Kickstarters, Marketing and Diversity

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the UK Tabletop Games Jam hosted by Inside The Box Board Games. Peter Blenkharn and team did a fantastic job, organising a fascinating selection of talks by some really interesting people. So much so that I had to write up as many of the tips as I could to share with you today! There was a lack of actual jam, but the rest of the food supplied was excellent.

In addition to everything highlighted here, there was a panel discussion on board games media featuring myself, Toucan Play That Game, Skip the Rulebook and the Cult of the New podcast… but I was too busy answering questions to take notes so I’ll just direct you to my article on how to contact reviewers for some tips! There was a load of time for playing prototypes too. All in all it was a fantastic event and I’d recommend any UK people keep an eye out for future events (Peter is planning them from what I hear!)

How to build a successful Kickstarter

Nathan Miller, who was part of the team behind the million plus dollar Kickstarter: Kano, a computer anyone could build. He gave a talk on what he felt were the important things they did right with Kano to generate its success. His advice was absolutely fantastic, but when you’re looking at creating board games in a market full of other board games, it might not be as obvious how to apply this advice. I’ll have some comments on this (part mine, part his).

Give your audience a story – Stories are incredibly powerful tools for engaging people. Wrapping up your Kickstarter within a story makes it so much more compelling for people looking into it, and so much more sharable too. The story of Kano is of building your own computer from scratch, yet being simple enough that you don’t need a mountain of technical expertise to do that. The trick to building your story is to step back from the technical details and understand what makes your game special. An incredibly useful step is to:

Identify your core values – Successful businesses don’t sell products, they sell ideas, they sell values. If you can figure out what is driving you to create your product, that element that is the source of your passion, you can (and should) utilise that insight to drive the marketing and message of your Kickstarter. For Kano those focussed around education, technology, and creativity. For a board game ask, what was it that made you choose this theme? Why is your game the way it is? Asking yourself these questions is hugely valuable during the development of the game as much as when planning the Kickstarter!

Find words and phrases that are connected to that core value – These are the words you want to be using throughout your Kickstarter page and your marketing. Short succinct phrases, taglines even, are easily shareable and the right phrases can really catch people’s attention. In Kano’s case they had phrases like “a computer anyone can make”.

From your core values, figure out who you are going to reach out to – who are the major influencers and do they share your core values. Obviously for board games this includes reviewers (targeting reviewers according to their tastes in games was something I brought up in my advice for reaching out to reviewers article recently), but think broader than that. What about other designers? What about other publishers? This is a friendly hobby and we are all on the look out for something cool and novel. If you have a particularly strong theme, look at reaching people who are interested in that.

When you reach out, give them the freedom to decide what to do – many of the people you want to share your project with are busy and get many emails asking them to do this and that for various things. There are two important tips here, 1) keep any communication brief, and 2) leave it open. Don’t ask them to do anything specific, since the knee jerk response is ‘no’. Instead, ask simply for their thoughts on your project. “Would love to hear what you think”. That leaves the ball in their court as to what to do.

If you’ve done a good job of identifying people who share your values and made your values clear on your Kickstarter page, chances are they’ll chose to do something! With Nathan’s project, they contacted Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, who backed their project. Just having him do that provided a great amount of publicity for the project. You’re probably not going to get Steve Wozniak to back your game, but be willing to think outside the board game box to draw in an audience.

Going through this process is not quick. But it is incredibly valuable!

Engaging your audience

Lewis Shaw, designer and publisher of Downsize, gave a talk on how to communicate with your audience. An element of running a Kickstarter that creators rapidly learn is very important!

A face is more appealing than a company logo – A lesson I could probably benefit from learning! People are much more friendly towards another person, but my goodness can we be ruthless with a company! After all, a company doesn’t have feelings right? So when you run your social media and Kickstarter campaigns using a company logo, people see you as a company. Which means when things inevitably go wrong, you’re going to get a whole lot less sympathy! Using a more personal image, you come across as a person. People address you as another person, not a company. Plus, I know I’d feel a lot more likely to support a fellow person rather than a company on Kickstarter.

Be honest – It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong, or when your plans aren’t quite running to what you’ve promised. But being open is absolutely the best policy when you’re running a Kickstarter! Delays and problems are par-the-course with Kickstarters and most backers know this. You won’t get nearly as much trouble from them for telling them when issues arise (preferably coupled with how you’re resolving said issues) as you will for pretending nothing’s wrong until you can’t hide it anymore. When communicating with backers just think, how would you like to be spoken to?

Know when to adjust your tone – It’s great to get a friendly enthusiastic Kickstarter update… when things are going well. When delays and other issues come up, people generally want reassuring that you’ve got stuff under control! That means acting, and writing, professionally. And being honest as above!

People love to give their opinions – A great marketing tip this one! We are all very good at tuning out adverts when we go through our social media feeds so you need to be a bit smarter with your marketing. Asking for opinions on something related to your project, like card layout or art work even down to iconography can be a great way to drive engagement and get valuable feedback on your project.

