Touring Alcatraz (And Feeling Sooooo Close with Crowdfunding Marketing…)
Crowdfunding and board games go together like peanut butter and jelly. Like cigars and sailboats. Like Monopoly and ending friendships.
Platforms like Backerkit and Kickstarter thrive on niche projects that get a small number of people REALLY excited. It’s not hard to see why its such an obvious choice for small board game publishers and independent tabletop games creators.
But while it is a great option (truly, it is), many mistake it as an “easy win”.
They think that, after all their time developing the tabletop game or product, the hardest work is behind them.
Just have to dot a few i’s, cross a few t’s, and wrap it up… right?
Unfortunately, that is NOT the case, and I want to share my experience visiting Alcatraz to help illustrate why…
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A few years ago, as my wife and I moved up from San Diego to Spokane, we had the opportunity to tour Alcatraz. Somehow, despite all my years growing up in the bay area, I had never been. To this day, my mother is in disbelief that, despite living only 30 min away, she somehow never took us as kids.
For those that don’t know, Alcatraz was, for a short time, the ultra-max high security prison in America.
For 29 years, it held some of the “big dogs"“ of crime. Guys like Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert Stroud, and Alvin "Creepy" Karpis.
Apart from the standard prison security, its physical location in the bay is why it was deemed “inescapable”. It is nearly impossible to row to shore, as the currents would sweep you straight out to sea. And swimming was also not a good option, unless you were really good with sharks…
Three men miiiiight have escaped in 1962 (popularized by the Clint Eastwood movie), but their bodies were never found. The only evidence of their infamous attempt was a thrashed rubber boat comprised of glued-together raincoats that washed up on the shore.
However, the same thing that made Alcatraz so difficult to escape from also made it too expensive to keep open. The costs of those trips back and forth from the shore stack up, and in 1963 closed its doors as a prison. Now, every year, over 1.6 million people visit the island and tour the infamous cells.
And overall, it was a good tour! It was redone in the early 2000’s, and I believe that at the time it was the gold standard for museum tours due to its immersive and interactive elements. But by 2023, I think many of its groundbreaking aspects had become standardized, and I found it normal rather than impressive.
Some interesting aspects of the tour:
Kids lived on Alcatraz! There were apartments on the island that housed the entire security staff and their families. Kids would play baseball just a few hundred feet from where prisoners would play baseball. Each day a ferry would take kids to school.
From my ignorant perspective, there was not that much security! I expected spinning rooms and multiple simultaneous key combinations. Nope. Just, like, one big open room and three locked doors, including their cell door. No cameras or rotating platforms. Movies have probably given me wildly unrealistic expectations for what a high-security prison looks like…
The prisoners were treated pretty well. They were given plenty of food that was of higher quality due to other prisons. They also had more access to recreational activities and didn’t perform any hard manual labor. However, they were on a MUCH stricter schedule than the standard prison.
But the biggest surprise was the view from the yard. From the top step, they could see all of the San Francisco peninsula, just 1.5 miles away.
Most prisons are exiled far, far from major cities. Exiled to the outskirts.
But this one was smack dab in the middle of the Bay.
San Francisco to the west. Oakland and the coastal range to the east, the Marin headlands and Sausalito to the North. San Jose to the south. A well-populated, culturally rich and diverse economic powerhouse of a region.
And it was amazing to me that the prisoners could just… SEE beautiful freedom just over the water.
I might be biased, but I believe San Francisco is easily one of the most beautiful cities in the world:
It can be cool in the summer, but year-round the climate is quite temperate.
The best Chinatown outside of China, and the best Little Italy outside of New York.
I love its distinctive Victorian housing is iconic and rare in other cities.
It has amazing food everywhere in the city (except pier 39…)
Golden Gate Park is amazing, second only to the Presidio, which has an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate Brigde and bay.
The surrounding hills and headlands offer a nature getaway just a 30-minute drive.
And every day the inmates stepped outside and gazed upon downtown.
They could hear the honks of cars along the Embarcadero. They could smell the salt water carried along the wind. They could see recreational sailboats float on by.
They could observe freedom as they remained in captivity. They were so close… and yet so far.
And that is my message to Kickstarter creators and anyone running board game crowdfunding campaigns:
When you start marketing, you are more similar to these prisoners than you realize…
By the time most tabletop games crowdfunding starts, you have already devoted YEARS of work into your project.
And by the time you are ready to start work on a crowdfunding campaign, the game is (nearly) finished.
Just like the prisoners on Alcatraz, you can SEE exactly what you want just over there… it feels like you could reach out and grab it.
But, unfortunately, that feeling of being close is an illusion.
Like the prisoners, you are so close, yet so far.
The prisoners were close, but the obstacles in their way… the walls, locks, guards, and water… kept them far away from freedom. It would have been no different if they were on the moon.
And yes, you have done an insane amount of work and almost completed your game, but now you have to begin marketing. And marketing is not the “final lap” of your race. It is a whole other race.
There is a whole new set of tasks to be done, requiring a whole new set of skills:
Writing content for a TTRPG is different than writing a landing page.
Chatting on Discord is different than running a social media campaign.
Emailing manufacturers is different than emailing backers.
Because crowdfunding a tabletop game is kind of like a prison break…
It’s an “all or nothing” kind of thing. “Nearly escaping” is the same as captivity, and ”nearly funded” is the same as having never made it at all. There’s no “good effort for trying!
If you do not put the proper work and resources into crowdfunding, just like the Alcatraz inmates, you’ll be gazing from where you are…
Over to where you hoped you’d be.
