Funding The Dream On Kickstarter

Your Kickstarter board game needs to be playtested. There's no better place to play test than an Unpub or Protospiel. But you can't just show up, sit down and expect to be successful. You have to prepare yourself to attend, prepare yourself to know what you want to learn. With this proper preparation, you will find success. Ed Baraf of Pencil First Games shares key ingredients to successful preparation.

JT Smith believes game convention can be made easy. He has launched a site called Tabletop.Events. The site delivers everything you need to know and do to launch your own game convention.This is important to a lot of our listeners who are discovering the need to launch their own game conventions in their area. Whether you are in San Jose, California or Des Moines, Iowa. Being able to put together a local event can help you build your fan base and find new friends and contacts.JT goes through the details of how Tabletop.events makes this easy. There are approximately 10 game conventions EVERY WEEKEND in the US. This is definitely something that has been needed.

Adam Clark created Kicktraq. Now he has built the premier platform for managing your Kickstarter campaign called Pledgemanager. From the smallest details for international shipping to keeping track of all the bits and pieces of your campaign add-ons.And when the campaign is over, Pledgemanner allows your campaign to become an e-commerce site, allowing those who missed the campaign to still pledge after your Kickstarter campaign has ended.Adam has contributed as much to the Kickstarter community as anyone. Take a listen and enjoy our conversation

Three things are necessary for Kickstarter Success. #1 Building the Audience - James tells us how#2 Professional Artists - You can't get by with amateur#3 Pre-marketing - You must invest time to build up to your campaignJames Hudson knows what he is talking about and identifies clearly those three things that you must do to be successful. Ignore his advice at your peril.

For first-time game designers, publishers, and designers. Curt Covert launched his company years ago and began publishing his own games focused on the "Stab-Your-Buddy" concept. Curt's games have a focused theme that customers have come to expect. Now, after 14 games and years of success, he explains the decision to move to Kickstarter for future growth.

Space Goat Productions has released Evil Dead 2 and Terminator boardgames on Kickstarter. How do you license someone's intellectual property? Space Goat Productions has been doing it a long time and they share some of the tips. They also have a large stable of artists who they use on a multitude of board game projects.

Just because you've had tremendous success on Kickstarter does not mean it is time to quit your day job. Especially if you want to run a board game publishing company.John Coveyou, of Genius Games, has raised $500,000 on Kickstarter, quit his day job, and discovered that cash flow is king and you can quickly get to the brink of financial ruin, even when you do everything right.He shares his story of success as he went from engineer to board game publisher.

Jamey Stegmaier joins me on Funding the Dream to talk about staying in touch with fans and the community without using Kickstarter.He has built a huge following with his generosity for sharing knowledge. Now, Jamey is using additional means to stay in touch with the community and allowing them to provide input and feedback.Jamey and I take your questions and discuss trends as well as partnerships. As always, a great conversation.

James Ernest is launching his 10th Kickstarter campaign. His last project, Tak, raised $1.3 million dollars with more than 12,000 backers."If you aren't famous, find someone who is" - James ErnestJames shares a lot of insight and advice about how to be successful in the boardgame industry. One key piece of advice is to get yourself a solid business plan. And make sure your game is going to sell at least 5,000 copies over two years.James designs games but sells product. Another big piece of advice for launching or running a successful game business. If you're doing a vanity project, make sure you understand what that means.Take a listen. Plus, more than 10 minutes of extra bonus content for Patreon backers.

Devin Thorpe is a new-media journalist and founder of the Your Mark on the World Center, and has established himself as a champion of social good. As a Forbes contributor, with 350 bylines and over one million unique visitors, he has become a recognized name in the social impact arena.He was recently named one of the top 200 Philanthropists & Social Entrepreneurs in 2017.I'm also pleased to call him a good friend and an inspiration to me as he puts his passion into changing the world and leaving a lasting mark.

Hunter Adams is an independent filmmaker with his movie currently available on itunes. It is called Dig Two Graves. A bit of a horror/suspense movie about having to pay a price to bring someone back we have lost.Sounds like an interesting film. Hunter discusses the importance of building your fanbase to launch a film. It is nearly impossible to simply be found in the vast sea of new releases and noise.This sounds very familiar to nearly every Kickstarter project owner who is wondering how they will get backers for their project.Take and listen and go check out Hunter's movie.

Gloomhaven is one of the most success board game projects on Kickstarter. The creator, Isaac Childres, joins me for a second time on the show. The episode was recorded while the campaign was still live on Kickstarter.I ask Isaac if he is even sleeping with the amount of energy and effort his project is requiring as he smashes through millions of dollars of funding and tens of thousands of backers. We also discuss some of the unhappy people out there who may not like what they are seeing.

Thank you for all your support over the years. I wanted to take this opportunity to chat about some changes coming and about something called Participation Inequality and how it can impact your Kickstarter campaign and how you can use it to your advantage. You are doing amazing work. This isn't easy and you are one of the few making it successful. Keep up the good work and join me for a short conversation.

Chris Clemmons is running a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for needed medical assistance. He and I discuss his decision to use the GoFundMe platform and what we can do to help. We also discuss the difficulty of asking for money and its social stigma. Help Chris out on his GoFundMe campaign "Save The GM from his damaged back"

The Circle paints a disturbing picture of the near future and the tracking of personal information. Steve Shillingford, CEO of Anonyme Labs, discusses three things you can do to help protect yourself online.#1 may surprise you. Your mobile number and how it is more precious than your social security number when it comes to protecting yourself. Steve discusses steps to take to change your behavior and to protect yourself. His app, call sudoapp, allows the creation of email and mobile numbers that protect your real numbers. Well worth taking a look at sudoapp (dot) com

Peter Vaughan the Director of Development at Breaking Games. They sponsored Protospiel San Jose and were showing their prototype Rising Tribes, going live on Kickstarter in June. Do you want to design or do you want to publish? It is very hard to do both and as a Kickstarter creator, you really need to determine what you want to do and what you are good at.

Jason Huffman failed on Kickstarter. But rather than be discouraged and give up, he stopped, reset his campaign, learned from the effort, and relaunched to success.His company, Battle Hardened Games, makes war games with really great art. I was a backer of his project, 1750: Britain vs France, and wanted to have him on the show. It is never easy failing in public. But he got back into the project and used that to find success. Jason has also been a great supporter of our Patreon project.

Gloomhaven is crushing it on Kickstarter. But not everyone is happy. Aldo Ghiozzi and I discuss the distribution channel and discounting.Many retailers and distributors have vocalized their frustration with Gloomhaven apparently taking all their customers by having tens of thousands of backers buy the game on Kickstarter.Is this a fair assessment? Aldo and I talk about it.Also, who is going to pay $140 for a game? We discuss the increasing price of so many games and the apparent willingness of gamers to hand over the money.

Brian Henk from Overworld Games talks blind playtesting and how critical it is. We are at Protospiel San Jose and he is watching families sit down and play his game, Barker's Row, without him being able to explain anything or say anything. Talk about a tough job. We talk about making it in the board game industry and the success of his past Kickstarter games.

David Sanhueza launched three Kickstarter campaigns in order to fully fund a single project. First was the artwork, which then rolled into the main project, when then rolled into a campaign for stretch goals. It is an interesting way to break up a funding campaign to fund small portions at a time and build exposure for your project.We are live at Protospiel San Jose chatting about his strategy.