In this conversation, Nick and Catherine discuss the development and crowdfunding journey of Catherine's board game, Estate Raise the Realm. They explore various aspects of game design, marketing strategies, the importance of email lists, and the challenges of fulfillment and shipping. Catherine shares insights on working with marketing firms, pricing strategies, and the significance of launch day momentum. The conversation highlights the collaborative nature of the board game industry and the learning experiences that come with launching a new game.
- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grodgames/estate-raise-the-realm?ref=68sojn
- https://www.grodgames.com/estate-raise-the-realm
- https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/419437/estate-raise-the-realm
- Music by Old Romans: https://www.instagram.com/old_romans
You can listen to the episode here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or read the transcript below:
Nick (00:02.709)
Today on the podcast, I have a creator named Catherine. Catherine, I met you and your partner at QuestCon in Orlando recently, and you had a super fun board game that you have designed and have been promoting. And I'm just really fascinated to know about your process of development and crowdfunding into getting this thing in the real world. So thank you so much for talking to me.
Kathryn Hahn (00:31.516)
Awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me on Nick. It's been super great to connect with you at QuestCon previously and then yeah, always fun to hop on a podcast and jam out about different creator things. So excited to be here.
Nick (00:46.521)
Well, crowdfunding is a huge topic that comes up on this podcast. So I'm always fascinated about different people's journeys through that process. So I guess let's get it out of the way. Tell me a bit about your game. What's the pitch?
Kathryn Hahn (01:01.572)
Yeah, so the game I'm working on is called Estate Raise the Realm. And it's a medieval fantasy themed worker placement game where you as a player are taking on the role of a noble leader. a great war has just ended and you've been given an estate to rebuild from the ground up. You have four workers to use and you use those workers to take different actions in your estate such as drawing cards, playing cards, getting resources, et cetera.
And as you play more cards in your estate, your worker actions become more powerful. So as the game progresses, you start getting to do more and more things and the game ends at the end of era five. So you're really trying to maximize your estate, get the biggest best estate by era five. And there's a couple of different things we've built in to make it unique every time you play. So each leader you play is asymmetric. There's special abilities and then we've got different events that happen each era. So it's probably a little bit.
of a big bite that we took off of the game design to like build a bigger, more medium weight game. But it's the kind of games that I love. My partner and I are big fans of things like Everdell, Scythe, like Rookala. And so that was really our inspiration is to make a game of our own in that genre. So we're excited to be bringing it to Kickstarter in October, October 15th is the magic date. But, you know.
Nick (02:22.369)
oof
Kathryn Hahn (02:23.993)
always learning along the way. So I'm excited to hear a little bit more about your journey too, Nick.
Nick (02:29.721)
Well, let's get into some of the, I guess, deep dive into some of the ways that you have been promoting it. When it comes to like a tagline, have you done any, well, first off, have you done any online ads for it at this point?
Kathryn Hahn (02:47.024)
Yeah, so we did partner with or we are partnering with Crowdfunding Nerds, which is a marketing firm that specializes in the board game space. They've done a lot of previous campaigns and I actually found them by listening to their podcast. So if you haven't, you know, checked them out and you're a creator, there's tons of great tips on just crowdfunding in general. And I felt like every week that they launched a new podcast this year, like it was exactly what I needed to hear that week. So.
Nick (03:02.142)
Okay.
Kathryn Hahn (03:15.315)
We've dabbled in advertising with them. It's something that I feel like I probably could have learned how to do, but there's just so many other things we're working on with this being our first game that just it was easier to partner with someone. A couple other things that we're doing or we have been doing to promote is being at cons. So QuestCon you mentioned is the local one in Orlando. We've been at Origins as well as a first time.
attendee, if you will, we had a discount on a booth, which was great. And then really just like word of mouth. So trying to, you know, be active and then some Facebook groups. We've got friends all around the country that we've been playing with online. So yeah, it's a collaborative industry, but it takes a lot of effort to kind of get your game out there.
Nick (04:02.597)
So, I was just looking at your Kickstarter project and right now you have 592 followers. is there any way for you to... Probably not track, but if you were to guess, what percentage of those would you say came from you being at a physical convention promoting the game versus online ads? Or versus word of mouth, whatever?
Kathryn Hahn (04:13.064)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (04:31.961)
Like, what would that pie chart look like?
Kathryn Hahn (04:34.068)
Yeah, I would say probably 25 % is probably from the local cons and everything. Like we've had this game at conventions for about four years now, obviously in varying different levels of finality. But one thing I would actually recommend to everyone listening is if you have a game, even if like it's literal paper that you're, you know, just writing on and cutting out with scissors, like get an email list sign up going. Like that's something we...
kind of didn't do until about a year and a half, two years ago. you know, people who played the very, very early versions of the game, like they're still fans. And so you're kind of like losing out on an opportunity to stay connected with folks. And so just like what we do right now is we have a QR code, a little stand that we set up on our table, no matter where we're playing the game. And it's an easy way for us to just capture it. like we originally just had like a Google form. Now we have a Squarespace site that, you know,
It's a little fancier, but really just set up a Google form and start collecting emails because to your point about like the Kickstarter page, like we have our email list, but we know there's some people on the email list who aren't on the page yet. And so like you actually don't have the people's like, and we know that because our email list is a little bit bigger than that Kickstarter page, but you don't have access to those people on Kickstarter until they actually back your project. And so.
