Monitoring the Vast Array of Kickstarter Titles

Stumbled across this on BGG because I have subscribed to Forged In Steel:

www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/35406/kic...day-2nd-november-201

. . . which indicates that 61 projects launched in the last seven days. That's just shy of 9 per day. There are a few game accessories in the 61 but the vast majority are games. The number closing is closer to 5 per day, indicating this was either a very busy week, or a lot of projects drop out prior to completion. Prior blog posts indicate about the same level of absurdity. Regardless, the conservative number for these back-of-the-envelope numbers is about 1500 games introduced per year, with plenty (thank God) failing to fund.

Yeah, it's getting like shovelware of the Wii or the apple app store. You have to sift thru so much garbage to find the apple fritter, or whatever that Seinfeld reference is supposed to be

One of those KS projects mentioned in the link caught my eye…the one with the Traveller RPG theme. I didn't realize that people still played it? I'm so old though that I actually remember playing and owning the original Traveller RPG; and, by playing, I mean we spent hours attempting to create characters or simply reading the materials.

I still play traveller. There are modern editions of it, with Marc releasing his own 5th edition at a rather high price tag through KS last year.

I had a look at the traveller 4x game on ks, mostly due to the ton of ads of BGG. No real detail on how it plays. Also it is two player unless you pay extra for the 3rd and 4th players. You get two factions in the base game and one of them is blank so you make it up yourself. Or atleast that is what i understood from the ks page. Sounds pretty crap.

I played a demo copy of the Traveller 4X game at a con this past summer. Its actually pretty well thought out. I do think price will be the biggest hurdle - IMO the game plays best with 3-4 players. So you're looking at about $110 to get started.

The guy doing it is doing so in conjunction with Lost Battalion ( Sergeants Minis game ) so there shouldn't be too many production issues.

Sagrilarus wrote: Stumbled across this on BGG because I have subscribed to Forged In Steel:

www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/35406/kic...day-2nd-november-201

. . . which indicates that 61 projects launched in the last seven days.

And since Kickstarter's inception there haven't been half that number of board games worth their weight in cardboard.

Having Kickstarted a few things and having some folks in my group who've Kickstarted many many more, I can securely say that, by and large, following Kickstarter is absolutely inessential to this hobby.

Msample wrote: I played a demo copy of the Traveller 4X game at a con this past summer. Its actually pretty well thought out. I do think price will be the biggest hurdle - IMO the game plays best with 3-4 players. So you're looking at about $110 to get started.

The guy doing it is doing so in conjunction with Lost Battalion ( Sergeants Minis game ) so there shouldn't be too many production issues.

Had you previously played the Traveller RPG? For the sake of nostalgia, I'm going to keep an eye on this one. Can you tell us more about how the game plays? The KS promotional materials don't do a good job of telling us how the game plays.

Msample wrote: The guy doing it is doing so in conjunction with Lost Battalion ( Sergeants Minis game ) so there shouldn't be too many production issues.

Sergeants Miniatures Game has had plenty of production issues and missteps. From super soldiers slipping past QA, cards missing from Red Devils, 3D Terrain that shipped missing rules, multiple rules revisions and a thread which resulted in a meltdown because the creator of the game didn't understand how grenades sould work, etc. It's a neat game but it's kludgey.

stoic wrote:
Had you previously played the Traveller RPG? For the sake of nostalgia, I'm going to keep an eye on this one. Can you tell us more about how the game plays? The KS promotional materials don't do a good job of telling us how the game plays.

I never played Traveller, so I can't speak to how it links into that world.

From what I played, each turn you get a hand of cards. Each turn is divided into two halves of three impulses each, where you pre plan three different cards face down. Each impulse you reveal the cards and determine who has the initiative to go first, possibly upsetting what the other player was doing . Each power has different limits on how many of each card type they can play in a turn as well as other abilities. There are about a half dozen card types - move, attack, explore, research, build ships. You settle planets and over time, build up both their government as well as their defenses.

charlest wrote: Sergeants Miniatures Game has had plenty of production issues and missteps. From super soldiers slipping past QA, cards missing from Red Devils, 3D Terrain that shipped missing rules, multiple rules revisions and a thread which resulted in a meltdown because the creator of the game didn't understand how grenades sould work, etc. It's a neat game but it's kludgey.

Fair enough - I haven't followed that game too closely other than playing it once and doing a little research to determine it was a total money pit I'd never justify investing in, esp given the limitations on game play.

I guess what I was getting at was that in this case, he's already parternered with someone, as opposed to some dude whose campaign successfully funds, then realizes "oh shit, I have to find a way to print this now" .

By the way, stumbled into the 2014 Successful Kickstarter Projects list on BGG as well, listing (to date) 432 games in 2014 that a) funded, and b) have an entry in the BGG database. Not sure why they're including that second criterion.

The question that remains is how many of these are truly home-grown efforts and how many are merely posing. The car on the corner of that busy road in your town is most likely being sold by a dealer even though it says For Sale By Owner on it, and many of these may be the same. I get the feeling that ten years from now Kickstarter will mature the same way the eBay has, and virtually everything on it will be from businesses instead of individuals.

Sounds like one great big pile of crap, but then again they keep rereleasing Coup and The Resistance through traditional channels, so what do I know.

S.

I think the second criteria is to use BGG's criteria for "game" and that way things like RPG's are excluded, dice bags, box organization, dice towers, reviewer supporter drives...etc.