I cant believe after all of this time kickstarter never tried to implement their own version of backerkit. I know boardgames were kickstarters largest category so gamefound eating their lunch here has to be a big deal, and it doesnt feel like theyve really fought to hold creators. Competition in the space is (mostly) good, but it doesnt even feel like kickstarter is competing on anything but incumbency
I’m going to make a wild guess this is a big part of why a number of publishers have been moving to Gamefound recently. Having the crowd funding and pledge manager in the same platform seems to remove a lot of friction. And while Gamefound’s feature set started out fairly minimal, they’ve shown that they’re willing to rapidly iterate and improve (including in the middle of a campaign or pledge manager to address specific concerns as we saw with the recent Sleeve Kings campaign).
Backerkit also has the whole setup now. They started by being a pledge manager and now has the crowdfunding part aswell. Worked great on the last boardgame I backed.
Kickstarter has long been trying to distance itself from tabletop games being their largest earner, like they are embarrassed by how not cool it is compared to glamorous stuff like pet movie projects from celebs.
Just look at the recent blog posts by the relatively new in his position CEO. Not one single mention of their biggest segment. They don’t care.
Gamefound offers the Stable Pledge program, which guarantees a 100% refund to any backer if the prices of the product **or shipping** increases by 10% or more after the campaign ends. I consider this to be very pro-consumer. Though it's worth noting that this is an opt-in for each project.
The fact that Gamefound is both the crowdfunding platform and pledge manager is, I imagine, incredibly helpful for project creators who I'm sure are sick of those "I change my email 15 times a month and I can't find my Backerkit link PLZ HELP" people I see in every KS comment section.
Stretch Pay, aka interest free payment plans, is a nice affordability option but I'm sure half the people reading this will take the cynical bent that this only encourages FOMO/consumer debt and should be ostracized.
I also think the GUI/UX is substantially better than Kickstarter. Projects can be broken out into different headers on the sidebar, add-ons are clearly listed and priced, the pledge manage is nice and clearly indicates costs and sub-options for line items, etc. And of course the site is exclusively for tabletop game projects, so it clears out a lot of bloat on Kickstarter.
I agree on Gamefound generally being better. I'll add the comment section also has more options - liking and editing posts, for example. I would say the only major area they still lag behind kickstarter is not having a dedicated Android app. Hopefully that changes soon.
In defence of FlexPay, I could afford to drop 300 bucks on GoAII, but I also prefer to maintain liquidity and pay 20 bucks a month.
So there definitely is a positive version of FlexPay, but it does require self control.
It’s actually hard to believe how dated Kickstarter’s platform feels. From the old dated GUI/UX, to missing features like stretch pay, to lacking a pledge manager - feels like they’ve been asleep at the wheel.
Actually Kickstarter just started (late last year I believe) implementing a rule where you can't launch a project unless your previous one has at least started fulfillment. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a huge reason for the switch, although I'm not sure if gamefound has any rules like that.
Well they are enforcing it now. It was enforced for me on my 2nd project. I couldn't even make a preview page until I had proof of my previous project being fulfilled.
Yeah it will prevent scandals like the Mythic one where devs take the money and start a new project with it without delivering on their previous promises
Reduced fees, fewer contractual obligations, improved business relations, greater growth opportunity--there's a hundred reasons why a company might sign an exclusivity agreement like this. Assuming its solely because of a single policy that Kickstarter hasn't enforced for big companies since its inception doesn't really make sense.
Why? CMON has many employees doing many different jobs. Having one portion of your company on hold while the other is working on their job for a previous project is silly. That’d be like a developer not being allowed to build multiple houses at a time so while one is getting its electrical work done they couldn’t pour the foundation for the next one.
Because they have funds that they are supposed to be using to fulfill project 1, but if they can just move onto a new project to get more money they'll do that and end up like companies such as mythic games or blacklist games, or Peterson games, etc etc...
You mentioned running a couple campaigns yourself, so you're familiar with the process. What would their artists, designers and other employees be doing while the project is in production?
I'm not sure how it would be feasible to run a large board game company with dozens of full-time employees and only focus on one project at a time. If they already have collected the funds for the first project, after they've paid for manufacturing, they should have up-front profits from it that they can invest into developing their next game while the first is in production.
It's a normal business practice, Mythic and Peterson games just got overly ambitious, didn't have enough of a buffer to survive unforeseen issues and got screwed by price hikes during the pandemic to sustain the chain.
Nah. Scale comes with privilege.
The likelihood of a Ninja Division/Soda Pop Miniature style implosion from CMON is minuscule. From Steve the Amateur Board Game Designer, it’s almost guaranteed.
Yeah and not just in board games. I’d argue that smaller teams/more focused development is good for just about any industry and has produced some excellent IP.
Wonder how they define "fulfilled". I have one project that sent half the stuff I was supposed to get then went radio silent on the rest but they start two more projects since.
Larger companies that have had multiple successful kickstarters and bring the platform lots of cash seem to get around it pretty easily (CMON never had an issue, neither does Wyrmwood).
I suspect you are just missing the pull they have with Kickstarters executives.
They only enforce it on small creators. Big creators like CMON can do whatever they want because they have a long positive history… but the true reason is because they bring in millions upon millions.
If your first kickstarter brought in millions then I’m sure you’d get an exception to the rule
It's probably to stem the practice of using Kickstarter 2, to fund Kickstarter 1, and Kickstarter 3, to fund Kickstarter 2, and then Kickstarter 4 and 5 to fund kickstarter 3 and parts of 2 because you suck at cost estimation
Then you're onto Kickstarter 8 and 4-6 haven't even delivered, and the bills are piling up, and you give weak ass explanations to the backers all screaming, and you wonder "How did I get here!!!"
see: Mythic games.
And with big players, Kickstarter doesn't fund the project, really, it's more of extra profit and cheap advertisement through hype and of course reduce the risk of sitting on unsold stock
Nobody believes clank legacy 2 needs crowdfunding to happen.
So they have good reason to be more lenient, although the recent debacle around rainbow 6 etc....
Gamefound is owned by Awaken Realms, so it could be good or bad. On one hand you could call it a conflict of interest, as AR crowdfund their own products on there. On the other hand, every AR project I've backed has been top quality with no nonsense, so you could expect some of that DNA to flow through into Gamefound and for them to hold creators to higher standards than Kickstarter does.
I believe they spun gamefound off so while they are both made originally by awaken realms, gamefound operates independently and pursues what is best for that side of the business
Agreed. Also I don't see how any bias can really be harmful in this context. They want their clients to do well so they get a cut of the profits and expand their platform.
I mean, they're obviously going to put AR games on the front page every time they're crowd funding but that's at most like twice a year and there's still plenty of other games being prominently displayed anyway.
Not just steam, literally every video game digital store is run by a developer. Epic (Epic Games Store), Sony (Playstation store), Microsoft (Xbox store), Nintendo (Nintendo store), CD Projekt (GOG), Ubisoft (UPlay/Ubisoft Connect), and EA (EA)
Everywhere else are middle men which sell you keys to the actual stores
Eh, it doesn't seem like any more conflict of interest than digital stores for video games (all video game digital store owners are Developers), and probably movies too. Less, actually. There is no real conflict of interest because it is in their interest that their "competitors" do well, too
AR is a good company. High quality games and good about sticking to projected timelines. Their production and distribution slipped during Covid, but they seem to have recovered well since then.
For me it's crowdfunding in genera. It's the FOMO that creates more and more future waste that bothers me. It encourages people to buy things they don't need and preys on that. It's just utterly gross to me, to be quite honest.
My major gripe with Gamefound is that it seems pretty consistent that you do not get the same level of information about the games on their campaign page.
If you compare Gamefound projects to Kickstarter projects, you see far less pictures and video about the games. And to me, a big red flag for any game, board game or video game, is when they don't show you many pictures or videos of the game.
So for that reason, I've mostly avoided backing games on Gamefound, because there just seems to be less transparency and info about the games. IMO, it's a major issue with Gamefound, to which I think they need to start enforcing higher requirements for projects.
Edit: Also, the search functionality on Gamefound is legit terrible. They desperately need an advanced search feature that allows you to filter results, based on a variety of data and conditions.
I don't quite follow how that's a Gamefound problem and not just the general direction of crowdfunding. Are you saying Kickstarter campaigns are still offering significantly more information? Why would that be? I doubt gamefound is telling their clients to use less info. I don't think either platform really cares what their client is writing as long as they're not explicitly lying.
I'm curious as well. I've never used them because when they first launched it was next to impossible to browse projects (the only search parameter was tied to mechanics, like "browse Worker Placement games" or "browse Area Control games" etc), so I just never bothered to return to the site. I'm assuming it's easier to browse now?
I would 100% assume (with absolutely no research) that the only reason to switch is that Gamefound will take less of a middle man margin sales cut.
To me, that makes it better. Less middle men the better.
Kickstarter is a unionized shop with a mission to support the arts that is finally cracking down on multi campaigns. They were always against them but have lowered requirements at a few points to support companies, and consumers were burned.
Gamefound is co owned by ravensburger and is a walled garden with no protection for consumers, but it is slightly better for large partner sellers. It's worse for the consumer, and it's worse ethically in multiple ways.
Comment Stretch Goal: I'll respond and continue this conversation once my original comment hits 400 likes. Let's do it! You won't be able to get a response once this campaign is over.
>If only CMON would just bring things to market instead.
I don't think it's feasible for them to bring large projects like Marvel United directly to retail. It's like what, 10 boxes, and most people don't need everything, but there are many that do, and crowdfunding allows to meet that demand without risk of having to produce everything upfront on a guess.
Retailers won't carry that much in stock either due to limited space, and store markup would eat into already thin margins that boardgame companies operate on.
A lot of people really like CMON. sure they rely on FOMO in their crowdfunding campaigns but honestly their games at retail are often very accessible and generally still a blast. They do good work growing the tabletop gaming hobby imo.
After the complete implosion of mythic games, failure of blacklist games, countless delays of Peterson games and Kingdom Death games, cmon ends up looking good in comparison.