Nick (05:55.194)
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (05:57.375)
Getting the email list yourself going is actually, I think, a more powerful tool because you have other ways to engage with them.
Nick (06:05.525)
I feel like I could talk to you for hours. There's so many questions I have. Okay, so, my wife and I who made our game Propagation Station, you met her and we, you know, played with each other's games, about a week ago, so let me wind it back, sorry. So a friend of mine, Zach Goins, who I've had on the podcast a few times, he does a lot of crowdfunding stuff, he reached out to me, I think two weeks ago, saying that he just started working with a company called Launch Boom. Have you heard of them?
Kathryn Hahn (06:07.348)
You
Kathryn Hahn (06:33.843)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, my heart of them.
Nick (06:35.909)
Yeah, and he was raving about them and how great they had everything. Basically, they can consult with them on meetings twice a week on all the lead up to the project. And then the project that he was working with them on launched, and they hit $260,000 in about two hours. So I'm like, okay, interesting. Good to know. So my wife and I met with Launch Boom, and we're now working with them on our project.
Kathryn Hahn (06:54.645)
Wow.
Nick (07:04.101)
So still in the super early stages. I mean, you saw how early we are with our game. And so like I've done plenty of Kickstarter projects in the past. The most I've ever raised at one time was 18,000. And I feel like with our current game, the ceiling is so much higher than any of my other projects. Like the potential to make money is, it's a lot more of a global product, I guess, or globally accepted product, you know, the propagating.
Kathryn Hahn (07:08.544)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (07:32.271)
Plants board game versus my super niche tarot decks. So I think it's worth it to work with that company. And so their biggest philosophy is that they have this platform that they call it the funnel, I guess. But it is like a static sign up page. But the difference is not only are people signing up, they can also put in a dollar to reserve their spot.
Kathryn Hahn (07:33.76)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nick (08:00.581)
and if they put in a dollar, you're offering them something free. our case, it's just a little mini expansion of seven extra cards. And with that, they have a much higher conversion rate of people who do become actual backers. Now this is based on the information they told us. From a standard email list, you're looking six to seven percent who become actual pledges. With that dollar reservation, that's more like 30 to 40 percent. So that gives you a lot.
more useful information as far as how much money you should be spending on ads. And so I'm really looking forward to working with them on all this stuff and I like that you can also have alternate versions of that landing page. You can do A to B testing early on on that to see which graphics and which copy works well. But they are charging $4200 to work with them. So that is pricey.
Kathryn Hahn (08:34.21)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (08:52.773)
but they also don't take any cut out of the pledges like a lot of the other marketing companies do. I did work for a short time with Backerkit Marketing and theirs was 5 % of every pledge if you use their platform, which was crowdfunding by Backerkit. And our project failed because nobody's on.
Kathryn Hahn (08:53.014)
Yeah.
Nick (09:16.293)
crowdfunding by BaccarKitt. If they'd done it on Kickstarter, it would have done a lot better and they would have charged 10 % of each pledge. So I'm curious, how does crowdfunding nerds charge and what kind of, I guess what do they bring to the table with their services?
Kathryn Hahn (09:17.058)
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (09:34.562)
Yeah. and we preliminary like looked at LaunchBoom, but we were kind of scared away by like that upfront cost. So it's kind of interesting to hear like that, like what, I think they've lowered it potentially based on what I'm hearing from you, but really crowdfunding nerds, they, their fee structure is they have a preliminary upfront, like set up fee, which was a thousand dollars. And that was, they build their landing page, or, know, your, landing page that people go to when they click on the ad and,
a couple other set up things, like creating all the ads. And then they have a $1,000 monthly fee for managing your ads. So that's something I think that's also unique is like LaunchBroom won't manage your ads. help you like learn how to do it. But like I'm really hands off. Like I gave them all my assets. I'm giving them more content as we're creating more stuff leading up to the campaign. But you know, we are like letting them set up everything in Facebook and manage it all.
We're only doing meta ads, by the way, because that's what their recommendation was really. the budget that we have, that was the best return on investment for us.
Nick (10:35.501)
Same with Launch Boom, yeah. Like, I've had...
I've had, I've personally had good experience with Reddit ads, but I think everyone's afraid to try Reddit ads. but yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (10:49.742)
Yeah, my partner Devon was going to look into red ads, but it's one of those to do items that just kind of keeps going down the list. and like crowdfunding that would do that for you too, as well for like an additional fee. But, for them, I think their additional like ROI from their perspective is that they've done this a lot. So they know how to target the ads for the right, like sectors of people and everything. And, you know, I'm very novice on the marketing front. So I just felt a lot more.
Nick (10:54.682)
Yeah.
Nick (11:17.551)
you
Kathryn Hahn (11:19.644)
comfortable, you know, if we're spending, you know, right now we're spending about $30 a day on Facebook. And so like that adds up. And so like me doing it and getting like maybe some couple of people versus them doing it and having a lot more confidence that we're going to get people from that.
Nick (11:35.589)
So do they take a percentage out of each pledge or no? Okay.
Kathryn Hahn (11:39.293)
They do not. So that was another thing that felt a little bit more comfortable for me is that I know exactly what my costs are going to be with them. So it's the fees that they're charging for their services and then whatever I tell them I want to spend on the ads. then they do have, I think, a minimum of $20 a day, potentially. I forget what that threshold bottom floor was, but it's very transparent. Whereas we'd also looked at Jell-Up.
which I think is another company that Kickstarter's partnered with now. And they're similar, I think, to what you were describing with BaccarKit. And it's like a percentage of the leads that they say that they generate for you. But like, how do you really know? Like, if my mom clicks on one of their ads, like, she was gonna back the game potentially anyway, right? Like, they might attribute her thing just because she happened to get the ad and click on it, right?
