The trick I think is in the “only via KS, not via retail” - which is simply a monopoly creating artificial scarcity.
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If the product would never be available at all without the Kickstarter funding it, then the scarcity is not artificial. The only relevant alternatives are (if Kickstarter exists) buy it on Kickstarter or (if Kickstarter didn’t exist) don’t buy it at all. And not being able to buy it at all is infinite scarcity.
Probably true for some campaigns, but I’m sceptical whether many established publishers could use that excuse.
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I’m not against Kickstarting niche stuff you wouldn’t be able to pitch to a traditional publisher. It’s one of my favorite things that crowdfunding makes possible. And if retailers don’t have any interest in stocking something, that’s fine. But explicitly refusing to make something available through retail channels isn’t great. And you never know. I don’t think anyone would have been willing to produce Gloomhaven when it was just a gleam in Isaac Childres’ eye, it’s just such a monster of a production and in theory so specialized in what it’s trying to do. But it turns out it’s set the boardgaming world on fire and been a huge commercial success. And that’s something that could always happen with something that was expected to be niche, even if it doesn’t often.
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Board games don’t grow on trees, there’s no natural scarcity to compare to. That may sound facetious, but I’m genuinely unsure how one can have a monopoly on their own product by virtue of not cutting a deal with a big distributor to get it to various game shops.
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The monopoly is intrinsic: you can’t substitute a copy of Gloomhaven for a copy of Munchkin. But the normal way of doing business is to sell to everyone by all available channels.
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I think this is just Queen games trying to up their kickstarter game at which they are–by all reports–quite bad. They are playing to the FOMO with which the boardgame market is saturated… and it seems to fit their most recent business style of not keeping games around (which is rather out of character for a big-name German publisher)
edit: I’d be absolutely interested in the city games and I love collecting as much as gaming it seems, but this whole kickstarter of theirs puts me off so much …
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Speaking from both sides- as a new publisher it’s incredibly difficult to get into distribution. Speaking to fulfillment centres and retailers, the indication is that if you’re Kickstarter isn’t mega successful (over 2000 copies) then distributors won’t touch it. It’s still possible to get into retail if you can approach local shops with ‘sale or return’ deals, but generally you’ll be selling from your webstore and at conventions. As a result, and being small, it generally doesn’t make sense to print a huge excess of copies to sell. I’ve read plenty of people who’ve published a game through Kickstarter, printed 1000 copies when selling ~300, and now have 700 copies sitting in their garage. Generally, we would love to get our game into distribution.
In addition to that, most retailers don’t like a game which has been discounted heavily on Kickstarter. But most Kickstarters need to offset shipping and risk by offering a discount, especially as even with a discount they will still be making more money than selling to retailers, and a lot more then entering distribution. When they refer to MSRP it’s generally how much they’ll be selling it online, or how much retailer pledges will be charging for it.
So, for small independent publishers, Kickstarter exclusive is not just fair, but almost expected- especially given the sheer quantity of games on there, no shop could stock them all.
HOWEVER
Queen games doing Kickstarter exclusive is bullshit. I mean, I don’t really understand why the big publishers don’t have their own storefront for preorders, like GMT.
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They do, for example Spielworxx and Feuerland just do pre-orders on their pages even with the goal of actually pre-funding the game (f.e. both Gloomhaven and Tapestry translations were 1 year preorders). Also there is a boardgame specific “kickstarter like” thing for smaller German publishers at spiele-schmiede through which I’ve backed the German translation of Brass: Birmingham.
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I’m really sympathetic to publishers using Kickstarter because distribution is hard. I also totally get the “This only gets made if we can guarantee funding first” model, and I like that KS has rejuvinated the boardgame industry.
On the other hand, if I’m helping a publisher create a thing I haven’t seen, or there’s only been a prototype review or materials that may not be the end product, I want a big discount. A huge discount. It needs to be “I’m taking this risk and waiting a year for the product so I pay a fee which is excitingly much less than I’d pay for a similar game in the shops”.
I get Gloomhaven needing to be at £100+, it literally costs that much to make. But I despair at £60 games (which should really be £40 games) going for £60 on KS. And publishers saying “Back it on KS at full price because this is the only place you can ever get it” as a tool to drive the price up when that doesn’t have to be the case just sucks.
