What are Kickstarter board games vs retail board games?
Kickstarter is a funding site where people post projects for crowds to fund (aka 'to back') the creation of a new item or project. Asking the public to fund/back projects in this way is known as crowdfunding. One subcategory of Kickstarter is the crowdfunding of board games. These board games are referred to as Kickstarter Board Games. The Kickstarter version of board games often include extra game items to thank and incentivize people to fund/back a Kickstarter project and help it become a completed physical game. These extras include: Stretch Goals - additional items for the board games' backers, and sometimes Kickstarter Exclusives - additional items for the board games' backers that will not go into the standard retail board games. TheGameSteward is a very different kind of game store. TheGameSteward helps actually bring games to market that might not otherwise get funded. TheGameSteward pays/funds/backs Kickstarter Board Game projects months and/or years before the actual game exists physically and ships for sale in-stock. (In comparison, many other game shops standard model is not to pay for games until a month after they already receive the game in-stock.) In this way and with your help as customers, TheGameSteward has helped insure the successful funding of hundreds of Kickstarter Games coming to market and will continue to do so.