Category: Letiman’s Lessons
Dan Letzring of Letiman Games discusses game design, Kickstarter, and game publishing topics that every aspiring indie game designer/publisher should read.
Lesson #23 – Getting A Struggling Kickstarter Campaign to Fund
Hello everyone, I am back! So I am so sorry but it has been almost a year since my last blog post. I am so sorry about that! Between being extremely busy and not being sure exactly what to write about, I definitely dropped the ball on this blog. If you have been following along, this past May I launched a campaign for our latest game called The Neverland Rescue. The game was designed by well-known superstar designer Scott Almes and it was beautifully illustrated by the extremely talented Jacqui Davis. These factors combined with the interesting gameplay and overall aesthetic, I would have thought it nearly impossible that this game would struggle to hit our modest goal of $10,300. However, I will be honest in that the campaign performed way below where we would have expected. There are a lot of reasons that I believe led to the struggle,…
Lesson #22 – Time Management and a day in the life of a Kickstarter creator – Interview with Carla Kopp
Dan talks to our very own, Carla Kopp of Weird Giraffe Games, about her Kickstarter campaign.
Lesson #21 – BoardGameGeek Tips and Tricks for Kickstarter Creators
Board Game Geek (BGG) is a fantastic site but most creators that use it have a love/hate relationship with it. The site has a lot of users, is a fantastic resource for all things tabletop, and is a great way to spread word of your crowdfunding campaign. However, although useful, the site is archaic and can be troublesome to navigate, especially for newer users.
Lesson #20 – Percent Funding for First 2 days, Middle, and Final 3 days of a Campaign
In today’s post, Dan goes big data. He analyzes board game projects over the last 18 months to test the common wisdom of how most project funds.
Lesson #19 – Using Tabletopia to Drive Interest in Your Campaign
I recently concluded my Kickstarter campaign for Groves. During this campaign, I found many ways to help spread word about the campaign but what surprised me the most was how interactive people were with our Tabletopia version of the game. I expected potential backers to be interested in the prospect of playing the game digitally but I did not realize how many would actually play it. We were lucky enough to get data directly from Tabletopia and this post will dive into all the juicy details on how Tabletopia helped drive interest to our live Kickstarter campaign.
Lesson #18 – How much art is enough?
It’s the perpetual creator question: how much of the art really has to be done before I launch my campaign? In today’s lesson, Dan takes a stab at answering that very question: how much art is enough?
Lesson #17 – How the Indie Game Alliance can help your Kickstarter Campaign succeed
Recently, Dan had the opportunity to sit down with Matt Holden, the founder of the Indie Game Alliance (IGA), a group formed to help smaller publishers unite to make a bigger splash in the board game industry. He provided some insight on the IGA, what they do for publishers, and how they can help a publisher’s campaign before, during, and after their campaign!
Lesson #16 – How Slack has revolutionized Letiman Games
Last September I was first invited to use Slack. The founding members of the Indie Game Report (TIGR) thought it would be a good idea to collect all of our official business and pending projects in a single area and they thought Slack would be the most ideal way to do it. Having never heard of Slack before then, I was a little hesitant. I am pretty young but I am sort of a dinosaur and new apps frighten me. I timidly joined the TIGR Slack channel and to be quite honest, it rocked my world.
Lesson #15 – Pros and Cons of IndieGoGo InDemand
The only platform I have ever used to crowd-fund my projects. Up until recently, I had never used IndieGoGo or GoFundMe. Recently, I (along with many other creators) have been approached by IndieGoGo to run an InDemand Campaign for one of my previously funded Kickstarter Campaigns InDemand is set up so that creators can take an already funded project (on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo) and continue to collect pledges for as long as the creator wishes. I recently gave InDemand a test run for my game Gadgeteers (which funded in September 2016) and I wanted to discuss my experience with this feature.