Board Game Crowdfunding: Disappointments 

Biggest disappointment is mythic games. Not being able to hold companies accountable. If you pledge, you can lose out. Should be a better way for this to be done. Ks should have better safeguards for buyers.

Apparently your channel is more significant to me than I realized, glad to see you back!

The algorithm is a tough one. They really expect you to upload daily and maintain your engagement metrics. It becomes a monumental task, especially for someone like you with a full-time job. I'm not a big board gamer (I mostly play tabletop war games) but I like you and your content. Keep on trucking, man! You're a good egg.

Oh, I would love your take on the $1 pre-campaign pledge marketing practice and the whole Launchboom thing. We need the KoA take!

I would be really interested in a top '10' narrative driven games! Where it is really about how good the story is.

TBH, I am disappointed at EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of the shady, half-assed God of War campaign. They completely wasted the potential of the game and made it too light with just the most basic gameplay possible (ffs, there isn't even line of sight), smaller tiles and fewer tiles than any Zombicide, only 2 enemies and 1 boss per level, tons of bad gameplay decisions, and even the minis are weirdly proportioned with strange-looking 3D tattos and makeup - 3D TATTOOS AND MAKEUP! They look like dwarven versions of their characters with big heads and short limbs. It's like they gave this project to the "B" team, and it's an insult to anyone who loves the God of War franchise. FFS, there isn't even one single God to fight in the base game. CMON kept those to the expansions because they know that's what people want. I could go on for several paragraphs about the half-assed, shady campaign, but no one wants to read that much opinion. I will say that it's the last straw for me and CMON is now on my "do not back" list. Kudos to you, and glad to have you back! You're the only person who has the balls to say anything negative about the God of War board game campaign. Most RU-vidrs ignored it.

Good to hear from you. Good luck with whatever you are doing.

I've been waiting for your videos!! Glad to see you're doing well. :)

Nice to see you back!Love your content,and how you check on all the aspects of games dude,keep up doing what you do best!

Welcome back. Good of you to let us know where you are in the process. One immutable fact of life is this, stuff happens. Now you went radio silent for perfectly good reasons and we are here for you now that you are back. Companies go dark for good reasons too. Eventually, they also have to come up and let folks know what happened. Or better yet, like you did, tell people ahead of time we are doing X, attending Y convention, or have X problem to solve. Then let the audience you built -and created expectation in- know when you will be back. Also, as you did. So you did what needed doing and you are working your way back to a regular schedule. Look forward to seeing the videos. My days of big dollar board game campaigns are over. I have no idea who I would get to play them with me, so I have no expectation that they will see the table enough to justify the expense, storage, or learning -then having to remember- the rules. So none of these campaigns even made my radar.

Glad to see you back :)

Glad to see you back. Definitely missed your content. The new digs look like they are going to be awesome!

The Dead Keep was a major disappointment on the points you make under your no.1. It could have lifted the Trudvang IP that CMON now owns out of the gutter but instead we now get just another Zombicide Black Plague clone. Boring.

Yeah before the campaign I was sure, God of War would be an All -in. But at the end I wasn't even backing.

I love your work, your insights and the passion. Keep on posting. That's a fantastic space for your hobby! Jealous!

Good to have you back!

Good to see you again. I hear you on all the points.

One disappointment I recently had was Tanares Adventures. The game is awesome sure, but flipping through the 3 books + cards was ridiculous to the point I didn't want to play anymore. Got the whole All-In pledge just for the company to come out a couple months later and say they are starting a new KS for updated/streamlined books, which would be an additional like 60$ or something. Maybe i'll pick them up eventually.

Glad to see you back KOA, missed yah!

glad to see you are doing well, looking forward to you getting back into the rhythm of things, keep safe, and congrats on the move.

Really nice to see you again. By the way, I love that shirt!

Posting a comment to help, love the channel :)

Glad you’re back!!

welcome back and yeah, agree on the points.

For god of war. I was expecting huge minis where the characters can be placed in different parts of the larger monster. Or if that wasn’t possible due to price and space. They could have made boards which are you climbing the enemies to their weak point to defeat them.

