Like most children growing up, I was completely obsessed with Pokémon when it came out in 1996. I had the lastest games, cards, and watched the television show religiously. My parents didn’t understand the craze. They certainly weren’t like the baseball cards my father collected. As I grew older, this interest shifted to Magic: The Gathering, a card game that was launched in 1993 and currently has approximately twelve million players. I remember that it had an incredibly addictive quality and sometimes I stayed up all night playing it with my friends.
Looking back on these card games, they were home-run successes, but the amount of capital needed to successfully launch one of these ventures was astounding. From the distribution to the professional illustrations to the marketing and advertising, it wasn’t a venture that one person could organize. That’s why Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, partnered with Wizards of the Coast to publish the game when he was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.
Crowdfunding has been marketed as a way to cut out the middle man and go straight to customer. It’s been made famous from music, gaming, and film campaigns. What is little talked about however is how websites like Kickstarter are changing the face of the board/card game industry. I recently wrote about the board game Kingdom Death: Monster which raised $2,049,721 with a $35,000 fundraising goal. I’m now going to introduce you to a card game that has already raised 63% of its fundraising goal in 12 days.
Martial Arts: The Trading Card Game is a fast paced card game of action, strategy, skill and speed. It is the brainchild of Alex Lim, who started the campaign after having experienced a variety of badly designed card games that were hard to learn and even more difficult to play.
“It was time to do martial art fans and card game players some kind of justice. ”
Alex had used Kickstarter for a previous fundraising campaign, but terminated the project before the duration was complete. This time, he has seen much better success with still 25 days to go. I sat down with Alex to get some of his insights on crowdfunding and how he approached campaigning on Kickstarter the second time around.
What have you learned from your first Kickstarter Project? How is this project different from your last?
During our first Kickstarter campaign, we went into it with a great game, but went about it as if we were trying to sell the idea. This was completely the wrong approach. Although we were excited about it, people didn’t just want to know how great it was. Instead, we needed to “introduce” the concept, show how it works, what makes the game different, and let them decide if it’s worth backing. We’re also more involved with the community in the tabletop gaming community. We’ve gotten a lot of great advice and exchanged ideas a month before going into our re-launch.
Besides the new mindset, I think the biggest improvement was establishing a great production vendor so we could really give back to our backers. Our focus this time around is the backers. Without them, all we have is a game and an idea. They are what bring life to this campaign and the future of our game. So through our revamped reward tiers and stretch goals, we put full effort into showing our sincere thanks to backers. It isn’t about the game being funded anymore, rather working together with our backers to make this game a success and expressing our sincere appreciation to them in any way we can.
Why did you decide to use Kickstarter as opposed to other platforms or methods of obtaining funds?
Kickstarter is probably one of the most versatile crowd-funding platforms out there. They aren’t overly focused in charity, products, and they frown upon personal funding. To us, this is the audience we need not just to help us succeed in our funding, but to help us build long-term relationships through our project. Plus, their track record in successful tabletop and card game campaigns exceed all other platforms that we’ve seen.
You have 63 backers at the time of writing. Can you give us an idea of who these people are? Martial arts enthusiasts? Who was this game made for?
Great question! I think we have a combination of both and a lot in between. When we playtested the game last year, we did so with experienced card gamers, martial artists, and people who were new to both. Because our game is adaptable to every level of player, we’ve gathered a lot of fans all across the board. What makes this game special to a lot of our backers, is that it focuses on martial art styles around the world, not just your staple from watching movies. A lot of our backers with martial art experience love the fact we’re also open to experimenting with styles they practice for future sets, like Brazillian Jujitsu, Capoeira, Sambo, and more. The Tabletop gamers are enthusiastic about the gameplay mechanics and how we make each style play different from each other and translate the actual moves into the cards.
Overall, Martial Arts: The Trading Card Game was created for the wide spectrum of people who like or respect martial arts and have always wanted to experience it first hand. There’s just so much depth in martial arts around the world and with the growing number of movies, comics, games, and schools that highlight it, our game gives backers the ability virtually become a martial artist with whatever style or styles they enjoy.
Lots of Kickstarter project owners have trouble “finding” the audience for their product aside from friends and family. How have you wrestled with this problem and what has been your marketing/social media strategy?
This was one of our biggest problems in our first campaign. Since then, we found that finding your industry’s online community and really getting involved with them is super important. Don’t just spam your idea, but also ask for advice and give your opinions and suggestions to others as well. We learned a lot from our first attempt that we could share this with others who were just starting their campaigns.
For your own social media, first thing you absolutely need is a website, not matter how simple. No matter what you’ve heard, it does give your idea credibility and acts as your central hub for people interested in your product or campaign. In our opinion, separating your personal facebook from your campaign’s facebook is a must. Not only does that give you an extra platform to market with, but you can really get an idea of who your fans really are. Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, etc… those are just icing on the cake. But if you do decide to utilize them, make sure they each have a different functionality. I think that if we did that, we would have had more of a momentum in our campaign. Maybe use your twitter to announce accomplishments in your campaign, Tumblr to announce events, your website for milestones, and facebook to make shout-outs to your backers.
And the most important way to get your audience is to connect with your current backers through your kickstarter comment/discussion pages and make regular updates. You’ve been backed because they have interest in your concept and if you involve them and really get them excited, they will have to problem getting their friends excited about it as well. This form of networking is very important in not only crowdfunding, but in all forms of marketing. Don’t just be satisfied that you were backed and leave it at that. Really show your appreciation to your backers and involve them in your concept any way you can. This is their project as well!
Anything else you’d like to tell our viewers?
Martial Arts: The Trading Card Game is a 2-4 player expandable card game that concentrates on “real” martial arts. Because it doesn’t rely on resource points to play cards, moves and countermoves are quick, in a first-person style of gameplay, and make a player feel like a conditioned fighter with years of training. The 4 decks we’re introducing on Kickstarter focuses on Boxing, Muay Thai, Aikido, Okinawan karate, Wing Chun, and Jeet Kune Do, most of which have never been translated into a card game.
The decks are completely customizable but this is not a typical CCG. Although there will be expansion sets (some of which are also rewards on Kickstarter), the cards will not be randomized so all cards and moves will be balanced. So instead of the person with the most powerful cards wins, it’s the player with the best skill and understanding of their decks. By mixing and matching different styles to your own preffered gameplay style, you’re essentially creating your own form of martial arts.
As a side note, we do understand the recent raise in international shipping costs and if we are able to reach our 25k Stretch Goal, we will make all international shipping free.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/martialartstcg
