Should you use crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding looks like free money from the outside. In reality it is a pre-order system that shifts financial risk from you to your backers, in exchange for a marketing job, a customer service job, and a logistics job that will occupy you for a year or more. Backers pay up front, you use that money to manufacture and ship, and you keep whatever is left. When it works, it lets a first-time creator print a game without taking on debt or begging a publisher.

It makes the most sense when three things are true. First, your game is finished: designed, blind playtested, and balanced, with only art and manufacturing left. Second, you have or can build an audience, because campaigns are funded mostly by people who knew about the game before launch day. Third, you actually want to run a small business, since fulfillment, taxes, customer support, and reprint decisions all land on you.

It makes less sense if what you really want is to design games rather than sell them. Pitching your game to established publishers costs nothing, and if a publisher signs it, they take on the art, manufacturing, freight, and marketing while you collect a royalty. Many designers who tried both report that self-publishing via crowdfunding earned more dollars per copy but far fewer dollars per hour.

A useful gut check: would you be comfortable emailing two thousand strangers an apology because your freight shipment is stuck at a port? If that scenario sounds like a nightmare rather than a bad Tuesday, licensing to a publisher is probably the better path for your first game.