So much Mythic Battles in the background. Super fun game!

Glad to see you back hopefully you all get nicely settled in to your new place

Welcome back man, missed yah! My biggest disappointment in crowdfunding is seeing my bank balance after backing the latest Castles of Burgundy campaign. Which is sure to repeat itself when Puerto Rico launches later this year.

It's great to see you are back 🙂. I do feel like you say that you are pretty much the only one who investigate case of suspicious bogus shenanigans within the board gaming industry. I wanted to briefly touch on what you said about the weight of responsibility. My impression is that there really is a silent collective who are not OK with how the industry is behaving today, but WE are either too lazy/ignorant of how/ or scared to speak up. The fear of getting shouted down by tribalist people who take any valid questions as a personal attack on their favourite developer/ publisher/ IP etc. I think that maybe you should ask the question how, rather than doing all that investigating for your followers who reach out to you, you may influence and encourage others to start doing it as well. For as long as we just have one or two people who raise these issues the market will not be impacted by it.🤔 Again, welcome back. I made sure to like your video 🙂 May the algorithm be with you, always.

Mine are Japanime Games, El Dorado Games, and Friendly Skeleton. All with undelivered products and almost non-existent customer support.

So glad to see another video from you. Is there any chance that you might do a segment regarding Funforge and Monumental any time soon? Backers for that game would love to have more eyes on their egregious situation.

Great to see you back King! Interested to know what you think of The Dead Keep? And what you think of CMON’s new strategy on Gamefound… (launch a new project every week! Quantity way out stripping quality…)

Good to see you’re back. And, congrats with the new house. That space looks huge! I don’t always agree with your thoughts and that 6:Siege box is laughing at my face (lost approx 250,-), but I really appreciate your presence in this niche field of board games. You’ll probably get loads of tips of poorly managed Kickstarters in your inbox, so here’s another one that has me fascinated: Adventures in Neverland by Black Box Adventures. Funded in 2020 and it’s a prime example of extremely poor communication and lies. I’m not a backer, I wanted to late pledge because it actually looks like a really cool game, then I started reading the comments on KS and BGG. My oh my…

Perhaps not your usual type of game, but FrostPunk the board game has amazing narrative through each game!

Hey, congrats on the new setup! ❤ Totally agree re: managing expectations. I was genuinely surprised by the amount of people that backed Merchants Cove, expecting it to be like Root to discover it was nothing of the sort - all down to setting that expectation of what it was about. (That says, I found it real odd as I had a very clear understanding long before it arrived so not entirely sure what happened re: communications 🤔)

Good luck settling in!

I give myself $1500 a year for board games and this year is the first time i dont think i will spend it all. Maybe summer and fall will change this.

You move more than anyone I’ve ever met. Sounds stressful. I hope you enjoy it! Look forward to the final setup

Alive, he's alive !

Marvel Zombies broke CMon for me. Kinda broke KS for me too. I was close to getting screwed by Mythic, but after being Reichbusted I just couldn't give them any more money as KS/pre-order. Keep up the good work, and best of fortunes!

Glad to see you back in action.

If you want a physical game with a great story go check out some old gamebooks like bloodsword, Lone Wolf, Fabled Lands, Heart of Ice, Etcetera.

Ha! Yes Red Joker and Cyber Odyssey... I thoght everone forgot about that one. I am/was an all in backer and was not worried about the delays early on but now think i have lost about $200.00. (no updates since October of last year). Now yes i looked a bit deeper and they are fulfilling a small card game ok KS called Alter: Realms of the gods. So maybe they are busy with that one, and they are hoping the funds from that one can finish out the Cyber Odyssey situation but things look grim.

Welcome back King! Heres a comment for the algorithm!

He is back!

Welcome to your new home. May the algorithm soon be with you. -Toby

Welcome back!

Glad to see that life stuff hasn't permanently kept you from producing more videos. Was watching Alex and a few others, but I definitely relate better to your commentary. I agree that board gaming needs more, or at least more in depth, voices.

All hail the return of the king!!

Yooooooo the homie is back !