Start small – Some more general advice for wannabe publishers here! Don’t rush into Kickstarter with a $200 project full of miniatures and add-ons and craziness. You’re going to learn a lot during your first Kickstarter and things will go wrong. The fewer sources of error you have, the smoother it’s all going to be. Small projects are also easier for people to take a risk on (and if you’re a first time creator you are a risk!) LINK and with a small project you’ll have much less overhead on art and other bits and pieces, giving you a much smaller funding target and a greater chance of success. Consider saving those big dreams for when you’re a little more established.

Kickstarter Distribution

Nigel Matthews from Games Quest (a UK distributor) gave a fairly detailed talk on some of the things to consider with Kickstarter distribution, and how Games Quest helps resolve those issues.

Get the shipping right – Don’t leave figuring out the details of shipping until after your Kickstarter. Shipping is possibly the most challenging and most important part to get right out of the whole process! Having a good plan in place ahead of time will not only make life easier for you, it will most likely bring in more backers since having a good shipping plan most likely means the shipping costs for your backers will be less. In particular, backers are looking for friendly EU, Canada and Australian shipping badges.

Don’t forget spares – Things are going to get lost or damaged and you’ll need to make sure you have a good supply of spares to replace those parts and whole games.

Publisher (you!) sells at 40% of rrp to distribution – If you’re using distributors rather than selling to stores direct then these are the margins you need to expect (and plan for!). Don’t let this be a shock to you later!

Prof Esther MacCallum-Stewart giving a great talk on representation in games #UKTabletopJam (highlighting @PlaidHatGames‘ Ashes) pic.twitter.com/DAMW7f3DQv

— Creaking Shelves (@creakingshelf) 24 September 2016

Representation and diversity

Professor Esther MacCallum-Stewart from the University of Staffordshire gave a great talk on representation and diversity, showing lots of examples of how to, and how not to, achieve good representation in your game. This is such an important topic that every reminder of it we can get is extremely valuable.

Sexy doesn’t have to mean naked – There’s nothing wrong with having attractive characters in your game, but people can still look attractive with clothes on! Let’s be honest, just turning on the sex appeal with underdressed females is the cheapest and worst way of selling your product. Aspire to be better.

Avoid lazy stereotypes – this is a great tip just for generating interest in your game. Everyone knows about the half-naked barbarian. When you mix with expectations people will sit up and take notice: it’s what humans do!

Great examples – Some games Esther highlighted as doing representation especially well were Pandemic, Ashes: Rise of the Pheonixborn and Dead of Winter (old drunk Santa Claus is a great example of twisting the “old wise person” stereotype!). What are your favourite examples?

Diversity goes beyond gender – What races feature amongst your characters? What ages? Body types/shapes? What sexualities? And don’t just use the time period as an excuse to not include certain races.

Accessibility is hugely important too – is your game colour blind friendly? If it’s meant to be a family game, can an 8 year old set up the game? Thinking about the people who might be using your product will help you sell more copies!

Making the Most of Conventions

Tony Hyam from the UK Games Expo team gave a fantastic (and incredibly) funny talk on how to get the most from conventions. Naturally this was focussed around the UK Games Expo, but much of the advice is transferable to other conventions too!

Identify what you want to achieve – It’s easy to think this is obvious or that you don’t need to figure this out but this is probably the most important thing to do when you’re planning your visit to a convention. Are you just looking to increase your visibility, sell games, generate momentum for an upcoming/on going Kickstarter, build relationships with customers, set up a distribution deal? All of these come with different criteria for success and different approaches to take at the convention. Get planning on what is most important to you.

Kerb appeal – Nothing is going to go well if you don’t put the effort into your stand. Your stand is quite literally what is going to attract attention to your product and get the punters coming over to chat with you. It is so easy to get this right, and so easy to get it wrong. Tony’s top (simple) tip: don’t put a f***ing table across the front of your booth and sit behind it. I think those were his words. Make your booth open and inviting! Set up stock and tables at the back so that people will wander in and talk to you. There is nothing more off putting as an attendee than some awkward lucking guy sat quietly behind a table looking more and more desperate as the convention goes on. Get some banners, add some colour to your stand. Show that you are a company with some personality! People buy off people.

Convention prep starts 6 months before – The amount of time the convention organisers have to help you exponentially decays as things get closer to the convention. Right now, the UK Games Expo team have all the time in the world to answer your questions and help you out (the Expo is in June). Two weeks before and you’ve got no hope!

Read the exhibitor pack – This might be a UK Games Expo only thing, but they produce an exhibitor pack making highlighting all the extra opportunities you have for getting your product out in front of people before they even come close to your stand. You can donate a game to the board game library, sign up to the playtest zone, there are prizes for best games in various categories, the Wyvern’s lair, adverts in the programme (that are cheap!), the press preview. Whatever convention you are planning on attending, keep your eyes open for easy opportunities to reach the visitors!

 

Further reading

For anything Kickstarter related I naturally have to point you towards the blogs of Mr Stegmaier and Mr Mathe.

An article with a lot to think about concerning representation and how we as board gamers all act, by Rachel Dobbs: http://rachel.we-are-low-profile.com/blog/the-average-uk-boardgamer/

A Board Game Quest article on how to set up your Kickstarter for success:  http://www.boardgamequest.com/tips-for-running-kickstarter-campaign/

My own tips on what backers should be looking for in a good Kickstarter project page: How to Identify Good Kickstarters