Kickstarter–My £’s Growing the Hobby

Well I’m sure everyone who comes here knows the basic premise of Kickstarter.com. But to be sure,

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative projects.
We believe that:
• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.
Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

Kickstarter FAQ

In essence the public agree to upfront to pay for something, then if enough people promise enough money the Kickstarter is ‘funded’. Money is paid by everyone and (hopefully) the company can then make what they promised. If not enough money is promised then no one pays a thing. There have been some super high profile stories recently about videogames getting funded with massive amounts of support. And a D&D based super geeky stickman comic recently raised $1,254,120 for reprints, (if you don’t read it I highly recommend the Order of the Stick if you are a D&D fan). More appropriate to our little area of the community have been two very different and successful drives.

Mantic achieved an amazing $354,998 to fund their new hardback rulebook and beyond that 15-25 new sculpts and conversions of a load of their older metals to plastic. Whilst everyone expected them to crush their $5,000 goal and they themselves started off with plans a plenty through to $25,000 and even ideas for their first $100,000. What wasn’t expected is how much the hobby community would come together behind Mantic, their ‘final’ stretch goal was beaten by $65,000 and they launched an amazing Celestial Humans range which took off at the end. Mantic threw out ideas and concept sketches and let the backers decide and lead the way things went. It was a great example of company/customer relations and likely has done almost as much as the cash inflow for Mantic’s coming years.
Everyone had high expectations for Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster because of it being put out by CMON who had recently ran the highly successful Zombicide Kickstarter campaign. Sedition Was: BfA went on to reach an staggering $951,254. Run by CMON for Studio McVey this campaign was a masterpiece of Stretch goals adding up so as almost every backer (97%) put in at least $100 to get all of the extras.
The amounts that these projects have pulled in is in itself a clear explanation as to why companies in the hobby are jumping on Kickstarter. Yet at the same time there are a few arguments against Kickstarter; some people feel that firms shouldn’t be going out ‘begging’ for money but instead should create products and put them out for purchase. Others feel that Kickstarter should be reserved for only for the smallest of companies and the likes of CMON or Mantic are too large a concern to deserve this funding method. Now I’m not one to find problems or reasons to complain, so I find it hard to see the problem with any company using Kickstarter, it’s a great way of getting products directly to those who want it and of funding projects that have already been through a level of consumer research.
The only downside I really see to Kickstarter is the FLGS’ (Friendly Local Gaming Stores) not getting to sell the products, although compared to the amount of internet sales through normal lines I can’t imagine its a big effect on miniature sales, slightly more for boardgames I suppose.
OK the other downside has to be the waiting, following is a list of Kickstarts that I have backed recently, my levels of patience are depleting as I wait.

• Order of the Sitck (Comics)
• Chicken Ceaser (Boardgame)
• Wasteland 2 (Videogame)
• Blackwater Gulch – Gangfights in the Old West (Skirmish miniatures game)
• Kings of War (Army scale miniature games)
• Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster (Boardgame+)
• Run out the Guns! (Model ships)

So as you can see I’m a fan of Kickstarter. I’d love to hear what other people have backed on Kickstarter or on the British Indiegogo. What are peoples thoughts on crowd funding? And scariest of all… are their any campaigns going right now I should know about? Whilst I was writing this, I was contacted by Ballistic Skill Four painting studio about their Indiegogo campaign "Last Days of Angels", what do you think about that idea, and about funding it in such a way?
Finally I recommend you listen to the last few minutes (Timestamp 4:43:41) of The D6 Generation episode 108, Nicole has summed it up quite well.