Hey everyone!

We have some updates on Gamefound platform development, but because 2021 is almost over, we wanted to take some time and reflect on our future for 2022 and beyond. We want to talk a little about why we think crowdfunding can be awesome and what is our vision for it coming forward.

Long story short - our vision and plan are not some fancy/trendy buzzwords, but a lot of down-to-earth hard work on details and tools. 

We feel that the positive impact of crowdfunding on the board game industry is beyond doubt. Some of the best board games were brought to gamers around the world thanks to crowdfunding and connecting creators directly to backers, without the traditional sales chain.

The whole process helps to bring fresh new ideas and passionate individuals and connect them with a wide audience that can take part in the process and help shape future games. Creators get audience involvement and direct sales to customers, backers get much better deals than in retail.

This all makes sense and is overall a really great creative process.

But creating and delivering games worldwide is not an easy task. If you ever made or closely followed a board game campaign, you know that there are a lot of hurdles and traps on the way – from production estimations, QA, packing, shipping, taxes, and more.

So, how can we make crowdfunding better? The answer is our vision for the future of crowdfunding on Gamefound.

We believe in hard work and pursuing a defined goal. Our mission is to accelerate the creation and delivery of great games by providing automation and tools. What do we mean by this?

Crowdfunding is still a fresh idea for many people and if we want the community to grow, we need to make sure all the information is clear and transparent. We’ve already introduced systemic stretch goals, add-ons, or product options.

We want to make sure backers know what they are backing, when to expect their product, what are the risks, and so on.

Project funded? GREAT! But now, you have to deliver it and at Gamefound we want to help you with this as much as possible. We want to create tools that will help you plan and execute logistics, automate invoices and create modules that will simplify worldwide tax settlements.

This means less work for the creator along with safety for the backer.

We always say that if creators spend less time on production/logistics/taxes – they will be able to spend more time working on their game – hence more, better designs ;)

We want the backers to discover games they'll love and let them keep up with the growth of those projects. We already have added polls for backers to vote on different changes and a comment section. A lot more will come to life in 2022.

Just to give a few examples of what's on our roadmap: notifications and mentions in comments, following other backers, prioritization of updates, and better ways to interact back and forth with the creator.

All in all, we want Gamefound to be a place where creators can start a project, successfully fund it and then help them as much as we can to deliver it in time and style. We feel like this creates real value for backers and creators and will take crowdfunding to a new level.

Hopefully, this sounds exciting for all of you and you will join us on this adventure. It will not be an easy one, as there are tons of details to get right, but with every iteration, we will slowly get there!

OK, time for our traditional development update – what have we been working on? There are 3 big topics. Perhaps not the most visible additions, but very important.

Ok, this one became big in 2021. A lot of creators outside of the European Union started to charge extra VAT for pledges in the EU. Today, after months of work, we are happy to announce that from next year, we will be making it possible for Gamefound to take care of EU VAT for companies outside of the EU.

What does this mean? In the first iteration, we will collect appropriate VAT in the pledge manager for customers from the EU and pay it to appropriate authorities. Then, we will provide the creator with a detailed list and confirmation of paid tax, as well as instructions on how to import products to the European Union once they will be ready for shipping from the HUB.

While this is the first iteration that we will be developing further, we hope it will already take some of the work from the hands of the creators and address this issue. 

This one we are especially proud of, as the topic is REALLY complicated. Just imagine generating invoices for every order that can be modified, refunded, or changed during the pledge manager. This took a lot of complex rules to put in place, but hopefully will make life easier for a lot of creators!

This one is perhaps the least visible, but in the past 2-3 months we have significantly improved our infrastructure and tech stack, updating to the newest versions of frameworks we rely on (.NET 5.0 most notably). Our platform is operating faster and has become more secure.

Again, not the most “exciting” thing, but you need to take time to strengthen the core of the platform and make sure our services are fully up to date with cutting-edge technology. This is a strong fundament for future growth and advanced tools. 

We have also fully implemented an easy-to-use follower gifts system. As a creator, you can create an item and choose it as a free gift for the followers and upon backing, this item will show up in their cart. You can also create a discount instead of a product.

All that is left for you is to create an awesome campaign that will convince followers to become backers! ;)

 

Apart from all we’ve already discussed, there are many small quality of life upgrades, fixes, and changes. It all leads us closer and closer to leaving beta ;)

Ok! This is it for today!

Marcin Świerkot 

CEO

Gamefound