[aaanotherhnfolk]

Before Kickstarter existed I had read Brian Tinsman's The Game Inventor's Guidebook which explains how to navigate the business side of board game publishing. There's a lot of surprising hurdles a board game must pass, chief among them getting a publisher to agree to print and market your game. Kickstarter helped create an alternative path to publishing but didn't address other key takeaways from the book.

For example: the book talks about the economics of printing game components, warehousing product, and buyer price sensitivity. These all combine to create narrow bands of acceptability for game materials. Kickstarter doesn't change anything about these economics. But now there is no central publisher to steer you away from these predictable issues.

My point then, is that even fancier game components don't make good stretch goals. The high price a game can command on Kickstarter from enthusiasts won't translate to the avg shopper who sees it on a store shelf. And if you print a standard and deluxe edition of your game, you are not effectively capitalizing on Kickstarter preorders to de-risk printing, warehousing, and shipping costs.

It's best to make one game that meets the exacting demands of the Target store shelf if you want to maximize success. Exploding Kittens is probably the best example to date. And that game is not well received by the BoardGameGeek scene (for valid reasons) which highlights the disconnect between the social validation designers crave and market success.