Alderac's COO on how to master board game crowdfunding, and two seasoned designers expose "dark underbelly" of the game design industry
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We’ve something of a crowdfunding advice special this week, with Alderac COO Ryan Dancey leading the line in bringing his decade-plus of experience running Kickstarter campaigns to BoardGameWire’s readers. He talks audience monetisation, fulfillment, why the days of lax tax attitudes are over, and the potential fallacy of influencer marketing. Mayan Curse designer Joe Slack also reveals his secrets of a successful crowdfunding campaign, especially regarding building an audience before you hit the go button. Elsewhere, two seasoned board game designers highlight why a professional association is so badly needed as they discuss the “dark underbelly of the game design industry”, and we reveal which game topped the BoardGameGeek new owners rankings for October.
“Influencer impact was judged to be quite high. I think that tide is receding”: Alderac’s veteran COO on how to master board game crowdfunding
Alderac Entertainment Group‘s veteran COO Ryan Dancey has managed more than 20 crowdfunding campaigns during his long career – and is currently overseeing another Kickstarter success with Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave‘s latest offering, Undergrove. In this in-depth guide he picks out every aspect of the crowdfunding process designers and publishers need to nail in order to run a successful campaign.
“We didn’t expect to find this dark underbelly of the game design industry”: Two seasoned board game designers highlight why a professional association is so badly needed
BoardGameWire spoke to a pair of long-time board game designers in the wake of the news that the designers of Wingspan, Space Cadets and Mind MGMT have teamed up to launch a professional organisation to fight on behalf of tabletop game designers.
The pair, who wished to remain anonymous for fears over their future careers, described a horror-show of interactions with publishers around contract law, overwork and unprofessional communication and attitudes – and underscore just how badly something like Tabletop Games Designers Association is needed in the modern tabletop games industry.
“The scope of the problem was far larger than I realized”: How the Tabletop Game Designers Association hopes to give creators a stronger voice
And here’s TTGDA co-founder Geoff Engelstein, who has launched the organisation with Elizabeth Hargrave and Sen Foong-Lim to support independent and publisher-attached designers across areas including contracts, advocacy and professional development. Engelstein told BoardGameWire that the need for TTGDA first came to him when he learned about “how Disney was trying to strong arm famed writer Alan Dean Foster over book royalties”.
“Building an audience is crucial”: Mayan Curse designer Joe Slack reveals his secrets of a successful Kickstarter campaign
Board game designer Joe Slack taps knowledge acquired through his four successful Kickstarters to provide some guidance on running a strong crowdfunding campaign. He talks knowing your numbers, how to spend a marketing budget and why building an audience before launch is key to clearing your targets.
No Rolls Barred scraps Twitch channel after three-month deal expires
No Rolls Barred, a group of board game entertainment video makers with more than 300,000 YouTube subscribers, has scrapped its three month-old Twitch channel after failing to pull enough fans across from its other outlets. Presenter Holly Musgrave announced the news in NRB’s most recent Twitch video, titled Goodbye Twitch, sayingh, “We had a three month contract with Twitch which is now over, for us to have a good go on Twitch to see if we could, you know, move a lot of our youtube audience over.”
Other news:
The White Castle tops October new owner charts after powerful Essen Spiel showing | BGG Stats
Board gaming’s most beautiful magazine is up for a pair of awards
New York board game cafe workers unionise in landslide election win
Challengers adds to string of awards by taking home Italian Game of the Year prize
And finally - we’re all very amped up about the imminent arrival of the over-punctuated Dune: Imperium - Uprising, but BoardGameGeek user @MaKe1985 has dampened the excitement somewhat with this image of the game’s sandworm models.
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