> Agreed, but within class that are buried amazing designers like Martin Wallace and Phil Eklund, who have used kickstarter to become largely independent of the

> Agreed, but within class that are buried amazing designers like Martin Wallace and Phil Eklund, who have used kickstarter to become largely independent of the big publishers. Martin Wallace has been self-publishing games for two decades through Warfrog/Treefrog, and that accounts for all of his most important designs. Things he did for other publishers tended to be either inferior and quickly forgotten, or straight reprints. He was also pre-selling straight to consumers (and getting pre-paid on) a substantial chunk of the games Treefrog published long before Kickstarter existed. Phil Eklund has been self publishing his games for at least two decades through Sierra Madre Games. I can't think of a game he designed for another publisher. And I don't think he's run a kickstarter other than the High Frontier reprint, either. It's really hard to argue that the main problem for Eklund has been lack of independence, he's pretty much the defining example of auteurism in board games. Sorry, don't think these examples work at all for making the case for the Kickstarter effect :-)