a desire to fund future projects because of this.
TLDR: Every kickstarter doesn’t have to be the biggest/most balanced/best value to be a success and we as a community have to be ok with the physical limitations of making cool new things.
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