I’m not surprised that collectible card games are booming, but I am baffled by them. In nearly every way, random booster packs in CCGs do not serve customers as well as the standard tabletop method of including all cards in the game.

Imagine an alternate universe in which Ark Nova–the #2 game on BoardGameGeek, featuring 255 unique cards–was a CCG. Instead of just buying the game and getting those 255 cards, the only way to get those cards is by buying random booster packs (or by turning to the secondary market). All you want is the cheetah card, but you keep opening farm animals that you already have.

If I’m pitching that game to you, it makes no sense, right? When the customer buys the game, just give them the game–how does it serve them to only have some cards and not others via random booster packs?

Yet it’s clear that people like CCGs. That includes me! I’ve played Magic off and on since 1993–I literally hosted a Reality Fracture draft a few weeks ago. I’ve also dabbled in a few other CCGs (enough to make a top 10 earlier this year; most are tabletop, and a few are digital).

So in the list below I look at the reasons why CCGs justify the use of random booster packs as a way to serve customers, accompanied by tabletop counterpoints. I talk about several of these in yesterday’s YouTube video.

• discovery: you can’t just see everything right away (counter: Ark Nova, Wingspan, Earth)
• draft: get a random hand of cards, pick one, pass the rest (counter: 7 Wonders, Sushi Go, Blood Rage)
• collectability: you can spend $5 on a pack of cards that contains a $50 card (counter: non-random games can be collectible and resellable too)
• uniqueness: my deck is different than yours (counter: Root, Scythe, Star Wars Deckbuilding)
• rarity: helps players value cards in a draft and it feels good to open something rare, like a treasure hunt (counter: games like Fliptoons note the quantity of each card on the card itself and Falling’s random shiny VP cards)
• community: encourage people to interact with each other through trading, organized play, and tournaments (counter: Catan, Dice Throne)
• self expression: highlight your creativity via deck construction (counter: any game with multiple paths to victory, plus living card games for deck construction)
• thrill of opening a pack: it’s exciting to reveal the unknown (counter: drawing a hand of cards in deckbuilding games like Clank and opening boxes in legacy games like Charterstone)
• cost: random boosters offer a cheaper buy-in when the customer doesn’t actually need everything (counter: any game with expansions, like Mindbug, Star Realms, Rolling Realms)
• retailer support: CCGs can comprise a significant portion of a local retailer’s revenue stream (counter: there are successful retailers who solely focus on non-CCG games)

In addition to these counterpoints, there are also some straight-up cons for random booster packs: duplicates and waste, scalping/tampering, and gambling issues. For so many newer, smaller CCGs I see announced, they just as easily could have been standard tabletop games with all cards included in a single box.

I also have a few edge-case examples, games that try to offer the feel of random booster packs while avoiding the cons:

• KeyForge: You don’t know what you’re getting when you open a KeyForge deck, so there is a sense of discovery. However, the cards in each deck have a unique back from all other decks, so there’s no rarity or trading of individual cards.
• Gudnak: This dueling card game offers deck construction and strong asymmetry. When you buy a Gudnak set or faction, you get everything. However, the publisher is experimenting with also offering random packs for draft, and those packs feature cards with alternate art.
• Skirm (Vantage spoiler): Each copy of my cooperative open-world game, Vantage, includes a randomized pack of a CCG played by the people of the Vantage planet.

Now, I know there’s one big obvious aspect I haven’t mentioned here: CCGs have made publishers a lot of money. But I don’t care about that. I care about serving customers and bringing joy to tabletops. That’s the only lens I care about for this discussion: Are there any ways that random booster packs serve customers better than their tabletop counterparts?

I’m genuinely asking, because random booster packs resonate with a lot of people. That much is clear. There is probably a viable way to offer them as an optional add-on for some tabletop games that (a) removes the cons of CCGs, (b) doesn’t impede the core, complete experience of the game, and (c) is truly fun for customers. What do you think? Have you seen this?

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Also read:

• The Perils of Selling Scarcity: Some Recent Thoughts on Magic
• The One Ring and Extreme Rarity in Games

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

I’m struggling to fully understand something, and I’d love to hear your perspective.

It’s actually two different sides to the same coin:

1. Is there something inherently magical about crowdfunding for consumers that cannot be captured by a newly revealed, ready-to-ship product?
2. If there is a sacrifice in attracting early-adopter consumers via the ready-to-ship model, is it vastly outweighed by the positive impact on retail customers (the vast majority of our sales)?

Since 2018, our model at Stonemaier Games has been that we invest our time, creativity, and resources into designing, developing, fine-tuning, producing, and freight-shipping new products before we reveal them–along with reviews and playthroughs of the 100% final version–and then we finally ask customers to consider buying them. We then ship to customers (consumers and retailers) over the weeks following the launch, and soon after there is a retail release.

This is done entirely in service to both consumers and retailers. By having such a short gap between reveal, launch, shipping, and release, we cast a strong spotlight on our new products, which increases the chances that the excitement from the reveal will sustain through the retail release and beyond. Customers aren’t left speculating on incomplete games with uncertain timelines (even as an avid backer myself, by the time I receive most crowdfunded games, I can’t remember why I was excited about them in the first place).

I’ve run crowdfunding campaigns (my last was Scythe in 2015), and I admire how creators and platforms have evolved over the years. I learn from them every day. But I have zero interest in returning to crowdfunding, as I truly believe our method better serves customers. We don’t need crowdfunding to build and engage community, gauge demand, improve our products, raise awareness, and allocate quantities to region-friendly fulfillment centers.

However, despite all those pros for ready-to-ship launches, I can’t ignore the data: Many crowdfunded games of a similar weight, aesthetic appeal, polish, quality, price, and region-friendly fulfillment–even from less-established publishers with a much smaller reach than Stonemaier Games–have attracted more early-adopter customers than our launches. Why is that? And does it highlight a problem or an asset?

Here are a few data points from our ready-to-ship new games sold over the last year:

• Braided Skies recently earned around $200,000 from around 4,000 customers.
• Wingspan Pocket earned around $255,000 from around 16,300 customers.
• Duel of Meloch earned around $250,000 from around 7,100 customers.
• Origin Story raised around $92,000 from around 4,200 customers.

Those are perfectly fine numbers, and I’m happy as long as our games bring joy to those who buy them. But relative to our overall reach–55,000 newsletter subscribers, 59,000 YouTube subscribers, a combined 100,000+ followers on Facebook and Instagram, and even 15,000 Champions who get a discount on all webstore purchases–it’s fair to say that quite a few potential early-adopters are missing out on our launches.

What elements of successful crowdfunding campaigns are missing from our ready-to-ship launches?

• focus: My favorite crowdfunding campaigns are those where there are 1 or 2 core products at most, plus a few related add-on options. Conversely, for many recent Stonemaier launches, we often offer a bunch of new accessories and expansions (most unrelated to the core product) that happen to be ready at the same time. We do this so people can consolidate shipping and reach free-shipping thresholds, but I think there’s value in a more focused approach.
• super-deluxe versions: Crowdfunding campaigns seem to be thriving on deluxe and super-deluxe versions of games. Our approach is to try to offer a deluxified experience in the standard version of each game, though we’ve never made a super-deluxe version of any game (at least not by modern standards).
• duration: Our launches are 5 days; crowdfunding campaigns average around 25 days. Why so short for us? I view it as a concentrated spotlight during that time, after which we’re typically ready to start shipping to customers. The products remain available on our webstore after the launch, just without the launch discounts. We typically see around 80% of consumer launch orders on the first day. That said, from the day of the reveal through the end of the campaign, we’re looking at 3-4 weeks–the same length as a crowdfunding campaign.
• visibility of funding and backer totals: There’s undeniable power in the visibility of funding and backer totals on crowdfunding platforms. If I check out an active campaign and see that it’s raised $500,000 from 6,500 backers, I have increased confidence and curiosity. We display launch units sold on each Stonemaier webstore product page, but it’s so spread out and you may not even see it.
• sense of urgency: Even crowdfunding campaigns that don’t use FOMO tactics (I have zero interest in using fear as a motivator) still have a sense of urgency to them, as there’s a good chance the game might be difficult to find for a while after the campaign delivers to backers. Aside from a small launch discount and a desire to be the first to play a new game, there’s almost no urgency to our launches. If you don’t buy from us now, you can easily buy from a retailer in about a month, and if the product sells out, we’ll make more.
• platform-driven discovery: I’ve always been a little dubious about the numbers reported by crowdfunding platforms for platform-driven discovery. However, there’s definitely a difference between hubs for a wide variety of projects compared a publisher-specific webstore in how people are more likely to browse and stumble across products they weren’t aware of.

