Defenders of the Realm: Definitive Edition

A week ago, I backed a board game crowdfunding project on Gamefound, Defenders of the Realm: Definitive Edition. Today, that crowdfunding project is at 92% funded. Which is really, really bad. Most board game crowdfunding projects hit their funding goal on the first day, some within minutes. And because "funded within 4 minutes" is a nice marketing slogan, a lot of companies doing crowdfunding projects set their funding goals deliberately too low. I've seen projects get cancelled after reaching 500% funding, because the company said that they can't actually make a game for that money. Making board games is very much a question of scale, as you have a lot of fixed costs that you can only absorb if you make several thousand copies of the game.

I don't think this is because the game is bad. Defenders of the Realm is a classic game from 2010, and the people trying to remake it have a lot of experience in game design. But they are pretty obviously rather bad at marketing. The crowdfunding project page doesn't look good, and there has been a lack of buzz created on other channels usually used for marketing crowdfunded board games. This is their second attempt at a remake, with the first crowdfunding campaign having failed mostly due to being overloaded with plastic and then being too expensive. This second attempt is a lot more reasonably priced at $60 for the base game, or $105 for the deluxe version.

The campaign is still going for three weeks, and it is extremely likely that it will pass 100% funded in that time. But the economics of board game crowdfunding make a game that is between 100% and 200% funded the actually scariest possible outcome. If a crowdfunding campaign doesn't reach its funding goal, your pledge never gets collected. If a campaign is very successful and collects a big multiple of its funding goal, it is very likely to get actually delivered. But a barely funded game is at a big risk that the company takes your money, but then fails to deliver the game. And the way that crowdfunding is set up legally, that is totally your loss.

So right now I am somewhat undecided whether I should renege on my pledge. Losing $60 + VAT isn't a huge financial risk, obviously. But if this project fails to deliver, it would be the first board game crowdfunding campaign to do so for me; and I have been pledging for board game crowdfunded games since 2015. Board game crowdfunding projects have a much lower rate of non-fulfillment than crowdfunding projects for let's say computer games or tech. Board game crowdfunding projects have a high probability of being late, but usually deliver eventually. I like the idea of the game, and I have no negative feelings towards the developers. But the funding goal of $100,000 sounds like awfully little to keep even a small company going for the year it is supposed to run until delivery. Cancelling my pledge looks like the financially smarter move, but emotionally it feels somewhat mean to me.