Anmelden
Top 7 Big Conclusions from Your 800+ Comments
Your generosity of insights, feedback, and ideas is truly amazing: I’ve learned so much from the 800+ comments you’ve made over the last week on the Facebook and website versions of my article about ready-to-ship launches vs crowdfunding. Thank you!
Before I delve into the input that resonated the most with me, I want to share a small call for action: If you are interested in the games we make at Stonemaier Games and don’t want to depend on an algorithm to keep you informed, please subscribe to our monthly newsletter. I heard from SO many people who reported that they didn’t hear about our new game, Braided Skies, during the 25-day window between reveal and launch, a time period during which I was constantly sharing information about it on this website, newsletters, YouTube, BoardGameGeek, and social media.
Fortunately, Braided Skies is still fully produced and available. It’s on all four of our region-friendly webstores, all of which offer flat-rate shipping to most countries. We’ve already started shipping in the US and Canada, with Australia and Europe following over the next 2 weeks.
Here are my top 7 big conclusions from your comments:
1. The launch is about serving early adopters. At least, this is the point of me talking about our ready-to-ship launches vs crowdfunding projects. My goal in this discussion isn’t to sell more games during the launch; rather, it’s to ensure we’re doing everything we can to serve a variety of customers, and we have room for improvement specifically for early adopters. I have no interest in fear as a motivator (no FOMO tactics, no exclusives), but I think we could more often include something special for free in addition to the game for early adopters during our launch period. I have a few ideas for what that might be, and it will always be something small that consumers and retailers can purchase post-launch.
2. People rely on ads to hear about crowdfunding projects. As I mentioned above, I was truly surprised by the number of people who said they were just hearing about Braided Skies for the first time as a result of the article. I’ve been talking about this game nonstop for the last month on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, BoardGameGeek, our newsletters, and this blog, and 10 different content creators showcased advanced copies before the launch (over half a million subscribers between them). We also ran ads, though our ad spend is very low ($1,000 or less) due to our organic reach. However, clearly it isn’t enough. For me, the takeaway is that I need to pay to boost posts to reach more people who already follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and we need to increase our ad spend to try to reach the same people who are seeing crowdfunding ads. This isn’t just for the launch; it’s also for the reveal, the shipping process, and the retail release. Last, I’m going to experiment with more vertical videos.
3. Discovery on crowdfunding platforms is way higher than I thought. It’s clear from your comments that a significant number of people visit Kickstarter and Gamefound on a regular basis to find new games. While I think we can best serve you via our current method–we invest in our games up front so they’re ready to ship to you very soon after you pay for them–it is also clear that some people are happy to wait. So I’m pitching a partnership to Gamefound that involves us launching a second printing preorder on Gamefound simultaneously with a Stonemaier Shopify ready-to-ship launch of the first printing. This allows us to serve Champions, early adopters, and retailers (all from the first printing) while increasing our visibility for those who primarily discover new games by browsing Gamefound (for the second printing).
4. Include more people in the process. Currently, the only people who have a hand in shaping our games are the designers, playtesters, proofreaders, my coworkers, and me. That typically adds up to around 100+ people, which is already a lot of cooks in the kitchen. However, what I would like to try is revealing a few key decisions via surveys before production begins, as well as some teasers at the PPC and MPC stages. If you enjoy this type of involvement, please subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
5. Feature more reasons to visit the Stonemaier website on a regular basis. Approximately 5,000 people visit our homepage every week, but they see the exact same content. You have to go digging around to see the content I post every day on Instagram, nearly every day on YouTube, twice weekly on the blog, regularly via the general and game-specific newsletters, and via design diary posts during a new game reveal, not to mention the reviewer links I add several times each day to various games’ media pages. So I’m working with our web developer to feature the 3 most recent updates across all of those categories right at the top of our website homepage, a list that will update every day based on the newest content.
6. Many backers are drawn to deluxe games. This is actually great news for us, because we try to make every game feel deluxe while still offering a compelling price. The problem is that I simply haven’t done a great job at conveying the deluxe nature of our games in anything other than my unboxing/tales-from-production videos. So I’ve created a new template for showcasing each game’s deluxe components in a single social-media friendly image, and I plan to share that image early, often, and everywhere.
7. Make our product pages more like project pages. It seems that people like the long scroll of crowdfunding project pages, especially when the images are mobile friendly. So for Braided Skies I’ve redesigned existing infographics and added some new images, along with some videos, with links to more content interspersed throughout the page. You can see many of these reworked images in this article.
Again, I genuinely appreciate your feedback and insights, and I hope you follow along to see how I continue to implement these changes for our next game (including a newsletter survey next Wednesday about a critical component in that upcoming game, a big 2027 release): https://stonemaiergames.com/e-newsletter/
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