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I think the place I go “no thanks” is when you see a big-ish publisher like Queen Do a Kickstarter for a roll and write based on a successful game (Copenhagen)
They’re taking the piss a bit at that point especially if the game is standard pad and paper and looks a poorly refined game.
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Kickstarter is just advertisement & hype generation for the big publishers. If you’ve ever been in one of “those” campaigns f.e. anything by CMON you know they use KS to rise high on the hypemeter on BGG. Of all the big German publishers the only one I regularly see pop up on KS is Queen though.
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In defence of CMON they mainly use it for their minis games. They didn’t with Lorenzo or Kreus or Modern Art and so on. I think it’s understandable with the risk in the mould costs for large minis games in some ways.
I’ve no doubt the hype from KS helps CMON hugely, but oddly I think they’re not particularly egregious here. I think there’s an interview out there with Eric Lang discussing why they can’t do the big minis games without KS. Irritatingly it was a few years ago so can’t remember which podcast.
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I doubt Gloomhaven costs over 100 pounds to make - it was $80 for the minis version on the first Kickstarter and $64 for the standee version I got. Now, obviously that was too low a price for what they were doing but I don’t think Isaac lost money on that printing, just probably didn’t make much. The reprint Kickstarter brought the KS price over $100 so that was probably to have some profit margin. And then retail tacks on another $30ish over that (at MSRP, obviously when stock’s been an issue there’s been scalpers).
It remains the only Kickstarter where I ever saved money off box price compared to online retail. What I think is much more enticing (and easier to work for publishers) is having addon content that’s free for Kickstarter backers and sold separately otherwise.
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I think one problem that has crept into Kickstarter projects is the increasing factor of fulfillment and subsidized shipping. I’ve seen creators try to pull back the curtain in Reddit posts and discuss that Quartermaster Logistics and its ilk are likely just as expensive as retail distribution - meaning the margin that creators could safely discount (the ~40% of MSRP/RRP that normally is allocated to the distribution/retail chain) is being used to pay for worldwide fulfillment services (and that’s not including the cost of actually shipping to the fulfillment centers and postage to individual backers; if they subsidize shipping, they’re on the hook for both those things, to some degree, as well).
Yes, a small creator doing their own fulfillment out of their garage seems so foreign now – many people wouldn’t back a project that wasn’t being professionally handled at the fulfillment stage.
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Crumbs, I saw the rrp in the UK is £140, I figured it wasn’t cheeky to charge £100 at KS. But it sounds like even that was inflated!
Haha, my first Kickstarter was literally fulfilled from my garage (still subsidised shipping though). But anything bigger than a large letter can’t be shipped overseas for anything approaching reasonable now, so for Die of the Dead we’re using fulfillment centres. Plus EU friendly shipping means you have to be in the EU ( 
) to ship it, or expect backers to pay the import fees and taxes when picking it up. (and it is expensive, especially if the game is cheap. Most think of shipping as a percentage of the game’s cost).
Although saying this, 40% is a small margin for distribution and retail. I’d put it closer to 80%.
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OMG I have Die of the Dead’s start date saved in my calendar after seeing the Chits n Giggles preview! Very excited for it.
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I don’t see anything remotely concerning in games–which tend to have very small print-runs–distributing through a subset of available channels. Not least because sporadic availability at a random subset of game stores across various countries at the whim of a large distributor isn’t actually more like “selling to everyone by all available channels” than more direct online sales through Kickstarter or similar.
Speaking of monopolies on one’s own creative work in the context of not selling that work at local retail seems rather off-target. The extent that we can say it is literally a monopoly doesn’t actually change when we broaden distribution. There’s still only one source of supply for Gloomhaven. It’s a tautology. Monopoly isn’t a useful concept at the level of individual products and works.
P.S. I feel like this sort of discussion has a tendency to push “anti-consumer” more towards the territory of “anti-me-personally” which I find a bit frustrating. Whether it’s one’s self or one’s empathy with one’s hypothetical, not being able to buy Gloomhaven isn’t anti-consumer.
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I haven’t seen/heard the interview, but I’ve heard it cited before. Makes a lot of sense, given what I’ve heard a single mold can cost.
I know some are really bothered by the way CMON run some of their campaigns (not all of them are to the level of Marvel United, Zombicide, etc), but given their overall success you can’t really blame them.
I also think their core pledges tend to be a solid value if you’re genuinely interested, it just starts to go down the more expansions you add in
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