Do you think a few of those elements add to the “magic” of crowdfunding? Of course, there’s also the aspect of helping to create something that doesn’t exist yet, but I still believe we can best serve our customers by making the product before asking customers to pay for it.

As much as I want people to get excited about our games from the start, our commitment to the ready-to-ship method seems to yield great results for our retail customers and localization partners, which is great! Here’s the data: If I add up the consumer webstore launch sales of new games since the beginning of 2024 (starting with our most recent retail releases, Wingspan Pocket and Duel of Meloch, and going back to Wyrmspan), the total is 72,462 units. Compare that to the total units in print for those games: 1,320,000 units.

That’s right: Over time, only 5% of our games are sold to consumers during the 5-day launch period. Close to 95% of our new games are sold by retailers and localization partners (plus some via our consumer webstore on an ongoing basis).

So it seems to me that in de-emphasizing the launch itself and offering a tight gap between reveal and release, we vastly increase the long-tail of our games. I think this is a worthy sacrifice, though I would still like to add a little more crowdfunding magic to our ready-to-ship launches. What do you think?

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Also read:

• Jamey Stegmaier on Crowdfunding 11 Years Later (external article by Fulfillrite)
• Are the Reasons We Quit Kickstarter Still Valid 6 Years Later?
• 10 Years Without Crowdfunding

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

We’ve had two long-standing pricing practices that often raise questions, so today I thought I’d consolidate both into a post about pricing. One is about why we don’t reveal the exact price for new products before they launch on our webstore, and the other is about why we charge full MSRP at conventions. I don’t think we are alone among publishers for these practices due to the reasons explained below.

Launch Secrecy

Since 2017 we have not announced the exact price in advance of a launch for the following reasons:

1. There are three different prices (MSRP, launch discount price, and Champion price) across multiple currencies (USD, CAD, AUD, GBP, and Euro). This greatly increases the potential for confusion about which price is being discussed online (i.e., if you hear me say, “The game’s price is $50,” there are 15 different ways that could be interpreted). But it’s very clear when you’re looking at your price in your currency on your webstore.

2. Sometimes I make small adjustments to the discounted price leading up to the launch based on the continual influx of industry information: Products that other publishers launch around the same time, reviews, buzz, instinct, and the many other random inputs I try to observe during this critical time.

3. As soon as the MSRP is made public, some retailers will start to list the game for preorder even if they don’t have other important pieces of information. We want our games to do well in retail, and I think it’s fair for retailers to wait until the publisher has launched a new product before they start to sell it. Withholding the MSRP helps to facilitate that goal.

People have asked for a rough estimate of the price in advance, so I’ve come to provide a high-threshold answer. For Braided Skies, I said that if you set aside the equivalent of $100 USD, you would have more than enough to order the game on our webstore. As you now know–the game launched last week–Braided Skies has an MSRP of $75 USD.

Convention MSRP

We charge full MSRP for our products at conventions, including the products we’ll have at Essen Spiel this week. Here’s why:

Selling games at a big convention like Gen Con or Essen is a huge investment. There are personnel costs (travel, lodging, and food for my coworkers and payments to all demo team members), booth fees, and freight shipping/logistics expenses to get the products to the convention hall. On a per-product basis, these costs triple the landed cost of most products.

It’s for this reason that every cent matters when we have a booth at a convention–this is why we charge MSRP. The silver lining is that customers don’t pay shipping fees when they buy games at a convention, and there are other perks as well: You can learn a new game from our demo team and sometimes get it signed by the designer or artist (both designer Dan Germain and artist Andrew Bosley will be at our Essen booth).

Also, even more importantly, this is why we don’t offer free games at conventions to content creators. I really appreciate reviewers–we send thousands of review copies each year–but if you want to see publishers invest in conventions, please consider buying a game from their booth instead of asking for a complimentary copy. I promise that we’ll have review copies for our new Essen games available later in the year.

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I hope this helps to answer some questions around our pricing practices. I’d love to hear from other publishers–is there anything I’m missing here?

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Also read:

• Price Secrecy: Flexibility and Patience
• 4 Most Popular Questions Asked About Any New Tabletop Product

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

In the early ‘90s, I was fascinated by a magazine called Nintendo Power. It was mostly a strategy guide for Nintendo video games, complete with vibrant visuals showing levels and hidden areas in games like Mario Bros., Zelda, and TMNT. Despite not even owning a Nintendo gaming console, the magazine made me feel like I had access to dozens of hidden worlds.

Little did I know that many years later I would have a hand in creating some hidden worlds at Stonemaier Games. Our tagline is literally, “Which world will you visit today?” So I thought it might be fun to create a strategy magazine in the style of Nintendo Power, allowing you to explore our tabletop worlds in a different way.

While I’m either the designer or the developer of all Stonemaier games, I’m certainly far from the foremost expert on how to play them well. So I posted a survey to Stonemaier Ambassadors (people who actively welcome people to our worlds on a regular basis) to see if I could find someone with deep knowledge for each of our games.

The result is the Stonemaier Strategy Magazine, a guide for each of our games, including mini-guides for 3 new games of 2026 (Duel of Meloch, Wingspan Pocket, and the just-launched Braided Skies, which were not revealed at the time of this magazine’s creation).

If you’re like me, you might enjoy discovering strategies as you play instead of learning how others play the game. I think you’ll find that this single-issue magazine is just a tiny taste of what you can do in these games—most of the discovery is entirely up to you. You might also learn something new about a game you know well, or you might be inspired to try a game you’ve never played.

The 52-page, full-color Stonemaier Strategy Magazine is $5, we will donate all proceeds from each copy purchased during our annual charity auction to these charities (divided equally). The auction is live now and will end tomorrow.

Thank you so much for exploring the worlds of Stonemaier Games! I’m so grateful to you for playing our games, the experts for authoring this guide, Alessio Paniccia for turning text into beautiful layouts, and all the amazing people—my coworkers, playtesters, proofreaders, artists, designers, etc.—for creating these games.

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I’ll never forget a brief conversation I had with a friend in the game industry around 10 years ago. We were talking about a publisher with 20 employees, and they were looking to hire more people. I asked my friend, “Is having more employees inherently better?”

His answer–a resounding YES–was memorable because (a) it wasn’t even a debatable answer for him and (b) I actually don’t agree. I think there’s a big difference between purposeful growth and growth for the sake of growth, whether it applies to the number of employees, products, infrastructure, revenue, etc.

This was perhaps the biggest topic I broached with Joe of Allplay and Nick from Bitewing in our recent conversation. Early in the chat Joe mentioned an exit interview with an employee who had concerns about the complex web of internal systems resulting from Allplay having 30 employees and publishing around 25 games per year.

I was already curious about this, as Allplay and Bitewing both have quite a few unfulfilled crowdfunded games (14 total between them at the time of the recording). I asked them how they felt about that quantity and how it serves their customers. We also talked about overhead (Allplay owns a warehouse) and the general concept of growth (Joe mentioned the size of Asmodee as an aspiration for Allplay).

Bitewing is a little more similar to Stonemaier in that both companies have less than 10 employees and rely heavily on outsourcing to independent contractors, facilities, and services. We incur different risks than Allplay: We have less control and might be forced to pivot (this happened recently when our fulfillment partner in Canada told us they no longer wanted to be a fulfillment center). Conversely, the risk of high overhead is that if you have a bad year, you might struggle to pay salaries and leases.

Here’s my take on growth for each category:

• Personnel: I believe in hiring based on need. If there are enough responsibilities for a new coworker to have and sustain a full-time position that will serve customers better, that’s when I start to think about a hire. The first place I turn to is this form. Also, importantly, if I hire someone, it’s because I believe in them and the position so much that it’s a long-term commitment that Stonemaier can commit to supporting through good years and bad years.
• Products: I believe in quality over quantity; I don’t think more is better. I think we can best serve customers by spending a lot of time, effort, resources, and love to release only a few new games at most each year rather than casting a wide net, especially when there are so many other companies also making great games. We can really shine the spotlight on each game when we do this, which also gives each game a better chance of long-term success.
• Infrastructure: We’ve never invested in infrastructure at Stonemaier Games. I view our core competency as game publishing, not warehousing, manufacturing, fulfillment, or retail (i.e., selling our own games via a storefront). We all work from home from 5 different states rather than maintaining a shared office space.
• Revenue: I literally don’t care at all about growing revenue year to year. In my opinion, the pursuit of increasing revenue doesn’t have any connection to serving customers (at best it is one of many metrics for gauging customer satisfaction). As long as we have the funds to generously support our personnel and fairly pay independent contractors, we have what we need. “Number go up” is simply not a goal for us.

