“Our attempts to do things ‘different from the others’ came back to bite us”: Plaid Hat’s Colby Dauch on The Monolith’s Kickstarter failure and rapid turnaround

Plaid Hat Games launched its Kickstarter for The Monolith in June with a trio of successful crowdfunding campaigns under its belt - only to pull the project three days after launch when pledges unexpectedly ground to a halt. In this first-person piece for BoardGameWire, Plaid Hat founder and CEO Colby Dauch explains why The Monolith exposed flaws that Plaid Hat’s previous campaigns had masked, what the publisher believes it got wrong, and why the changes made for its rapid relaunch appear to be working.

“This is a time to be disciplined, focused, and clear about why a game deserves to exist”: industry veteran Scott Morris on launching new publisher Steelwing Games

Few people in the hobby game industry have have seen as many sides of the business as Scott Morris - from leading global strategy at Lucky Duck Games, building publishing partnerships at GTS Distribution and running sales, marketing and social media at Arcane Wonders. Now Morris is applying that experience to his own venture as founder of Steelwing Games, whose debut title Rainbow Blvd. has been nearly a decade in the making.

Valor Mountain challenges hobby game publishing’s “safe bet” mentality as it ramps up ambitions

After years spent engaging with publishers and designers - both at Capstone Games and through his Board Again Gaming podcast - Christopher High believes the several thousand new board games and expansions released each year are pushing publishers towards commercially safer bets. Now he's wagering his company Valor Mountain Games can succeed by taking chances on the kinds of titles other publishers are passing over.