CMON’s original faux pax, charging shipping higher than what was estimated during the campaign, pales in comparison to the other companies charging shipping 2, even 3 times.
Cmon is a well oiled machine that delivers, campaign after campaign, even with excessively huge number of stretch goals.
Other campaigns with similar vast number of mini stretch goal keep failing to deliver, or ask for more money.
Steeped...
-.-
I'm *sure* I'll get my copy of **Chai: Tea for 2** and the extra nice deluxe bits for **Chai** (which were a big part of why I backed Tea for 2), *reaaaalllyyy sooon*. They're only 2 years over original delivery estimates of February 2022 at this point.
I'm so sad about this one. I supported it because the creators were local, but alas I've pretty much accepted I'm never getting **Chai: Tea for 2**. I got a little excited when we got *some* updates for a while last year, but the hope was fleeting.
I may quite dislike CMON but past the cost and fomo stuff, they always deliver, they're consistent, they're not gonna take the money and run and I don't like their games much but they're not complete garbage, just not to my taste. Also, their minis look cool even if I'm not a big minis guy
I dislike them but as a business, they're an easy recommend if someone's nervous with crowdfunding and they're not doing anything terrible past fomo which is fine if not ideal
> CMON’s original faux pax, charging shipping higher than what was estimated during the campaign, pales in comparison to the other companies charging shipping 2, even 3 times.
Yep. Look at the recent Kingdom Death mess: Backers realizing now they're gonna have to (probably) pay an extra shipping charge, for every one of the 12 expansions they ordered.
For clarity:
16 expansions, not 12
Creator said that backers were overwhelmingly asking for this years ago, and thus these two were pushed out quickly
Creator said that after Black Knight, Frogdog, (and presumably Campaigns of Death), bundling of expansions into smaller shipments will be the way.
Cmon seems to be severely stuttering in recent years, though. Things me or friends backed were/are fulfilled waaaaaay too late nowadays. Wild West Zcide was what? Delayed by 2 years? The Iron Maiden Collab shipped 2 months late. The franchise comics vol. 2(?!) are 4 months late already. The new DmD expansion should have also been ready by now. Covid hiccups isnt an excuse for like 2 years anymore
Welcome to buying things on kickstarter. They never ship at the original estimated time. Estimates slip all the time in all industries. If you want things immediately buy them at retail.
Yeah, they completely manipulate people into buying more than what they need, and focus a lot on their miniatures.
But generally, they've had solid hits on their hands and have made some good games. So I can't crap all over them. Consumers have to be aware of their own finances and realize "you can't own everything all the time" sometimes you just have to say "no, that's enough."
I love Marvel United, Season 3 of Marvel United, I got basically the bare minimum, base game, +1 set + KS extras from Season 1 + a couple of bonus items.
That was it, I passed on the Giant Galactus, the age of apocalypse set, and the 4 bland uninteresting sets that they came out with.
It's not like they're doing anything illegal like misrepresenting the minis, falsely listing prices, or anything.
There's plenty of boardgamers who are like "lol wtf" at ridiculous minis and so on. Like I was pretty "wtf" at the Castles of Burgundy castle minis. Guess what, I didn't buy them.
I don't know why they would get hate for offering OPTIONAL minis for people who really like minis way too much to buy. It's also not like these are 8 year old kids who don't know better in an iPad game.
I back their games but 9/10 I’m very happy with only the base pledge. All-ins aren’t really worth it for me, because I know I’ll never get a of that content played, but I do like the variety that stretch goals typically provide.
I’m not a fan of the KS FOMO model but CMON overall delivers high quality games reliably. They also have some good game lines, like the ASOIAF minis wargame, which are pretty separate from KS at this point.
I like and have a bunch of CMON games but I always thought it was pretty scummy that they always used Kickstarter even though they're a full fledged company and didn't need Kickstarter to make or deliver their products.
I think that’s arguable. The super deluxe versions with all the stretch goals and multiple boxes aren’t really viable in retail…. Plus some people really like them, so their crowdfunding campaigns do serve a purpose. Plus bonus for people who don’t like crowdfunding is that those backers partially paid for the development of the game you got at retail ^^.
Win win!
If those products aren't viable as a retail product, it sounds like something sketchy is happening if they are selling well on Kickstarter.
Kickstarter doesn't change the fundamental nature of production+selling, it just lets you secure the initial capital ahead of time. But a big company like that has the capital to begin with.
It absolutely changes the formula a fair bit. Your product goes right to the consumer, no storage fees, no middle-man distribution fees or logistics, no stock not getting where it needs to go to meet market demand, and the biggest thing is no risk.
Big companies are just like small companies; they don’t like risk. You’re giving too much credit thinking that a company like Hasbro is gonna put capital on the line to produce something ambitious and niche for the fun of it. Monolith producing Mythic Battles Pantheon in its full scope is not something that would ever happen without kickstarter. And if it did your larger cap company would absolutely nickel and dime for every cent on those expansions/supplemental products. Plus once profitability shows the slightest hint of not keeping up, product line gets axed and you never see any of the other planned content.
At this point it's a sales platform to reach people who simply browse Kickstarter or have a Kickstarter newsletter/website feed.
I think Kickstarter fully embraces this, trying to be the next Steam.
I mean KS embraces it because they get a portion of the money. In reality CMON kinda fucks over retailers or resellers by offering different rewards by tier instead of funding their own game and using distributors like they should be doing.
I say this because their campaigns generally include additional add-ons that cannot be purchased afterwards except from eBay resellers.
I don’t think this is the case though. How many retailers want to have a half dozen big box expansions for a game on their shelf? I get the FOMO pull sucks, but, the only way releasing a flood of content makes sense is if they can sell it all in one sitting. (Now, if you want to argue that releasing a crap ton of expansions for an unreleased game is a bad idea… I’m with you 100% on that. Except for Marvel United. I bit on that one.)
I mean, that's kind of my point though.
If they release expansions through distributors, the shops will have generally a good idea of how well the game is selling at their shop so they be able to make the decision of whether or not they want to purchase more expansions or not.
Either way that's a way better solution then CMON doing bullshit like a COMPLETE EDITION tier on Kickstarter and then releasing con exclusive add-ons to that game.
This "need Kickstarter" argument always sounds weird to me.
Why does that matter? At all? Honest question.
Sure, KS is great for people who couldn't get a bank loan. But KS is great for everybody - including companies who can do the financing in another way.
When the infrastructure already exists, why not use it?
There's nothing "scummy" about this. And especially for CMON who make most of their big titles available through retail later anyway. Just ignore the KS if pre-paying bothers you and buy the game in retail.
Its scummy because its large companies circumventing consumer protections. They have no obligation to deliver the product and its technically not a "pre-order" although most people see it that way.
There definitely should be more regulation on this environment as thousands of people have been duped out of their money.
This and the fact that they release exclusive items based off of tier rewards that they don't re-release to the public. I love Blood Rage but to get extra exclusive monsters that they released as tier rewards or even as promo items at special events it's stupid expensive to get now and is kind of a slap in the face.
They have the money to self publish games, their campaigns generally always exceed the funding cost and they generally suck at communication once a project IS funded.
It's a little different because shops are able to utilize distributors for those limited edition products as opposed to having to actively pay very close attention to Kickstarter.
Plus Kickstarter forces you to pay everything upfront before items are shipped, whereas distributors or at least some distributors don't.
Of course they have an obligation to deliver products. That they might not fulfill their obligation in case the company fails in the meantime is a risk you voluntary accept.
But there's an extremely easy method of avoiding any problems you have with this: Don't back - wait for retail. It is that easy. Especially with a company that later sells through retail.
When a company like CMON goes through KS it's de facto a pre-order. You pay in advance and you expect to get the product and the company promises to deliver the product. And until they go broke they most likely will.
> They do NOT have an obligation to deliver
Yes they do, according to Kickstarter's [terms of service](https://legal.kickstarter.com/policies/en/?name=terms-of-use): "When a project is successfully funded, ***the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward***. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their ***obligation*** to their backers."
> you can't legally pursue a refund
You can definitely [sue them](https://www.seattlemet.com/arts-and-culture/2015/10/washington-state-sued-a-failed-kickstarter-project-and-won) for [failing to deliver](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/feds-take-first-action-against-a-failed-kickstarter-with-112k-judgment/). However, it's usually not worth pursuing due to the international logistics, complex cases or companies simply going bankrupt.
Of course they have an obligation to deliver.
They promise to deliver, backers expect fulfillment.
That's what an obligation is.
That your chances of getting a refund are crap in case they can't deliver doesn't make a difference.
Your mistake is to think that obligation is solely based on legal enforceability.
Nobody would back a game if the company could just shrug their shoulders because they're not in the mood.
And BTW you absolutely CAN sue. Whether successfully is another question. But you can almost always try.
Companies fail to deliver because they are failing. Not because they feel they aren't obliged to.
Sorry but a promise is not an obligation, it's just hope. They legally have no obligation and the entire KS model has disclaimers stating that. This was my whole original point about circumventing consumer protections, so I don't know why you are stuck with "goodwill" discussion.
[What is this then?](https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use)
>When a project is successfully funded, the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their obligation to their backers.
Again, you talk about legality. Obligations are not restricted to legal procedures. in fact most interactions never go to court. Suing is for exceptional cases where things sufficiently escalate and motivation is high enough.
The KS model makes clear that you take a risk as a backer. There IS a risk that the obligation doesn't get fulfilled. But that's a rare exception and not at all the expectation of anybody. The KS model could not work if most projects didn't deliver.
And no company can get away with just saying "thanks for the money, but we'd rather not deliver and just have more money to spend on drugs and booze, thank you very much. Here's our next KS".
Games aren't getting delivered when a company fails, not because they don't feel obligated to deliver.
> Again, you talk about legality. Obligations are not restricted to legal procedures
True, but I don't think anyone cares if they believe a company has a moral obligation to deliver a product, in the context of this conversation, legal obligations are pretty much the only relevant type of obligation.
