I did an article a some time ago for the Gazebo (Link to Mob Money) on the various crowd sourcing platforms available and thought I had covered it pretty extensively.
Then, while wandering around Spiel, I stumbled upon a stand for Spiele Schmiede (Game Forge) from Happy Shops, a company that runs a specialist crowd funding platform just for board games.
A platform with a 90% success rate, you read that correctly, 90%, for those who aren’t up on the numbers, Kickstarter has a 46% success rate and that’s considered to be a huge success.
How do they manage that? Well, for starters they have a deal with German board gaming site, Spiel Offensive, for prime placement in their monthly newsletter for one of their product, directly advertising to 70,000 people in your target market.
They also vet every project that applies to be on their platform, which means a smaller number of projects to compete with.
To get on their platform a game must have the backing of an established game editor or publisher who will vouch for both the idea and the quality of the game.
If you don’t have contact with one; they have contact with several which they can put you in touch with.
A transparent and complete description of the game production costs and risks, they will check out the costs to see if it is a viable project and also to look for potential problems you may have missed that could cause the project to fail despite a successful campaign.
They don’t take over the production planning and manufacture but if asked they can help you find suitable partners. This element of quality assessment is absent from other platforms and is definitely a factor in that huge success rate. It is also a massive help to new game designers, creating a game is one thing, marketing it is quite another.
They Also:
– Handle the Shipping
– Provide international Customer support, only questions they don’t have the answer to will be forwarded to the designer.
– Do PR and Marketing work for you; they actually pay for some advertising for you (Banner ads on Board game geek for example) as well as issue press releases etc.
– They offer advice on design and costing on the project. Given their success rate that would be advice worth listening to!
– They will produce a Video for your project if your own isn’t up to scratch.
– They will create Web pages in multiple languages for your project.
When I spoke to them they were quite emphatic that the platform wasn’t just for Germany and they are quite keen to attract international game designers as well.
If you have a game but don’t know how to get it to market, or want to break into the market in other countries you can contact them as follows:
By Email: Spieleschmiede@Happyshops.com
Or Phone: +49 (0) 34 62 /82 48 99
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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