Kickstarter Lesson #3: Art and Design

Regardless of the type of project, art and design can make or break a campaign. The vast majority of projects on Kickstarter aren’t made by professionals, so backers understand that your project isn’t going to look professional grade (especially if you’re raising money to make it look professional grade). But the art and design of your project page make a huge impression on potential backers, so you want the project and the project page to look as polished as possible.

As I just mentioned, there’s a good chance that part of the reason that you’re raising funds on Kickstarter is to afford great art and design. Thus what you’re looking for while creating your Kickstarter campaign isn’t an artist to do all of the art for the game–just some of it. Enough to give your backers a taste of what will come.

Art vs. Design

Before I continue, I need to distinguish between art and design. The art is comprised of raw pictures and illustrations. If you’re creating a board game, the art should be created digitally, most likely by someone painting in Photoshop. The design (graphic design) is everything that happens after the raw art is made–creating frames for the art, incorporating icons and symbols, fonts, sizing everything, creating the printer-ready files, etc.

For example, you look at the Mars Needs Mechanics Kickstarter campaign. Scroll down to the Backer Levels section (also see partial screenshot at the bottom of this post). The image on the game board mockup was created by an artist. That art was then incorporated into a 3D frame to create the “box” you see here. The designer also created or selected the various fonts you see here.

The Mars Needs Mechanics project page gives you a good idea of the type of art and design you’ll need before a project. If you’re making a board game, you’ll want the art for the box, the board, and a few cards. The designer can mock up some 3D components for you as well. Those will give people an idea of what the final product will look like.

Other well-designed project pages for board game Kickstarters are Tomorrow and Heartland Hauling.

Finding an Artist and Designer

So how do you find an artist and a designer? For both, I would first look to friends, with two caveats: One, look for friends who really know what they’re doing–you should be 100% confident in their work. Your project is worth a great artist/designer, so don’t go with someone simply because they won’t charge as much as a stranger. Two, pay them. Don’t try to get anyone to work for free. No matter how good of friends you are, you’re not going to get the quality or the priority if you’re asking them to work for free. Also, if they’re offering you their expertise, they deserve to get paid. That’s how artists and designers make a living. One middle ground strategy you could go with is to offer them a base rate and 1% of your total Kickstarter earnings. That way they’re getting paid even if the project isn’t successful, and they have a vested interest in the project.

I found my non-friend artists for Viticulture through two different sources: This extremely informative blog post and ConceptArt. The blog post mentions the use of Twitter to find artists. ConceptArt is more focused–you post what you’re looking for and how much you’re looking to pay, and artists respond with examples from their portfolio. Also, if you’re a game designer, reach out to artists of other games to see if they have an opening in their schedule. It can’t hurt to ask.

There are plenty of websites out there to help you find graphic designers–elance is one that I’ve heard good things about. But in all likelihood you know a friend who does graphic design. Just like with the artists, don’t go for the cheapest possible option. Go for the person with whom you have the utmost confidence. An amazing graphic designer can end up saving you a ton of time and money on the back end, especially if they’re preparing printer files for you.

Communication

One other factor to consider when you’re choosing between artists and designers is communication. Do you want the artist who takes 5 days to respond to your e-mails, or the one who always gets back to you right away? That time adds up when you’re working with someone for months at a time. I’d rather pay more for the responsive artist or designer than the one you hardly ever hear from.

Payment

How much can you expect to pay for art? It really varies quite a bit. Two key factors are size and color. You can probably get small black and white concept sketches for about $10, but bigger color images for things like the box or the board will cost several hundred dollars at minimum. The investment is absolutely worth it. You’ll need a PayPal account set up to pay your artist (I’d recommend opening an account just for Kickstarter, not your personal account).

Project Page

Last, when you get to the point that you’re designing the look and feel of your project page, I would recommend that you have your designer send you the files in a format that you have the ability to edit. That way if you want to tweak the wording of something, you don’t have to go back and forth with the designer for a tiny change. I tinkered with my stretch goals a lot during the campaign, and there were times that I felt that I didn’t have a second to spare. Most likely the file format will be InDesign, which is expensive, but if you happen to have it or can get a student discount, it’s very helpful.

I’m curious to hear what artists and designers have to say about this post, as well as other project creators who have worked with artists and designers. Do you have anything to add that will help other project creators?

