[BurritoAlPastor]

Board games are uniquely well-adapted to the crowdfunding format because the game design can be 100% complete and playtested before any art or manufacturing has even started. (Of course, you need some art to sell the Kickstarter.) The upfront capital for developing a board game is about $40 at the art store.

In the extreme case, some campaigns link to a print-and-play version of the game so you can “try before you buy”. Try to do that with a video game!

[Garlef]

There actually are similar things for video games: Steam Greenlight / Early Access for example.

Also: Even a long time ago, both Quake and Quake 3 Arena had free versions out in the open before their relase.

[Xelbair]

The thing is that Early Access has a very(rightfully so) bad reputation - because board game design needs to be finished prior to campaign, whereas you can drop empty game in early access, promise quite a lot.. and then abandon the project.

[raxxorrax]

I hear it has a bad reputation, but it isn't how I understand early access. I invested in a lot of early access stuff and some projects never saw release. That is the risk I took, because without this mechanism of giving people some financial advance, we wouldn't see as many games.

To me, people expecting too much from these investments seem to not have not understood the deal. It is small scale venture capital with no guarantees.

Creating art for such endeavors is not trivial and a lot of work. In case of computer games often more work than the coding. So it would have to be a pretty great idea if you can do with minimal effort in that department.

[indigochill]

> It is small scale venture capital with no guarantees.

Kickstarter at least is not this, because if it was VC then backers would be buying equity, not product (often at close-to-retail price).

Fig is closer, since it is set up so that you can purchase shares in future revenue of the project (or just buy the product like Kickstarter), but IIRC you still don't get an ownership share, technically (I haven't looked into it closely since it's not my thing, so could be mistaken).

IMO either one is actually preferably for creators to a VC model since they get to maintain full ownership and their only (semi-) obligation is to deliver the product people pre-paid for.

Imagine if you could fund a tech startup by pre-selling product to customers instead of slicing up ownership of your company before it's even off the ground.

[hangsi]

> Imagine if you could fund a tech startup by pre-selling product to customers instead of slicing up ownership of your company before it's even off the ground.

Isn't that (not quite literally) the story of early SpaceX? Admittedly a pretty unusual case, but they did get large long term contracts to fund their development.

[m4rtink]

Yeah - SpaceX got their first NASA contract after their first successful Falcon 1 flight, with 3 failures before that. The Falcon 9 needed for that NASA contract for ISS resuply was still on the drawing board back then.

[_curious_]

"Imagine if you could fund a tech startup by pre-selling product to customers"

I know of a couple tech ventures that did exactly this...they (1) had established a minimum viable audience and then (2) queried their people for what they wanted and how much they would pay for it, and (3) developed technology that delivered above and beyond functionality at (4) less cost than people expected which resulted in (5) a lot of pre-orders that (6) they delivered on which (7) that was the genesis of how they raised $VC to scale rather quickly.

[detaro]

And you somehow can't run a crowdfunding campaign for a game that isn't actually worked out and playtested?

It's the same thing: look at what's already there, pay if you think that's good.

[irrational]

I’ve backed a lot of board games. I would never back one that has not been throughly play tested, has the rule book basically finished (at least the text if not the images and graphic design), has a play through video, and ideally has some reviews of prototype versions from trusted reviewers.

[detaro]

And it's a good idea to apply similar ideas to early access computer games, which was my point. People will try sell you something that doesn't meet that bar, but you don't have to let them.

[PeterisP]

The point is that the business is very different - an almost-ready board game has spent just 5-10% of its total budget because all the big money is needed for manufacturing the production run; so an almost-ready board game can need crowdfunding to make it.

However, an almost ready computer game has almost all of the effort (and money) already invested. If it's 90% ready, then it needs some 10% extra money and some beta testing, so it can go on an "early access" sale but does not need crowdfunding to get released.

And if it is at a stage where it still needs 90% of the total budget and wants to gather it from crowdfunding, then you can't apply the same ideas as from a boardgame, because a computer game can't be ready for play until much (or most) of the work and money is already spent, like you can with boardgames.

[moksly]

You likely can’t run a successful campaign for a non finished/play tested board game, no. There is too much competition for backers to take the risk.

It doesn’t stop people from trying, but there is a reason so many project never get funded.

[angled]

Bring back shareware?

[mnky9800n]

When you can download anything of any size what's shareable about shareware? I feel like the social aspect of sharing it was as motivating as the freeness of it.