Kickstarter is a very strange beast. People use it to help fund passions they have. Companies use it as a medium to measure demand for potentially risky endeavors. Some organizations even use it to promise the future and most of them even follow through! About a year ago I got deep into the Kickstarter. I kicked hundreds of dollars worth of board games. Recently I started to get some of the fulfillment of these campaigns and today I would like to talk about the various experiences I have had on Kickstarter.
One of the more interesting experiences I have had was not really paying attention to what I was buying. This first happened with a game called Chaosmos. This game a purely a hype train buy for me. I saw a few of the reviewers and bloggers talking about an jumped on. Luckily this game was great. But it wasn’t the last time I did it. I also did this with Conquest of Spereos, March of the Ants, and various others. So far I have yet to be disappointed but there is always a chance!
Another interesting predicament I got my self in was what I call The Edition Rush. This happened with the Shadowrift expansion Shadowrift Archfiends. As soon as I had received my fulfillment they released a Kickstarter for the second edition of the game. This infuriated me. I cannot believe a company would do something like this to people who paid to support their product. At the very least the original backers should have received the second edition rules and upgraded components for the first Kickstarter. They didn’t even wait for the corpse to cool before they were already starting to pre-order the second edition. This was a no-go for me and I actively talked against the campaign for the second edition.
I have also been lured in by the temping nature of miniatures. This happened with Blood Rage. It was like a stretch goal/add-on infinite loop. Each time more people would pledge, more stretch goals would get unlocked. Each stretch goal didn’t add more content to the base game, but rather added more availability of add-ons. The more add-ons your add the more money you pledge, and the cycle continues. I will say this was money well spent. The game is amazing and all the add ones look and feel fantastic.
The last experience I want to talk about is the Kickstarter I forgot I even kicked. This happens with Through the Ages. When I got this fulfillment I thought I had received someone else’s package. It came with like eight other games. I was thoroughly confused. Then I looked back at my backer page in Kickstarter and saw I had actually kicked this game and it was actually my package. This was me buying a classic. I forgot that I had done it because no one was really talking about it because it wasn’t the new hotness. Still a solid buy but it was confusing having a huge package at your door and not knowing if it was for you.
Kickstarter is a dangerous place. Sometimes people never even get what they paid for. Luckily that doesn’t happen to much in the board game world. My adventures are experience that I think happen to others and it is definitely something to think about when you are spending money on that medium. I hope this was helpful for all you and your wallets! See you next week.
-Kyle.