With life, some projects come to a standstill. In my case, work on Trigrams and some other card decks came to a hiatus. In an effort to keep some personal work alive related to those projects, I decided to research the real cost of a Kickstarter project, mostly focusing on Trigrams.
With the few articles I read, the sobriety of reality set in. While games like Exploding Kittens and Cards Against Humanity were runaway hits, many other funded projects ended up either completely breakeven or net loss for the teams.
So, why discuss here? My design work, as mentioned before, is mostly a hobby. While I do occasionally sell patches on eBay, it’s not my primary occupation. Reality revealed itself that some of my projects may simply remain concepts, some more developed than others. Much like my military rank card deck, other forces seem to stall the best-laid design plans.
For now, it seems some of these projects will remain ‘in the vault’ as it were. Perhaps, at some point, the stars will align and my creations will move from drafting table to reality. Or maybe a benevolent patron will stumble my way 😉
Until then, stayed tuned.
Article links:
http://carolmertz.com/2016/05/the-dirty-details-of-self-publishing-an-indie-tabletop-game/
https://medium.com/@JohnTeasdale/how-we-turned-140k-on-kickstarter-into-40k-in-debt-and-how-we-broke-even-1f86d80fe50f
https://www.polygon.com/2015/2/25/8102751/exploding-kittens-kickstarter-rich
Data Monkey Designs 