>And no company can get away with just saying "thanks for the money, but we'd rather not deliver and just have more money to spend on drugs and booze, thank you very much. Here's our next KS".
Of course but what about, "sorry we tried our best to deliver the product but ran into unforseen difficulties and unexpected costs, and we won't be able to deliver what we were hoping "?
I've never understood why anyone cares about that either. It's not like there's some finite amount of games that can be hosted on KS. We're not losing indie gems every time CMON starts a campaign lol
True, though it makes it harder to compete as a indie, imagine putting up a 3 feet sign for you locally brewed soda and then coca cola forks lift in a giant 1 mile neo sign, overshadowing your petit attempted at gathering some attention.
One positiv note on this is that with big company with good games, larger crowds flock to that stream and there is a higher chance for indie people to get notice, although then judge to standards of the big money when their product is standing next to a giant.
But you do feel the sting of giganotosaurus going full chad mode and overtaking the site. Gamefound says they will help you market your product but they are slow to respond and last time they hit with (we have to many campaigns right now). Which means, step a side kid, daddy is home and he's bringing the dough, because if you look at the active campaign most of them are established bigger companies.
It is good in the end for consumers because it creates dire competition and weeds out shitty games, but bad for creators that kickstarters originally aimed for. Sad but inevitable.
I'm just not sure why CMON switching to direct to retail would get those campaigns any more attention or money. The people that want the CMON stuff know they want it, and they buy it.
Anyone can back whatever game they want on there while any other campaign is running.
Whether or not CMON is using Kickstarter, those indie games are still competing with it just the same. Your soda shops don't really hold up, because I don't think there are that many people that just decide "I will log in to Kickstarter and buy *something* today" and suddenly discover these games.
/_/Guldur summarized it better than I can or probably could have.
They're circumventing user protections by utilizing Kickstarter, and the additional scummy part is that CMON always releases additional items per tier that you won't be able to get later down the road unless you pay a ton for it off eBay or other sites.
I have blood rage and it's still one of my favorite games, but holy crap is it expensive if I wanted to get the additional monsters/items that they released exclusively as promo or higher tiered items.
Yeah, that's very true.
But I also enjoy completing games that I very much like, especially if I'm taking the time to paint all of the minis. Plus if I or other friends thoroughly enjoy a game, I like items that offer ways to mix it up, I just extremely dislike the way they go about this.
However, by using Kickstarter, they can better tailor their production to sales. I have bought several games through Kickstarter that I enjoy, but nobody else in my area seems interested in, or are in supper limited supply. Going retail only could mean they wouldn't even get made. Could these companies just stick to their own internal websites for those sales? Sure, but Kickstarter also has a much bigger bullhorn than they do.
Some of the other hobbies use the pre-order method to determine production as well. It is well used in the model train world with fulfillments taking years from pre-orders as well.
How would you define "need"? And why do you care?
It's functionality a pre-order, direct sale to consumer system. There's nothing scummy about that. It's just a business model and frankly, a good one. Producing under a traditional model the company gets somewhere around 35% of the MSRP with the rest going to middlemen and retailers. While potentially putting the company in the hook for having to buy back overstock.
CMoN gets a higher share of the revenue from the product which they created. And suffer lower losses and financing charges. And frankly, they make pretty good games. Which would almost definitely not be the same quality if they had to lose much of the money to distribution.
If you use a 20% off coupon to buy a $600 coat, even though you could pay full price, is that "scummy"?
The scummy part is that their circumventing customer protection by utilizing Kickstarter which has a history of not caring or providing refunds for projects that individuals fail to deliver.
The coat analogy doesn't make any sense because...I buy coat from the coat store. The coat store supplies customer protection... I can contact said coat store selling the coat and immediately and return if needed. Ill be honest, I have no idea what the point of that analogy was.
At the end of the day though, it feeling scummy is my opinion. I've still purchased their games.
None are really. CMON delivers their projects one and another and some of their games are fantastic and well regarded by the communities.
Scammers will be everywhere and it's Kickstarter's job to keep their service free from those scammers. There have been many projects that were breaking rules and were straight up non-consumer friendly at all. Kingdom Death and Mythic Games are big names that stand out in those unethical practices. I'm not calling them scammers but Kickstarter didn't do anything to protect backers.
KDM has always offered discounts for people that wanted to back out so I am not sure why you are lumping them with Mythic. Is it highly delayed? Yes. Is everything coming? Yes.
People hate on CMON for various reasons, but I am not sure backers get completely screwed out of their entire pledge because of CMON. So yes, KS are the bad guys.
This. But I'm also unsure if KS gives developers as many tools as GF does.
For example, every KS I've ever seen has pledge levels of (A), (A+B), (A+B+C), etc. Plus Add-Ons.
Gamefound I've found a few examples where it's less of a "Pledge LEVEL" and more of a "Pledge Package." Where there may be updated cards for first print backers, but the full game for first time backers. The way Backerkit handled Gloomhaven Grand Festival was nuts too. As long as these new platforms offer new features and ways to buy and customize, the better.
With how CMON runs their projects, like Marvel United or Zombicide, it might be in their interest to offer multiple iterations, similar to Gloomhaven, rather than have separate KS for each.
As a counterpoint, they have been exceptionally slow to offer basic features for backer accounts which has been insanely frustrating such as:
- sorting/archiving backed projects (for a long time they were organized by campaign id and not date backed or completed)
- clear messaging of order/backer status (paid vs shipping paid vs. complete)
- consistent methods to message creators about campaigns
- customer support on a campaign by campaign basis (for a long time it was just a generic contact form)
I actively stopped backing things on there because it was such a poor experience for anyone that backs more than just occasionally. Yes, I know that is a power-user problem but for these kinds of platforms the power-users (which are usually big spenders) are who you want to cater more to.
For any wondering about the features of the Gamefound platform, they have one which allows for a refund if the shipping exceeds 10% of the estimate and a feature that allows you to break up your pledge into payments.
CMON with their current campaigns on Gamefound hasn’t opted into the shipping refund feature but does have the payment plan one. However, it’s only available on the higher/all-in tiers.
Gamefound doesn’t have a mobile app so you’ll only be able to access it via a web browser.
What a surprise. Company which revenue model is to crowdfund products and has a long history of getting millions per project finds new crowdfunding platform that offered them better margins than Kickstarters 5%.
Its honestly so weird to me that a company signs a god damn contract for exclusivity on crowdfunding.
Like hello, crowdfunding should not be a recurrent method for big companies, but mainly for smaller ones that need it.
Why is this even something normal now. It's so ridiculous as an idea.
Why? Sure, the idea started out as "help me make this thing that I made in my garage at an industrial level" but Kickstarter hasn't been that in a decade or more.
The KS/GF model allows companies to make products and skip getting capital funding from places like banks. Why should a bank take a percentage cut in my boardgame? I'd rather my money go direct to CMON.
Things can change. The market votes. You aren't required to participate. If you would rather go the other route, there are plenty of games that aren't crowdfunded and there are also retail releases of crowdfunded games.
It also allows even established companies to make more risky projects by guaranteeing customers for it during development (thats the only reason we got Oath, for example)
>Like hello, crowdfunding should not be a recurrent method for big companies, but mainly for smaller ones that need it.
Large ambitious projects need crowdfunding regardless if they're from a new or an established company as they're not as feasible for a traditional retailer model.
> Definitely not true.
It definitely is if you have any actual experience of the industry, here are some links to check out:
https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/147898/links-selling-direct-increasing-turns-and-gaming-w
https://www.pineislandgames.com/blog/why-crowdfund
There are multiple factors at play here:
1) Board games beyond mainstream gateway titles are a relatively niche hobby. Giant 20kg heavy games that come in 10 boxes even more so, and most retailers won't stock those on a whim due to the limited space and low local demand. An all-in of Solomon Kane is just a bad investment for them, compared to a box of Wingspan they'll sell much faster.
2) Selling directly to consumers through crowdfunding has significantly larger profit margins, about double that of a traditional retailer approach. This allows companies to sell more content for a similar price compared to what they would have to do through retailers to keep decent profit margins.
3) Due to the nature of board game manufacturing, the more pieces you make of any custom component, the cheaper it gets per piece. Crowdfunding allows creators to have stretch goals, adding more content or higher quality components as the demand grows and their costs per copy decrease. This is not possible to do through retail model, as you can't risk printing too many copies that will be unsold.
> Boardgames is one of the only markets where people have been accustomed to that line of thought.
What other markets can you think of that meet the following criteria:
- Physical stores selling the products produced by other companies.
- Relatively small audience with wildly varying taste, requiring stocking lots of different options, yet repeating customers are very irregular.
- Products come in large boxes with separate extras, which are exclusive to the original product.
- New products released weekly that necessitates cycling out old products.
Each point might seem insignificant on its own, but all of those factors together add to the complexity of distributing games retail.
This really is another big kick in the teeth for Kickstarter in the board game space - Gamefound had half of the top 10 most-funded board game projects last year, including the #1 slot: https://boardgamewire.com/index.php/2024/01/25/gamefound-turns-up-heat-on-kickstarter-after-scoring-2023s-biggest-tabletop-fundraise-half-of-the-years-top-10-most-funded-board-game-projects/
I'm a bit out of the loop, other than knowing Gamefound existed I'm not at all familiar with the actual nuts and bolts of the functional differences between them and Kickstarter.
My main question would be - Is there anything about Gamefound that actually addresses the issues with Kickstarter (failed projects, cost/size bloat, etc) or that are more consumer friendly? Or is it just another platform but functionally identical? Because if it doesn't make anything better for actual gamers then crowdfunding getting to the exclusive lock in phase of industry growth is just a more of the same cycle we've seen all over the place.
Cmon can make their campaigns just as big as they want as far as i know. The real big difference for the consumers imo is gonna be that Gamefound allows stretchpay - currenty at no extra cost. I really think they hope that will encourage more people to back those high level all in pledges. Not really sure about their failed projects polices though.
