What’s On Kickstarter Right Now?
Today is January 30th, 2024. ZineMonth & ZineQuest start in about 48 hours. In the vague popular wisdom, January is thought of as a slow month for Kickstarter. Let’s see what’s on Kickstarter’s “Tabletop Games” section right now.
Currently, there are 389(!) active tabletop games projects live on Kickstarter, which I’ve sorted according to my vague, loose categories. I’ve also added how many of them are funded vs unfunded, and how many are using AI (either declared so, or so obvious I could clock it in just a glance). After listing them, I’ll offer some thoughts at the end.
In order, there are:
- 90 miniatures, models, or STLs. 82 funded, 8 unfunded; 1 using AI (for some promo art).
- 80 standalone board or card games. 43 funded, 37 unfunded; 12 using AI.
- 37 5e splats: monsters, spells, items, and other stuff. 34 funded, 3 unfunded; 15 using AI.
- 26 5e adventures. 22 funded, 4 unfunded; 12 using AI.
- 24 ~sexy~ miniatures, models, or STLs. 22 funded, 2 unfunded; no AI.
- 23 non-5e RPG splats: monsters, spells, items, and other stuff. 18 funded, 5 unfunded; 3 using AI.
- 17 new RPG systems. 11 funded, 6 unfunded; 3 using AI.
- 14 board game expansions, editions, or reprints. 13 funded, 1 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 10 new editions or reprints of existing RPG systems. 8 funded, 2 unfunded; no AI.
- 10 maps, physical or for VTTs. 8 funded, 2 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 8 dice accessories: towers, boxes, mats, and so on. 6 funded, 2 unfunded; no AI.
- 8 non-5e RPG adventures. 4 funded, 4 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 6 “hilarious” party games. 1 funded, 5 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 5 conventions, events, or stores. 4 funded, 1 unfunded; no AI.
- 4 dice. 3 funded, 1 unfunded; no AI.
- 4 coins, tokens, or other counters. 2 funded, 2 unfunded; no AI.
- 3 tarot decks. 1 funded, 2 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 2 TCG/CCGs. 1 funded, 1 unfunded; no AI.
- 2 puzzle books. 2 funded; no AI.
- 16 miscellaneous other projects. Plushies, playing cards, model backdrop art, a digital board game thing, book tabs, a gaming table, card sleeves, a Traveller audiobook, bookends (I think?), a YouTube channel, meeples, paper standups, stock art, a travel backgammon board, a vertical chess board, and clay sculptures. 11 funded, 5 unfunded; no AI.
Right now, the top ten most-funded projects include three standalone board games, two board game expansions, two 5e splats, a set of miniatures, a CCG, and the YouTube channel.
Some Thoughts
If you’d asked me to guess how many live projects there were on Kickstarter this morning, I’d have guessed between 100 and 150. The fact that there are close to 400 shocks me—this little dive took about three times as long as I was expecting.
What strikes me most about all of this is how much trash there is on Kickstarter. Granted, I’m almost exclusively into RPGs, and I’m a known snob, but even still it astounds me how much just random junk clutter there is floating around. I sorted these projects by Newest to collect all of this data, and the amount of time I spent just trawling through cheapo STL files, AI-generated 5e DriveThru splats, and derivative board games was mind-numbing. Almost all of these had extremely low funding goals—most under a thousand dollars, some even under a hundred dollars.
Of the things I was interested in, mainly the adventures and new RPG systems, it was extremely difficult to find the stuff I might be interested. I’ve been using Kickstarter regularly for about five years now; I’ve run seven projects and backed 57, pretty much all of which are tabletop RPG-related. My three “recommended picks” on the games page are a 5e adventure, a reprint of Big Eyes, Small Mouth, and a card game. My “Discover -> Recommended for Me” page is a little better—some OSE zines, a CY_BORG expansion, the new Goodman DCC hack—but still is filled with 5e AI crap and big-box reprints of existing systems.
Of my last four projects (two OSR splats, a Mothership adventure, and a 5e splat), only about 15-25% of my backers came from inside Kickstarter itself—the rest were from outside sources. The 5e project had the highest number of those. I don’t know what the giant hundreds-of-thousands big-box board games’ stats look like, but I would be willing to bet they’re not that much higher. Kickstarter projects always flash huge numbers, sure, but few game companies release internal numbers outside of Kickstarter. There’s no great way to tell how a board game sells in a “on Kickstarter” vs “off Kickstarter” match-up.
What all of this suggests to me is that Kickstarter is a bad platform for what it advertises itself to be. All those STL files and 5e AI books have goals in the low hundreds—they don’t need the crowdfunding, their projects have budgets in the single digits. Those big-box board games—they obviously don’t need the crowdfunding, they’re coming from publishers with a dozen-plus games under their belt. But the projects that do need the crowdfunding? The little experimental board games and the tiny RPG zine adventures? They’re getting lost in the wash.
Is this really the platform we want to tie ourselves to? Is the best place for scrappy indie projects that need cash actually here? Kickstarter?