For what it’s worth, I feel similarly about events and conventions: To me, the goal is for everyone to have a great time in a specific shared experience. An event that works well with 100 people may feel completely different if it grows to 400 people.

Those are my thoughts on growth! I’d love to hear your perspective: Is more inherently better? When is growth good?

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Also read:

• Questions for The Bits (part 1)
• Questions for The Bits (part 2)

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

A few days ago I posted an article with my answers to some of the questions I asked Joe from Allplay and Nick from Bitewing on their podcast (The Bits), and today I’m back with a few more responses. Also, the podcast is now available–check it out to hear their fascinating answers!

4. What’s a recent piece of constructive criticism you heard from a customer, coworker, or contractor that made you rethink your position?

I think there’s great courage in listening, learning, and evolving, and I think it’s important that I give others the grace to do the same. It’s okay to change your mind or a process.

Here’s a little thing, but I heard it and will act on it: I recently wrote a post about our announcement trailers (Braided Skies and Namiji), and a reader–Tom–commented that they found it a little jarring that the text for each “scene” was in a different position on the screen. So in future trailers, I’ll request that the text always be in the same position.

Here’s one more, as that first example isn’t really about me changing my mind. I had a plan to print on the inside of our box lids small images from all of our games and a QR code to learn more, as I thought that’s a place that would ensure the information is always in the game (even if it passes hands over time). A coworker said that people really don’t like promotional content printed on their game boxes–their theory is that people like the choice to keep or recycle such content. So I changed it to a loose sheet of paper that will start to appear in some games in 2027.

5. What’s a game by another publisher you recently played from which you learned something about product design?

I can’t possibly narrow this down to one game, so I’ll mention some quick observations from recent plays:

• Jisogi: I love how different tile shapes fit together to form each anime.
• Hellas: The box lid folds out to become the board, and the bottom of the box is the score track.
• Sky 5: A different quantity of cards is used for each player count, but instead of requiring that you count out that exact amount, you hold up a card like a ruler to determine the approximate height of the deck.
• Kano: I love the use of a canvas material for the board and the resin paint jar tokens.
• Torchlit: Certain special cards are foil-embossed, which really makes them stand out.
• Aqua Garden: The sheer volume and beauty of the fish meeples in this game is staggering.
• Eldur: Another game that uses the box as a board; the box also acts as a tug-of-war track and a place to display active ability cards.
• Falling: I love that Falling only has a 10-VP track, and when you reach 10, you gain a random card valued at 10 VP with a small surprise bonus on the back.
• Askalotl: This adorable game uses multiple lidless boxes to speed up setup, make cards easy to pass around, and to conceal information on cards.

6. What’s an experiment you tried recently? What about it went well, and how would you adjust it if you did it again?

A little over a month ago I had a chat with a friend in which I expressed a desire to engage more often with our customers. I do this publicly on many platforms, but gone are the 2012 Viticulture Kickstarter days when I thanked every backer individually in a private, personal message. Due to the scale of our webstore sales, this is no longer possible, but it also didn’t feel true to send customers a generic, fill-in-the-blank message.

The friend pointed out that this doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Sending a few notes is better than sending none. So for the last 6 weeks, every week I pick a few random customers who recently placed orders, and I send them a message thanking them for the order. I often share something I love about the product they bought, a short design story, or a recommendation for the first time they get it to the table. I’ve been delighted by the responses, and it’s a great reminder of the power of something real, genuine, and personal in an era of AI slop. Honestly, there isn’t really anything I’d adjust about it at this time, but I’m curious to see how it evolves.

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I’ll be back next week for my final answers. In the meantime, here’s the video with Joe and Nick’s perspectives!

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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

I love listening to publishers speak publicly, frankly, and openly about their business decisions. Two such publishers are Joe from Allplay and Nick from Bitewing, both of whom share their thoughts and often field questions from guests on a podcast called The Bits.

I also love asking questions, so I reached out to Joe and Nick to see if they might consider me as an inquiring guest. They were very kind to accept, and we recorded the episode recently. It hasn’t aired yet, but I thought it would only be fair if I answered the same questions I asked. So here’s part 1, and when the episode airs, I’ll share it here and add my answers to the remaining questions.

1. I really appreciate that you two take the time to make this podcast. Does it continue to bring you joy, and what’s a game-related podcast you enjoy?

I’m fortunate to have a few platforms on which I share my thoughts on publishing from different angles: this blog (which is also available as a podcast), our game design YouTube channel, and the Posivitely Board Gaming podcast (with cohost Mitchell Whitfield). All of these formats absolutely continue to bring me joy, especially when I get to hear your thoughts in the comments; if they weren’t, I wouldn’t keep making them week after week, year after year!

I listen to a lot of podcasts about games, but I’m only aware of a few that are recorded and regularly posted by fellow publishers. There’s The Bits, Lens and Veil (by Shem, Sam, and Zach from Garphill Games), Decision Space (one of the hosts is Paul from Gamehead Games), Think Like a Game Designer (Justin Gary from Wise Wizard Games), Nerdlab (Marvin at Nerdlab), and Crowdfunding Nerds (Andrew Lowen at Lowen Games).

2. What’s the best way you currently serve customers? What’s the #1 area of improvement for serving your customers?

This is a slightly difficult answer to question, because at the heart of literally every decision we make at Stonemaier Games is, “Does this serve our customers? How can this better serve our customers?” We don’t always get those answers correct or execute them perfectly, and what’s best for one customer may not be what’s best for another hundred customers, but this is our guidepost every day.

So what’s the best way we serve you? I’m actually more interested in your answer to that than my answer. But if I were a customer of Stonemaier Games instead of the co-founder, I think I might say that I appreciate the sheer abundance of art (all created by humans) in each of our games. I love when every card or tile in a game has unique art, and I don’t take that for granted–it is a significant expense, and one that takes time, trust, and project management. A close second might be how accessible we are (mostly publicly, but also privately for confidential questions/requests), but it’s really quite rare that I ever have a direct question even for my favorite publishers.

As for our #1 area of improvement, I think it’s first-printing perfection. We put so much work into creating, testing, and proofreading our games, expansions, and accessories, yet we all-too-often falter late in the process with something that ends up sticking out like a sore thumb. While only some of these errors are my fault, they are all my responsibility. We’re currently using an app called PageProof for proofreading that seems to be helping significantly, and our PPC playtests over the last few years really help too. But we can do better, and we will do better.

3. For people who don’t already follow you, what is the number 1 way they discover your newest product?

Honestly, it’s far more important for me to serve people who already follow us or our games than it is to entice newcomers (whether it’s via organic marketing, our content, advertising, etc). However, I also strongly believe in the power of actively and inclusively inviting people into the world of Stonemaier Games. I want to welcome people who haven’t tried one of our games, especially if there’s a game we make that might bring joy to their tabletop.

Again, it’s difficult to pick a true #1; rather, I have a top 5. However, of those 5, I think if I had to choose one, it would be word of mouth from people who either play our games and share them with friends (one of the perks of making games/expansions that always play up to at least 5 players) or follow our content and share it publicly. This is followed by reviewers (we send thousands of review copies each year), retailers (it’s hard to measure if people are discovering our games through retailers or if they’re learning about them elsewhere and going to the retailer for the purchase), digital games (Board Game Arena in particular is a great discovering platform, though I’ve heard from many people who discovered Wingspan via Wingspan Digital), and play-and-win at conventions (thousands of people play our games for the first time via play-and-win, but I’m not sure how many of them are learning about those games for the first time via play-and-win).

I’ve rambled enough for today, so I’ll save the remaining 7 or so questions for future articles. I’d love to hear your thoughts about all three, whether they’re in relation to Stonemaier Games or if you’re a publisher who would like to share your answers!

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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

Over the last 14 years at Stonemaier Games, many times we’ve asked ourselves why things are the way they are (both in the game industry and within our company). This led to us being one of the first publishers to offer region-friendly shipping, to Stonemaier leaving behind crowdfunding in 2015, and eventually to me hiring my wonderful team of coworkers starting in 2020.