Its not credit at least not yet. They used to call this lay away. You (currently) dont pay any interest or fees. Just a straight split of the pledge amount. So you pledge 400 - over 4 months for example you pay a 100 dollars each month.
No need to be silly about this. People buy shit they cant actually afford to go all out on all the time like cars, houses, funiture, etc. Mofos are out there there right now putting a ps5 on a their visa card. Not wanting to spend 200 at the same time doenst necessarily mean you cant afford the shit.
If dave can comfortably afford to spend 50 a month and get the same shit i got for spending 200 in one go AND not have have to pay a single cent extra- more power to him. Its fee free so currently there isnt any drawback to keeping more of your money in your account.
I know we like to dump on fomo and predatory this and that. But i aint got time to feel bad for people that cant control themselves.
I kinda think this whole spreading the payments is long over do. Not necessarily from the consumer side. But rather a mofo like cmon in this instance shouldn't get all the money up front all at once while everyone waits a year and a half for the game to show up.
> If dave can comfortably afford to spend 50 a month and get the same shit i got for spending 200 in one go AND not have have to pay a single cent extra- more power to him. Its fee free so currently there isnt any drawback to keeping more of your money in your account.
As an FYI, I know from when my employer implemented one of these, the general expectation is that about a third of people taking them will miss a payment and end up paying fees. That's why the companies offer it "free" - it's a fabulous money spinner because so many people *can't* correctly judge the amount they can spend.
Gamefound doesn't have any fees for Stretchpay. It's pretty transparent and consumer friendly. They can't be expected to be everyone's mom and financial advisor.
Yes i am very familiar with lay away and credit fees. And like i said, i aint concerned about some other adult not being able to manage their own finances. Doesnt make this a bad or evil or predatory proposition at the moment. We'll see how it shakes out going forward
Honestly, to judge how evil/predatory it is or isn't would depend largely on the terms and the size of any potential extra fees incurred from missed payments.
In and of itself the ability to pay in instalments isn't really evil/predatory. It's those extra fees that are the predatory bit.
Stop being naive.
Single mom under povertly line quits job and qualifies for govt assistance. Helps with food rent etc. She say fuck work imma live off what i get for free. Plenty have made the argument that it can potentially make people stay dependant on the government which allows the government to have more control over your life. So its all bad right? The system is completely bad because we know some mofos take advantage and the govt can use it to tell mofo what kind of food they can buy with their food stamps. And its completely evil because there will be some politicians taking advantage in some ways. Or.... is that not just automatically what that means?
Mofos that use the layaway properly -and sticking with the convo here thats most folks - aint getting taken advantage of. The ones that aint CHOSE to try to pay for some shit they could afford. So no one should get the benefit because SOME people can't mange their shit (assuming we are talking about cats that miss payments due to not being able to afford)? Sorry but no. If other shit creeps into the stretchpay offering in the future, that may be worth a revisit. But now its exactly the same. If you cant afford 200 OR 50x4 months, dont fucking pledge it. If you cant resist fomo, thats your fault. You cant not go all in on a pledge- your fault. Not gamefounds. Not cmons.
Companies arent your friends. They want your money. You want (some of) their products. If the terms are favorable and you arent being stupid go for it if you want. If you are being stupid, be less stupid
Yes this is in a way a "Make it sound good for consumers" but in the end better for the companies.
One thing they could have done is maybe let the stretch pay correspond with the estimated /shipping date and be able to hold payment if they overstep the deadline by X days/months, that way it would force developers to uphold a better budget plan and not just bail with a bag of cash.
I think it would have made a good balance, because like many people here are complaining about is CMON's production time, so this would let backers keep some safety in regards to their money.
Honestly? Gamefound is pretty much the same as KS from a consumer perspective. The main differences are that Gamefound is focussed on board games, has a better interface for projects (specifically navigation menu and separate options for adding add-ons) and has a pledge manager (KS projects often use Gamefound as a PM too btw).
So nothing earth shattering and more or less the same.
FTR, most of the stuff you listed are things the creators themselves do/decide on, so you can't blame platforms like KS and GF for stuff like bloat or prices (I agree prices have skyrocketed lately). Those are on the creators/publishers.
This indeed, followed this one from the sidelines. Even though it got reported to kickstarter nothing was done... Very sad for backers who lost money...
> I've seen plenty of hilariously sketchy projects pulled
Let me guess, very small and very few backers, so it didnt get them much money anyway?
Had they been large with lots of backing they wouldnt have had many qualms letting them run its course and crash and burn...as long as they got their cut first, of course.
Kickstarter doesnt care for petty thieves, they want the big league scammers
I think people misplace their anger on Kickstarter instead of the companies (like CMON) who are abusing the system and launching games on the platform when they could easily pay the funds to create the game without crowdfunding. They've turned crowdfunding into effectively a preorder system which hurts the indie designers who need it the most.
My main complaint with CMON is the bloated projects and the lack of support. They take sometimes a whole extra year to deliver a game and by the time you get it, the game is already on the back page of their website with barely any updates.
They do like four kickstarters per year and can take two years to deliver. Once they got your money they kinda ignore you.
The way they've affected the boardgame industry has arguably been a net negative.
Established publishing companies used it as a marketing tool and drowned out indie developers trying to get their passion projects made
How will that be any different on gamefound...? They are still an established publisher using a platform designed for indie developers to get their passion projects made.
My first thought as to why they are switching is that Kickstarter actually put new rules in place where you cannot launch a project until your previous one has at least started fulfillment, and CMON doesn't like that so they switched over.
It’s getting harder to find board games on KS among all their ‘sexy elf barmaid STL’ shovelware, I much prefer Gamefound these days.
I wonder how much Alex from BGco was involved in making this happen, kudos to him if he had anything to do with this.
Another thing people are forgetting, Kickstarter caters to many different kinds of projects not just boardgames, while Gamefound is very much boardgames centered. Which could be another reason for CMON to do the switch
When Gamefound launched their crowdfunding campaign, they used emails illegally harvested from Kickstarter campaigns to use for marketing.
Due to that, I'm never backing a game on their service. They don't care about Data Protection laws.
Board games are still showing up on kickstarter and seem to be doing well. A lot better than Cmon ever did as far as getting your stuff in a normal amount of time. Hell I'm still waiting on Trudvang crap. I quit buying Cmon games due to this. Its was pretty crappy that kickstarter would let them start multiple campaigns without delivering on the oldest one first.
People think CMON is large. Do you think CMON can sustain 3 to 5 stinkers in a row? I'm not sure things will go well and then we'll have posts about massive layoffs...this is a low margin biz. CMON needs to order the right amount of copies from the manufacturer and they don't want a shit ton sitting in their warehouse like...HATE. Two worse killers of companies, having too much inventory available and have no inventory and high demand that you can't afford to meet.
I'm in the business mode of why not? It just makes sense. I give you promos and trinkets, you throw me some promos and "extras"...we are all in
It’s crazy to me that people still don’t realize this after it’s stated in every single “X big company shouldn’t be on crowdfunding thread” in literally every board game forum on the internet. CMON makes more money in retail than they do on Kickstarter but they could not make the amount of extra content/expansions they do in a retail model because of the inventory concerns both for themselves and for their distributors/retailers that don’t want to stock dozens of expansions for one game. If you think their stretch goals are bloat/poorly developed FOMO grabs, you can ignore them and wait for retail. But if CMON could make money selling that KS exclusive stuff at retail, they would do it. But they can’t so they don’t.
I cant believe after all of this time kickstarter never tried to implement their own version of backerkit. I know boardgames were kickstarters largest category so gamefound eating their lunch here has to be a big deal, and it doesnt feel like theyve really fought to hold creators. Competition in the space is (mostly) good, but it doesnt even feel like kickstarter is competing on anything but incumbency
I’m going to make a wild guess this is a big part of why a number of publishers have been moving to Gamefound recently. Having the crowd funding and pledge manager in the same platform seems to remove a lot of friction. And while Gamefound’s feature set started out fairly minimal, they’ve shown that they’re willing to rapidly iterate and improve (including in the middle of a campaign or pledge manager to address specific concerns as we saw with the recent Sleeve Kings campaign).
Backerkit also has the whole setup now. They started by being a pledge manager and now has the crowdfunding part aswell. Worked great on the last boardgame I backed.
Kickstarter was too busy salivating over blockchain bullshit.
Kickstarter has long been trying to distance itself from tabletop games being their largest earner, like they are embarrassed by how not cool it is compared to glamorous stuff like pet movie projects from celebs. Just look at the recent blog posts by the relatively new in his position CEO. Not one single mention of their biggest segment. They don’t care.
As someone out of the loop, are Gamefound's practices any better?
Gamefound offers the Stable Pledge program, which guarantees a 100% refund to any backer if the prices of the product **or shipping** increases by 10% or more after the campaign ends. I consider this to be very pro-consumer. Though it's worth noting that this is an opt-in for each project. The fact that Gamefound is both the crowdfunding platform and pledge manager is, I imagine, incredibly helpful for project creators who I'm sure are sick of those "I change my email 15 times a month and I can't find my Backerkit link PLZ HELP" people I see in every KS comment section. Stretch Pay, aka interest free payment plans, is a nice affordability option but I'm sure half the people reading this will take the cynical bent that this only encourages FOMO/consumer debt and should be ostracized. I also think the GUI/UX is substantially better than Kickstarter. Projects can be broken out into different headers on the sidebar, add-ons are clearly listed and priced, the pledge manage is nice and clearly indicates costs and sub-options for line items, etc. And of course the site is exclusively for tabletop game projects, so it clears out a lot of bloat on Kickstarter.
All great points.
I agree on Gamefound generally being better. I'll add the comment section also has more options - liking and editing posts, for example. I would say the only major area they still lag behind kickstarter is not having a dedicated Android app. Hopefully that changes soon.
In defence of FlexPay, I could afford to drop 300 bucks on GoAII, but I also prefer to maintain liquidity and pay 20 bucks a month. So there definitely is a positive version of FlexPay, but it does require self control.
