Latest news with #AsherMcClennahan
Forbes
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Kickstarter's New Head Of Games Asher McClennahan Discusses His Vision
Asher McClennahan joined Kickstarter in March of 2025 as the new Head of Games. Kickstarter has become a vital part of the tabletop gaming industry. It serves both the start up dreamers who want to make their first game and larger interests that want to reach a broader audience while also gaining advance capital to offset costs of a big release. Many games and gaming companies would have never gotten off the group withut the help of Kickstarter. That makes the Head of Games at Kickstarter an important position. Asher McClennahan joined the company in that position a few months ago. He sat down with me for an interview where we discussed how he views his role and what he can do to help tabletop creators no matter the current economic climate. 'The thing that is constantly running through my mind,' said McClennahan, 'what I am always talking to people internal to Kickstarter about and people in the community is being of service to them. It is very important to me that Kickstarter as a platform and just me as a person are actively serving this community.' Part of McClennahan's concept of service is giving back to a hobby that helped him. During the strange days in which we live, it's important to step away from the constant feed of troubling news. Tabletop games give people a chance to break away for a few minutes or hours and reconnect with those most important to their lives. 'I think that in a post pandemic world,' said McClennahan, 'with the climate, the economic political climate that exists in 2025. It is really easy to spend a ton of time doom scrolling or trying to find ways to escape and cope with whatever it is that we are dealing with as humans. The thing that really saves me from a lot of that was games and so creating opportunities for play I think is one of the most important things that we as people and as a society can do.' One of the first steps that McClennahan took to help creators to use the platform was integrate pledge manager assistance after the ledge drive was completed. After a Kickstarter, the creator either had to manage getting the product to their backers on their own or to turn to a third-party service that took an additional cut of the pledge money. Now backers can use an integrated service to help fulfill their promises. I think the big one is how streamlined everything is not just from crowdfunding to pledge manager," said McClennahan. 'Obviously there's huge benefits and just being able to stay in one ecosystem. I am so impressed by really genuinely they are very, very cognizant of how easy it would be to over inundate creators with pledge management features and guides and walkthroughs that sort of overcomplicate the reality. What I really love about our pledge manager is how simple and streamlined it is. I think the right buttons are in the right places that you expect them to be. From a feature perspective, the big reason that the Kickstarter pledge manager is so useful and helpful is that it has all of the sort of table stakes features that most creators expect.' The main feature he was excited about was helping creators figure out taxes on whatevr funds are raised. It's a common misperception that the end number of a Kickstarter is just a big pile of money for the creators to use however they wish. In reality, creators have to pay start up costs, give Kickstarter a cut and then keep some aside for when the IRS comes calling next year. "It is really robust in its reporting and in remitting of of taxes to try to make that Process much, much easier for creators," said McClennahan. McClennahan sees room for all kinds of scales of Kickstarters under his watch. Some supporters enjoy being ablr to easily be notified when their favorite creator is preparing something new. Others like to wander the site like a physical store and see what new things they can help fund. "In terms of what we see on the platform in like a macro view I'm really excited about what's happening on Kickstarter," said McClennahan. 'Tabletop games are at an 80%+ success rate so far on Kickstarter this year, which is incredible. There is there is a group of people who expect sort of more high fidelity Kickstarter pages and things like that. There were also still a lot of people that go on the website. You know, we have many millions of people hitting this website every single, every month and I think what's cool is like there are still lots of people who are on Kickstarter, backers who are there for the discovery aspect, to see a small game and really let it come to life, and I think that's one thing that I really love about Kickstarter. You can have both. There is like a dichotomy that exists within Kickstarter itself, where it's like these huge campaigns featuring major IP or very well known creators that are making these really high fidelity pages.' Recent years have been a challenge to tabetop creators. Shipping has become more expensive and less reliable, the market is full of games vying for attention and the current state of the economy is very volatile. There's no easy solution but there are steps creators can take to minimize their vulnerability. "If you're a creator and you're looking at tariffs I think the reality is just pay attention," said McClennahan. "There's amazing communities of people out there that are really talking about it every day. They're being very public and vocal about what the status of all of this is, and you know we have a couple of articles to help you understand. Tariffs shoot up. Don't panic, we've seen that go back and forth many, many times already. We don't know how it's all going to end up. There's like, thereyour shipping costs that you will you will dictate there? There's a couple of levers that you can pull. There is the tariff manager if you using the Kickstarter pledge manager. There are ways that you can pass those costs on. When you're doing the budgeting and the projections after your campaign, before you launch, consider all of the scenarios that are possible including the worst case. You should have a sense of understanding where the tariffs are today. Build it in your calculations that looks at those manufacturing costs with a with a 30% tariff, with a 54% tariff, with a 45% tariff. Just so that you can more deeply understand what situation you might be walking into. Try to build your tiers and pricing model such that provides value to your backers but also honors the fact that there is a little bit of unpredictability. Now, I'm not saying double the price of your your tiers and call it a day, but I think really being eyes wide open before you launch your campaign will help decrease the level of panic that you might experience afterwards. If you can arm yourself with the knowledge of your costs and and potential outcomes, you are most well equipped to weather any storm that is coming."
