My Soap Box
Every few weeks I see a post like this – frustrated at how long a board game Kickstarter is taking to fulfill.
It’s not that the projects won’t fulfill, or that the creators are misusing funds, heck, sometimes they aren’t even late versus their stated timelines. But, consumers are frustrated.
No one wants this. It hurts the brands of publishers with long fulfillment times, and it hurts the overall shared ecosystem of board game Kickstarter.
The Problem
There is a vast range of where in development a game can be when it goes live on Kickstarter. It might be buttoned up on gameplay, but only have 30% of illustration; it might have half a campaign written; it might be complete excluding add-ons; or it might be ready to ship to manufacture the next day.
There is nothing wrong with games crowdfunding at any of these stages.
The issue is that many consumers don’t have a firm grasp on what stage of development a game is in. And are frustrated when a project is later than they expect.
Risk to Timelines
Estimated delivery dates don’t do a good job of communicating development risk. That is, the more development work there is to do – the more opportunity there is for timelines to get pushed and games to be delayed.
A friend of mine and the company – Adam Medeiros (who I hope to write about in future articles) – is helping us project plan for Sigil. We started the plan over the summer, after we were already deep in brand, graphic design, testing, and illustration.
Just getting a relatively simple game like Sigil to Kickstarter involves hundreds of interdependent tasks. And these tasks aren’t straight forward - they are often complicated processes involving multiple people and their own timelines. And, each process has its own dependencies – any one of which could delay entire timelines.
If a game is fully developed and illustrated when it hits Kickstarter, then there are a limited number of areas where things could get delayed.
File proofing
Manufacture & assembly
Freight & customs
Fulfillment
Sure, a fire at the factory could set the project back months (or completely torpedo it), but for the most part delays in aggregate will be in the order of weeks or maybe a couple of months. And those potential challenges are easy to and often budget for in a timeline estimate.
Whereas we’ve seen more complicated development tasks like incomplete illustration, graphic and component design, and game content cause delays on orders of magnitude of months and years.
There is nothing wrong with projects at various stages of development crowdfunding. Making unfinished projects possible is a strength of crowdfunding.
But, I believe that most consumers do not have a solid grasp on the difference in development between projects. Project complexity and how it bleeds through to publisher stated timelines, and the risks to those timelines, isn’t well understood or communicated.
It’s in the Risks
Creators often provide some level of clarity around where a project is in development in the risks section of their campaign.
Frosthaven Risks Disclosure
The issue seems to be two-fold
Many backers don’t read the risks section (before I had a professional interest, I often didn’t)
What project status disclosures mean, and how they can impact timelines (and risk to timelines) isn’t intuitive for non-industry-insiders
These problems persist even when there is good disclosure around project status.
Incentives & Human Nature
I believe that board game Kickstarter creators are overwhelmingly trying to do right by their backers. But it is worth noting that there are mixed incentives around estimated timelines and disclosing how much work is left to be done on a project.
Creators who hope to build a brand and release multiple Kickstarters are incentivized to give conservative estimates. Similarly, projects that are mostly buttoned up can afford to give conservative estimates without having off-putting far-off delivery dates.
I think it is human nature to be optimistic on timelines for large, complicated projects. It is simply hard to account for how delays cascade through a complicated system. And to be frank there is some incentive for Kickstarter creators of projects with substantial development work left to err on the side of optimistic timeline estimates.
Solutions
I don’t have a good solution to better communicating where in development projects are, and how that could impact timelines and the risk to delays.
It’s a conversation that I think is worth having.
Setting realistic expectations around projects and understanding why some projects have higher risks of delays helps the entire Kickstarter ecosystem.
How do you communicate the work left to be done on your projects?