It’s actually hard to believe how dated Kickstarter’s platform feels. From the old dated GUI/UX, to missing features like stretch pay, to lacking a pledge manager - feels like they’ve been asleep at the wheel.
Actually Kickstarter just started (late last year I believe) implementing a rule where you can't launch a project unless your previous one has at least started fulfillment. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a huge reason for the switch, although I'm not sure if gamefound has any rules like that.
[удалено]
Well they are enforcing it now. It was enforced for me on my 2nd project. I couldn't even make a preview page until I had proof of my previous project being fulfilled.
Good
I agree that it's a good thing 👍
Yeah it will prevent scandals like the Mythic one where devs take the money and start a new project with it without delivering on their previous promises
At the same time, I'd assume when dealing with a juggernaut like CMON, that is a "rule for thee, not for me" type situation.
Which I would say is completely wrong if that's the case.
Absolutely, but as long as they're making $$ Kickstarter won't care
True, but I guess why make the switch then if Kickstarter is already giving them a bunch of perks?
Reduced fees, fewer contractual obligations, improved business relations, greater growth opportunity--there's a hundred reasons why a company might sign an exclusivity agreement like this. Assuming its solely because of a single policy that Kickstarter hasn't enforced for big companies since its inception doesn't really make sense.
For sure, it could be many reasons.
Why? CMON has many employees doing many different jobs. Having one portion of your company on hold while the other is working on their job for a previous project is silly. That’d be like a developer not being allowed to build multiple houses at a time so while one is getting its electrical work done they couldn’t pour the foundation for the next one.
Because they have funds that they are supposed to be using to fulfill project 1, but if they can just move onto a new project to get more money they'll do that and end up like companies such as mythic games or blacklist games, or Peterson games, etc etc...
You mentioned running a couple campaigns yourself, so you're familiar with the process. What would their artists, designers and other employees be doing while the project is in production? I'm not sure how it would be feasible to run a large board game company with dozens of full-time employees and only focus on one project at a time. If they already have collected the funds for the first project, after they've paid for manufacturing, they should have up-front profits from it that they can invest into developing their next game while the first is in production. It's a normal business practice, Mythic and Peterson games just got overly ambitious, didn't have enough of a buffer to survive unforeseen issues and got screwed by price hikes during the pandemic to sustain the chain.
Nah. Scale comes with privilege. The likelihood of a Ninja Division/Soda Pop Miniature style implosion from CMON is minuscule. From Steve the Amateur Board Game Designer, it’s almost guaranteed.
Or like a mythic games style implosion .... wait a minute 🤔
Investing through Kickstarter is not without risk, heh.
There is no investing. They are preorders.
I completely disagree. There are plenty of examples of large, million dollar campaigns where the company imploded.
Yeah and not just in board games. I’d argue that smaller teams/more focused development is good for just about any industry and has produced some excellent IP.
Wonder how they define "fulfilled". I have one project that sent half the stuff I was supposed to get then went radio silent on the rest but they start two more projects since.
Literally just proving someone has received it.
Larger companies that have had multiple successful kickstarters and bring the platform lots of cash seem to get around it pretty easily (CMON never had an issue, neither does Wyrmwood). I suspect you are just missing the pull they have with Kickstarters executives.
It's possible. I'm just going off of what I was told by Kickstarter and my experience.
It was selectively enforced, probably. I assume your projects didn't fund for millions of dollars.
They only enforce it on small creators. Big creators like CMON can do whatever they want because they have a long positive history… but the true reason is because they bring in millions upon millions. If your first kickstarter brought in millions then I’m sure you’d get an exception to the rule
It's probably to stem the practice of using Kickstarter 2, to fund Kickstarter 1, and Kickstarter 3, to fund Kickstarter 2, and then Kickstarter 4 and 5 to fund kickstarter 3 and parts of 2 because you suck at cost estimation Then you're onto Kickstarter 8 and 4-6 haven't even delivered, and the bills are piling up, and you give weak ass explanations to the backers all screaming, and you wonder "How did I get here!!!" see: Mythic games.
Guys, I got it. We just need one more kickstarter.
I was thinking petersen games.
[Sad Hyperspace noises]
Oh for sure! I think it's a great thing, but also think it could be a contributing factor to why they went to gamefound.
And with big players, Kickstarter doesn't fund the project, really, it's more of extra profit and cheap advertisement through hype and of course reduce the risk of sitting on unsold stock Nobody believes clank legacy 2 needs crowdfunding to happen. So they have good reason to be more lenient, although the recent debacle around rainbow 6 etc....
… and Petersen Games…
Completed fulfillment for me, with evidence
Are you referring to gamefound or Kickstarter?
Kickstarter
Gamefound is owned by Awaken Realms, so it could be good or bad. On one hand you could call it a conflict of interest, as AR crowdfund their own products on there. On the other hand, every AR project I've backed has been top quality with no nonsense, so you could expect some of that DNA to flow through into Gamefound and for them to hold creators to higher standards than Kickstarter does.
I believe they spun gamefound off so while they are both made originally by awaken realms, gamefound operates independently and pursues what is best for that side of the business
Technically yes, although Marcin still has over 50% of the share capital if I did my maths correctly.
I mean, everyone loves Steam and Valve is (in theory) also a game developer.
Agreed. Also I don't see how any bias can really be harmful in this context. They want their clients to do well so they get a cut of the profits and expand their platform. I mean, they're obviously going to put AR games on the front page every time they're crowd funding but that's at most like twice a year and there's still plenty of other games being prominently displayed anyway.
Not just steam, literally every video game digital store is run by a developer. Epic (Epic Games Store), Sony (Playstation store), Microsoft (Xbox store), Nintendo (Nintendo store), CD Projekt (GOG), Ubisoft (UPlay/Ubisoft Connect), and EA (EA) Everywhere else are middle men which sell you keys to the actual stores
Eh, it doesn't seem like any more conflict of interest than digital stores for video games (all video game digital store owners are Developers), and probably movies too. Less, actually. There is no real conflict of interest because it is in their interest that their "competitors" do well, too
AR is a good company. High quality games and good about sticking to projected timelines. Their production and distribution slipped during Covid, but they seem to have recovered well since then.
From few projects I have funded, yes. At least it feels clearer.
For me it's crowdfunding in genera. It's the FOMO that creates more and more future waste that bothers me. It encourages people to buy things they don't need and preys on that. It's just utterly gross to me, to be quite honest.
My major gripe with Gamefound is that it seems pretty consistent that you do not get the same level of information about the games on their campaign page. If you compare Gamefound projects to Kickstarter projects, you see far less pictures and video about the games. And to me, a big red flag for any game, board game or video game, is when they don't show you many pictures or videos of the game. So for that reason, I've mostly avoided backing games on Gamefound, because there just seems to be less transparency and info about the games. IMO, it's a major issue with Gamefound, to which I think they need to start enforcing higher requirements for projects. Edit: Also, the search functionality on Gamefound is legit terrible. They desperately need an advanced search feature that allows you to filter results, based on a variety of data and conditions.
I don't quite follow how that's a Gamefound problem and not just the general direction of crowdfunding. Are you saying Kickstarter campaigns are still offering significantly more information? Why would that be? I doubt gamefound is telling their clients to use less info. I don't think either platform really cares what their client is writing as long as they're not explicitly lying.
I'm curious as well. I've never used them because when they first launched it was next to impossible to browse projects (the only search parameter was tied to mechanics, like "browse Worker Placement games" or "browse Area Control games" etc), so I just never bothered to return to the site. I'm assuming it's easier to browse now?
They've got some more filters. I mostly use the solo mode filter
Nope
I'm sure it's no better for the consumers. They have stuff like stretch pay so you can pretend you're not spending more on junk than you should.
I would 100% assume (with absolutely no research) that the only reason to switch is that Gamefound will take less of a middle man margin sales cut. To me, that makes it better. Less middle men the better.
Kickstarter is a unionized shop with a mission to support the arts that is finally cracking down on multi campaigns. They were always against them but have lowered requirements at a few points to support companies, and consumers were burned. Gamefound is co owned by ravensburger and is a walled garden with no protection for consumers, but it is slightly better for large partner sellers. It's worse for the consumer, and it's worse ethically in multiple ways.
If only CMON would just bring things to market instead. Companies that endlessly crowdsource at their level of success are exhausting.
You can’t just milk people with endless fake stretch goals and exclusives using FOMO if your product is just sitting on a shelf though.
Comment Stretch Goal: I'll respond and continue this conversation once my original comment hits 400 likes. Let's do it! You won't be able to get a response once this campaign is over.
>If only CMON would just bring things to market instead. I don't think it's feasible for them to bring large projects like Marvel United directly to retail. It's like what, 10 boxes, and most people don't need everything, but there are many that do, and crowdfunding allows to meet that demand without risk of having to produce everything upfront on a guess. Retailers won't carry that much in stock either due to limited space, and store markup would eat into already thin margins that boardgame companies operate on.
Seems they are doing that with some of their games (just taking pre-orders for Metal Gear Solid instead of going through Kickstarter).
A funding practice to surpass Metal Gear?!
So wait, we are not hating on CMON any longer. It's Kickstarter who are the bad guys?
A lot of people really like CMON. sure they rely on FOMO in their crowdfunding campaigns but honestly their games at retail are often very accessible and generally still a blast. They do good work growing the tabletop gaming hobby imo.
After the complete implosion of mythic games, failure of blacklist games, countless delays of Peterson games and Kingdom Death games, cmon ends up looking good in comparison. CMON’s original faux pax, charging shipping higher than what was estimated during the campaign, pales in comparison to the other companies charging shipping 2, even 3 times. Cmon is a well oiled machine that delivers, campaign after campaign, even with excessively huge number of stretch goals. Other campaigns with similar vast number of mini stretch goal keep failing to deliver, or ask for more money.