Nick (12:25.187)
Yeah.
Nick (12:30.989)
Yeah, I told my wife to never like or comment on any of my ads because then that becomes like, I gotta pay a few cents. Yeah. So one thing that I do like about Launch Boom is like they're primarily console consultants. So they're not doing the stuff for you, like you said, but because I already have the ability to create all the ads myself, I created all the graphics, all the all the
Kathryn Hahn (12:35.236)
I know, I see my ads and they get so excited in the wild and I'm like, no, I can't, I can't, I gotta get off this.
Kathryn Hahn (12:50.919)
You
Nick (12:59.615)
3D mockups and renders and stuff like that, them not doing it was not an issue for me because I was planning on kind of doing that stuff myself anyways. But they have their whole development system like in a super elaborate, easy to follow checklist as a spreadsheet. So everything I'm doing is already set up in a way that I can replicate it with my next project.
without needing to use them and I'm looking forward to trying that and they also give us access to this platform called school which is kind of like a community thing where like I guess the launch boom games team is three to five people or so but it's like full of forums where people like other people using launch boom can communicate with each other and be like hey give me feedback on this and then they can also all respond and you have access to that
Kathryn Hahn (13:25.085)
Gotcha.
Nick (13:54.038)
community in perpetuity even well after your project ends.
Kathryn Hahn (13:57.053)
Hmm. Gotcha. And so was that fee you mentioned, I think you said it like a $4,000 fee, was that based on like you with like your project or is that just like a flat fee anyone who uses Launch Boom?
Nick (14:03.034)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (14:10.021)
It's a flat fee for anyone who has a game on Launch Boom. They have some other type of fee structure, like Launch Boom Games is like a subsidiary within Launch Boom, or it's a specific team within Launch Boom. But I mean, we're still early on. We only finished like with the first step of like creating the meta pixel and connecting it and...
Kathryn Hahn (14:13.438)
Okay.
Nick (14:30.169)
doing all this. But OK, so one thing that I wanted to tie this back to what we were talking about is one of the things that I had to do for it is create a MailChimp account. because their platform only works with MailChimp. And I was looking at the MailChimp pricing and it is absurdly expensive to use MailChimp. So like I've already got like forty six, forty seven hundred people on my email list on my Shopify store, which just as a
Kathryn Hahn (14:38.217)
Mm.
Kathryn Hahn (14:45.587)
Yeah.
Nick (14:55.813)
process of using, just doing online sales and stuff on my online store. And if I had that on MailChimp, once you hit over 5,000 people in your email list, it's $350 a month. Right? Yeah, that's ridiculous. And so I was like, hey, do I have to use MailChimp? And they're like, no, just use MailChimp for the new signups and just keep communicating with people on your old platform. And so anything under 5,000 is...
Kathryn Hahn (15:10.168)
my gosh.
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (15:22.015)
Hmm.
Nick (15:24.677)
$20 a month on MailChimp, but that's a hell of a jump right from 20 to 350
Kathryn Hahn (15:29.334)
It's a big jump and I actually have a funny story. So we do not use Mailchimp because we were using their free service and we needed to do the upgrade. And I, for the life of me, tried to give them my money. I tried to the upgrade. I kept getting errors. I reached out to their help bot. They connected me to a sales rep who connected me to Billing. I talked to five different people at Mailchimp and like...
Nick (15:44.378)
You
Kathryn Hahn (15:55.874)
They never followed up with me, you know, like, so I switched to Mailer Lite, which is a different platform actually recommended by crowdfunding nerds. And so far it's been really great. We had the free platform up until this week because we outgrew it. And so I just, you know, converted to the annual plan and that's still based on numbers, but right now, like my annual cost is about $200. Like it's not anywhere near $300 a month.
Nick (15:56.709)
Nick (16:20.261)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Hahn (16:22.285)
And as it grows, it scales up. think like the next tier is like maybe another hundred or something. Like it seems very reasonable. And I've been pretty impressed with like the features that they have in the marketing system.
Nick (16:37.285)
So like, because I have Shopify, which I already pay monthly for, it's got its own mailing system and CRM. So they were just saying once I'm done with the, I guess the marketing phase of our game, I could just take all those email addresses from MailChimp, move them over to my Shopify and close out that account, which is the plan. Because Shopify, I believe, gives you 10,000 emails you can send per month before they charge you more.
And that charge is based on the emails you send. It's not like you have to upgrade your account or anything. And it's just wild to me that like those other platforms are so darn expensive when I'm $30 a month for Shopify and there's no limit to the amount of customers you can have. but anyways. So earlier when I had asked about like what percentage of your clicks came from you doing the in-person events, it just seemed to me like
Kathryn Hahn (17:05.996)
Okay.
Kathryn Hahn (17:23.97)
You
Nick (17:35.459)
You're putting so much work into that and that's something I don't want to do. So talk me into doing it.