“Why?” is such a powerful question. So why only ask it once?

This is an insight from Mehul Nariyawala, co-founder of Matic Robots. On his recent appearance on the Unit Economics podcast, Nariyawala shared that a common practice at Matic is to ask “why” three times in a row to get to the heart of a problem or question.

An example of this came up recently with the success of Wingspan Pocket. Both externally and internally, people have asked if we should make an expansion or a spinoff. “Why?” I asked. Well…that’s what publishers do when a game sells well. “Why? Is the game missing something?” Well…no, but I’ll always take more cards. “Why aren’t there more cards?” Wingspan Pocket’s abilities are depicted as icons, not text, and with icons there’s a limit to the number of unique abilities. “Why not add more text?” That’s counter to the accessible, approachable concept of Wingspan Pocket; rather, Wingspan is already there if you’re looking for a lot of unique, text-heavy powers.

Sometimes the answers might reveal information but need more time. For example, a number of people have recently asked if we will sell games on our webstore for pickup at Essen. The answer is no, but why? We use InsideUp’s POS at Essen, and it doesn’t sync to our Shopify. Why do we use their system? We share a booth with them, and it’s more customer-friendly if customers can buy products from both companies at a single checkout. Why value efficiency over preorder convenience? It’s partially economics: It’s much more expensive to sell games at a convention than on our webstore. Why? Booth rental and personnel costs. Why not find a way to make it work financially? If it best serves customers, I think that’s a worthy goal to pursue.

I really like this concept not only for business discussions, but also for processing playtest data. “This card was useless.” Why? “I never used its ability.” Why? “The ability was too expensive to activate.” The best playtesters provide the third answer right from the start, but even then I sometimes dig deeper to best understand the problem so I can try to identify the best solution.

Why? Why? Why? I’m going to use this approach for more questions in the future. Have you tried something like this?

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Ranging from our Kickstarter trailer videos from 2012-2015 (featuring me and Alan talking directly to the camera) to polished, animated trailers with voiceovers from 2016-2024, we’ve tried a variety of approaches to the initial video introduction. Starting in 2025, we tried a new method that I’ll discuss today.

A Few Disclaimers

First, some groundwork: I believe that the purpose of an announcement trailer (or crowdfunding video) is to give people a small taste to entice them to learn more. 60 seconds is my target length; I don’t have a time restriction on other videos in which I’m trying to explain how the game works.

Second, a contradiction: I think music makes a big difference in announcement trailers (big thanks to my brother-in-law, Joel, for composing the music for our videos), but I also think that these videos need to function with the sound off (research shows that 85% of people watch videos with sound off on social media).

Third, I’ve come to believe that static images are just as effective as animations, and they work better when someone pauses the video. This came to me when I was scripting the Vantage trailer, partially due to the constraint that I didn’t want to spoil anything about what you might discover after crashing on the planet.

Our Current Method

Add all this together, and you get a video that doesn’t take long to script and can be created on a small budget (less than $1,000 for music and videography). After I prepare the script and I receive the music from Joel, I send them to the amazing Emmanuel Ho, who integrates images from the game to form the video.

One other nice perk for this method is that it’s really easy for localization partners to use the same video, whether they translate the text as subtitles on YouTube or they swap out the English text for their language using the source files.

Now, I’m not saying this is the only way to make effective teaser trailers in 2026 or that our trailers are perfect. It’s a challenge for me to describe the hooks of the game in less than 10 words per scene. I’ll continue to hone this skill. But overall I really like this method, and I’m really happy with how our recent Braided Skies trailer turned out.

Data

Whether 1,000 people or 100,000 people watch your announcement trailer, if you go through the trouble of making it in the first place, I believe in using methods that encourage retention. That is, if only 10% of people watch the last half of the trailer, why not make it half as long (and more focused) instead?

That’s why I aim for 60 seconds at most for our videos. I think they could be even tighter (45 seconds when possible), but the data is encouraging. Of the 47,000 people who have watched the 53-second Braided Skies trailer, on average people are watching 72% of the video.

I took a look at our other recent trailers that use a similar structure:

• Vantage: 14,312 views, 31 seconds, 79% average percentage viewed
• Origin Story: 9,830 views, 45 seconds, 75%
• Euphoria Essential: 2,874 views, 54 seconds, 69%
• Duel of Meloch: 16,378 views, 61 seconds, 73%
• Wingspan Pocket: 43,426 views, 53 seconds, 70%

Again, this is far from the only way to offer an effective announcement trailer. I really enjoyed the human connection and weirdness of the Shug trailer a few months ago, and recently the Baba Is You trailer used mostly a series of photos (ala stop motion) to generate nearly 150k views.

What do you look for in an announcement trailer to pique your interest and inspire you to learn more?

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Also read:

• Kickstarter Lesson #260: The Teaser Trailer
• What Can Kickstarter Project Videos Learn from Facebook Videos?

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

This weekend, just a few days before yesterday’s Braided Skies reveal, Stonemaier Games hosted its 13th annual Design Day. On Sunday, the Design Day itself featured designers, playtesters, and gamers from St. Louis and around the country for 12+ hours of playtesting and gaming at Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe.

The purpose of Design Day is to bring together designers, playtesters, and content creators to give and receive feedback on game prototypes, expand their network within the gaming community, and learn from clever mechanisms in published games. If you’d like to know details about how the day is structured, you can read about previous Design Days here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Why We Run This Event

On paper, the event doesn’t make much sense. We’re not promoting anything. There’s really no focus on Stonemaier Games at all. To put it simply, Design Day is just something we like doing. 

We like doing it for the designers, the playtesters and gamers, and the content creators. The creative energy is palpable and inspiring, and it seems to be a worthwhile, joyous experience for attendees. I’m also on the lookout for future Stonemaier products (so far we’ve published four games that appeared at Design Day), but I’m mostly just trying to be helpful to other creators and maybe help them find the right publisher.

How Does Design Day Work?

• We opened most ticket sales in the spring to past attendees (around 80 tickets), then sold the remaining 30 tickets to people who signed up for a back-in-stock notification (you can use this year’s listing to get a notification for 2027). We added a few extra people this year, though there are space and noise limitations we are mindful of. We charged $45-55 per ticket, which accounts for about 40% of the total food/beverage/space cost for the day (Stonemaier covers the rest).
• Joe sent an email each month containing new information and an actionable step for attendees. The most complicated step is creating the calendar of events, which requires us to consider game length, player count, table size, etc.
• We share and participate in casual, optional activities on Saturday. People travel great distances to Design Day, so we try to offer a full weekend of activities for those who want it. One local attendee, Melissa, is always very kind to open up her home for a gaming evening, and some attendees visit friends or sightsee in St. Louis. It’s also become a tradition to introduce attendees to disc golf; this year around 30 people participated on a hot afternoon at Crestwood Park. Designer Ben Rosset also ran a Q&A about game design and manufacturing in the morning, and Paul Salomon (Gamehead Games) ran a playtesting event on Saturday evening.
• Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe provided the space, food, and drinks (and access to their huge game collection). This was our second year at Pieces’ new, bigger location, and it’s still great! The tables are much more spread out, and nearly every table is wheelchair accessible. Pieces serves their delicious homemade cookies throughout the day, and attendees optionally enjoyed their delicious gaming-themed mocktails and cocktails. Pieces has its busiest day on Saturday (and Saturday is a very busy day in that area of St. Louis), hence why Design Day is on Sunday. We use a buffet format for meals: Bagels and muffins for breakfast, poke bowls for lunch, and a nacho bar for dinner. There are veggies and gluten-free options at every meal.
• The schedule of the day is preset. People sign up for tables in advance (we guarantee that each designer who signs up in advance will get to playtest their game at least twice, and we ask designers to share rulebooks in advance for attendees to peruse). It’s very structured. We never interrupt the day with announcements, and every game ran on schedule. Attendees were also flexible for games that ended early or when the designers didn’t show up–they simply picked another game to play.
• A mix of unsigned prototypes, to-be-published/crowdfunded prototypes, and a few published games were played, with the intent being that each can inform the experiences of the other. There’s this great mindset of talking about game design from all angles throughout the day.
• Playtesters optionally filled out a short form (created by Hilda Vazquez) after each playtest to give to the designer.
• I spent most of the day observing various games, checking in with designers and playtesters, and trying to have a few minutes of quality time with each attendee.

How Were the Games?