Dont forget holy grail games Edit: and space goat productions! Edit2: and steeped games! Sooooo maaaaaaany scammerssssssss
Steeped... -.- I'm *sure* I'll get my copy of **Chai: Tea for 2** and the extra nice deluxe bits for **Chai** (which were a big part of why I backed Tea for 2), *reaaaalllyyy sooon*. They're only 2 years over original delivery estimates of February 2022 at this point.
I'm so sad about this one. I supported it because the creators were local, but alas I've pretty much accepted I'm never getting **Chai: Tea for 2**. I got a little excited when we got *some* updates for a while last year, but the hope was fleeting.
I may quite dislike CMON but past the cost and fomo stuff, they always deliver, they're consistent, they're not gonna take the money and run and I don't like their games much but they're not complete garbage, just not to my taste. Also, their minis look cool even if I'm not a big minis guy I dislike them but as a business, they're an easy recommend if someone's nervous with crowdfunding and they're not doing anything terrible past fomo which is fine if not ideal
> CMON’s original faux pax, charging shipping higher than what was estimated during the campaign, pales in comparison to the other companies charging shipping 2, even 3 times. Yep. Look at the recent Kingdom Death mess: Backers realizing now they're gonna have to (probably) pay an extra shipping charge, for every one of the 12 expansions they ordered.
To be fair, if you went all in on KDM you got everything for a cheap price. The issue has always been the delay.
For clarity: 16 expansions, not 12 Creator said that backers were overwhelmingly asking for this years ago, and thus these two were pushed out quickly Creator said that after Black Knight, Frogdog, (and presumably Campaigns of Death), bundling of expansions into smaller shipments will be the way.
Cmon seems to be severely stuttering in recent years, though. Things me or friends backed were/are fulfilled waaaaaay too late nowadays. Wild West Zcide was what? Delayed by 2 years? The Iron Maiden Collab shipped 2 months late. The franchise comics vol. 2(?!) are 4 months late already. The new DmD expansion should have also been ready by now. Covid hiccups isnt an excuse for like 2 years anymore
Welcome to buying things on kickstarter. They never ship at the original estimated time. Estimates slip all the time in all industries. If you want things immediately buy them at retail.
Yeah, they completely manipulate people into buying more than what they need, and focus a lot on their miniatures. But generally, they've had solid hits on their hands and have made some good games. So I can't crap all over them. Consumers have to be aware of their own finances and realize "you can't own everything all the time" sometimes you just have to say "no, that's enough." I love Marvel United, Season 3 of Marvel United, I got basically the bare minimum, base game, +1 set + KS extras from Season 1 + a couple of bonus items. That was it, I passed on the Giant Galactus, the age of apocalypse set, and the 4 bland uninteresting sets that they came out with.
It's not like they're doing anything illegal like misrepresenting the minis, falsely listing prices, or anything. There's plenty of boardgamers who are like "lol wtf" at ridiculous minis and so on. Like I was pretty "wtf" at the Castles of Burgundy castle minis. Guess what, I didn't buy them. I don't know why they would get hate for offering OPTIONAL minis for people who really like minis way too much to buy. It's also not like these are 8 year old kids who don't know better in an iPad game.
Junkies have to blame CMON and KS for it for some reason lol
> and focus a lot on their miniatures Well, it's literally in the company's name..
I back their games but 9/10 I’m very happy with only the base pledge. All-ins aren’t really worth it for me, because I know I’ll never get a of that content played, but I do like the variety that stretch goals typically provide.
I’m not a fan of the KS FOMO model but CMON overall delivers high quality games reliably. They also have some good game lines, like the ASOIAF minis wargame, which are pretty separate from KS at this point.
Always was. At least CMON seems to deliver on their FOMO.
Kickstarter has long been the bad guys
I like and have a bunch of CMON games but I always thought it was pretty scummy that they always used Kickstarter even though they're a full fledged company and didn't need Kickstarter to make or deliver their products.
I think that’s arguable. The super deluxe versions with all the stretch goals and multiple boxes aren’t really viable in retail…. Plus some people really like them, so their crowdfunding campaigns do serve a purpose. Plus bonus for people who don’t like crowdfunding is that those backers partially paid for the development of the game you got at retail ^^. Win win!
If those products aren't viable as a retail product, it sounds like something sketchy is happening if they are selling well on Kickstarter. Kickstarter doesn't change the fundamental nature of production+selling, it just lets you secure the initial capital ahead of time. But a big company like that has the capital to begin with.
It absolutely changes the formula a fair bit. Your product goes right to the consumer, no storage fees, no middle-man distribution fees or logistics, no stock not getting where it needs to go to meet market demand, and the biggest thing is no risk. Big companies are just like small companies; they don’t like risk. You’re giving too much credit thinking that a company like Hasbro is gonna put capital on the line to produce something ambitious and niche for the fun of it. Monolith producing Mythic Battles Pantheon in its full scope is not something that would ever happen without kickstarter. And if it did your larger cap company would absolutely nickel and dime for every cent on those expansions/supplemental products. Plus once profitability shows the slightest hint of not keeping up, product line gets axed and you never see any of the other planned content.
At this point it's a sales platform to reach people who simply browse Kickstarter or have a Kickstarter newsletter/website feed. I think Kickstarter fully embraces this, trying to be the next Steam.
I mean KS embraces it because they get a portion of the money. In reality CMON kinda fucks over retailers or resellers by offering different rewards by tier instead of funding their own game and using distributors like they should be doing. I say this because their campaigns generally include additional add-ons that cannot be purchased afterwards except from eBay resellers.
I don’t think this is the case though. How many retailers want to have a half dozen big box expansions for a game on their shelf? I get the FOMO pull sucks, but, the only way releasing a flood of content makes sense is if they can sell it all in one sitting. (Now, if you want to argue that releasing a crap ton of expansions for an unreleased game is a bad idea… I’m with you 100% on that. Except for Marvel United. I bit on that one.)
I mean, that's kind of my point though. If they release expansions through distributors, the shops will have generally a good idea of how well the game is selling at their shop so they be able to make the decision of whether or not they want to purchase more expansions or not. Either way that's a way better solution then CMON doing bullshit like a COMPLETE EDITION tier on Kickstarter and then releasing con exclusive add-ons to that game.
This "need Kickstarter" argument always sounds weird to me. Why does that matter? At all? Honest question. Sure, KS is great for people who couldn't get a bank loan. But KS is great for everybody - including companies who can do the financing in another way. When the infrastructure already exists, why not use it? There's nothing "scummy" about this. And especially for CMON who make most of their big titles available through retail later anyway. Just ignore the KS if pre-paying bothers you and buy the game in retail.
Its scummy because its large companies circumventing consumer protections. They have no obligation to deliver the product and its technically not a "pre-order" although most people see it that way. There definitely should be more regulation on this environment as thousands of people have been duped out of their money.
This and the fact that they release exclusive items based off of tier rewards that they don't re-release to the public. I love Blood Rage but to get extra exclusive monsters that they released as tier rewards or even as promo items at special events it's stupid expensive to get now and is kind of a slap in the face. They have the money to self publish games, their campaigns generally always exceed the funding cost and they generally suck at communication once a project IS funded.
It's no different than releasing a limited edition item at retail, which tons of companies do.
It's a little different because shops are able to utilize distributors for those limited edition products as opposed to having to actively pay very close attention to Kickstarter. Plus Kickstarter forces you to pay everything upfront before items are shipped, whereas distributors or at least some distributors don't.
Which has nothing to do with CMON, because CMON has always delivered.
Of course they have an obligation to deliver products. That they might not fulfill their obligation in case the company fails in the meantime is a risk you voluntary accept. But there's an extremely easy method of avoiding any problems you have with this: Don't back - wait for retail. It is that easy. Especially with a company that later sells through retail. When a company like CMON goes through KS it's de facto a pre-order. You pay in advance and you expect to get the product and the company promises to deliver the product. And until they go broke they most likely will.
They do NOT have an obligation to deliver and you can't legally pursue a refund.
> They do NOT have an obligation to deliver Yes they do, according to Kickstarter's [terms of service](https://legal.kickstarter.com/policies/en/?name=terms-of-use): "When a project is successfully funded, ***the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward***. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their ***obligation*** to their backers." > you can't legally pursue a refund You can definitely [sue them](https://www.seattlemet.com/arts-and-culture/2015/10/washington-state-sued-a-failed-kickstarter-project-and-won) for [failing to deliver](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/feds-take-first-action-against-a-failed-kickstarter-with-112k-judgment/). However, it's usually not worth pursuing due to the international logistics, complex cases or companies simply going bankrupt.
Of course they have an obligation to deliver. They promise to deliver, backers expect fulfillment. That's what an obligation is. That your chances of getting a refund are crap in case they can't deliver doesn't make a difference. Your mistake is to think that obligation is solely based on legal enforceability. Nobody would back a game if the company could just shrug their shoulders because they're not in the mood. And BTW you absolutely CAN sue. Whether successfully is another question. But you can almost always try. Companies fail to deliver because they are failing. Not because they feel they aren't obliged to.
Sorry but a promise is not an obligation, it's just hope. They legally have no obligation and the entire KS model has disclaimers stating that. This was my whole original point about circumventing consumer protections, so I don't know why you are stuck with "goodwill" discussion.
[What is this then?](https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use) >When a project is successfully funded, the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their obligation to their backers.
Again, you talk about legality. Obligations are not restricted to legal procedures. in fact most interactions never go to court. Suing is for exceptional cases where things sufficiently escalate and motivation is high enough. The KS model makes clear that you take a risk as a backer. There IS a risk that the obligation doesn't get fulfilled. But that's a rare exception and not at all the expectation of anybody. The KS model could not work if most projects didn't deliver. And no company can get away with just saying "thanks for the money, but we'd rather not deliver and just have more money to spend on drugs and booze, thank you very much. Here's our next KS". Games aren't getting delivered when a company fails, not because they don't feel obligated to deliver.
