July 20, 2019: Kickstarter Reports, July Update

The majority of our Kickstarter efforts over the last month have been centered around dealing with international fulfillment. It seems that no matter how much time, money, sweat, and stress we throw at the situation, international fulfillment of Kickstarter rewards is a painful experience. It is bad enough, many times, that we have to start weighing the pros and cons of even offering international rewards. For many nations, the number of backers is so low that we potentially lose revenue by including that country in a campaign. But we continue to look at the situation seeking a reliable, efficient, and cost-effective solution. No luck as of yet . . .

With that said, here's the latest news on our active Kickstarter campaigns.

The Fantasy Trip: Decks of Destiny

• April 29 to June 3
• 1,172 backers and on schedule
• BackerKit surveys and preorders are now open (preorder today!), the project is at print, and we're down to the routine of tooling, production, and final assembly. Everything is slightly ahead of schedule; we're sure to consume any time we gained long before we reach the finish line.

Three Mini-Expansions for Munchkin!

• March 25 to April 12
• 1,331 backers and on schedule
• The project is making its way across the ocean and is expected at our fulfillment warehouse in August.

Bag of Bags

• March 31 to April 1
• 287 backers and on schedule
• The project is making its way across the ocean and is expected at our fulfillment warehouse in August.

Powered by GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 & Game Reprint

• March 4 to March 22
• 1,019 backers and on schedule
• The project is making its way across the ocean and is expected at our fulfillment warehouse in August.

Pocket Box Games of the Eighties

• January 30 to March 1
• 1,974 backers and behind schedule.
• Scanning continues. Tooling samples continue to come in. We're doing all we can to wrap up the early stages of manufacturing, but we refuse to rush the factory and risk producing games that we're not proud of. Everything that we have seen so far looks incredible!

The Fantasy Trip Adventures

• January 2 to January 14
• 1,375 backers and on schedule
• The project is making its way across the ocean and is expected at our fulfillment warehouse in August.

Ogre Battlefields

• December 5 to December 28
• 1,401 backers and on schedule
• It's at the fulfillment warehouse and working its way through the process of packing and shipping to backers.

Munchkin Steampunk: Girl Genius

• November 1 to November 21
• 2,195 backers and on schedule
• Many backers have their rewards. The remaining packages are being handled as fast as possible. We expect this project to not appear again in this report.

That's a total of 8 active projects:

• 2 now mailing to backers.
• 4 on the water.
• 2 at the factory.

As we mentioned last month, our ability to produce new titles is running into the limitations of the Kickstarter platform. We're exploring new crowdfunding options – see Ogre Miniatures Set 3 – and working out how best to use the various crowdfunding tools available to us. It may be possible that we need to create and manage a crowdfunding system on Warehouse 23; right now, all we can say for sure is that we're looking at all possibilities when it comes to direct-to-you titles and crowdfunding new projects.

To keep close track of our Kickstarter efforts, we recommend following both the Steve Jackson Games and Warehouse 23 accounts, as well as liking and following our Facebook page.

-- Phil Reed