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- By Chez Oxendine
- Indigenous Entrepreneurs
Amid surging demand for diverse perspectives in media, the tabletop gaming industry is experiencing its own flashpoint.
The industry — rebounding from a fall-off during COVID-19 — stands to nearly double in market value from $24.9 billion in 2022 to $46.7 billion in 2028, per a report by market researcher Arizton Advisory and Intelligence.
Game designer and Cherokee citizen Connor Alexander calls the intersection between a hunger for Native storytelling and a growth in storytelling games “an unusual moment.”
Alexander is the owner and founder of Coyote and Crow Games, which launched a tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) of the same title in 2022. That launch followed a wildly successful, million dollar Kickstarter campaign — proof that people are searching for new ways to look at their stories, Alexander said. That could mean anything from his RPG’s Native-driven settings to “semi-cooperative” games where if one player fails, everyone fails.
“Indigenous people aren’t a monolith, obviously, but I think a lot of us have perspectives that are different from the core belief systems and worldviews you find in traditional board game designs,” Alexander told Tribal Business News. “I think Native Americans have a different perspective that people are hungry for.”
The sentiment is echoed by William Thompson, another Cherokee game designer and cofounder of Absurdist Productions. Since its inception in 2017, the company has published innovative board games and RPGs like Transformation, a solo game where users chronicle a 7-day transfiguration in a journal.
Thompson agreed with Alexander: there’s more room for Indigenous perspectives in game design than ever before. As a media-wide interest in diverse storytelling grows, an opportunity has opened up.
“From what I’ve seen, there's definitely space and a lot of people who are looking for new perspectives, new games, and new ideas, and from that perspective, I think diverse voices of all kinds are absolutely welcome,” Thompson said. “There are people who are excited to see Indigenous games, as well as games from other cultures. I think there's a lot of acceptance in a lot of corners in this industry. The board game space can be extremely welcoming in that way.”
Crowdfunding has been key
For both Thompson and Alexander, crowdfunding has been the key to getting their voices heard and stories told. Both designers have used the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform to launch their games, effectively pre-selling copies of the game to donors and raising awareness for their brands.
Alexander’s debut game, Coyote and Crow, raised nearly $1.1 million from more than 16,000 contributors in 2021-22. A subsequent campaign for Alexander’s board game, Wolves, didn’t match the Coyote and Crow's numbers, but still funded the new game's production with more than $100,000 raised.
Thompson, through Absurdist Productions, funded solo roleplaying games, including Seven Murders Til Midnight and Transformation. Each raised between $13,000 and $14,000 via crowdfunding, which opened the doors in a way that wouldn’t have been available under traditional publishers, Thompson said.
“I couldn’t have started my company without crowdfunding,” Thompson said. “Producing thousands of copies of a game is wildly expensive. With crowdfunding, you have to prove yourself to people and gain their trust, but once you do, it works great.
“Eventually, we want to move away from crowdfunding and just sell our games through distributors, but we aren't there yet. For now, we still rely on the trust and support of our backers to make these projects happen.”
Both creators now have new campaigns in the works. Alexander has already funded a new, horror-focused supplement for the Coyote and Crow game called Ahu Tiiko. It’s already raised nearly $106,000 from more than 1,400 contributors.
Next month, Thompson will launch a campaign for Winter Rabbit, a “semi-cooperative” board game for multiple players.
Don't destroy your opponents
While strategy and war-based games drive the tabletop gaming industry's growth, Indigenous-designed games such as Winter Rabbit and Wolves instead feature a theme of “semi-cooperation.”
In both games, players are tasked with keeping communities afloat while working to be the biggest contributors or leaders. As such, players who attempt to “destroy their opponents” — rather than supporting the central community — end up making everyone fail, Thompson said.
In Winter Rabbit, the community is a single village. Thompson said the goal was to look at competition through a different lens, one that rewards players who work toward a greater good while trying to win.
“I wanted something that had lots of positive interactions in it, something that reflected taking care of the land, not exploiting it,” Thompson said. “That idea reflected what I wanted in the values of a game. You think about these strategy games and you see some really colonialist themes. I wanted to reflect more Indigenous values and ideas.”
Certainly the trend isn’t solely Indigenous, Thompson said. But semi-cooperative games reflect an Indigenous perspective on growth as a sustainable relationship with one’s resources, rather than extractive.
Alexander said that idea, which is also central to his game Wolves, represented a chance to find a new niche in a growing, but crowded, market.
“I think Native Americans — we have a much different perspective,” Alexander said. “I think exploring that is just a good business decision.”
Building on those decisions, Alexander plans to branch out soon, he told Tribal Business News. The designer believes that the success he’s seen on Kickstarter has left him preaching to the proverbial choir.
The goal behind his earlier games was to bring more Natives players into board games and RPGs, Alexander said. Despite his crowdfunding success, he believes most of the games have ended up in the hands of people who are already invested in the hobby.
“I think I'm speaking to people that I already know. None of my games have been breakout games in that Native space,” Alexander said. “I think I need to find another publisher who has a bigger and better reach to get them out. I don't have the marketing power or the financial pull to do those games justice.”
While Wolves is available at national retailer Barnes and Noble, which Alexander called a “feather in his cap,” it hasn’t reached many new Native gamers. To achieve wider success, Alexander plans to pitch two other games in the works, a family-focused game called Seven Clans, and a beadworking game called Adela, to larger board game publishers.
Emphasize Indigenous heritage
Alexander believes publishers are looking to diversify their portfolios, and advises aspiring Native designers to emphasize their Indigenous heritage when pitching their games. It’s a way of opening doors that are often closed to Native Americans who might otherwise enter the field, Alexander said.
“At the root core, there's a systemic issue here. Being a board game designer is something you can only do when you have a metric ton of privilege,” Alexander said. “I’m white-passing, I grew up off the rez, I got a college education, I was able to work in the board game industry before I launched Coyote and Crow … all of those things contributed massively to the success of that game.”
Even so, Alexander acknowledges that there is growing interest in diverse perspectives and there is room for Native voices. To make that happen, it’s important for him and others to support Indigenous creatives through initiatives like grants to attend board-game conventions, which is a goal for his current Ahu Tiiko project.
It also means showing Indigenous people there are games for them — and by them — out there, Alexander said. He hopes the “unusual moment” for Native storytelling right now can become the norm.
In the meantime, he advises aspiring Native American game designers to lean into their Indigenous heritage in creating their games, and when pitching them to publishers.
“Find a good publisher, play the hell out of it, playtest it and don't be afraid to tack on your tribe to your resume. Say I'm so and so from this Nation … I think there's no shame in using that to get your foot in the door with a publisher who might not otherwise listen,” Alexander said. “There's a whole sphere of Indigenous culture, and their visions, and their perspective that is valuable and has worth, and we need to get them to a point where they can share it.”