> Again, you talk about legality. Obligations are not restricted to legal procedures True, but I don't think anyone cares if they believe a company has a moral obligation to deliver a product, in the context of this conversation, legal obligations are pretty much the only relevant type of obligation. >And no company can get away with just saying "thanks for the money, but we'd rather not deliver and just have more money to spend on drugs and booze, thank you very much. Here's our next KS". Of course but what about, "sorry we tried our best to deliver the product but ran into unforseen difficulties and unexpected costs, and we won't be able to deliver what we were hoping "?
I've never understood why anyone cares about that either. It's not like there's some finite amount of games that can be hosted on KS. We're not losing indie gems every time CMON starts a campaign lol
True, though it makes it harder to compete as a indie, imagine putting up a 3 feet sign for you locally brewed soda and then coca cola forks lift in a giant 1 mile neo sign, overshadowing your petit attempted at gathering some attention. One positiv note on this is that with big company with good games, larger crowds flock to that stream and there is a higher chance for indie people to get notice, although then judge to standards of the big money when their product is standing next to a giant. But you do feel the sting of giganotosaurus going full chad mode and overtaking the site. Gamefound says they will help you market your product but they are slow to respond and last time they hit with (we have to many campaigns right now). Which means, step a side kid, daddy is home and he's bringing the dough, because if you look at the active campaign most of them are established bigger companies. It is good in the end for consumers because it creates dire competition and weeds out shitty games, but bad for creators that kickstarters originally aimed for. Sad but inevitable.
I'm just not sure why CMON switching to direct to retail would get those campaigns any more attention or money. The people that want the CMON stuff know they want it, and they buy it. Anyone can back whatever game they want on there while any other campaign is running. Whether or not CMON is using Kickstarter, those indie games are still competing with it just the same. Your soda shops don't really hold up, because I don't think there are that many people that just decide "I will log in to Kickstarter and buy *something* today" and suddenly discover these games.
/_/Guldur summarized it better than I can or probably could have. They're circumventing user protections by utilizing Kickstarter, and the additional scummy part is that CMON always releases additional items per tier that you won't be able to get later down the road unless you pay a ton for it off eBay or other sites. I have blood rage and it's still one of my favorite games, but holy crap is it expensive if I wanted to get the additional monsters/items that they released exclusively as promo or higher tiered items.
That's just marketing. You don't need those extra monsters that everyone says suck anyway. They don't owe you these toys years after the KS lol.
[удалено]
Yeah, that's very true. But I also enjoy completing games that I very much like, especially if I'm taking the time to paint all of the minis. Plus if I or other friends thoroughly enjoy a game, I like items that offer ways to mix it up, I just extremely dislike the way they go about this.
However, by using Kickstarter, they can better tailor their production to sales. I have bought several games through Kickstarter that I enjoy, but nobody else in my area seems interested in, or are in supper limited supply. Going retail only could mean they wouldn't even get made. Could these companies just stick to their own internal websites for those sales? Sure, but Kickstarter also has a much bigger bullhorn than they do. Some of the other hobbies use the pre-order method to determine production as well. It is well used in the model train world with fulfillments taking years from pre-orders as well.
How would you define "need"? And why do you care? It's functionality a pre-order, direct sale to consumer system. There's nothing scummy about that. It's just a business model and frankly, a good one. Producing under a traditional model the company gets somewhere around 35% of the MSRP with the rest going to middlemen and retailers. While potentially putting the company in the hook for having to buy back overstock. CMoN gets a higher share of the revenue from the product which they created. And suffer lower losses and financing charges. And frankly, they make pretty good games. Which would almost definitely not be the same quality if they had to lose much of the money to distribution. If you use a 20% off coupon to buy a $600 coat, even though you could pay full price, is that "scummy"?
The scummy part is that their circumventing customer protection by utilizing Kickstarter which has a history of not caring or providing refunds for projects that individuals fail to deliver. The coat analogy doesn't make any sense because...I buy coat from the coat store. The coat store supplies customer protection... I can contact said coat store selling the coat and immediately and return if needed. Ill be honest, I have no idea what the point of that analogy was. At the end of the day though, it feeling scummy is my opinion. I've still purchased their games.
None are really. CMON delivers their projects one and another and some of their games are fantastic and well regarded by the communities. Scammers will be everywhere and it's Kickstarter's job to keep their service free from those scammers. There have been many projects that were breaking rules and were straight up non-consumer friendly at all. Kingdom Death and Mythic Games are big names that stand out in those unethical practices. I'm not calling them scammers but Kickstarter didn't do anything to protect backers.
KDM has always offered discounts for people that wanted to back out so I am not sure why you are lumping them with Mythic. Is it highly delayed? Yes. Is everything coming? Yes.
ESH
People hate on CMON for various reasons, but I am not sure backers get completely screwed out of their entire pledge because of CMON. So yes, KS are the bad guys.
Crowdfunding competition is good for us consumers. Hope this creates more incentive for Gamefound and Kickstarter to innovate.
See a fun game, back a fun game. The website hosting it is a non-factor in my decision making.
This. But I'm also unsure if KS gives developers as many tools as GF does. For example, every KS I've ever seen has pledge levels of (A), (A+B), (A+B+C), etc. Plus Add-Ons. Gamefound I've found a few examples where it's less of a "Pledge LEVEL" and more of a "Pledge Package." Where there may be updated cards for first print backers, but the full game for first time backers. The way Backerkit handled Gloomhaven Grand Festival was nuts too. As long as these new platforms offer new features and ways to buy and customize, the better. With how CMON runs their projects, like Marvel United or Zombicide, it might be in their interest to offer multiple iterations, similar to Gloomhaven, rather than have separate KS for each.
As a counterpoint, they have been exceptionally slow to offer basic features for backer accounts which has been insanely frustrating such as: - sorting/archiving backed projects (for a long time they were organized by campaign id and not date backed or completed) - clear messaging of order/backer status (paid vs shipping paid vs. complete) - consistent methods to message creators about campaigns - customer support on a campaign by campaign basis (for a long time it was just a generic contact form) I actively stopped backing things on there because it was such a poor experience for anyone that backs more than just occasionally. Yes, I know that is a power-user problem but for these kinds of platforms the power-users (which are usually big spenders) are who you want to cater more to.
Or even something as basic as sorting all live campaigns by most recent, which they also added only recently.
For any wondering about the features of the Gamefound platform, they have one which allows for a refund if the shipping exceeds 10% of the estimate and a feature that allows you to break up your pledge into payments. CMON with their current campaigns on Gamefound hasn’t opted into the shipping refund feature but does have the payment plan one. However, it’s only available on the higher/all-in tiers. Gamefound doesn’t have a mobile app so you’ll only be able to access it via a web browser.
The Kickstarter app is ass. I would just use the browser for Kickstarter anyways. I forgot they even had an app until your comment reminded me.
Interesting news. Personally I find Game Found much more user friendly, good partnership.
What a surprise. Company which revenue model is to crowdfund products and has a long history of getting millions per project finds new crowdfunding platform that offered them better margins than Kickstarters 5%.
“they’re the same picture dot jpg”
Its honestly so weird to me that a company signs a god damn contract for exclusivity on crowdfunding. Like hello, crowdfunding should not be a recurrent method for big companies, but mainly for smaller ones that need it. Why is this even something normal now. It's so ridiculous as an idea.
Why? Sure, the idea started out as "help me make this thing that I made in my garage at an industrial level" but Kickstarter hasn't been that in a decade or more. The KS/GF model allows companies to make products and skip getting capital funding from places like banks. Why should a bank take a percentage cut in my boardgame? I'd rather my money go direct to CMON. Things can change. The market votes. You aren't required to participate. If you would rather go the other route, there are plenty of games that aren't crowdfunded and there are also retail releases of crowdfunded games.
It also allows even established companies to make more risky projects by guaranteeing customers for it during development (thats the only reason we got Oath, for example)
>Like hello, crowdfunding should not be a recurrent method for big companies, but mainly for smaller ones that need it. Large ambitious projects need crowdfunding regardless if they're from a new or an established company as they're not as feasible for a traditional retailer model.
Definitely not true. Boardgames is one of the only markets where people have been accustomed to that line of thought.
> Definitely not true. It definitely is if you have any actual experience of the industry, here are some links to check out: https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/147898/links-selling-direct-increasing-turns-and-gaming-w https://www.pineislandgames.com/blog/why-crowdfund There are multiple factors at play here: 1) Board games beyond mainstream gateway titles are a relatively niche hobby. Giant 20kg heavy games that come in 10 boxes even more so, and most retailers won't stock those on a whim due to the limited space and low local demand. An all-in of Solomon Kane is just a bad investment for them, compared to a box of Wingspan they'll sell much faster. 2) Selling directly to consumers through crowdfunding has significantly larger profit margins, about double that of a traditional retailer approach. This allows companies to sell more content for a similar price compared to what they would have to do through retailers to keep decent profit margins. 3) Due to the nature of board game manufacturing, the more pieces you make of any custom component, the cheaper it gets per piece. Crowdfunding allows creators to have stretch goals, adding more content or higher quality components as the demand grows and their costs per copy decrease. This is not possible to do through retail model, as you can't risk printing too many copies that will be unsold. > Boardgames is one of the only markets where people have been accustomed to that line of thought. What other markets can you think of that meet the following criteria: - Physical stores selling the products produced by other companies. - Relatively small audience with wildly varying taste, requiring stocking lots of different options, yet repeating customers are very irregular. - Products come in large boxes with separate extras, which are exclusive to the original product. - New products released weekly that necessitates cycling out old products. Each point might seem insignificant on its own, but all of those factors together add to the complexity of distributing games retail.
This really is another big kick in the teeth for Kickstarter in the board game space - Gamefound had half of the top 10 most-funded board game projects last year, including the #1 slot: https://boardgamewire.com/index.php/2024/01/25/gamefound-turns-up-heat-on-kickstarter-after-scoring-2023s-biggest-tabletop-fundraise-half-of-the-years-top-10-most-funded-board-game-projects/
I'm a bit out of the loop, other than knowing Gamefound existed I'm not at all familiar with the actual nuts and bolts of the functional differences between them and Kickstarter. My main question would be - Is there anything about Gamefound that actually addresses the issues with Kickstarter (failed projects, cost/size bloat, etc) or that are more consumer friendly? Or is it just another platform but functionally identical? Because if it doesn't make anything better for actual gamers then crowdfunding getting to the exclusive lock in phase of industry growth is just a more of the same cycle we've seen all over the place.
