5 Kickstarter Video Tips From A $500,000 Tabletop Game

There’s always a lot you can learn from Kickstarter projects that are doing well. Have a look at the Golem Arcana tabletop game. Their video is great for many reasons, and you might not have the resources to match their cinematic quality.

But there is something that you can emulate in your own Kickstarter project video, even if you just record it with the video camera of your phone: letting others do the praise.

About a minute into the video, they let people speak who have tried the game – and these people (obviously) love it. Have a look for yourself:

The project creator is in the video too, he explains the benefits and makes a compelling pitch – but he also uses these testimonials to really sing the praise. In 20 seconds, 6 different people talk about different aspects they like about the game, and that’s compelling. Implicitly, this also demonstrates: Many people like this.

And some part of our brain automatically concludes: ‘Hey, this must be fun!’

Know Your Backers

They obviously have done their homework and identified many of the objectives people typically have with tabletop games: it’s too difficult to learn the rules, too time-consuming to paint the figures, and so on… (the game creator pretty much addresses all these objections within the first minute already).

Fascinate With Stories

He also uses compelling storytelling to create a sense of fascination and introduces different characters of the game. About three minutes into the video, he starts to talk about the setting of the game.

Our brains are wired for stories. It’s been like that since the early dawn of human kind. From childhood to old age, good stories always captivate our attention. You don’t need to be a natural-born storyteller to use the power of story in your Kickstarter – we share some great resources for crafting powerful narratives in our (free) Kickstarter Success Guide.

But Isn’t The Video Too Long?

The video is longer than what’s typically recommended for a Kickstarter pitch video, but in the case of Golem Arcana this is actually a good thing: because the length of a video is ultimately not measured in minutes, but in engagement. As long as you can keep your viewers engaged, go on.

Because the longer you engage them, the more likely they are to take action. The reason why we generally recommend to keep your video short is that very few people can create videos that are so entertaining that they keep people’s attention for more than two minutes.

More Than Just A Thing

Towards the end of the video, he also shares that it’s not just about yet another game, but about a whole new way to play together.

Now I personally am not really into boardgames and golems and ogres at all. But when he talked about this, suddenly there is something that resonates with me and that I find interesting and worthwhile. It allows the viewer to connect on yet another level with this Kickstarter.

This is something we always recommend you add to a Kickstarter. Sometimes it might not be obvious. Sometimes you might not be consciously aware of what the underlying reason is for why you want to make a certain project happen, and then it’s time to ask yourself some questions to figure that out. But if you’re passionate enough to start a Kickstarter about something, we can almost guarantee you that there’s an underlying mission, a deeper meaning, a hidden purpose that fuels your passion.

Quick Recap

The main lessons you can take away from this Kickstarter project video are:

• Let others do the praise
• Know your backers
• Fascinate with stories
• Engage & entertain your viewers as long as you can (but not a second longer!)
• Communicate a deeper meaning

At the time of writing this blog post, they already have more than a thousand backers who pledged $163,006. They still got 28 days to reach their $500,000 funding goal. This isn’t looking like an easy win, but still very possible to pull off.