Kathryn Hahn (17:41.218)
Yeah, I would say that has been, yeah, well, I would actually caution you again. Like you, I think that's an area where we were a little naive thinking that, you we're going to have a booth at Origins and we're going to get so many signups. And like at some point, like you just hit a ceiling of, you know, people are walking by, they have so many things that they're looking at and there's a lot of competition for attention, right? So,
You know, we had a booth as a first timers and it was like, think $600, but like next year, if we go back, it's going to be a couple thousand and you have to sell a lot of games or in our case, we weren't even selling games yet. Right. So we got to get a certain number of email signups to make that worthwhile. And I have to go back and double check, but I think we may have gotten about 200 people at origins, which was great. You know, like I think at that time it was like a pretty big jump in our overall email list of folks and.
Nick (18:19.674)
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (18:37.453)
Yeah, like the in-person events are exhausting too, you know, like you have to really man the booth and be on the whole time and like you're not really getting to experience the rest of the convention. So I think that another approach to take that we're actually going to do at PAX this year, PAX Unplugged, is just bring the game and set it up on the table a couple of times in the free play, but then just enjoy the convention for the rest of it. And in a way, like just having it in the free play area, I think is going to help generate.
interest because people are going to see the game being played, you know? Sometimes with the booth, you're kind of in your little cubby and it's hard to get people to come in and actually feel and touch the game.
Nick (19:20.651)
Do you have plans for once the game comes out to like go to conventions to sell it? Or do you plan on just making enough to like focus on online sales? I don't know. Do you have a plan already with that in place?
Kathryn Hahn (19:35.183)
We have a plan to be at Gamma because we've heard, and we've never been to Gamma Expo, but talking to people we've heard that's a great opportunity to have a booth and like connect with retailers and other folks who would be interested. And if our campaign is successful, we'll be in the post pledge management process where people could still back and, you know, basically sign up to receive some of those copies. So we're going to be at Gamma and we did.
actually not remembering, we're new at Origins just because there was a discount to do it and we felt like it made a lot of sense and with our manufacturing timelines, we're again, probably gonna be right at the edge of people who could still sign up and buy the game there for being part of the initial fulfillment process. I honestly can't tell you right now though, if we're planning to have a bunch of extra copies and sell online or not, we've talked to another industry connection.
Sam at BA games and like he just did Forge of Ravenshire and like he really opened up his, you know, behind the scenes numbers for us and was helping explain like this is how many copies he did pre-sale and this is how many he's doing for retail and he's going to do it on Amazon. So like, I think that's an avenue, but for us, like we're just kind of taking it one step at a time right now of like, let's see how the Kickstarter does and how many orders we get there. And then like, let's see how many come in and post pledge management process and
There is a lot of economy to scale of how many you actually end up ordering, you know, like bringing down that per unit costs and everything, but it's a little bit like I don't, for me, like I don't really want to have a lot of inventory for like a year or two, right? Cause that's a lot to manage. I kind of want to make the game, get it to people, put on their tables. And then we have some ideas for some additional games that we want to focus on and, and, you know, go through the publishing process with those.
Nick (21:15.541)
Mm-hmm
Nick (21:30.481)
I know like in my case I do a lot of art markets while I'm selling my art and stuff and each year I do less and less and I want to I'm starting to kind of think to myself like if I had spent say the eight hours that I would have spent at this market focusing on SEO and used that money to like run ads for my site would I have made more money in the long run? It's really hard to like
quantify that, but that's something I'm starting to think about more and more. And so that kind of is a similar thought that I'm taking to when I'm doing these Kickstarter projects, how much additional manufacturing am I going to do on top of what's needed to fulfill the pledges? With my Kickstarter project that did super well, I, because it did so well, I ordered way more books than I thought, you know, like I'm like, people can be going to my website forever buying this book.
And I hadn't really considered the fact that like all the people who play Morkborg are already on Facebook. So I already got that whole customer base pretty much. So I've got all these like Morkborg leftover books that are just not moving that quickly. I'm selling wholesale to other stores, but people aren't going to my website to find them. So again, that ties back to me not having the good SEO, but like I would have been better off if I had not made so many books and just use that profit to like pay for my marketing.
or something like that. those are just kind of the thoughts I have when it comes to like, if our project does crazy well, although I feel like ours would be a good long time seller because we're marketing to not just board gamers, we're marketing to plant lovers. Cause our game's simple enough that plant lovers who might be board game curious would be into it. I don't know, I don't have an answer to that, but I wanna err on the side of too few copies.
Kathryn Hahn (22:58.165)
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (23:13.289)
Yeah.
Nick (23:24.087)
than on the side of too many copies.
Kathryn Hahn (23:27.381)
Yeah, like I've heard definitely some people say like they've had horror stories of having so much leftover inventory that just sits. if you're not, like if you are keeping it at home, like that's fine. It takes up space in your house. But if you're using a fulfillment center, like you're paying them every month to store your game, right? So that adds up to, and you have to balance it. I think the sweet spot is creating a product or game that people love.
and they want to get and you have the momentum and then you have that scarcity. So then maybe you do a reprint in the future, but trying not to have too much of a tail end of leftover product.
Nick (23:58.334)
Yeah.
Nick (24:06.593)
I definitely learned, so my first tarot deck sold out crazy fast and that scarcity became like a way that I was able to ride into that second printing. And I wanna do more of that. yes, scarcity is a good thing. So you talked a bit about fulfillment. Do you already have stuff planned for that or are you gonna kind of decide on that after the Kickstarter starts to wind down?
Kathryn Hahn (24:23.625)
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (24:35.817)
Yeah, we don't have any like finalized partnerships, but what I have done is I've connected with a couple of folks in the industry. Partly actually at Origins, we met some folks and that was great. Just like, I was very new at the time to like knowing anything about fulfillment. So a couple of great folks like just, you know, had a couple of hour calls with me and walked me through everything that goes into getting a game from China all the way to a fulfillment center in a country like the U.S. or Europe, et cetera.