Cmon can make their campaigns just as big as they want as far as i know. The real big difference for the consumers imo is gonna be that Gamefound allows stretchpay - currenty at no extra cost. I really think they hope that will encourage more people to back those high level all in pledges. Not really sure about their failed projects polices though.
So Gamefound will help people who's finances are so bad they need to buy a $200 game on credit.
Its not credit at least not yet. They used to call this lay away. You (currently) dont pay any interest or fees. Just a straight split of the pledge amount. So you pledge 400 - over 4 months for example you pay a 100 dollars each month.
Yeah, like they said. They can't afford 200 in one shot, but supposedly 50 x 4 is fine.
No need to be silly about this. People buy shit they cant actually afford to go all out on all the time like cars, houses, funiture, etc. Mofos are out there there right now putting a ps5 on a their visa card. Not wanting to spend 200 at the same time doenst necessarily mean you cant afford the shit. If dave can comfortably afford to spend 50 a month and get the same shit i got for spending 200 in one go AND not have have to pay a single cent extra- more power to him. Its fee free so currently there isnt any drawback to keeping more of your money in your account. I know we like to dump on fomo and predatory this and that. But i aint got time to feel bad for people that cant control themselves. I kinda think this whole spreading the payments is long over do. Not necessarily from the consumer side. But rather a mofo like cmon in this instance shouldn't get all the money up front all at once while everyone waits a year and a half for the game to show up.
> If dave can comfortably afford to spend 50 a month and get the same shit i got for spending 200 in one go AND not have have to pay a single cent extra- more power to him. Its fee free so currently there isnt any drawback to keeping more of your money in your account. As an FYI, I know from when my employer implemented one of these, the general expectation is that about a third of people taking them will miss a payment and end up paying fees. That's why the companies offer it "free" - it's a fabulous money spinner because so many people *can't* correctly judge the amount they can spend.
Gamefound doesn't have any fees for Stretchpay. It's pretty transparent and consumer friendly. They can't be expected to be everyone's mom and financial advisor.
Yes i am very familiar with lay away and credit fees. And like i said, i aint concerned about some other adult not being able to manage their own finances. Doesnt make this a bad or evil or predatory proposition at the moment. We'll see how it shakes out going forward
He literally just described how it's predatory and evil, dude, stop being obtuse
Honestly, to judge how evil/predatory it is or isn't would depend largely on the terms and the size of any potential extra fees incurred from missed payments. In and of itself the ability to pay in instalments isn't really evil/predatory. It's those extra fees that are the predatory bit.
Stop being naive. Single mom under povertly line quits job and qualifies for govt assistance. Helps with food rent etc. She say fuck work imma live off what i get for free. Plenty have made the argument that it can potentially make people stay dependant on the government which allows the government to have more control over your life. So its all bad right? The system is completely bad because we know some mofos take advantage and the govt can use it to tell mofo what kind of food they can buy with their food stamps. And its completely evil because there will be some politicians taking advantage in some ways. Or.... is that not just automatically what that means? Mofos that use the layaway properly -and sticking with the convo here thats most folks - aint getting taken advantage of. The ones that aint CHOSE to try to pay for some shit they could afford. So no one should get the benefit because SOME people can't mange their shit (assuming we are talking about cats that miss payments due to not being able to afford)? Sorry but no. If other shit creeps into the stretchpay offering in the future, that may be worth a revisit. But now its exactly the same. If you cant afford 200 OR 50x4 months, dont fucking pledge it. If you cant resist fomo, thats your fault. You cant not go all in on a pledge- your fault. Not gamefounds. Not cmons. Companies arent your friends. They want your money. You want (some of) their products. If the terms are favorable and you arent being stupid go for it if you want. If you are being stupid, be less stupid
Yes this is in a way a "Make it sound good for consumers" but in the end better for the companies. One thing they could have done is maybe let the stretch pay correspond with the estimated /shipping date and be able to hold payment if they overstep the deadline by X days/months, that way it would force developers to uphold a better budget plan and not just bail with a bag of cash. I think it would have made a good balance, because like many people here are complaining about is CMON's production time, so this would let backers keep some safety in regards to their money.
Honestly? Gamefound is pretty much the same as KS from a consumer perspective. The main differences are that Gamefound is focussed on board games, has a better interface for projects (specifically navigation menu and separate options for adding add-ons) and has a pledge manager (KS projects often use Gamefound as a PM too btw). So nothing earth shattering and more or less the same. FTR, most of the stuff you listed are things the creators themselves do/decide on, so you can't blame platforms like KS and GF for stuff like bloat or prices (I agree prices have skyrocketed lately). Those are on the creators/publishers.
Good, kickstarter can go suck a lemon.
I'm out of the loop, what's the issue with kickstarter as a company?
They also don't give a heck about backers - even if you report clear scams they keep it running.
Examples? I've seen plenty of hilariously sketchy projects pulled.
The Toyzzo game table was a clear scam and KS let the campaign run.
This indeed, followed this one from the sidelines. Even though it got reported to kickstarter nothing was done... Very sad for backers who lost money...
I reported mythic games after the monsterpocalypse debacle and Kickstarter said "we can't do anything"
> I've seen plenty of hilariously sketchy projects pulled Let me guess, very small and very few backers, so it didnt get them much money anyway? Had they been large with lots of backing they wouldnt have had many qualms letting them run its course and crash and burn...as long as they got their cut first, of course. Kickstarter doesnt care for petty thieves, they want the big league scammers
I think people misplace their anger on Kickstarter instead of the companies (like CMON) who are abusing the system and launching games on the platform when they could easily pay the funds to create the game without crowdfunding. They've turned crowdfunding into effectively a preorder system which hurts the indie designers who need it the most.
My main complaint with CMON is the bloated projects and the lack of support. They take sometimes a whole extra year to deliver a game and by the time you get it, the game is already on the back page of their website with barely any updates. They do like four kickstarters per year and can take two years to deliver. Once they got your money they kinda ignore you.
The way they've affected the boardgame industry has arguably been a net negative. Established publishing companies used it as a marketing tool and drowned out indie developers trying to get their passion projects made
I agree 100% with that assessment but is Gamefound any better when it comes to that?
I'm pretty sure it won't.
How will that be any different on gamefound...? They are still an established publisher using a platform designed for indie developers to get their passion projects made. My first thought as to why they are switching is that Kickstarter actually put new rules in place where you cannot launch a project until your previous one has at least started fulfillment, and CMON doesn't like that so they switched over.
but in this board game context, is CMON not an established publishing company?
Ok but how is Gamefound different?
Are you saying indie developers had an easy time getting games to market before Kickstarter?
It’s getting harder to find board games on KS among all their ‘sexy elf barmaid STL’ shovelware, I much prefer Gamefound these days. I wonder how much Alex from BGco was involved in making this happen, kudos to him if he had anything to do with this.
His dream come true. He can shill even harder for CMON now.
I'm going to have to go Google what games they've made. I genuinely don't know. If the games are fun I'll move to whatever site though.
I think that Restoration Games did that too. I guess GameFound is trying to compete with Kickstarter .
I vastly prefer Gamefound in basically every way, so this is great news.
Another thing people are forgetting, Kickstarter caters to many different kinds of projects not just boardgames, while Gamefound is very much boardgames centered. Which could be another reason for CMON to do the switch
Boardgames have made up the majority of kickstarter's revenue for several years now. Losing CMON is a big deal.
As if Boardgameco could not shill CMON any harder
Is Gamefound more accepting of companies hiding behind “crowdfunding” so they can be less accountable to their pre-order storefront?
When Gamefound launched their crowdfunding campaign, they used emails illegally harvested from Kickstarter campaigns to use for marketing. Due to that, I'm never backing a game on their service. They don't care about Data Protection laws.
Would you have a source for that please?
I can't provide a source, it's not something news sites care about. The email I got the marketing from was one I had only used for Kickstarter.
So how come you assume your address was harvested by one party instead of shared/sold by the other? Are you boycotting Kickstarter as well?
Will this reduce CMON's shipping charges? /s
They have an option on gamefound to allow automatic refunds if the shipping goes over 10%. They have not opted in yet for some weird reason.
Top lol
Board games are still showing up on kickstarter and seem to be doing well. A lot better than Cmon ever did as far as getting your stuff in a normal amount of time. Hell I'm still waiting on Trudvang crap. I quit buying Cmon games due to this. Its was pretty crappy that kickstarter would let them start multiple campaigns without delivering on the oldest one first.
KS turned into a desert. I’m happy about that
KS bad, Gamefound good!
People think CMON is large. Do you think CMON can sustain 3 to 5 stinkers in a row? I'm not sure things will go well and then we'll have posts about massive layoffs...this is a low margin biz. CMON needs to order the right amount of copies from the manufacturer and they don't want a shit ton sitting in their warehouse like...HATE. Two worse killers of companies, having too much inventory available and have no inventory and high demand that you can't afford to meet. I'm in the business mode of why not? It just makes sense. I give you promos and trinkets, you throw me some promos and "extras"...we are all in
It’s crazy to me that people still don’t realize this after it’s stated in every single “X big company shouldn’t be on crowdfunding thread” in literally every board game forum on the internet. CMON makes more money in retail than they do on Kickstarter but they could not make the amount of extra content/expansions they do in a retail model because of the inventory concerns both for themselves and for their distributors/retailers that don’t want to stock dozens of expansions for one game. If you think their stretch goals are bloat/poorly developed FOMO grabs, you can ignore them and wait for retail. But if CMON could make money selling that KS exclusive stuff at retail, they would do it. But they can’t so they don’t.
Gamefound said “C’mon CMON!”