Compared to many other crowdfunding sectors, the board game industry has been a relatively safe bet over the past decade. In stark contrast to what happened to tech and video game backers, board game players have often put down their money and received new, pristine cardboard and plastic boxes a few years later. This approach has resulted in some of the best board games of the past decade and has fundamentally improved the industry by increasing production values and broadening the scope of creativity. It’s been such a successful venture that some of the biggest companies in the industry have come out of Kickstarter, such as CMON Games (Zombicide, Marvel United), Stonemaier Games (Wingspan, Scythe), and Awaken Realms (Nemesis, Tainted Grail).
But recently I feel like that trend has changed. This once exciting way of producing games has changed a bit and the dice have become craps. Projects have become less attractive to consumers, with increased risks, higher costs and promised exclusive content that ultimately isn’t really exclusive.
The biggest culprit for this downturn is the economic impact of the pandemic on publishers. Supply chain issues and rising material costs have put enormous pressure on a sector that operates on thin margins. The many lockdowns in China and the unstable economy have led to an ever-changing logistical situation, requiring more effort and skill from publishers. In addition to the ever-shrinking profits on the production side, the consumer has been significantly affected.
One look at the shipping costs of a CMON campaign is guaranteed to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I still remember when the company’s original Kickstarter campaign for Zombicide launched back in 2015. Believe it or not, shipping was free. The campaign was a success, raising nearly $800,000 and producing a wealth of exclusive content that would never be available again. Backers went all out, receiving 43 bonus miniatures, 12 bonus cards, a special campaign with linked scenarios, an online scenario editor, six glow-in-the-dark dice, and a t-shirt as bonus material alongside the core game. This model became CMON’s calling card: a veritable truckload of exclusive content that would later become unavailable in stores, resulting in huge profits for both consumers and manufacturers. It trickled down to other companies like Awaken Realms and Monolith, and quickly became the standard for miniature-heavy projects.
That was the past. Now the pledge price for these big games has skyrocketed from Zombicide$100 to $130 for a comparable amount of content in CMON’s recent DCeased campaign. And the shipping costs that were included in that original $100 price are now estimated at $40 for DCeased. While it’s fair to think that a price increase is necessary for these companies to survive and continue producing games, it has resulted in a crowdfunding model with far less benefit to consumers. Even some of the exclusive extras that make up a large portion of the perceived value during fast-moving campaigns eventually become available for purchase in stores. These items now appear all the time in follow-up campaigns, such as the successful Dune: War for Arrakis recently returned to crowdfunding for the second time. This strategy of releasing a second campaign openly emphasizes that these projects function as pre-orders, which further deviates from the idea of crowdfunding as it was originally conceived.
In addition to rising costs and the loosening of exclusivity with follow-on campaigns and retail sales, the risk to clients has also increased dramatically. While there were cases of projects and companies going bankrupt before the pandemic (see: The disaster that befell Atlantic City), a rising tide of high-profile failures has been flooding the news cycle of late. Mythic Games has been the most prominent recent troublemaker, extending its run for the hugely successful Darkest Dungeon And 6: Investment board games. In both cases, backers were forced to pay multiple times for their rewards, putting more money in than they originally committed to the projects and hoping for the best. While both games ultimately lived up to their core ethos, Mythic was forced to sale of various other intellectual property, such as Anastyr And Hell: The Last Saga to competitor CMON to remain solvent. CMON has said it will offer existing backers of those two projects a copy of each game, although the content will be significantly reduced from the original pledge offerings. Both Analysts And Hell: The Last Saga received hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid, and now their backers are left in limbo, hoping to get a small portion of their money back because the original promises will never be fulfilled.
Mythic Games is just one example. Golden Bell Studios scammed thousands of backers by only partially fulfilling his dungeon crawling card game Unbrokenbut the company continues to appear at conventions regularly to sell a retail version of that game. Funforge raised over half a million dollars to reprint its hit Civilization game Monumentalbut over 4,000 backers who supported the project are still waiting four years later, with nothing delivered. In the meantime, a lower profile version of the game has already hit the store for everyone to buy. These are the big failures, but there are dozens of smaller cases scattered around. I personally am waiting for the solitaire expansion for Academy Games’ Agents of Chaos board game, which was promised as part of a crowdfunding project in 2019. These card games were in a warehouse since October 2023 and have only just started shipping to investors.
While many of us have grown weary, I am not suggesting we throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is still a lot of good work being done on crowdfunding platforms. The aforementioned Dune: War for Arrakis is a phenomenal game, thanks in part to a successful $1.33 million campaign. Smaller companies like Leder Games continue to use the framework to produce exceptional work. New indie developers are still popping up every week, though they are sadly overshadowed by the giants that make up the bulk of the space. This is precisely why I argue that the magic is gone. These large companies that are the face of crowdfunding have lost their swagger; the value of their offerings has diminished; and the risks associated with these large campaigns have increased significantly. Before, we all benefited from it, and it led to breakthroughs in game development and marketing. Now, the bottom has fallen out and it is much less attractive.