Nick (24:48.705)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Hahn (25:03.059)
I think for us a little bit of it is going to be the number of backers and where they are. So like if we only have a handful of people in the UK for instance, we're probably going to drop ship it from the US. But if we have a couple hundred people and we're able to send a pallet or two of the games to the UK or these other countries, then it makes a lot more sense economies of scale there to kind of split up the way that we send it from China to the fulfillment centers.
Nick (25:29.38)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Hahn (25:30.835)
I think that what's really important pre Kickstarter is just starting to have conversations with folks and being able to get quotes. So that's what I have done is I've got a couple quotes from a different couple of folks and that helps me put like more real numbers on that Kickstarter page of like real estimates for shipping. then obviously you put the disclaimer, like this is just an estimate and everything is going to be finalized closer. And that's partly because even if I had picked my fulfillment partner now,
Nick (25:50.263)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Hahn (25:56.799)
Like they've told me like, can't tell you what the shipping is gonna be next September. Things change, right? Like there's a potentially this like strike gonna happen at some of the ports in the US. Like that's gonna drastically impact things. you know, that's part of the uncertainty of, you know, just being someone who's trying to ship something direct to consumer. And I think that a lot of people who back Kickstarters know that.
Nick (26:02.912)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (26:24.309)
What quantities are you getting your estimates based on?
Kathryn Hahn (26:28.885)
So it seems like for fulfillment, it's less on like quantities. mean, obviously for freight, like across the ocean, like that's based on pallets, but I haven't even really gotten those. That's like my fulfillment person was like, yeah, like that will be like a couple thousand dollars. But it's really for the fulfillment to backers and like the number that they want to know how much is shipping gonna cost me. That's based on the size of your game and the weight of it. And.
like, so knowing kind of your box size and the weight, like our box right now, I think is about 3.4 pounds. And so I rounded up for the estimates because I was like, this is our prototype still, we're gonna be adding a couple of things in. So I rounded up to four and half pounds just to be safe. But that's what they want to know. Like they want to know what's the size and dimensions of your box, and then what's the weight of it, because I think it depends on either, like, whatever's bigger or something like
Whatever cost more I think unfortunately for the ship is like that's what they use either the weight or the size
Nick (27:25.306)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (27:29.177)
So let's, again, so many questions. Let's talk about box size. What evolution did you go through to determine the ultimate size of the product? Was it based on like, this is what size paper is, this is the minimum size the board needs to be, or like, did you measure a board game box you like and try and make everything fit within that?
Kathryn Hahn (27:57.055)
We did the former. we have these player mats, dual layer player mats, which are really cool. So we know we have six of them in the game and they're a certain size. And we also knew the size of our game board. And actually when we made our current prototype, the game board was a smaller size. So now we have a bigger game board. So we know the box has to be a little bit bigger. But we did it based on those dimensions. So we're like, OK, the game board is going to fold up into four. like.
Nick (28:01.924)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Hahn (28:23.011)
It's going to be like, that's the limiting factor from like the bigger part of the box. And then from like the dimensions of like how high or how, like, you know, the height of the box, was, okay, we're going to have like these dual layer player boards stacked up. And then you have a couple more things. And the other piece of it was our manufacturing partner. We're going to be using Panda and they're a little bit on the pricier side, but they also provide a lot more handholding for, especially for first time publishers. So.
Like we sent all of the things that are gonna be in our box to our project manager, Cardiner, and she was like, you know, like your box is actually gonna be a little bit too small here. So like she helped us make sure that everything fit in. And then even with that, like when we got our game, we did 10 prototype prints and it was like, things just fit in. So now like, you know, it's a learning curve. And I actually...
I do think there's some people in the industry I've heard who are like kind of like experts at this, so you can like hire them to help advise you on, especially like inserts. That's something that's top of mind for me. Right now we don't have an insert and I've heard from a lot of, you know, potential backers, they like inserts and everything. It keeps everything organized. So that's going to be, you know, a final piece of our puzzle. Once we finalize the game is like, well, if we want to have an insert here, like, do we need to make it like just a little bit bigger?
Nick (29:46.049)
When you're designing the components of the game, do you have like an ultimate MSRP in mind or do you kind of think of like this is what it's got to be and then you make the MSRP based on that?
Kathryn Hahn (29:58.134)
for me, I kind of like was like equating it to some other games that we know and love and thinking, okay, like our game is like this kind of game. has these kinds of components. It's probably going to land around here. But then I've also kind of done some research on like what, how do you, how would you calculate it from scratch? And what, we've, what I've learned is that you take your landed cost of your product. It just kind of industry norm is you take that landed costs and you times it by five.
so landed costs for folks who might not be familiar is you have the cost for creating the game. So it's like your manufacturer actually doing everything with them. Then you have your ship, like shipping of like freeing it across the ocean. That's like putting it on that boat that goes across the like U S or China to U S and then you combine those two costs together. And, for us, those ended up being very close together. So our MSRP for our base is going to be $65.
and then our deluxe copy is going to be $10 more. For Kickstarter, we're going five under just to kind of help give our backers a little bit more incentive to back on Kickstarter early. And then, yeah, like if we are in retail or that's we're going to be setting the MSRP at 65 for bass.
