"Kick Starting" Topic

Well, it seems that kick-starting, that is, asking buyers to pony up funds first and then creating the product, seems to be catching on! Seems to have started with Eureka. Any thoughts about this?

Seems a good way to get venture capital and guage interest all at the same time. If no one buys in, it probably wouldn't have sold anyway. The down side is, the people that buy in probably represent the majority of sales.

You mean their 100/300 club? Yes, if it gets more product choice out there firstest, why the devil not?

I think Wargames Factory did it too with their Libery and Union League, or some such, prior to their meltdown…

Depends on the nature of the product, and how much development work has already been done.

First-edition rules and boardgames make me particularly nervous, as with a Kickstart, there may be less incentive to do the necessary playtesting and development.

I made an "investment" in both the Ogre and Zombicide games. (My wife used the term "investment", but she may have modified it with the adjective "crazy" in our discussions).

I first invested in Ogre because I wanted to make sure a got a copy in case it turns out to be a limited run (like some of the recent GW Specialty games in a box). For Zombicide, the game looks cool (dare I say elegant), the cost of the game seems reasonable (even if I did nothing more than use the minis), and it looks low risk.

This method appears to be a relatively low risk way of sharing in the costs for a relatively high liklihood of getting something fairly tangible in the end. I am a bit more skeptical about investing in computer/video projects since the product is less tangible than a board game or a minis game.

For the developer, it is probably a good way to gauge the interest level. I do wonder if ventures like Ogre end up tapping the bulk of the market. This would not be the case for a video or board game that had a larger appeal.

The other very cool thing is the lemming rush feel and the active reward process for getting more folks backing the project. I bought in for both of these in the first couple of days. My projected haul is now much larger than originally anticipated and with new goals and goodies arriving almost daily it is quite the rush. This also encouraged me to up the ante to snag new goodies as things were added or became locked. I would encourage any gamer to pony up a buck or two on these types of projects just to experience the Kickstarter meta-game as you ride the developers own satisfaction and disbelief in striking gold and satisfy my dwarven avarice. I think this part of it rocks.

Bottom line, I do feel like I am investing in my gaming future and this all seems more tangible than miniatures club approaches that I have observed in the past.

Lost Pict

Makes you wonder that an aspiring mini maker could show a line of greens and get investment. I think that we wargamers have gotten more wealthy. Perhaps we can do the reverse? We can offer a starter fund we pledge to for a pet project. At some point an aspiring mini maker sees the profit and offers a line of greens? I suppose this is in keeping with the original Eureka ideas but a bit more open ended.

I invested in Banner Saga ana animated (think Disney style animation from thendays of Sleeping Beauty) Viking adventure with turn based combat.

With the Kickstart program you can see how far along the developement is. Plus you feel like you are part of helping a product you are interested in moving forward.

All in all you can gage what your interested in and what your comfortable investing.

Pre-selling and raising funds from the people who actually want the product is a much, much more efficient way to form capital than to try to get it from bank loans, savings or venture capitalists.

I hope we see more Kick Starter and IndieGoGo projects in the miniature gaming industry in the years to come.

I'd happily use Kickstarter, but it's only available to US citizens… there are other crowdfunding sites, but Kickstarter gets the bulk of the traffic.

So I'm starting up the old fashioned slow way, and paying for it all myself, then praying I can sell enough to get my money back eventually!

Just be careful!

The 37 saddest failed Kickstarter projects. "I have taken so many dumb part-time jobs to keep it going that it is embarrassing and tiring"…
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As long as there's a solid example of what is being made, a 3D print, a single sculpt, I say it's viable. I think it becomes a little harder to justify when all someone has to show is some cool concept art.

I agree with Stryderg, most of the backers probably represent a majority of your immediate sales.

Hi lads,

I'm a big fan of kickstarter, I ran a successful kickstarter campaign in Dec-Jan.

It's important to know that you aren't 'investing' when you back a kickstarter project. You 'backing' a project, that means you are giving money to someone to help them realize their project and produce some sort of physical thing. For this you receive a reward, something that is produced as a result. I think it's important to make that distinction, as most people see it as investing, which I think implies some sort of long term return on the investment.

Before I began, the sculptor and I created five greens to show off and we promised 7 more if we were funded, we were overfunded and will produce an extra three on top of that.

I'm hoping to use the sales from these afterwards to produce more models. It's a great thing for our hobby. 53 backers helped to launch this line.

While I'm an unknown, the sculptor has been around for a while and works on some well known lines. We showed what we could do and had some very modest goals. I think those two things are important. We have a June goal for deliver of the models, it will be tight, but I hope we make it.

I'm looking at doing it again in October, only this time I will have the greens all done before hand and when the kickstarter campaign is done, it will only be a matter of sending the greens to the molders so it will be a much shorter delivery time and everyone will know exactly what they are getting. I'm mostly interested in cutting down the time to delivery as I think the backers are pretty happy with the way the current project is going.

I wrote a rather lengthy blog post about the experience for anyone interested in a good read.

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Shoot! That's the wrong link, link to article below

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I use Kickstarter projects to fund releases by bands I like. I think it's a great idea but I'm not sure if I'd do it for wargames rules.

On a related topic, it's worth knowing that the US JOBS Act which became law a few weeks ago has provisions to promote crowdfunding, though some key items were left undefined (such as what it takes to be a crowdfunding "portal"). The SEC was ordered to complete regulations within 3 months, so in a couple of months everyone will know whether this is going to be the big thing in easily raising money for small companies or another good idea undermined by regulatory overzealousness (or protecting the interests of broker/dealers).

The act also loosens up the serious legal restrictions on using advertising or general solicitation to raise money. E.g., asking here for people to make an actual investment would have been asking for trouble. It may not be in the future, at least if the investors are affluent enough – we'll see when the regulations come out.

It reminds me of the "ransom" model done by a few RPG writers, notably Greg Stolze.

Basically, the author wrote the game, set an amount he'd ransom it for, and once that was reached, he made the PDF available to download for free for everyone.

Just my opinion but,

Kick-Starter seems to works best when the "starter" already has a reputation or has proof that the game is well on its way to completion. I wouldn't suggest starting your own Kick-Starter project unless you can get a good following for the project.

As an investor, I have only skimmed some wargaming Kick-Starter projects but it is interesting to see the different projects on there.