Geek Dad
12 hours ago
- Business
- Geek Dad
A Conversation with Kickstarter and Crowdfunding Tabletop Roundup
Earlier this week I got to chat with Asher McClennahan, the head of games at Kickstarter. I was curious to hear how tariffs had affected things like the number of projects launching or being backed, and also whether some of the 'tried-and-true' advice about launching projects is actually true. As far as tariffs go, McClennahan said that there definitely were some publishers who held off on launching projects earlier this year in favor of waiting to see what things would be like later, but the number of games projects launching is still pretty steady. Kickstarter did add a tariff calculator so that project creators could set things up to charge for tariffs later, taking out a little bit of the unknown, and while we don't know what will happen with China tariffs after the 90-day pause, he expects we may see another boom in project launches this fall from all of the publishers who postponed things earlier. And while anecdotally a lot of people said they were hesitant to back projects when tariffs were so high, the numbers show that folks are still backing things about as much as usual. That makes sense to me: the publishers and backers most affected by the high tariffs earlier this year were from the projects that funded last year and were in the process of delivering now—for those, it was generally too late to turn that ship around. For projects launching now, I think the expectation for a lot of backers is that things may be resolved by the time these games hit the water—fingers crossed that they're right! One of the things I've heard from publishers is about ideal windows to launch projects, both in terms of the time of the year and the day of the week. McClennahan said there's a lot of anecdotal advice about avoiding January as a launch date—it's right after the holidays, after all—but he said the numbers don't necessarily support that. Projects that launch in January (and there are still a good number of them) seem to do just as well overall as in other parts of the year. Another launch tradition is that tabletop games generally launch projects on Tuesdays—probably 90% of the Kickstarter games I review launch on Tuesdays, so I asked if there's any data to support that theory. McClennahan told me that the vast majority of games launch on Tuesdays, so it has become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: there simply aren't enough game projects that launch on other days of the week to have enough data to say for sure whether other days might even be viable. The good news for tabletop game creators is that people are still out there backing games, and something like 70% of all game projects hit their funding goals. (From my own small sample size, I also know that a lot of creators who didn't fund the first time have found success after making some changes and relaunching later.) Another piece of good news is that it's not just huge projects that are hitting their goals, though those are the ones we tend to hear about the most. Smaller, more niche projects are also getting funded all the time; McClennahan said that Kickstarter's recommendation features seem to work, and backers are able to find the projects that they're interested in. Of course, Kickstarter isn't the only game in town—Backerkit and Gamefound have both had a lot of success in attracting backers and raising funds, and they offer different types of features for both project creators and backers. But it does seem like Kickstarter's first-mover advantage is still pretty strong, and fans of crowdfunded tabletop games haven't stopped looking for games there. With that, I've got a few crowdfunding projects to highlight today—mostly games that I haven't gotten to play yet myself, but things that caught my attention and looked like they could be fun. New to crowdfunding? Check out our crowdfunding primer. My head has been destroyed, but my right arm has a spirit overlay that increases its damage. (Prototype shown) Photo: Jonathan H. Liu Mechromancers by Witchway Games There's only about a week left to go in this campaign for a 2-player card battle game. You play as 'mechromancers,' building spirit-powered robots and pitting them against your rival. You use deck-building to build up more powerful attacks and defensive capabilities, but you can also power up the parts of your robot with Soul Overlays (transparent cards that boost the part in various ways). When a part loses all its health, the mechanical part is destroyed but the spirit remains, giving you more spirit points for abilities and upgrades … but if all four parts are destroyed, you lose. I did get to try a prototype of the game, and I liked the various ways you can build up your bot: will you go strong on offense or shield up? Or maybe you try to get some more card draws so you're ready for whatever your opponent throws at you? The artwork has a cartoon feel, and the transparent overlays are a nice touch too. There aren't any ways to repair damage and the game ramps up as parts get destroyed, so each fight is pretty quick and then you can reset and try again! Paperback Adventures Volume 2 from Tim Fowers Paperback Adventures is a deck-building, word-making, rogue-like game where you spell words to battle monsters and eventually face off against various bosses. I reviewed the first volume back in 2021 when it was on Kickstarter, and Tim Fowers now has a second volume launching on Gamefound. It adds one new character, Iron Knee (each character has their own unique deck and abilities), and also introduces the Binding Nexus that lets up to 4 people play together. The original was for 1 or 2 players, though the 2-player mode still felt mostly like two people playing a solo game next to each other. I'm curious to see how Binding Nexus mixes things up! Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid from Maestro Games The mobile game Clash of Clans already made the jump to a graphic novel series (I just wrote about the latest book earlier this week), and now it's also going to be a tabletop game! Alas, I haven't gotten a chance to try this one at all, but it's designed by Eric Lang and Ken Gruhl, and includes both elements of building up your town and army and sending raids to your opponents' towns. There's a ton of optional add-ons so it's definitely not a cheap game, but looks like it could be fun! Pet Names from Pink Tiger Games This is the eighth game from Pink Tiger Games, a company started by my friend Ami Baio with games that are all about conversations and being kind. Pet Names gives you a bunch of cards to mix and match to create cute nicknames for your friends, scoring points if you can come up with the favorite of the round. The game also comes with a little plush fox bag to carry the cards! Trouble on the Tempus from Minor Disaster Games This campaign only has about a day left to go—if only you could time travel to give yourself more time to think! In the game, that's exactly what you get to do: you're on a spaceship trying to repair the Hyperdrive, dealing with a series of disasters. But if things get too hairy, you can time travel back to the beginning and try again … except now there's a new paradox in the disaster deck. I'm a sucker for time travel stories, and I really like the way this one handles the concept: all the disaster cards will be in the same order, so if your team can remember the order of the disasters, you should be able to plan for them. But if you time travel too much, you'll tear time itself apart. Casual Game Insider It's hard to believe that Casual Game Insider is preparing for their fourteenth year! I remember when they first launched, there wasn't a common industry term for quick, accessible games, but now I talk about casual games all the time. The quarterly magazine is switching to digital-only this year, and includes spotlights on some cool games, interviews with various folks in the game industry, and everything from tips on hosting a game night to attending your first gaming convention. Each issue also has a free game included—though I guess with the digital magazine you'll need to print it out yourself. Liked it? Take a second to support GeekDad and GeekMom on Patreon!