I Backed a Backer: Salem

Joshua Balvin, the creator of Salem: An Innovative New Strategy Board Game for 3-7 players and backer of Viticulture, was so kind as to answer my gauntlet of questions. If you’re future project creator or you’re interested in a behind-the-scenes look at game design or Kickstarter projects, I think you’ll find this really interesting. Joshua has done a great job with his project so far–as of this posting, his 294 backers have pledged $18,391 out of his $30,000 goal with 12 days to go.

Describe Salem in 2 sentences:

Salem is a dynamic board game that makes players the judge, jury and executioner in a thematic recreation of the witch trials of 1692. The way players interact with each other and the game itself makes each game of Salem a unique and historically immersive experience.

What is your favorite mechanic in Salem?:

My favorite mechanic is the way the deduction works. In typical deduction games it’s an all-or-nothing. If you’re incorrect or if someone gets a key piece of information before you do then you can’t win. Generally players also obtain information secret from other players.

Salem is unique in that every last bit of information is public knowledge–you’re constantly active no matter which player’s turn it is. There’s no secret knowledge among players and you can recover at any moment if you’ve made an incorrect deduction.

The deduction works on many different levels. Every bit of information gives you something valuable, but it’s the way that all these bits of information interact that’s unique. Every game has a unique set-up, and strategies that worked last game won’t work this time. It’s finding those strategies that give the game a rich and rewarding payoff and I love watching players having “aha!” moments.

What was your most brilliant breakthrough when designing and testing Salem?:

The biggest breakthrough was simply that there is no time-frame for creating a great game. It took 6 years from the first play-test until it was finished with over 300 play-tests during that time (and I completed 2 other games and found a publisher for one in the meantime). I threw the game out completely 7 times and started from scratch. I refused to compromise either the game play or creating an accurate historical narrative which was the real challenge of creating this game. In the end, the game that came out of the process was well worth the fight.

What do you consider the best (or most unique) element of your Kickstarter campaign?:

I love interacting with backers. Some of the best ideas for rewards and promotions have come from the backers (the 3D gallows piece that’s being offered was an idea directly from comments on the project). It’s amazing seeing the excitement people have around the project and in many ways it’s no longer my project–there’s now a community who are anxious to provide really stellar ideas, many of which are being incorporated!

What is your favorite Salem reward level and why?:

The pilgrim meeples. Hands down. The game is really beautiful to watch during game play as it becomes a unique collage of colored cards and wooden pieces. Having 140 custom made wood pilgirms would really take that beauty to the next level and I definitely hope that we get there!

If you’re intrigued, go check out Salem here. And if you’re a project creator who backed Viticulture and are interested in doing an interview on this blog, feel free to contact me at jamey.stegmaier@gmail.com.

Game Design Interview: Story Realms

One of the perks about becoming a game designer is that you get to meet other game designers. I haven’t actually met the creators of Story Realms, another game that’s on Kickstarter right now, but we’ve corresponded a bit during our overlapping Kickstarter campaigns, and we decided to do dual entries about our games. You’ll find my interview here, and I hope you enjoy their interview below.

1. Tell us about your game.

Our game is called Story Realms. It’s a cooperative storytelling game adventure game that plays in about an hour. One player takes on the role of Storyteller and runs the adventure. The other players play as a heroic version of themselves magically transported to a storybook world and destined to save the day. Each new adventure is a unique experience with a new story to tell and new challenges for the player to overcome. The players will face a giant in the Thunderdrum Forest, fix the observatory in the steamworks city of Venture, save the Rainbow Prism from an army of the Dark, search for a way through the labyrinthine Quizzleplex. The adventures have anchor points that keep the story moving along, but the players have a lot of freedom about how the story unfolds in each scene. The game is story focused, but still uses dice rolls and simple game mechanics to help determine the outcome of the player’s choices.

2. What was the inspiration for the game? Why did you choose to make this game?

The game got its start over a year ago at a superhero party for Angie’s daughter Katie. A superhero game that was supposed to be the fun main event turned out to be pretty frustrating and we started talking about what kind of game we wished existed to play with our families. From there, the idea just started to grow. We knew we wanted something that let people work together to become heroes. We wanted it share our love of stories and encourage people less familiar with storytelling games to give this kind of game a try. We wanted people to be able to jump in with little effort and leave with a great experience and a wonderful story to tell. It was also important to us that it be fun for the whole family. We didn’t want to make a game that a parent played to humor their kids. We wanted a game that would be exciting for adults and that kids could play too. It was a big challenge to strike that balance, but it was a challenge we were excited to take on.

