Oops…
On Friday the Gamefound campaign Kingdom Come: Deliverance – The Board Game, was cancelled after raising a cool €318,902.
The entire update is worth a read. Backers were understandably upset both with the “fake funding goal” and with the tone of the update.
It’s an unfortunate situation on all fronts.
Backers feel betrayed and are missing out on a game that they were excited about. The creators are out tens of thousands of dollars, watched their campaign fail, and trust in their company and them individually as crowdfunding creators implode.
And, the overall ecosystem of creators – especially future first time creators - will suffer from further erosion of trust.
What Went Wrong?
According to the creators:
…even though the funding goal has been met–it does not meet the realistic costs of the project. Bluntly speaking, we did not have the confidence to showcase the real goal of ~1.5 million euros (which would be around 10k backers) in a crowdfunding world where “Funded in XY minutes!” is a regular highlight.
In short, they needed to raise 15x their funding goal, and 5x their funding level to break even.
It’s worth noting that this was Boardcubator’s first game, and first crowdfunding campaign [Update: I was very wrong on this point, this was neither Boardcubator’s first game or campaign.]
They were clearly in a bit over their head in terms of the ambition and scope of the project. And, setting a funding goal 15x below what they actually needed to raise was egregious, even ignoring the ethics of their decision.
I am sure the creators are regretting their decisions, and I don’t want to pile on. They clearly made a mistake, and although their decision does impact people. It is a much better outcome than funding, accepting funds, and failing to fulfill.
I believe they made a mistake with their low goal, that they miscalculated the demand for their game and their ability to market it. But, they weren’t malicious. And, at the end of the day they chose to cancel the campaign and do as right as they could by backers given the situation that they backed themselves into.
But, I do think that the specifics of the campaign aside – there are some interesting ideas to think through and talk about.
Does Fast Funding Matter?
Yes. It can be hard to break out correlation from causation, but campaigns that fund faster do better. From a psychological perspective – people want to support projects that others are supporting as well.
Classic u-shaped funding curve
But, it’s more than that. The power of momentum is very real when it comes to crowdfunding campaigns. Native algorithms on the platforms put well performing campaigns in front of more people, and well performing campaigns get more external eyes on them through crowdfunding round ups, and discussion on forums.
My gut is that momentum is less important on Gamefound versus Kickstarter, as they have less of a native audience. That’s the primary reason why we (as a small creator) are hesitant to give Gamefound a try.
Kickstarter has a very robust audience and powerful algorithm to help backers find projects that they love.
50% of our Nut Hunt backers found us through Kickstarter.
We don’t have detailed insight into how Kickstarter’s algorithm works, but from what we can tell the primary drivers of page placement (and the coveted first page placement) are:
Dollars funded & funding velocity
Backer count & backer count velocity
Interaction & comments
It’s unclear to what extent % funded matters besides being a correlate to overall funding and funding velocity. But it is clear that being fully funded does matter, as many people don’t look at or back unfunded projects.
And, there does seem to be a correlation between reasonably fast funding and a “projects we love badge”.
Whether funded in 10 minutes is substantially different than a higher dollar goal funded in 6 hours, is hard to say.
There are also some less tangible benefits to momentum.
It’s easier to run a successful campaign and energize your base around hitting stretch goals, rather than fighting to reach a funding goal. You also earn more flexibility with your organic marketing as people are much more likely to read a post from a successful creator at 250% funding versus an unsuccessful creator – even if the dollar amounts raised are equivalent.
This isn’t to excuse Boardcubator’s mistake. It’s to provide context. I understand their motivation, even though I disagree with their choices.
Have a Plan to Bridge the Gap
When you set a funding goal, you are making a promise to your community that if you hit that goal you will deliver them that project. It doesn’t matter whether fast funding looks better, or how powerful momentum is – the ethics are clear, creators need a plan to deliver their games at their funding goals.
Even when that means losing money.
And, this isn’t uncommon. We spent north of $40k bringing Nut Hunt to market, and if the Kickstarter were the extent of all sales ever, then we would lose money on it. But, for us Kickstarters are our way of funding a print run. So, we made a marginal profit on each unit sold through the Kickstarter, but the Kickstarter didn’t recoup our initial investment.