I truly am inspired and awestruck by the creativity, innovation, and vulnerability of the designers at this event. Everyone puts a lot of work into these games, and I loved listening to the constructive interactions between designers and playtesters.

Design Day isn’t a competition, but as a way of helping designers see how far along their games are, we ask attendees to rate each game on a 1-6 scale indicating how close a game is to being publishable.

Based on this rating scale–basically, how close they are to being a successful publishable game–here are the top-rated games of Design Day 2026, with brief descriptions in the words of the designers:

1. Alchemists of Avalon by Tyson Gajewski (5.8): Mancala, resource manipulation, drafting, contracts
2. Among Mortals by Brendan Hansen (5.5): Card game with a shared board. Area Control, Hand Management, Variable Powers, Hidden Affinities
3. Puzzle Factory by Ben Rosset (5.5): Worker Placement, Puzzle-making, Partial Simultaneous Play
4. Moominos by Hilda Vazquez (5.4): Card/Tile drafting, Thinky-puzzle, Set Collection
5. Delvers of Deepgate by Clayton Smith (5.17): Tower Defense Dungeon Dive
6. The Royal Tent by Heather Dixon (5.17): Shared Engine Building, Rondel, Contract Fulfillment, Variable End-Game Trigger
7. Treat Street by Jacob Gentrup (5.11): Series of mini card games
8. Top Flight by Kyle Boyer (5.07): Push your luck racing
9. Aragonite by Wes Kendall (5.06): Pattern block-laying, trick-taking, bag-building, engine-building
10. Synchrony by Austin Bailey & Jason Jones (5.04): Ephemeral engine and tableau-building, asymmetric set collection, time-as-a-resource

Other games rated 5.00 on average were Dice Rogue (Joe Totherow), Franchise Wars (Pete Wissinger), Magic Tricks (Chris Porter), and Pips (Ben Morayta).

If publishers are curious to learn more about some of these games, I’m happy to talk to you about them and connect you to the designers (if they’re looking for a publisher)!

Next Year

If you want to attend Design Day next year, you can use this year’s listing to get a notification for 2027, and if there are any extra slots, we’ll likely announce them in our April e-newsletter.

Have you found value in running or attending events related to your industry? As alternatives to Design Day, there are Protospiel, Unpub, and other playtest events around the country, including some at Geekway to the West in St. Louis in May.

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On Wednesday we will reveal our final new game for 2026, a big Euro game called Braided Skies. We’ll share information about the game with people who already follow Stonemaier Games, but that’s a fraction of the people who could potentially enjoy this game. So starting soon after the reveal, we will run some ads on Facebook and Instagram to invite people to sign up for a notification when the ready-to-ship game launches on our webstore in mid-October.

This is a common practice among crowdfunders, though from recent reports they are spending exponentially more than I would expect: Some publishers are investing $20,000-$40,000 on prelaunch ads (compared to our prelaunch ad spend of $1,000, which is augmented by organic reach from our YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, newsletter, Bluesky, etc).

It seems to me that spending $20-$40k prelaunch can dig creators into a deep hole, shifting the focus from serving backers to getting enough backers (that you at least break even). I talked to Tamas at Lemery Games about this topic, and he shared that he spent less than $3,000 on a recent prelaunch campaign for Caravanserai.

Cleverly, Tamas uses these ads to evaluate the market for the game using click per lead (CPL) as the key metric. If the CPL climbs too quickly into the ad campaign without generating a significant quantity of signups, that’s a sign that (a) the game or its presentation isn’t ready, (b) the format of the project isn’t resonating with people, or (c) the timing of the campaign isn’t ideal. This is an opportunity to step back and make key adjustments, not push through with another $20,000 in ad spend.

That’s the first step. If the ads are resonating with people, I think it’s reasonable to spend up to $5,000 (or maybe $10,000 for a much bigger project) on prelaunch ads, with the goal of reaching those who are genuinely interested in the product. I think it’s fine to have an extra hook (e.g., Tamas offered an expansion with a miniature to anyone who signed up for Caravanserai in advance and ended up backing a core pledge), but I personally think that pairing the right game with the right person is what matters most.

Tamas provided some data: “For Caravanserai, 695 people signed up on a dedicated pre-campaign landing page, and 1 week into the campaign 16% of them pledged. For a game with a higher entry point (rewards range from $45 to $89), the average CPL was $2.60, which is still a good number at 695 sign-ups.”

Maciej at Gamefound recently shared some related data with me as well. Their average CPL via AdFound is $3.10, and they’re seeing a 22.6% conversion rate (these are prelaunch followers who become backers).

Again, I think it’s really important to keep Tamas’ observation in mind: The math isn’t linear, and nothing is guaranteed. $3,000 spent on ads with a consistently low CPL is a good sign that you’ll see around a 20% conversation rate after the project launches. But $30,000 spent on a swiftly increasing CPL is money you may never make back.

For other creators, what is your total prelaunch ad spend, and what have you learned from running those ads?

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Also read:

• Kickstarter Lesson #245: Should You Advertise and Preview Pre-Launch?
• 3 Ways to Maximize Prelaunch Signups
• 3 Key Insights from a Year of Social Media Advertising

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In regards to several recent crowdfunded games that either relaunched after an initial cancellation or are struggling to move far past their funding goal, I’ve heard some concerns about trust from potential backers.

For example, if a project has a $10,000 funding goal but after the first few days they only have a few hundred backers and $13,000 in funding, is it a mark of dishonesty if they cancel the project, reconfigure, and relaunch?

Personally, I do not begrudge anyone from learning from a mistake, oversight, or shortcoming and trying to do better. Nor do I consider it dishonest to showcase a marketable funding goal…as long as the creator is transparent about their aspirational goal.

Here’s an example from a related article:

If you want to make a hypothetical game with a landed cost of $20 (manufacturing plus freight shipping) with a trusted long-time producer like Panda, you’ll have a minimum order quantity of 1,500 units (or 2,000 if plastics are involved). Ideally you’ll make more, but that’s the bare minimum you need to cover that MOQ. So that’s $30,000.

Of course, you’ll need to pay artists, graphic designers, playtesters, and proofreaders–those costs can vary greatly based on the complexity of the game and the quantity of the art. At Stonemaier Games, I would say that those costs add up to around $75,000 on average. Added to the landed costs for the 1,500-unit MOQ, that’s $105,000.

I might list the funding goal at $30,000, but somewhere else on the project page I might discuss that I’ve already invested $75,000 in the game and that the funding goal is based on the MOQ of 1,500. So there I might note that we’ll make the game if we reach the funding goal, but my hope is to eclipse $105,000, perhaps marked by a stretch goal.

A creator could also just outright say, “We chose $10,000 as a marketable funding goal, but our aspirational goal is to make at least $50,000. Reaching that aspirational goal will help us cover our sunk costs and will enable us to pay for the first printing without dipping into our savings. If the project has not reached $30,000 a few days after launch, this is a strong indicator the game and/or the campaign are missing something important, and we may consider relaunching to best serve the audience for this game.”

This is essentially what Siclen Studio announced on a recent video about their current Kickstarter, though they took it a step further: They said that as long as they stay above their $10,000 funding goal (as of this writing, the project is at $13,535), they will make the game even though they had much higher hopes for it. I admire that, though I also worry that backer accusations of dishonesty backed Siclen into this corner instead of offering them the grace to relaunch.

I understand that this is a contentious subject, and I also understand that a creator risks losing backer trust if they relaunch. However, we are talking about crowdfunding here: Nothing is etched in stone. Crowdfunding gives creators the opportunity to learn from the crowd while the product and the project are still pliable.

Also, is it not an inherently human trait to set a lower goal with the hopes of surpassing it? I can certainly relate to that.

What are your constructive thoughts about marketable vs aspirational funding goals?

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Also read:

• Setting a Reasonable Campaign Goal
• Admirable Goals vs Successful Crowdfunding
• Preventing a Dud

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

Over the weekend I was playing a game, Takenoko, which I hadn’t played in a while. I had a rule question about gardener and panda movement, and I did what I often do if I can’t find a question in the rulebook: I pulled out my phone and Googled the question.

These days, Google shows the AI answer at the top of the page, so I see that first before scrolling down to look at the sources, most of which are BoardGameGeek threads. 99% of the time when I have a rule question and use this method, I find the answer, which is made possible by people who ask questions in permanent public places (versus private messages).

At Stonemaier Games, we’ve found that the AI answers aren’t always correct (this is why I look at the sources too). We rarely have a good way of replicating the question and/or fixing incorrect answers, so we found a web app that enables those features.