Nick (31:14.222)
Okay. So that's in our game, that's something that we're thinking about now because we are deciding that we're going to go with like all cardboard for the base game and then have a component upgrade kit as an additional purchase. Because we're trying to target non-board gamers, we want to be able to have a super low MSRP. So we're trying to get the game to be an MSRP of
Kathryn Hahn (31:32.243)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (31:43.141)
$50 and do it on Kickstarter for 40 Something around there. I mean nothing set in stone again. We're gonna chat with launch boom about all that stuff, but like So because we're doing that upgrade kit as like deluxe components What separates your deluxe version from your non deluxe version?
Kathryn Hahn (31:46.899)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (32:05.394)
Yeah, we're similar where our games are going to be very like almost the same because we really don't want to gate keep the game itself between the two versions, but our deluxe will have better components. So it'll have wooden resources and metal coins versus the cardboard resources that the base game has. And then we're going to be adding a screen print onto this first player token piece just to make that a little just more snazzy. And then we will have a very like small
exclusive add-in to the deluxe, which is going to be called the Ancient Ruins deck. It's a unique card per player. we're still finalizing the total quantity, probably based on how well we do, but like game is one to five players. There will definitely be five of them in the game. And it's basically a card that's two-sided and one side is ruined at the start of the game and you get to un-ruin it as a choice, as an action. And then it becomes a future action space for you to choose from. That's a lot.
like cooler and unique to your estate. So that'll be Kickstarter exclusive in that deluxe version of the game and it won't be like able to be bought later on.
Nick (33:11.875)
So the Deluxe version is a separate box, it's not a pack of upgrades.
Kathryn Hahn (33:17.554)
Yeah, well, it's like you're from our manufacturing perspective, like it's they're going to be making the boxes almost like the same and like there'll be a slightly differences in terms of what they're putting in the box, but it's still just one box you're getting. Yeah.
Nick (33:29.347)
Okay. Gotcha. So if you buy the Deluxe, you have the base game in it. Okay, so does Deluxe still come with the less Deluxe components in it too?
Kathryn Hahn (33:43.34)
I don't think we are going to do that just because like you're getting the wooden resources, like you don't really need the other ones. And I'm pretty, I think we talked to our manufacturer about like they're able to do that separation. And that's going to reduce shipping costs too, because like you're going to have less cardboard in that box.
Nick (33:46.785)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nick (33:59.661)
Yeah, so metal coins and wooden pieces with screen printing on one of them. And yeah, and so that's all from the same manufacturer, Panda's doing all of that.
Kathryn Hahn (34:06.366)
On the starting player token. Yep.
Kathryn Hahn (34:13.352)
Yep, so Panda kind of has like end to end capabilities there. They do fancier, shnazzier stuff if you want, but we're kind of keeping it at that kind of core board game on table. We don't have any plastic molded pieces or anything that kind of raises the cost of your game pretty significantly. yeah, for them, or for us, if you will, like...
Nick (34:14.425)
Very cool.
Kathryn Hahn (34:38.644)
They were attractive as a manufacturing partner for his first time, you know, publishers because they really help walk you through the whole design readiness process of like getting your files ready and make, like I said, like making sure your box fits. And then they handle a lot of like the testing too. I've heard that maybe with other manufacturers, they might not do that for you. So like our game is going to be 10 plus. So like they're going to help us with that certifications and everything.
So it just gave us a lot of confidence that like we're not gonna completely drop the ball on something.
Nick (35:12.951)
Okay, I I didn't know that there was certification. I thought it was just kind of an estimate. I guess that shows what I don't know.
Kathryn Hahn (35:20.852)
Yeah, I think for kids, yeah, like you have to like, get your things like tested for lead. If it's like for kids. So that's why some games like are 14 plus, even though you might be like, you could play that game with a younger child. And then also in the EU, there's some other like certifications you need.
Nick (35:43.309)
Wow, okay. So, when it comes to the metal coins, was there any concern about like that reducing or increasing the weight at like too much or how many coins do you have in the game? Or, I don't know. Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (35:57.884)
Yeah, great question and good concern there with the rate. So something we did to mitigate that is it's gonna be some coins are one, you know, coin like a one for one, but then we'll have some coins that are three coins. So that way, we don't need as many coins to have the same quantity of value of those coins, if you will. So I can't remember, I think.
I think like victory point wise, like there's going to be 30 or 40 victory points worth of coins, but like there'll be less of them because we're having some of those as like three coins.
Nick (36:33.635)
Yeah, in our game we tried the growth tokens being worth either one point or a three point growth token and we noticed that
most people didn't want to use the three point because they're like exchanging it so often so we're keeping everything at one point which then ultimately means we're gonna have what was it 65 tokens or so which if those were metal that'd be very heavy but we might still try it i don't know i might try plastic but i've never really seen plastic coins in a game
Kathryn Hahn (36:54.066)
Mm.
Kathryn Hahn (37:14.972)
Yeah, I do think there's some interesting finishes you could put on like either metal or plastic. So that could be a, you know, halfway in between you do plastic, but you do like a cool shiny, you know, coating on them.
Nick (37:28.261)
So for our Deluxe upgrade kit, we're picturing wooden versions of all the pieces. So it'll be wooden versions of the grow lights with screen printing on them, wooden version of the pests with screen printing, just single color. And then it seems weird that your growth tokens, I mean, they're not really money, but they're kind of used as a currency. So...
Therefore I feel like it has to be metal. But they are supposed to represent clippings of a plant. So metal seems weird when wood would work. Anyways, those are just thoughts.