We hope to recoup that investment through ongoing sales and understand that it takes time to build a business and each successful campaign will be a boon to our future projects.
We’re able to take this stance because we have a long-term view of the business and have capitalized it appropriately.
It is unfortunate that this philosophy implies a further competitive advantage to established and well capitalized creators, but if a creator doesn’t have the capital or wherewithal to make a project happen at a given funding level, then that shouldn’t be their funding level.
It’s the choice that does right by backers, and it’s also what makes sense as a business owner.
Failing to fund is a setback, funding and cancelling is business ending.
I think that this is what is most astounding to me around creators setting un-workably low funding goals. It’s such a massive gamble with their reputation and the future of their business. Sure, it makes this one project more likely to get off the ground, or at least get off the ground sooner. But, at a very high potential cost.
Fully Developed
As I’ve delved deeper into crowdfunding, it’s become pretty clear that creators are bringing projects to market with a broad range of development still to be completed, that backers generally don’t have a good grasp on where games are in their development, and how that translates into execution risk.
When we bring a game to Kickstarter it is fully developed, we’ve already contracted, taken delivery of and implemented illustration, our graphic design is done, and we’ve already sent print files to our manufacturer.
We may need to make changes – for Nut Hunt we re-did the box insert – and we’ll implement any unanticipated stretch goals. But, there is a substantive difference between these kinds of tweaks around the edges and having a substantial amount of development work and investment left.
Our Kickstarters are designed so that the only use of proceeds is for manufacture and fulfillment. We’ve already paid our illustrators and graphic designers.
The reason a campaign like Kingdom Come: Deliverance gets cancelled is because they have substantively more investment to make to develop the game – in this specific case mostly to develop the companion app.
There is nothing wrong with using funds to further develop a game. Maybe it’s to write more scenarios, or commission more illustrations, or make an app. That’s a big part of what Kickstarter is for – to make projects possible.
But, I think it is an important and often overlooked differentiator. Funding goals can be lower and realistic if the publisher’s upfront investment developed the game to a place where it is ready for manufacture.
Conversely a publisher either needs a big war chest, or funding goals need to be higher for games with a substantial scope of development work to do. Not to mention execution risk.
What Can Creators Do?
Kickstarter is a shared ecosystem. Bad behavior, failed campaigns, and surprises in things like shipping cost, erode trust in the platform and platform creators as a whole.
Building trust is hard and takes time. As a now established Kickstarter publisher we get to build trust through executing on our promises. Through delivering our games in a timely manner, through communication, through high quality product, and consistency.
And, we plan to.
I don’t envy future first time creators. Every failed campaign and broken promise makes things just a little harder. But, the good news is that people will still take a chance on you.
Heck, 1,232 people took a chance on us in our first campaign. So, maybe it’s about showing up, and doing the work, and accepting that maybe these things take time to build.
Pledges & Broken Promises
Last week Jamey Stegmaier wrote an article highlighting another publisher - Doomsday Robot’s - crowdfunding pledge:
In principle I agree with the sentiments and understand the frustration Doomsday Robots has on behalf of backers and directed towards creators who have run campaigns with issues.
I think there are a few line items in their pledge that are specific to how they run their business, but don’t make sense for other publishers. For instance:
“We commit to include backers as partners in the process of creation…” implies that there is meaningful development work to complete after a campaign ends. Our approach is different.
“We will provide monthly financial reports…” feels like massive overkill, and not particularly productive.
Nit picks aside, a pledge like this is just a statement of values. Just like we have a mission statement, it’s good to communicate those values. Even if not a lot of people will read them, they are a good anchor and reminder as to what is important.
For crowdfunding specifically our stance comes down to something much simpler than Doomsday Robot’s pledge.
We strive to do right by our backers.
Or maybe more aptly, we strive to do right by our community.
At the end of the day though, values, mission statements, and pledges are just words. They’re a promise.
Setting a funding goal is also a promise.
What matters is how we execute on those promises. It’s how we block and tackle on day-to-day basis. It’s how we treat our community.
I applaud Doomsday Robots. They’ve run a couple of campaigns, and as far as I can tell have done right by their community. It’s encouraging seeing other creators take a stance. It’s encouraging to be reminded that the vast majority of creators are doing right by their backers.
What publishers have gone above and beyond in putting backers first?
