Something Completely Different... the Game and the Book
My Kickstarter campaign for a board game and architecture book.
If you’re interested in mental health, dreams, and reality then it’s hard to imagine you’d be interested in board games and architecture, but here we are: my Kickstarter campaign for an architecture-themed board game and book.
I want to print 2,500 copies of a large format, coffee table book on my father’s work. It will cost US$23,000.
Books
There have been a dozen books on my father’s work, but I don’t like them because they’re impersonal. They only consider the photographs and not the meanings of them. You only find meaning historically, commercially, personally, and psychologically. Aesthetics are not enough; they’re never enough.
Games
At the same time, I’m interested in putting a game on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform where people preorder innovative products that need funding. That is the crowdfunding idea, but we’re now seeing well-funded projects appearing on Kickstarter to take advantage of the community of eager buyers.
In 2024, 83% of Kickstarter’s campaigns were devoted to board games. 6,000 board games earned over US$200 million. The highest earning project, a campaign that ended last month, was a single game that garnered US$15,000,000 in pledged support.
I’ve designed dozens of board games over the last 15 years but never produced anything commercially. After a little investigation, attending a couple of conventions, I found the toy industry to be dull and uninspired.
Board games have become much more popular, riding the electronic game wave while offering a more personal experience. This is no thanks to the American toy industry which produced 1,200 versions of Monopoly. Over the last 30 years European game designers pioneered collaborative, resource management, and ecologically themed games. Europeans refer to American games as Ameritrash.
Publishers
Small publishers and independent retailers have opened a new market for games. 1995 marked the publication of the game The Settlers of Catan, the first Eurogame to achieve popularity outside Europe.
Large American toy corporations never knew their market. They were out-classed by the new genre of Euro-style board games. It’s a classic story of corporate inertia and insensitivity.
Kickstarter is a community of buyers with a direct-to-consumer sales channel. This explains Kickstarter’s rapid growth and the predominance of game campaigns. Kickstarter is basically a retailer, like Amazon, for products that don’t yet exist.
Crowsfunding
Through crowdfunding, it’s conceivable one might create an innovative product without kissing the ass of self-serving corporations. The ass-kissing never worked anyway, as demonstrated by the 1,200 versions of Monopoly.
But crowdfunding is neither simple nor easy. I did one Kickstarter campaign for my last book and raised US$1,000 mostly from my own mailing list.
It’s great that Kickstarter has collected an accessible community but I still have to market my product, demonstrate that I’m reputable, and build a sales funnel.
If you want a shot at success, this is what you need:
A good idea that’s easy to understand and affordable to prototype.
A means of demonstrating the product, an analysis of manufacturing costs, and a strategy for delivering it to buyers.
Tests of the product, the production and delivery system you propose.
Knockoff products to sell that are both less and more expensive than the main product.
A Kickstarter page with all the details of the product, offers, and conditions.
A custom web domain, address, and homepage just for the product. This is not the Kickstarter page.
An email address specific to your project. Not a gmail address!
A Customer Management System, or CMS, to contact and keep informed the thousands of interested people whose email addresses you hope to find.
Descriptions of your not-yet-existing product, along with photos, videos, and positive endorsements.
A weekly newsletter to keep your prospects informed leading up to and during the 30 days of your active campaign.
I have done all these things, but they won’t assure success. Some campaigners are making large investments in sales and marketing with professional graphics, videos, websites, promotion, and production. I’m not, but I’m also not trying to raise millions of dollars.
I’ll spend US$2,000 in advertising to get off the ground with no guarantee of success. I feel like Don Quixote tilting at windmills on an ass with a cardboard shield.
The campaign will start on May 15, 2025. Subscribe to the mailing list to get news and offers I’ll only make to those on the list.
From May 15th through June 15th you can pledge on the project’s Kickstarter webpage for either the game, a PDF version of the book, or various posters. The glossy, hardcover book will become available when campaign pledges exceed the book’s production cost.
The game is called Clients Versus Architects. The book is called From the Eye of the Beholder.
Visit the campaign website for information and click this button to subscribe to the campaign! (This is a separate list and not part of Substack.)