Kathryn Hahn (38:09.82)
I mean, I'm a big fan of wood. Like I think nice quality wooden pieces have a good like, you know, feel component wise. And I'm like, when you play games, like the tactileness of it means a lot. So.
Nick (38:23.845)
Okay. Okay. Maybe we get away with wooden ones. Now when it came to the screen printing, do they charge you double if you're screen printing on both sides?
Kathryn Hahn (38:34.3)
I think so. that's one area where we had a quick conversation with our project manager at Panda on and it is expensive to do the screen printing, especially like if you do multiple colors, but I can't remember exactly what the cost structure was there, but that's definitely an area you should ask about before you commit to what you're doing there.
Nick (38:52.993)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. So, what do you have left to do before your launch on the 15th?
Kathryn Hahn (38:56.485)
Hahaha
Kathryn Hahn (39:04.125)
Yeah, so we just finished working on our campaign story with our designer, Maria and her team at Merit and it's looking really good. So what I'm actually doing this week is I'm sharing that campaign preview page with a couple of folks just to get feedback and put some tweaks on there. I'm getting some final shipping estimates from some partners just to make sure I have the latest and greatest there. And then a lot of what we're doing is really just trying to build the hype.
for launch day. So I just sent out our September newsletter this week to our followers and I'm working on some more like drip campaign emails leading up between now and the 15th just to help you know build the momentum and make sure people are aware that we're launching on the 15th because that is something that we've heard time and again from folks and even witnessed it ourselves right of like your your launch day momentum is really important and that can help.
really set the tone for the rest of the campaign. So we're trying to make sure everyone is excited and ready to back the game on the 15th.
Nick (40:08.175)
So what pledge levels are you gonna have other than just standard and deluxe?
Kathryn Hahn (40:13.468)
Yeah, we're kind of keeping it pretty simple. So we'll have standard deluxe and retailer. So retailers were definitely open to working with you and there'll be like a low tier retailer pledge level that then we'll get in contact with you and kind of finalize everything after the campaign ends. And then we're also depending on
Nick (40:33.797)
Sorry, can you dive more into the retailer thing? Because the way I do it is I just assume they're getting 10 copies and I charge like 50 % of the list price as that. I hate doing that because that means Kickstarter is taking their cut off of that larger wholesale order. But I know some places do something that's like really cheap for the retailer and then they just send them a bill for more later on, which also makes sense to me, but I feel like...
you're gonna have people accidentally select that when they shouldn't. So, I don't know, just curious what does your retailer pledge option look like?
Kathryn Hahn (41:11.422)
Yeah, we were going to set it at $20 and have it below because a couple of things we've talked to some retailers about do they back campaigns? Why do they? Why do they not? And part of it on their side is if they have to put up a large, you know, financial backing, you know, and they're not getting the product for a year from now, that's setting them out, right? Like they, they are not going to able to reap that back until they're able to put on their shelves. And so,
The other piece on our side is, you you mentioned Kickstarter takes their cut and so does Stripe on Kickstarter. So I think it's like five and 5%. And so you're losing out on that, you know, profit or revenue on our side. And our pledge manager that we're planning to use is called Hive Interactive and their cut is lower. It's I think 3 % at the rate that we got. it's going to be like if when we go through the final, you know,
truing up of the retail order with our retailers through Hive, then it's going to be a little bit less costly on our side to do that. The other piece is that, you know, I'm new to this, I'm going to admit that, like, I don't know quite the quantities that retailers were wanting, so I don't want to pigeonhole them on that on the campaign page. I'm going to let them, you know, work with us and decide, like, do they want six, 12, like, whatever.
Nick (42:19.982)
Okay.
Nick (42:33.327)
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (42:37.352)
can't remember exactly how many are gonna fit into like a box palette situation, but yeah.
Nick (42:42.537)
You will have a minimum that they have to order, Okay, just haven't figured out what the minimum is yet. Okay, okay, cool. So I mean, with Square, you could also just send an invoice and then have them pay that since you have the Square site. yeah. I've done that in the past too. Like I've allowed the retailers to afterwards put more money in and then like I'll throw in some of my other stuff as part of the wholesale order.
Kathryn Hahn (42:45.042)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (42:57.768)
That's true. Yeah.
Kathryn Hahn (43:10.355)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (43:10.501)
so that they don't have to get 10 of the same thing, they can mix and match with my other wholesale items.
Kathryn Hahn (43:15.42)
Nice. That's a good idea.
Nick (43:17.603)
So then, what are the other pledge levels you have?
Kathryn Hahn (43:20.99)
So we do have a stretch goal that we are hoping will get unlocked, which is going to be like a little mini expansion deck. It's called, we're calling it the interactive deck. So it gets added in to the deck overall, and it's just cards that are more interactive with other players in the game. So if that gets unlocked, we'll be able to print that and that'll be something people can add on to their pledge later on. And then we do have a partner we're trying to solidify some details with.
They were a nonprofit we met in Long Island at a convention we were there. And I'm still waiting to finalize this with the contact there, but we were hoping to do an add-on where people could buy a game to donate to that nonprofit. And they basically do gaming with kids after schools and for other groups of people who might not have the ability to buy board games themselves. It's like an avenue for building that up in their community.
Nick (44:04.517)
Huh.
Kathryn Hahn (44:18.64)
We thought that would be a nice partnership to give back.
