The Importance of Creating Gateway Games

Foreword
Everyone has played a gateway game, and usually, it's a player's first venture into the hobby that they have this experience, whether it be at a friends house, a board game cafe or just a game that they picked up on Amazon. This is the underlying pin of what I want to write about in this post. ​

Credit: https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/22/21068797/ kickstarter-2019-board-games-video-games-tabletop-data-china-tariffs-trump

Straight to the thesis. 
I believe firmly that gateway games are both the key and the crux of our industry. If brilliant gateway games continue to be developed and published every year, the market will continue to grow as fast as it has been doing (almost 25% on average every year since 2015). On the other hand, if gateway games diminish in volume and consistent quality, we can expect a decline in growth to the point of stagnation, like that which we have seen in the video game crowdfunding sector. ​

What is a gateway game?
Read this thread here on Board Game Geek for more info, but BGG user JoeDogBoy described a gateway game as, 'A gateway game can be the game that gets a "non-gamer" to play "real" games. It can also be a game that gets someone to try a new genre of games. A "heavy Gateway Game" is a heavy game (not a lightweight) that has an appeal to non-gamers, or non board gamers.'
I picked this specific user definition because 1. It comes up first on Google and 2. Most users in the thread seem to agree with him or build off his idea. 
So what can we take from this?
A gateway game is:

1. A game for a non-gamer
2. Converts non-gamers to "real gamers."
3. Can get gamers to try new genres

From these three core points, it almost describes a demo that you would find on a video game marketplace for free, designed to wet your whistle enough to get you to buy the game at total price. That is pretty bloody accurate to describe what a gateway game is for this post. ​
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Why are gateway games important?

1. They convert people to the hobby, thus prompting more than just one time purchases, thus growing the market. (80% of Kickstarter backers are repeat backers and control the majority of Kickstarter's algorithm). 
2. They are great at encouraging exploration of genres (promoting a "share-the-wealth" mentality for more minor indie games). 
3. They take customers on a journey to purchasing games with a more considerable profit margin, benefiting the industry. ​

How do gateway games do this?
Gateway games, at least to me, are all about altering perceptions of mechanisms and themes. Worker placement games can seem scary when the player is attacked with all these options on a massive, difficult to read board, but if a player has played Tiny Epic Dinosaurs first, or even Disney Villainous for that matter, then moving up in the world of worker placement games doesn't seem quite as scary. 
After all, the term "gateway game" is inherited by the term "gateway drug". A gateway drug is a product designed to ease a consumer into the market, only to get hooked and grow the business consistently at a more significant profit margin (the more intense the drug, the greater the profit margin (for the most part) is akin to the more prominent the board game box, the greater the profit margin).
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I seem to be getting a little fixated on narcotics here, but you understand the point I am trying to make. At this point, I would like to reflect on my original thesis. Without these gateway games to get people into the hobby, how can we expect the industry to grow? Can we expect ourselves to stand by and watch the average joe buy themselves the occasional Monopoly every year, benefiting just one company, and be okay with where we stand in the industry? Shall we make a heavy war game with a £200 price tag and expect the regular non-gamer off the street to pick up the rulebook and start playing? This is why we need to nurture our customers from the ground up.  ​

Credit: https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/tiny-epic-dinosaurs-an-early-jurassic-impression/

Credit: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/08/board-game-review-be-the-bad-guy-in-disneys-villainous/

Credit: https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/tag/war-games/

The Journey
No matter your preference in genre or your favourite game, starting small as a designer and developer is excellent for both you and the consumer. I plan to talk more in-depth about why starting small is great for you, particularly in a different post. To begin creating small is great for the consumer for many reasons, a lot of which I found out by reading "12 Months to $1Million" on my daily walk in the park. 

1. You need to build trust with your customers initially, and it's a lot easier to trust you with a smaller price tag.
2. In theory, the smaller the price tag, the more customers/backers you are to get, which will build up your newsletter and create a solid community of people that your customers can interact with and share in the fact that "they were the first ones there". 
3. Starting small will allow you to get on the ground floor of the journey new gamers will be going on with YOUR games. ​

​That last point is probably the most important. With my most recent Kickstarter, I was confused at my statistics during the mid-campaign slump. I took the quiet time to look over each backer that had graciously supported me, and I found that instead of 80% of my backers being repeat backers (the standard split for a project), it was only around 50%, meaning the other 50% were first-time backers. I was confused about why, but then I realised that with Food Time Battle in Space, I achieved something almost by accident that I now believe to be my core design philosophy: to make games with heavy mechanisms simple for the average consumer. This, along with the cartoony art, attracted these first-time backers.

Unbeknownst to me, I stumbled across what I should have been doing all this time, starting the journey for new gamers to get into the hobby, play more complex games, and contributing to the industry's profitability. 
To break it down more clearly, here is an example of how you can gain, keep, maintain and nurture your customers from the first campaign until you make the game that you can go full time with. 

1. Microgame - Backers 100 - Unit cost £2.50 - Retail £5.00 - Profit based on backer fulfilment £250 - (Profit Margin of 50%)
2. Cardgame - Backers 200 - Unit Cost £4.50 - Retail £10.00 - Profit based on backer fulfilment £1100 - (Profit Margin of 55%)
3. Cardgame with Wooden Components - Backers 250 - Unit Cost £7.00 - Retail £20.00 - Profit based on backer fulfilment £3250 - (Profit Margin of 80%)
4. Boardgame with Wooden and Plastic Components - Backers 500 - Unit Cost £6.00 - Retail £40.00 - Profit based on backer fulfilment £17,000

Assuming all these four games either share one similar mechanism, one overarching theme, or a great relationship with your customers, then the backer growth that underpins the example is an underestimation. I believe you could see a much quicker growth. 
Regardless, as you can see between steps 3 and 4, the unit cost will stay at a similar level or decrease slightly, despite the number of components and value you add to the game. This is because of the number of units you will be able to order from the manufacturer due to the profit you gained from backer fulfilment. 
Some people see that shiny bright light at the end of the tunnel and think, I can do this right now. They will say, "I know I have the perfect game. It has great art, great mechanics, a great story, and I know what I am doing". That isn't going to help you if you haven't built your audience. If we include shipping in your goal for that fourth Kickstarter, you are going to need a minimum goal of £9,000 at the very least to get that project off the ground, and so you can pay for that minimum order. £9,000 might not be impossible with your first-time project; in fact, I know it's not. However, £9,000 is much harder to get than the £750 you will need for step 1. 
That's why you start low, and nurture your customer. Eventually, that same customer that started your journey with you will slap down £40 on the middle-weight game that you wanted to make, to begin with, and they will do that with confidence whilst telling all their friends on social media to do the same. 

Create your own Gateway Game
I started writing this blog post with the lofty ambition of convincing others like me, just beginning in the grand scheme of things, creating their gateway games and contributing to the movement of increasing the already growing board game market rather than trying to take from it. There are enough pieces of the pie if everyone contributes to making it. I hope I have, if not convinced you, at least made you think back to the first gateway game that you played; Whether that be Splendor, Ticket to Ride, hell, even Exploding Kittens, and hopefully, you think back fondly. 

Conclusion
Thank you very much for reading. I run my daily podcast in which a lot of these blogs start as, and then I talk through them before writing them down like I am doing with this one. Therefore all the suggestions for this post are going to be the episodes revolving around this topic.  


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Thanks, 


Niall from Crab Studios