On Portal, we feed our rulebooks (and other applicable files) into the app, ensuring that it sources the official files. Anyone can choose a game and ask a question, and Portal will find the answer in the rulebook, including visual citations. You can try it right now.

As a publisher, I have access to the back-end dashboard for our games on Portal, where I can see a list of questions all in one place. I can improve answers and use the “confidence” metric to improve rulebooks for reprints. I see a lot of potential value in it, and the developer (Will) is very responsive.

However, many questions about games are less urgent and more geared towards discussion. Sometimes they’re not even questions. The community around our games is driven by threads about specific cards, house rules, fan-made components, opinions, and photos. For those, we recommend using any of the following:

• Game-Specific Facebook Groups
• Game-Specific Discord Channels
• BoardGameGeek
• Stonemaier Games website

For the first time, all of these options are now found in one convenient location on our website (“Rule Questions”, at the top of the page).

How do you ask rule questions? Are you satisfied with the answers? What other types of questions or posts do you make about tabletop games (when you’re hoping for other perspectives)?

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14 years ago today–on September 10, 2012–Viticulture reached its funding goal on Kickstarter. I consider this the official day that Stonemaier Games was born, and I’m so grateful for those original backers for giving birth to that game and this company.

September 2012 is also around the time that I started posting articles on this blog about my thoughts, observations, data, mistakes, and lessons learned. That would approximately make this my 1456th article on this blog!

I don’t have a monumental topic today; rather, I have a few bite-size topics on which I’ve ruminated recently. I’d love to hear your thoughts about any of them.

• Games on ships: I recently went on a cruise around Iceland, and every evening we would end the day by playing games in some of the quieter places on the boat. I was pleasantly surprised to see that quite a few other people did the same. Lots of portable card games. The ship itself did not have many games, just a few decks of cards and a dozen copies of mahjong in the library. I’m reaching out to a few cruise lines to see if we could contribute some of our smaller games to their collections. What types of games do you see people playing when you travel?
• Mentioning a tip: During the Iceland cruise, we went on a number of excursions. Sometimes people tipped the tour guides, sometimes not. But I noticed that tips increased significantly at the end of an excursion to an isle of puffins. The difference was that at the end of the trip, the tour guide (one of several) thanked their coworkers and verbally invited people to share their loose change as a tip on the way out. Quite a few guests did that, and not just with coins. It was a reminder of the power of a clear, simple call to action. Have you recently responded to a call to action (and if so, what inspired you to actually take action)?
• Out of print: In a recent interview with a retailer on The Bits podcast, roughly around the 90-minute mark, a retailer (Kylie of Games Unlimited) says that he wishes publishers would let retailers know–specifically, retailers who have bought or consistently buy a product–if a currently-in-stock product is going out of print or will be out of stock for a while. All it takes is a mention in your retailer newsletter: Hey, X product with only 100 units remaining has been slow to sell and we’re not going to reprint it for a while, so now is the time to get it if the game has sold well in your store. I thought it was great feedback from Kylie that we will act on at Stonemaier Games. Do other retailers relate to this?
• Memorable moments: Earlier today I read an article listing common misses in Euro games (games with high agency, minimal randomness, and skewing towards perfect information). I don’t agree with some of the items on the list, but one stood out to me. I agree that some of the best Euro games include big memorable moments. Perhaps the moment when you play a difficult card requiring multiple steps (e.g., an elephant in Ark Nova), the moment when you complete a spatial goal (e.g., fill an island in A Feast for Odin), or the moment when you do something incredibly powerful (e.g., go to space in Tapestry). What’s your favorite memorable moment in a Euro game?
• The invitation of closure: Recently a friend recommended a 7-book series around the same time that someone suggested a 10-season TV show. The good news about a long-running series is that if I love it, I can immerse myself in that world for a long time. The bad news–as I often feel when I hear about a long-running series–is that I’m daunted by how much of a commitment it is. Plus, if it has existed for that long, I wonder if I’ve missed out on the peek of the series when people were the most excited to talk about it (the community aspect). I can see this happening with games with lots of expansions, and it’s one of the reasons I like aiming for a moment of closure with our games (e.g., 3 expansions for Scythe–though I later added Duel of Meloch, 1 expansion per continent for Wingspan, 3 expansions for Tapestry). Does the scope of a series of games impact your desire to try the game in the first place?

Thanks for reading and/or joining the conversation, whether it’s for this article or any of the 1455 articles that preceded it!

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At Stonemaier Games,  our staff and contributors now include a total of my 6 full-time coworkers, 1 part-time coworker and cofounder, a number of key independent contractors and creatives (designers and artists), and another 100+ paid volunteers (proofreaders and playtesters). I am so lucky to work with such talented, passionate, and kind people every day.

I’m in the incredibly fortunate position of running a company I love. I try to value my coworkers (in both words and actions) as I’d hope someone would value me if I were in their shoes. I’m a proponent of slow, deliberate, and sustainable growth: If I make the rare decision to hire someone, it’s a commitment to support them long term through the good times and the bad.

Today also happens to be the exact day I said goodbye to my treasured cat companion, Biddy. As I’ve reflected on the 16 years he was in my life, I realized how grateful I am to have had a career at Stonemaier Games that allowed me to work from home. That is such a huge gift of time I could share with Biddy, who would often nap on my chair or desk while I worked.

Here are our updates for 2026:

• Company Retreat: The 8 of us gathered in Phoenix for a few days of playtesting, discussion, and invaluable idle time together. Several of our games–including Wingspan Pocket–are significantly better as a result of the collective feedback, and it was helpful to see the value of simply being in the same space as each other. We’re getting together again for a low-key evening before Design Day in a few weeks.
• Sales Team Meetings: A few times this year the Stonemaier sales team (different facets covered by Susannah, Alex, Erica, Dave, and me) has convened for a 1-hour call without any specific objective–we’ve just made space to talk about anything related to the present and future of our products so we can do a better job of serving our varied types of customers (retailers, localization partners, distributors, online stores, convention attendees, and webstore users).
• No Generative AI: This has been a tough year for many talented people, with companies using AI as a justification for layoffs. My heart goes out to everyone who lost their jobs. Stonemaier Games does not use, has not used, and does not plan to knowingly use generative AI for creative work (text, art, videos, etc). If we’re creating something, we want it built from the ground up by talented people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures. We believe that the process is integral to our output, and it allows human creativity to shine. Whenever AI tries to poke its tendrils into our company, we instead ask the question: Why don’t we pay a person to do this?

What are you reflecting on this Labor Day?

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• Labor Day 2025: What’s New This Year
• Extreme Ownership and MrBeast
• Labor Day 2024: What’s New This Year
• How I Value My Coworkers
• Wages, Inflation, and Labor Day
• The Bear and Professional Development
• A Short Note About Wages on Labor Day
• Labor Day: Fair Wages, Volunteer Compensation, and a Job Application Update
• Perks and Principles for My Coworkers at Stonemaier Games
• Why I Prioritize Paying Freelancers
• Flatter Your Way into a New Industry
• Hiring in a World of Volunteers
• Designer Advances
• Gameosity Game Industry Job Board

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

Today I received an enlightening email from a fellow tabletop publisher–someone who has used crowdfunding successfully for multiple projects–about their struggles with certain types of marketing and advertising. I’ll explore this publisher’s struggles and share some constructive opinions.

Struggle #1: Facebook Ads Aren’t Resulting in Backers

The publisher shared data for three of their projects, on which they spent a total of around $90,000 on web ads. This expense essentially negated any profit they would have earned from these projects, with the most recent ad generating a 1% ROAS (return on ad spend).

However, they also shared some good news: BoardGameGeek ads are working well for them. That’s great. I actually haven’t posted an ad on BGG for a while, but I need to do so, and I’ll report what I find. The publisher also shared that they like Gamefound as a platform for discoverability, organic visibility, and the algorithm surfacing campaigns.

Meanwhile, whenever we launch a new product, we work with ad manager Andrew Cook to post two sets of ads on Facebook: One before launch to draw people in, and one during the launch to invite them to check out the webstore. For both the ads and Andrew’s time, I aim to spend around $2,000 total per launch. For every dollar we spend, we generate around 3x that much in revenue (but I think that multiplier would greatly decrease if we significantly increased our ad spend). So perhaps part of the key here is to find the right person to run your ad campaigns.