Nick (44:23.522)
So for that expansion add-on, would people add it to their pledge once it gets unlocked or during the pledge manager phase after the campaign ends?
Kathryn Hahn (44:34.91)
going to be the pledge manager phase. that part of that, again, is also like the better economies on our side of the 3%.
Nick (44:36.633)
Okay.
Nick (44:43.781)
Okay, yeah. So like, crowdfunding by BaccherKit has some features that are really nice. One of them being that you can create add-ons that get unlocked as people select them. Because I could say on my side, I've done a project where like, these enamel pins will be great, but only two people pick them. And you're like, well, shit, now I have to order 100 enamel pins for these two people. So being able to have like a minimum
Kathryn Hahn (45:09.702)
Mmm.
Nick (45:13.418)
almost like smaller crowdfunding goals within your overall thing is pretty nice. And I do wish Kickstarter would adapt that.
Kathryn Hahn (45:20.658)
That's cool.
Yeah, the Kickstarter seems like they keep adding on more features, partly from these other competitors having them. So Kickstarter, if you're listening.
Nick (45:28.581)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you're launching on the 15th. What time of day?
Kathryn Hahn (45:40.766)
I'm still picking that, but I'm thinking morning East Coast hours. I was actually talking to another podcast yesterday, Meeple the Meeple, they have a UK host and a US host, and the UK host was wondering, could you stagger the start? Because if we launched 10 a.m. Eastern time, that's half way through the day in the UK. So I wish Kickstarter had a way to do that, but I think just...
Nick (45:42.456)
You
Kathryn Hahn (46:09.136)
A majority of our emails and followers are based in the US, so we're likely going to do morning US time.
Nick (46:17.177)
And so the 15th is a Tuesday. What thought process came into picking a Tuesday as your launch?
Kathryn Hahn (46:25.564)
Yeah, so there's a lot of just people who launch board games do it on Tuesday. So like just a lot of the community that's the launch day, at least in the US. And so we picked a Tuesday because of that.
Nick (46:40.277)
I could say I launched my, the one I have on Kickstarter now, my tarot deck. We launched it on the 26th, which was a Thursday. Because our thought was people are probably browsing their computer a lot on Thursday.
And those first 48 hours are so important, it would make sense for to be Thursday and Friday as those first 48 hours. I don't know if that was successful, maybe Tuesday is better. But I want to try Tuesday next time.
Kathryn Hahn (47:07.92)
Yeah, there's actually like a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of stats that people have aggregated on it. And like Tuesday is the day. Like you don't want to do Monday because people are focused on getting back to work. You don't really want to do the weekends because people are doing stuff. But yeah, Tuesday is the day.
Nick (47:22.873)
Yeah.
Nick (47:26.181)
Okay, I'm gonna remember that and do Tuesday next time. And so how did you choose when it's gonna end? Did you choose a specific date and time or did you just do the 30 days end on its own?
Kathryn Hahn (47:28.88)
Okay.
Kathryn Hahn (47:39.774)
Yeah, we're gonna do 30 days. We were toying with the idea of doing a shorter campaign, but partly right now, like with the way our dates are falling, the US election is gonna happen in like the middle. So we're kind of like, we don't wanna go so short that we try to end before that, because then we don't have enough time, you know, to like do stuff. And then we are, so are gonna be trying to do some events. So we're actually gonna have like a little.
Nick (47:52.739)
Mm.
Kathryn Hahn (48:05.8)
Board Game Night at Fable Coffee, which is the new board game cafe in the Orlando area. And that'll be, I think, like the 25th on Friday. And then we wanted to like utilize Halloween to do some fun like marketing stuff with our characters over Halloween, you know, a couple of days there. And then, yeah, like the US elections on the 5th of November. So we don't want to do anything that week really. And we're going to have a big like.
Nick (48:28.237)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Hahn (48:30.078)
Kind of for crowdfunding, it's your first 48 hours and then your last 72 hours are really big. So we want to have enough time at the end to have a nice big push.
Nick (48:41.261)
Well, Catherine, I have learned a lot from talking to you. Thank you so much for talking me through your project. For people who want to learn more about it, you can find it on Kickstarter under Estate Raise the Realm. They can also go to your company, GroddGames.com. That's G-R-O-D Games.com. And you're also on Board Game Geek. Estate Raise the Realm can be found there.
Kathryn Hahn (49:08.752)
Yeah.
Nick (49:11.777)
Anything I miss?
Kathryn Hahn (49:14.384)
Nah, I mean, just a shout out to folks like you, Nick. Like it's always great talking with other people in the industry and nerding out on game design. So appreciate being on the pod and yeah, very excited to be running our first campaign. We're going to learn a lot, I'm sure. We've already have been learning a ton this year and hope some of your listeners hope to see you on launch day.
Nick (49:17.442)
You
Nick (49:37.943)
Yeah, I'm excited to pledge to it myself, so thank you so much. Thank you. I hope you have a wonderful day and good luck with the launch.
Kathryn Hahn (49:40.644)
Awesome.
Kathryn Hahn (49:45.522)
Thanks.
Outro
Chain Assembly: Art for profit sake is recorded through Riverside FM, distributed through Spotify for podcasters, and edited on Adobe Audition. The music is provided by Old Romans. If you learned anything useful or found this podcast helpful, please rate and review us five stars. If you want to learn more about me or my art, head over to ChainAssembly.com.
crowdfunding, board games, game design, marketing, Kickstarter, email lists, fulfillment, retailer partnerships, pricing strategies, launch strategies