3.  What about the game will really appeal to people? What kind of audience are you trying to reach?

With Story Realms, we are trying to make a game that’s fun for the whole family. We’ve playtested it with hardcore gamers, casual gamers, family members and children as young as 5 years old. Everyone has a fun time. My suspicion is that this game will initially appeal to people who already like storytelling and adventure games. Our hope is that it will help people introduce their friends, their family, and their children to these types of games. While the game was designed with fun, first a foremost, it was also designed with a little subversive education in mind. The world draws heavily from folklore, fairytales, and beloved classic literature. We are also writing a curriculum based on US national standards and hope to encourage some educators out there to give Story Realms a try for as a unit for their classes.

4. Is this your first game? Tell us about your design studio and your experience as a game designer.

We’ve been working together to design various games for nearly 10 years now. However, prior to Story Realms, this has remained as sort of a hobby. Story Realms is the first game we’ve felt strongly enough about to try and put out to the public and get published. For a lot of years, the design team was actually Julian, Angie and Angie’s husband Randy. We worked on ideas for expansion products for 3^rd Edition D&D. We worked on strategy and resource management games. We spent a year working really hard on a space themed game that we never got quite a clear vision or solid mechanics for. Looking back, in each instance, we were really caught up in the theme and story of the game. With the space game, we spent about as much time writing up lore and history for the world of this board game as we did working on the mechanics and it was never really supposed to be a storytelling game. With Story Realms, I think we finally got clear that what we’ve been reaching for all these years is a game that delivers the play time and easy access of board games, but the engaging and imaginative experience of traditional storytelling games and RPGs. So while we’ve only been working on Story Realms for a little over a year, in some ways, we feel like it’s what we’ve been working towards with every one of our previous attempts at game design.

5. It seems like your Kickstarter project is going really well. Now that you’ve made your funding goal, what are some of the stretch goals you are hoping to make? What would you like to do if you over fund by a lot?

We are very excited about how the project is going. We’ve hit our funding and have unlocked several of our stretch goals. The more support we can gather, the more fantastic we can make the game. Basically, our hope with overfunding is to just be able to provide more of everything. We want more artifacts and powers for the players, more Lore Cards and Storyteller tools for telling your own story and more pre-made adventures to play through. At higher levels we plan on providing an entire deck of cards that gives more information about the landmarks of the world and some cool new types of powers. At our highest currently planned level, we’d like to turn all of the books into hardback. Mostly what this extra money goes towards is increasing our art budget. Story Realms is an incredibly art heavy game. Everything in the game has art. Every power, every artifact, every major character, every scene of the adventures, everything. We’ve been very blessed to work with a phenomenal team of artists, but art takes time and that time has expenses. To add all of the cool extra stories, tools, and fun cards into the box that we really want to put in there, we need to raise a lot more to cover the art and additional design time. The exciting thing also is that some of our backer levels grant the backer the ability to collaborate with us to put their own designs and ideas into the game. At present, we haven’t had anyone pledge at those levels, but we’re still very hopeful. We would love the chance to work with an excited fan to help bring their creative ideas to life as a piece of the Story Realms game.

Congrats to Story Realms on their success! If you’d like to see my answers to the same questions, click here.

The 12 Tenets of Board Games

Over time, I’ve accumulated a list of mechanics that reflects the 12 Tenets of Board Games that I believe in (you can read about how these specifically apply to my game, Viticulture, in the FAQ section of my Kickstarter page):

1. Quick setup/easy to learn.
2. Balances, not checks for close games.
3. Conflict, not hostility.
4. Choices, not luck.
5. Scaleability.
6. Unique production/creation.
7. Variable turn order.
8. Fast pace/smooth flow.
9. Multiple paths to victory.
10. Point-based end-game trigger.
11. Reasonable duration.
12. Replayability.

These are different for everyone. What are your tenets of great board games?

The Box!

If you subscribe to the updates on Kickstarter (I think you have to be a backer to do that, but anyone can view them here), you know that I decided earlier in the project to proceed with some of the art and graphic design that I was originally waiting until full funding to initiate. It was a risk, but it seems to be paying off, as we’re nearing our funding goal.

Today I received the box. I’ll reveal the full frontal version tomorrow on an update, but today I’ll show you the new 3D rendering of it…as you can see, I listened to your feedback (it was good feedback!)