Struggle #2: Paid Previews Aren’t Working

The publisher shared that paid previews (often on YouTube) aren’t working well, both because they require an extremely polished product before any funding has been received and in terms of only a handful of new backers coming to the project from the previews.

That said, as the publisher also pointed out, attribution from a video is difficult to quantify. “People watch it, follow you, watch another, read your rules and then a week later they pledge.” I agree that there is high value in seeing multiple content creators talk about a game over the span of 1-2 weeks.

I’ll ask this: What if the goal is to inform instead of to convert? You can’t control how many people will back your project after watching a video, but you can try to be of service to people so they can spend their limited budgets on the games that will bring them the most joy. Preview content is one way to do this.

Struggle #3: Prelaunch Followers Aren’t Converting into Backers

The publisher shared that around 7% of prelaunch followers became backers for their most recent project, while they’ve seen other projects get close to 20%.

They did add a few caveats to these numbers (they’ve made some mistakes with pricing and shipping fees). No project is perfect, and it’s more important than ever to have a great game at a great value when you’re trying to create something new.

Creators can reduce the chances of encountering these issues during the campaign by having a variety of people look at their project page before launch.

As for the game itself, I think it’s increasingly helpful to share with backers how it’s different than existing games (while also sharing a few comparisons: If you like X and Y, we think you’ll enjoy Z). Also, sometimes it is a matter of getting just one game that elevates itself over all of your other games–that one special game can make a huge difference for a publisher.

Struggle #4: Climbing into the BGG Hotness Is Very Difficult

The publisher shared this: “We still haven’t cracked BGG organic traffic. I just don’t know how to drive traffic to my BGG page without paying to do that. Designer diaries, etc – they work, but it’s very small traffic, and time I could spend on a game.”

As long as it’s for the right reasons, having your game appear on the BGG Hotness list can have a multiplicative effect, as even more people discover it, which solidifies the game’s presence on the list.

I wrote this a while ago, but I think these tips for helping your game appear on the Hotness still apply: “Find ways to get people talking about your game on BGG. Post images on a regular basis. Encourage conversation as a moderator and a participant. Drive external traffic to your BGG page.”

In my opinion, the best target audience to invite to participation on BGG are the people who are already following your company or your project. This isn’t the reason why I focus on community building, but it is one of the serendipitous results.

I love that we have deeply engaged customers at Stonemaier Games, whether they’re participating on BoardGameGeek or our Facebook groups, Discord, YouTube Channel, Instagram, Bluesky, this blog, etc–I try to hang out with our followers on their platform of choice. In the rare occasions when we have something new to share with them, they’re likely to see it.

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I truly feel for every creator who has struggled to connect an external or internal audience with their newest creation. It’s hard–I’ve experienced that too. Whenever I’m discouraged by the uphill battle of finding newcomers to invite to our games, I try to focus on how grateful I am for those who already choose to follow us.

Thanks to the publisher who shared this information with me. They asked to remain anonymous but said it was perfectly fine if I publicly post my thoughts on these topics.

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Also read:

• Paid Advertising and How Backers Find Your Project
• Which Banner Ad Message Gets the Most Clicks?
• Everything Crowdfunders Need to Know About Advertising
• 10 Million Views: The Results of an Advertising Experiment
• Rick and Morty, Revisionist History, and Ads I’m Happy to Consume
• 10 Marketing Methods Used at Stonemaier Games

“Getting attention on a board game release announcement isn’t free anymore. It’s not news. At best it’s a bullet point on a long list of new release announcements for the week. The traditional method we’ve long employed of selling to distributors who sell to retailers who sell to players, sadly seems to be falling apart for us, and I suspect for most publishers.” –Colby Dauch, Plaid Hat Games

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve thought over and over about an article that Plaid Hat Games’ Colby Dauch wrote for Board Game Wire. Plaid Hat launched a Kickstarter in June for a new game (The Monolith). They pulled the campaign after a few days and have since relaunched. As of this writing, the project has raised $113,687 from 1257 backers.

In the article, Colby offers a transparent, humble, and vulnerable perspective about his crowdfunding philosophy, how it didn’t result in a successful first launch of The Monolith, and the adjustments he’s made for the current campaign. Today I’ll share my thoughts Colby’s initial goals and how they’ve evolved.

Original Goals (in Colby’s words)

• We will severely limit the use of exclusives. We don’t want people feeling like they HAVE to buy the product now or they will be missing out.
• We aren’t seeking to punish the people who have long supported their local board game shop by purchasing our products through them.
• Most of all we don’t want to manipulate our customers by preying on their fear of missing out.
• We will reduce the long wait between the time you back a game and the time you get that game by being fully ready to go to production at the time of the Kickstarter.

JAMEY: I love these goals, so it pains me that they didn’t align with a successful first campaign for The Monolith. However, there are a few important nuances in these goals, as I think they are all worth pursuing.

First, promos provided for free to backers and then later to everyone else at a set price are, in my opinion, just as effective in the short term and far more effective in the long term compared to exclusives.

Second, I believe it is reasonable for a publisher to offer a discount to direct-order customers, especially early adopters who are also paying shipping fees. [This paragraph was updated to represent my opinion.]

Third, I firmly believe that a publisher can best serve backers by offering a fully designed and developed game at the time of launch. This removes a significant amount of scheduling uncertainty, and design and development are well within a publisher’s control, even on a limited budget. However, the funds attained from a crowdfunding campaign may be necessary for a publisher to invest in art, miniatures, and other expensive sunk costs–Colby talks about how he may have prematurely invested in molds for The Monolith.

Future Takeaways (in Colby’s words)

• When possible, create a version of the game that focuses on lower price and a version that focuses on maximum bling.
• Be more willing to compete with the price point that we and everyone else knows online retailers are going to put on our games.
• Give the campaign a chance to communicate what the demand is. We will still be production ready, but I won’t be putting the cart directly in front of the horse again.
• Better leverage the community-based systems that already exist to support crowdfunding.

JAMEY: Fortunately, Colby is remaining true to his customer-first goals even while evolving as a crowdfunder…with one exception that has left me a bit torn.

Crowdfunding projects do seem to attract most backers to all-in deluxe pledge levels, so it makes sense that The Monolith’s $89 reward is the most popular (976 backers). However, that was an early bird price; for most of the campaign, that same exact reward has been available for $99. So while the early bird level was successful at attracting backers for the first day or so, far fewer backers have pledged to the project since then.

I personally think that a far more effective tool for attracting backers on day one (other than offering a great game at a great price) is to offer a significant unlock for free to ALL backers if you reach a certain threshold within the first 48 hours. If for some reason that threshold isn’t reached, you can add it as a big stretch goal later in the campaign. All backers are early adopters who are bringing the game to life.

I appreciate Plaid Hat for sharing their detailed thoughts with Board Game Wire, and I’m curious what you think about these goals vs how backers have responded to both versions of the project. What would you like other creators to learn from these insights?

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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog. 

We always try to make games that are easy to get to the table, but this is absurd: Just one month after customers started receiving copies of Wingspan Pocket, the game already has over 1,000 ratings on BoardGameGeek. People are getting the game and actually playing it right away–this is a publisher’s dream!

What makes Wingspan Pocket so immediately playable? Can these characteristics be replicated in other games? Here’s my take:

• Context of Wingspan: I can’t overlook that a person’s knowledge of Wingspan makes it easier to play Wingspan Pocket. Similarly, it was easier for me to play Duel for Middle-earth the first time because I had already played 7 Wonders Duel. I think this asset extends beyond game brands to game mechanisms: If I’m drawn to a new deckbuilding game, I come to it with the experience of having played other deckbuilding games.
• Fast initial setup and per-game setup: I don’t mind punching and sorting a new game, but it’s really nice when that process only takes a few minutes. With Wingspan Pocket, you literally just remove the paper bands that secure the decks of cards, and the game is ready to be played. The per-game setup takes another 2 minutes, which not only makes it easier to play the game for the first time, but also every other time.
• Streamlined core rules with engine building: No matter how complex a game is, I love when the core action system can be described in a single sentence or infographic. In Wingspan Pocket, you activate bird powers from left to right, starting with the Nest action. That’s it–that’s your turn. A brilliant part of Elizabeth’s design is that you immediately have a sense of progress, because if you play a bird on your first turn, you also get to activate that bird.
• Game length: Wingspan Pocket plays in around 30 minutes, making it easy to fit into a busy schedule. Most of our other games are longer–some significantly longer–which is right for those games, but it’s neat to see how quick-to-table a shorter game is.
• Solo play: All of our games include Automa solo modes, so you can play them without having to schedule around other players. This removes a huge barrier to entry. Wingspan Pocket is playable from 1-5 players, so when you’re ready to share it with other players, there’s a higher-than-average player count cap.
• Shared excitement: When I have the sense that many other people are playing a specific game, I’m excited to play it too. Perhaps it’s just the algorithm, but I’ve noticed a higher density of Instagram posts about Wingspan Pocket than other new games we’ve released in the past. Some of the above factors impact these posts, along with the beautiful bird art by Natalia and Ana–it’s a photogenic game.
• Reference cards for each player: I believe that the #1 asset to making a game friendly to those who teach games is the inclusion of reference cards for each player. Wingspan Pocket’s reference card has the core gameplay, setup, and card anatomy on one side and icons on the other.