Surprised you didn’t touch on the following with CMON: 1 - the campaign was lazy. No gameplay ready on launch. No rulebook available on launch. No physical prototypes available in a post-COVID era. 2 - shipping charges continue to be excessive. It’s baffling to me how a giant of crowdfunding cannot (or will not) negotiate better shipping rates. I think the other explanation is that they just do not subsidize shipping at all, passing all of the cost to ship a box to the backer. I’m guessing many companies do this to some degree. So disappointing in many ways.

The return of the king 💪

Nah, today crowdfunding is not crowdfunding anymore. That disappoints me in general! It's only a platform for Preorders. You will get nearly everything in retail and most of the time even cheaper. Many stretch goals makes no sense. If they are useful, you find them in retail or on the homepage of the publisher. No problem, that you missed campaigns. On top there will be another campaign (second printing, 2nd Edition, new addon with the same corebox again...)

I’m here for the narrative games too for sure. What are your top picks for narrative?

CMON comics 2 is leaving me feeling pretty flat towards them. The 3 Zombicide comics are really bland, that to me ust phoned in. I feel so ambivolent about them that I don't wamt even want to see them. I decided to give them to a bookdrive.

Eric M. Lang can only do broken area control trash. How the hell could he possibly make a god of war board game?

GOW campaign was a let down, was excited for a 1-2 player game to slay beasts with my son but still hopeful their progress in showing the game in the PM brings me in. Opted for acrylic tiles for COB instead for now.

Hey king, and plans on attending gencon this year? If so any game suggestions to try this year?

I think The Isofarian Guard was a great narrative game. Loved it. Actually sold the game but kept going with the story through the app.

I remember that video about GoW, interesting how these things develop and looking back retrospectively. Also interesting that you mention bloodborne as after much deliberation I am passing on grimhaven as there’s just no point for me to jump on it as having everything from bloodborne, but that’s just me. Personally I am at the point of saturation and not being in CONUS for me means not really being able to move the ones that I don’t love or no longer play and do not intend to play again and while I get the majority market is new entrants or those who are not at that point but I suspect for many who started during the golden age of KS boardgame campaigns you can only consume so much content. To answer the question of individual investment, I’ve really scaled back, I’ll get updates to exisiting IPs that I own and I like the industry move to standees as asking >$200 for a boardgame just because minis BEFORE shipping versus

God of War was so easily skippable. Strange

Welcome back. Hope the move went well

I’m not sure if it’s a disappointment, but more of a just realizing I don’t need anymore games right now, but I haven’t gotten any new kickstarters/gamefound games this year. Nothing as really struck as being exceptionally different what what I either already have or have coming. DC united is tempting if it has some new mechanics, but I haven’t played enough of my other United games. The dead Keep seemed interesting but I have Massive Darkness 2. I would say my greatest frustration right now is the inaccessibility of the games I have from an organization perspective. I finally decided to get Heat pedal to the Metal, and love it. Not just the game but also how organized it is and how easy it is to table. Wyrmspan is exactly the opposite, opened the box and it’s just a few package of cards some tokens to punch and 2 containers to hold eggs. Nothing to hold the cards once it’s been opened. HOMM3 I got the big box that was supposed to store everything, everything tucked away in trays nice and neat, with 2 punch boards on top and no where to put the stuff you punch out. I’d happily pay a few dollars more for a game that is designed to be able to be stored and played

Welcome Back

Not sure how can you talk about being disappointed in crowdfunding without mentioning LSG and others that continue to fail their backers

Great to see you are back. My biggest disapointment is to see how Crowdfunding is used as a money making machine. I feel that games are being specifically designed to make the most money on the Crowdfunding platforms: FOMO for exclusives, expansions that should have been in the base game, etc. A lot of games are going to be published anyway, even without crowdfunding. This is not anymore about helping to bring projects to life. I will only support smaller companies that really need my support.

If GoW made decent minis instead of whatever most of that crap is, wrote good lore for in between the games for this board game, and had the voice actor for Kratos narrate the missions as flashback stories it would be such an easy win.

Liege and you, basically! Jeremy Howard doesn't seem to be active. Critical Fail seems to have gone.. Board Game Co is too normie. Quakalope is... Quakalope.

