Kickstarter Musings #1

So in the past couple of days, there have been 2 events that have made me really think about stretch goals that are offered on Kickstarter for board/card games.

The first event was the start of the TMG project for Scoville.  All of the stretch goals offered are not Kickstarter exclusive.  All of the goals add more to gameplay (5/6 players, additional cards).  The backer price is 67% of MSRP.

The second event was an update for the Euphoria project from Jamey Stegmaier concerning amending the Kickstarter exclusive for realistic resources for the game.  For those that are not aware, the retail version of Euphoria comes with wooden tokens to represent gold, stone, and clay.  For the backers, those resources are replaced with gold painted metal bars, painted glass beads, and resin bricks.

Kickstarter Exclusives
After receiving Jamey's update and doing some hard thinking, I have come to the following conclusion:
Exclusive Kickstarter backer rewards should be avoided at all costs!

Now some people will probably think "Then why should I ever back anything on Kickstarter?".   There are many reasons to back a project.  The biggest reason being that there need to be enough backers so that the game is actually produced!  Even though I said that there should not be exclusive rewards, there are still things that projects can do:

1) Provide additional "Promo" content
There are many projects that provide additional game content as backer rewards.  Some of these projects, though, also provide a means to purchase this content later (usually through BoardGameGeek).  My opinion is that this does not constitute an exclusive reward since I will have the ability to purchase it at a later time.

2) Provide the game at a decent discount
As stated above, the backer price for Scoville is 67% of MSRP.  Most online sites will sell the game for around the same price point.  To me, this is enough to make me back the project since shipping is generally included in the backer cost (provided the game ships from the same country).  Also combined with this is that backers generally receive the game first, with distributors receiving it a couple weeks later.

Just before starting this post, I received another update from Jamey stating that Stonemaier Games is removing all Kickstarter Exclusives from future projects.  I applaud Jamey and Alan in this decision, and look forward to their upcoming project Tuscany: Expand the World of Viticulture!

Gameplay Content Stretch Goals
Another topic I would like to weigh in on is the use of stretch goals to provide additional content.  I am not a fan of this tactic.  I would prefer to play the full game instead of a mostly complete game.  If developers have playtested something and thought it was good enough to keep, they should include it by default.  I realize that in some cases, not having a few extra cards does not really affect the quality of the game, but there have been some projects that were adding items to the game board if a stretch goal was met

I realize that if the project included all the gameplay content by default, the starting price would have to be higher.  I am perfectly okay with that, and will gladly pay the difference.  What the project could do instead, although I realize that Kickstarter makes it more difficult to do this, would be to have stretch goals that decrease the cost for each backer, since the burden of producing the full content of the game has been covered by enough backers.  Again, I realize that this is impossible, but I find it really annoying when I keep hoping 3 more people back the project so that my copy of the game will include those 10 extra cards.

Hopefully anyone that reads this now understands my view.  These are strictly my opinions, and I welcome any debate.

New Game Design - Taking a Break from Playtesting

So it's been 2 months since the last playtest of my game.  I am not worried about it, though, since there have been a lot of new games (Kickstarter and Christmas gifts) to play.  Recently, I have had a couple new ideas for my game that will also deal with a couple issues that I had.

The biggest issue I've had so far is the amount of space each player would need.  I have been trying to figure our how to reduce the footprint required by all players.  Then it hit me, overlap the cards.  Given the layout of some old west towns, the majority of buildings could be on one main road.  By setting up the player boards to have a single, main road, I could have the players overlap the cards, thus reducing the footprint.

The slight downside to this change, however, is that there would be a lot of blank space on the cards.  So in thinking about it for a little bit, I came up with an idea.  The idea is to give some/most of the cards from the first 2 years a temporary or one-time ability that can only be used while it is visible.  This would add more strategy for players by making them decide when to overlap a specific card, thus losing its temporary ability.

So with these changes in mind, I need to take some time to modify the cards to add temporary/one-time abilities, and generate new player boards.  While I am working on these changes, I also plan to start thinking of some ways to give players unique starting resources/abilities that provides each player a different potential strategy to pursue.

Until next time, keep gaming!