I’m so happy to see people playing Wingspan Pocket, and I’m looking to learn from this experience for our other games (including Wyrmspan Pocket, which Connie is actively working on).

What inspires you to play a game soon after adding it to your collection?

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Also read: The Formula for Wingspan’s Longevity, Replayability, and Success

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog. 

A huge part of my job at Stonemaier Games is communicating information via this website, our newsletters, Facebook groups, the weekly YouTube livecast, etc. I’ve tried to hone my communication skills through lots of practice, plus the consumption of other creators’ newsletters, crowdfunding updates, videos, and more.

I’m always fascinated by how someone handles communication when things don’t go as planned, and we had a few such situations arise during our recent Iceland trip. Here’s what happened, how the communication was handled, and what I learned from it as a creator.

Please Get Off the Plane

We boarded the plane for our Baltimore to Reykjavik flight late in the evening, and then we sat on the plane for around an hour while mechanics came and went. The captain kept us informed during this time that there was a minor mechanical issue that would be fixed soon. When the issue was resolved, the plane continued to sit at the gate for around 20 minutes before the pilot shared that the airport runways were now undergoing scheduled maintenance, and we would need to get off the plane and wait until the next day at 2:00 to reboard.

It was a rough way to start the trip, because we missed an entire day in Iceland as a result. In this case, I think the communication between the plane and the passengers was fine, but I have to think that better communication between the airline and the airport could have gotten us out of Baltimore without disrupting the runway maintenance.

In publishing, communication about timing in the short-term can have big implications. For example, we have a game we’re trying to launch on our webstore right before Essen Spiel (and then have copies at the convention), but to make that possible, we needed to work with our manufacturer to split the print run into two halves.

The Eclipse Is Cancelled

A small part of the reason we chose this particular week to go to Iceland is that they were in the path of totality for a solar eclipse due to happen on August 12. The weather was sunny and clear the entire trip…until the afternoon of the eclipse, when the boat was surrounded by a thick layer of fog.

Throughout the day, the communications officer on board gave updates and set expectations for the eclipse viewing. She told us that the captain was doing his best to find a clear area, but the chances of finding one were increasingly low. While I’m sure some people were disappointed that they missed a clear view of the sun, these updates ensured that no one was completely caught off guard by the lack of visibility.

I appreciate this approach to crowdfunding updates. Even if things aren’t going as planned, I’d rather know (and to hear what the creator is working on) than be kept in the dark.

We Now Live on This Bus

After a fun visit to an Icelandic horse ranch, our excursion bus struggled to pull out of a steep driveway. The driver kept trying, time after time, and each time the bus drifted a little further down the hill. This went on for around 20 minutes without a word of communication from the driver or tour guide.

Did we need progress updates? I don’t think so. We could all hear what was happening, and we knew the driver was doing his best. No one complained, and when the driver finally got it to work, we all cheered.

However, I think there was probably an opportunity for one update 10 minutes in to ease any future concerns. Something along the lines of, “If we’re still here in 20 minutes, we’ll call for a backup bus and everyone can wander around the ranch in the meantime.”

Sometimes people just need to hear that everything will be okay (and how it will be okay). It’s why we send a shipping update and post in a game’s Facebook group about a week into the shipping process–we want to assure people that it’s normal for some orders to have shipped but not others, and that we’ll take care of them if their order doesn’t arrive exactly as they’d hoped.

There Is No Line (Until There’s a Line)

We went on a few excursions, and we found the lack of signage at port to be a bit bewildering. For example, when we arrived to go see puffins in the wild, there were several lines, but the only guidance anyone had from the excursion coordinator was to either wait in a specific line (as directed by her) or to wait literally anywhere else until further instructions were provided. It was confusing for the hundreds of people who had excursions at different times, and probably frustrating for the coordinator to get the same questions over and over.

Similarly, for any future product, I think it’s helpful for customers to have a place to “wait” (i.e., a prelaunch signup page or a game-specific launch notification newsletter). That way they don’t have to wonder if they’ll miss out–they’ll get a notification when the product launches.

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Have you learned anything about communication recently from travels, crowdfunding, or other experiences?

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog. 

A little under 2 weeks ago, we arrived as part of a group of 7 at port in Reykjavik to check into our cruise. This process is very similar to checking into a flight, except at the final step before boarding, there was a surprise: The attendant informed Megan and me that we had VIP status. We were swiftly shepherded into a lounge where we would wait for the ship (instead of standing in line).

As it turns out, the travel agent who arranged the trip for our group (the sister of a friend with whom we were traveling) had received a free VIP upgrade, and she was very nice to apply it to our room. It mostly meant that when the cruise ship docked at various ports around Iceland, we could skip the line to get off and on the boat.

When I heard this from the concierge in the lounge, while I appreciated the ability to save some time, I didn’t want to leave behind the rest of our group. But the concierge continued with the following: Those with VIP status could include other members of their party when skipping lines.

Oh. I see. That felt different. Yes, there was a still a little unease about going to the front of a long queue (which only happened once during the trip), but if we could use the VIP status to help our friends and family… well, yes please. I love positive player interaction!

So as we enjoyed this perk during the trip, I wondered if there were other forms of VIP status that avoided the feeling of exclusion, gatekeeping, or elitism. Here’s a list of some examples, many of which were shared during yesterday’s livecast:

1. Stonemaier Champion program: For $15/year, Champions support this blog and our YouTube channel while receiving a 20% discount on every Stonemaier webstore purchase and prioritized shipping before non-Champion orders. This has proven to be a good value for over 15,000 Champions without hurting the experience of everyone else.
2. Convention early access: Various conventions offer early access to the expo hall or hotel blocks for volunteers and those with special ties to the industry (e.g., FLGS owners). Accessing the expo hall an hour early feels great but isn’t so much time that you’ve cleared the shelves.
3. Theme parks: I went to Universal Studios last year and stayed in a hotel connected to the new Epic Universe, so we could enter the park an hour early early (time we used to have a quiet breakfast). We didn’t pay to jump to the front of the lines for rides, but in hindsight I regret that decision, as we spent hours waiting for our turn.
4. Birthday perks: Everyone should feel like a VIP on their birthday! Many coffee shops and bakeries will reach out to customers with a birthday treat, which seems like a win-win for the shop and the customer.
5. Speakeasies: Modern speakeasies (like NOTA in St. Louis) make you feel “in the know” with their hard-to-find doors and passwords to enter, but really anyone is welcome.
6. Loyalty systems: Some companies offer points to those who purchase products from them, and over time those points can result in some special privileges. The Lego Insider program is an example of this.
7. Backstage passes at concerts: Some people pay for backstage access while others gain it by knowing the right person. I don’t mind this mild form of gatekeeping because the backstage has an actual capacity limit (unlike an most early bird crowdfunding rewards).
8. Restaurant regulars: Have you ever been to a restaurant so many times that they know your favorite dish or sometimes serve you a special off-the-menu item? I haven’t, but it sounds amazing. I like that this is an organic, personalized version of a loyalty program.
9. Corporate perks: Some companies make their employees feel like VIPs by giving them access to suites at sporting venues (and invite friends and family to join them, like the cruise VIP status).
10. Airport lounges: My credit card gives me access to some airport lounges, and it was really nice to relax in one of them during a trip earlier this year. I wouldn’t say this fully qualifies for the list, as the other way to access them is to pay for expensive plane tickets, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

I want our customers to feel like very important people (even if they aren’t Stonemaier Champions), so I appreciate the variety of these VIP techniques.

Is there a VIP status or perk you’ve experienced that avoids the feeling of exclusion, gatekeeping, or elitism?