What's the name of the fb page again please?

Finally after being burnt a few too many times now, I'm disappointed with bloat. Unfortunately bloat attracts crowd funding

A few things I've been doing the past few years. 1. Don't give KS money. Do the $1 pledge to get into the PM. KS doesn't deserve more than their cut of $1 because they don't protect backers and they don't protect the people browsing their platform from scams and bad faith publishers. 2. I've been trying to gravitate toward indie publishers of games that look novel and don't have a bunch of miniatures. Or sticking with a few big publishers I feel are reliable like AR, Garphill, and Restoration.

The fact that campaigns keep getting shorter is stupid (as in a stupid move). I know this and I still constantly think to myself "Wait, this campaign is already at the last day ? It JUST started !". I started backing games last year (in spite of being in the hobby for at least 8 years) and I am already tired of trying to follow these crowdfunding campaigns constantly popping up.

I have a issue though not really a disappointment. I got the game Mega Pulse by Orion games. A couple of months back they said they ran out of funds, however they having another company Tangerine games take up the reigns and make the game for us. They mentioned the game will be delayed to 2025 because of this. I just got a recent update and the Creator of Orion basically admits that the reason they ran out of funds because he used the funds for his medical Bills. Now its not a disappointment because I still will get my game cause the other company is making it. However it makes me concerned that companies can just do this with the money.

Enjoy rebuilding your gaming space! It is one of my favorite parts of moving.

We are legion and we are many!

I have been disappointed in the last few kickstarters by awaken realms, like they have been alright games but just not amazing. Feel like they don't polish the rules enough, I really enjoyed Nemesis however Nemesis Lockdown was just more and not better, and subsequent games. I also backed ISS vanguard and they could have streamlined the game some more. Lords of Ragnarok seems like it was a massive flop as it wasnt an improvement to Hellas. Tamashii was alright, I enjoyed the programming but felt it becomes survive and sprint to the finish of each scenario every time and I had high expectations that your decisions matter in each game but they have little impact you just unlock a card or two. Starting to feel like each games is a v0.8 or a 0.95 and not there. I also have the great wall but haven't tabled it yet.

Let‘s wake up the algorithm! The room is gonna be great!! 👍

Street Fighter V Championship Edition was my latest disappointment. After a year or two? they changed pretty much everything. Atleast they told us and I was able to get my money back.

As much as I love the bloodborne game. I agree with you. The level design isn't great. I'm playing nova aetas renaissance and the level design with gameplay is some of the best I've played. Story is fine.

“I didn’t want this video to be focused on the disappointments, but rather the solutions…” The title of your video should align with and reinforce that sentiment. It currently does not and comes across as strictly negative. Just my 2 cents. Thanks for all you do!!

Eye of Zamrock funded

I know it wasn't what many (very vocal) people wanted, but I'm excited for God of War the Board Game. Reading the Dev Diaries I (mostly) knew what to expect, and it being so heavily inspired by 2 games I love (Cthulhu DMD and Bloodborne TBG), it's very much a game for me. If I wanted the GoW narrative again, i would just replay the videogames. I tend to avoid/dislike narrative in board games as I don't think they can do it well, unless they are completely solo focused. Even Oathsworn, which has a great story, is a lot of downtime because of the narrative and it's hard to stay focused/engaged. I do agree CMON needs to take advantage to being n GF and use the preview page instead of only relying on their website for the Dev Diaries.

Zombicide is never a disappointment

The chief marketing officer of a crowdfunding website who’s literal job is to market projects and get you to spend as much as possible is no substitute for you King of Average!

Why does it take five Minutes to get into the content you advertised!!! So verbose!

Disappointment was you caving in to Mythic demands for 6th Siege money and telling your viewers you are doing it for them and they should not follow your example. That was beyond lame ... Do what I say not what I do....

you look tired, buddy! hope you are oke! my latest dissapointments have been judgement and okko. and the monolith games customer service. 😬 i was already wondering what’s going on, but this is the first vid i get shown from you in a few weeks 🤔❤️!