I haven’t run a crowdfunding campaign in 10 years, but Stonemaier was built on the foundation of the 7 campaigns I ran from 2012-2015, raising around $3.2 million to fund games like Viticulture, Euphoria, Between Two Cities, and Scythe, among some expansion and accessory projects.

It was a very different time on Kickstarter, as the gaming category there was much less populated than it is now. While I was fortunate to have success on the crowdfunded games frontier, I made a bunch of mistakes that likely would sink a project in 2025 (especially if I were a first-time creator):

1. I didn’t build enough of a crowd for the first game prior to launch. I actually put quite a bit of effort into this before the campaign, but I was still learning the tools and skills to spread the word effectively.
2. I didn’t budget carefully enough. I got caught up in the excitement of Viticulture and added a stretch goal that likely would have sunk the campaign if we had reached it. It was a big wake-up call that I needed to budget much more carefully (and with a healthy buffer) and not make reckless decisions even when things are looking good.
3. I didn’t have a production-ready game heading into Kickstarter. I got better at this over time, but Viticulture still needed several more months of playtesting, development, art, and graphic design after the campaign ended. Entering a campaign with an incomplete game puts the burden of uncertainty on backers, who I think are much more savvy to avoid such projects today.
4. I offered exclusive content. This was such a standard practice in those early days that I didn’t think through the long-term implications. I was thinking about 3,000 customers, not the potential of 300,000 customers in the coming years. After Euphoria, I realized just how poorly I was serving the majority of customers through exclusive content, and I stopped offering it. Instead, I shifted to a model of offering free promos to backers that I could sell in the future to anyone.
5. I got too fancy with stretch goals. Even after 6 campaigns, I was still making mistakes, as this happened on the Scythe campaign (my final Kickstarter). I was worried about blowing past all of the stretch goals on the first day, so I waited until after 24 hours had passed to announce the stretch goal levels, which greatly irritated backers. I heard their feedback and fixed it, but it was a good reminder to keep core elements like stretch goals clear and simple.
6. I didn’t invest in great graphic design. I had a shoestring budget for Viticulture, so I hired a college student for the graphic design, and I used my rudimentary InDesign knowledge to construct the project page. It wasn’t terrible, but nothing about it conveyed that the final product would be polished and professional. That’s when I brought in Christine, who is still with us today.
7. I offered early bird rewards. While this isn’t a huge dealbreaker–I still see plenty of projects offer a little reward for people who follow the pre-launch page or back within the first 24 hours–I wish I had instead used the method of, “If we reach X goal in the first 48 hours, everyone gets this special bonus.”
8. I used crowdfunding universally instead of selectively. Not every game is a good fit for crowdfunding, but I couldn’t see through any other lens at the time. I think crowdfunding is best when you can truly tantalize backers with several major hooks (component, art, etc). I’m glad that Between Two Cities worked out on Kickstarter, but in hindsight it would have been a great way to start building strong relationships with retailers and distributors. The same goes for the Viticulture reprint in 2014, which I reprinted as part of the Tuscany campaign; I don’t think it’s bad to use an expansion campaign to reprint the game, but it was another lost opportunity to form stronger bonds with retailers.

Despite those mistakes, there are a few things I did right in those early, foundational campaigns: I invested in art (even taking money out of my meager 401k/IRA so I could pay the Euphoria artist up front), I tried to offer a great value for the reward pricing (which even included shipping fees, which was standard at the time), and I focused on the people by inviting conversation, replying to every message within a few minutes, and thanking each backer individually during my first campaign within a few hours of their pledge.

What do you think about these mistakes? Are there other common mistakes you see crowdfunders making that deter you from backing their projects?

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Also read:

• 10 Years Without Crowdfunding
• 10 Better Reasons than KS Exclusives to Back a Project
• Are the Reasons We Quit Kickstarter Still Valid 6 Years Later?
• If I Returned to Kickstarter, Here’s How I’d Do It
• The 10 Reasons I’ll Back a Kickstarter Project
• 7 Insights Missed by Most First-Time Creators

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