Go On Board plans to stick with Gamefound after record $7.6m Cyberpunk 2077: The Board Game success
Polish board game crowdfunding specialist Go On Board says it plans to stick with Gamefound for its future campaigns in the wake of wrapping up one of the ascendant fundraising platform’s biggest-ever projects on more than $7.6m.
The huge fundraise for Cyberpunk 2077: The Board Game is the second-largest recorded on the platform ahead of late pledge capital being added, behind the $12.1m Nemesis: Retaliation campaign from Gamefound CEO Marcin Świerkot’s other company Awaken Realms.
Cyberpunk easily beat the former second-placed fundraise, Awaken Realms title ISS: Vanguard, which collected $4.9m during its campaign at the end of 2020 – and also outdid Go On Board’s debut Gamefound campaign, the $4.4m The Witcher: Path of Destiny campaign from October last year.
The raise is a record one for Go On Board, pipping its biggest Kickstarter campaign success in The Witcher: The Old World from 2021 by about €45,000.
A Go On Board spokesperson told BoardGameWire the company was happy with its shift from Kickstarter to Gamefound, adding that they were proud that both Cyberpunk and The Witcher: Path of Destiny had made it into the crowdfunding site’s Top 10 projects in terms of money raised.
He said, “We are happy with the change. We’ve worked with Gamefound even before the move, and since we really like all the features they are introducing, the change was quite obvious for us.
“We’ve had two big campaigns on Gamefound and our plan is to create our future ones there as well.”
While Go On Board had the weight of the popular video game IP behind its Cyberpunk 2077 campaign, that doesn’t necessarily herald a record-breaking home run in terms of crowdfunding success.
Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City, an Eric Lang co-design launched onto Kickstarter by CMON in 2022, finished its campaign with about $890,000.
Gamefound began life as a Kickstarter pledge manager in 2015, before CEO Marcin Świerkot set his sights on beating the crowdfunding giant at its own game in the tabletop fundraising sector two years ago.
Other big board game publisher that have made the switch from Kickstarter to Gamefound since its launch as a crowdfunding platform include CMON, which announced in February that it was leaving Kickstarter after 12 years – and $108m of projects – to sign an exclusivity agreement with the rival company.
That same month IP-focused board game publisher Gale Force Nine followed its phenomenally successful debut crowdfunding campaign on Gamefound last year by announcing a trio of new games it would crowdfund on the platform.
Big tabletop game success on Kickstarter so far this year include the Altered trading card game, which raised about €6.2m, as well as the record-breaking $15.1m raised for Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere RPG from Brotherwise Games last month.
Now Go On Board has the record-breaking Cyberpunk campaign wrapped up, the company’s focus will shift to development and production – with the hope that the game does not suffer the delays currently being experienced by its previous crowdfunding campaign, The Witcher: Path of Destiny.
That production is currently running five months behind schedule after some of the game’s prototype components failed to meet Go On Board’s standards, and delivery is currently predicted to take place in May next year.
A Go On Board spokesperson told BoardGameWire, “We always try to plan the entire project precisely, including development, preproduction and logistics. At the same time, the project is very much dependent on outside factors, that affect the timeline.
“The first one is the campaign itself, where we prioritize responding to the community, even if it would mean some extra work on the project. And, more importantly, the production and logistics are affected by the scale of the project, as well as other random factors.
“For Path of Destiny we are producing approximately 300,000 separate items, and such a huge scale affects the timeline. We also needed an additional changes before launching the production, and we know our community prefers that we aim for a higher quality, than simply keep the schedule.
“As we are getting more experience, and our team grows, we plan our projects better, but since it’s crowdfunding, not a simple pre-sales, sometimes some are unavoidable.”
