The Crowdfunded Board Game Renaissance

An anonymous reader writes: FiveThirtyEight has an article about the surging popularity of new board games, which is being boosted by campaigns on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Since Kickstarter came online in 2009, board games and card games have accrued $196 million in pledges, 93% of which went to successful projects. That's even better than video games have done, at $179 million and 85%. For an industry whose yearly sales don't tend to break $1 billion, those are impressive numbers. The article attempts to explain their success: "Designers show up, explain their game idea on a Web page, often with photos and a video, and ask for pledges. That lets a designer learn, in real time, what the demand for his game is. ... Second, they are democratizing tools. Internet crowdfunding has done the same thing for game designers that blogging platforms did for writers: turned them into publishers."

Comments

Designers ! Publishers

[pr0t0]

Internet crowdfunding has done the same thing for game designers that blogging platforms did for writers: turned them into publishers.

Perhaps, but most of the board game Kickstarters I see are from publishers; and often large ones at that. Most designers will tell you, if you are interested in being a board game designer, do not attempt to publish your game. The amount of work involved is all-consuming as publishers do far more than simple distribution. As a designer board game enthusiast, I listen to a fair amount of podcasts on the subject like The Dice Tower and The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast. Board Games Insider, however, is by the CEOs of Portal Games and Stronghold Games, and is all about the business of board games not the playing of them. It's a really interesting look behind the curtain and I highly recommend it.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[KatchooNJ]

Except this "fad" has had a huge resurgence/boom in recent years, and has truly been going strongly for the past twenty years (in the U.S.), with the introduction of Eurogames (German games) to the American audience. (Settlers of Catan usually gets the credit for being the first big Eurogame to hit it big in the States back in 1995.) Board games were always something Americans played, but all we knew were the likes of games like Monopoly, Risk, Sorry, etc... Those games can be fun for a bit, but they often outlast their welcome before long. The world was simply waiting for designer board games...

Games are much more refined now and there is a ton of variety, so basically anyone can find something they like. Wargames? Sure, we have plenty... Deep strategy games?... yup! Amerithrashy fun with lots of minis and dice?... of course! Card games?... well, duh. Abstract games? Word games? Party games? Yes, yes, and yes! We are currently in the real golden age of boardgaming. There has never been a better time to be a fan of board games. I play in a gaming group weekly and we don't have any people I would label as hipsters... we're basically all geeks/nerds. heh Everyone there is a programmer or works with computers in some way. The hobby seems to attract that type. :-)

Not Just Board & Card Games

[Guy From V]

Ye olde pen and pap'r role playing games are thriving in the crowdfunding environment. White Wolf's classic World of Darkness line, which ended over a decade ago making way for their new revamped (rimshot) 2.0 version has been resurrected (groan), bought and licensed from the clueless buffoons at CCP games who absorbed WW. Under the Onyx Path label many original authors and developers have used Kickstarter campaigns amazingly effectively producing some excellent quality stuff that's at least as good as the original, I think even better in some cases. Projects usually get 100% funding within hours and most of the projects I followed and sent money to capped off at ~ 200-300% or more. Shadowrun, BattleTech and Call of Cthulhu are all doing well in crowdfunded ecosystem plus the massive amount of independent projects and project lines is staggering. Even better, the [total dogshit]:[pretty good] ratio has been steadily rising as well.

for more information

[polar red]

check out BoardGameGeek.com, it contains a list of nearly 80,000 games/components/expansions.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/b...