February 12, 2021: Kickstarter Reports, February 2021 Update

In 2020, Kickstarter was a significant percentage of our overall revenue. (I've been working on our annual stakeholders' report around other tasks. Not yet finished, but we'll touch on crowdfunding more in the report.) As posted on January 5th, we ran a total of ten different Kickstarter campaigns in 2020 and all but two have been completed and delivered to backers.

As of the moment, we have three open projects.

Steve Jackson Games' GURPS Pyramid Scheme

• January 18 to 26
• 1,570 backers and ahead of schedule
• We've started the BackerKit fulfillment stage and project supporters have until March 1 to complete their surveys. Every few days, we lock down completed BackerKit surveys and deliver the PDF rewards to those backers who have finished their surveys. After March 1, we'll start the process of adding the PDFs to Warehouse 23 libraries.

Hexagram #6, an Old-School RPG Zine for The Fantasy Trip

• November 17 to December 1 (2020)
• 775 backers and on schedule
• We've now seen proofs for the new zine and the playmat. The Quick Quest adventure proof should arrive before the end of this month. The two new hardcovers are sailing across the ocean. As of the moment, everything is on schedule!

Car Wars Sixth Edition by Steve Jackson Games

• November 29 (2019) to January 6 (2020)
• 3,936 backers, behind schedule
• Tooling approved! Once the factory opens after the Chinese New Year break, we can plan out the manufacturing schedule. We do not yet have a delivery date, but we're over the biggest obstacle that was causing the delays. It's downhill from here. (Knock on wood, as they say.)

That Car Wars Sixth Edition campaign has been a perfect example of why many of our projects aren't assigned a public release date until they're at the factory and (many times) through the tooling stage. Still, although the delays are frustrating for all of us involved, we refuse to rush the process. We get one chance to make this right, so we've been picky when it comes to approvals and have chosen the slower path over rushing the approval process. If you would like to read more about the tooling approvals, please see this Kickstarter update.

We have more projects planned for both accounts in 2021, so please make sure you are following Steve Jackson Games and Warehouse 23 on Kickstarter. You never know what we'll take to Kickstarter next!

-- Phil Reed