EP 339 How Van Ryder Games Built Final Girl Through Crowdfunding

Kickstarter for board games used to reward scrappy creators with a prototype and a promise. Now it often rewards publishers who look like they’re already finished. After 14 years, I sit down again with AJ Porfirio, founder of Van Ryder Games, to map that shift from the inside, from his first $10K campaign to Final Girl Series 4 pushing $1.5M with thousands of backers.

We talk about how AJ got started designing a solo board game simply because he didn’t have people to play with, and how tools like TheGameCrafter and early crowdfunding made experimentation possible. Then we get honest about what’s changed: higher production expectations, heavier marketing, and the reality that you may need real capital before you ever launch. We also dig into Final Girl’s growth, what it means to be “completionist-friendly,” and why AJ is calling Series 4 the end of Era One before moving to a more flexible Era Two model that gives the team more creative freedom.

To close, we tackle AI beyond the usual artwork debate: AI in game design, playtesting, rules support, and even AI as a potential companion that helps players learn and explore a system. AJ shares why he’s skeptical today, what would need to change, and how publishers might think about monetization and control if AI becomes part of play.

Subscribe to Funding the Dream, share this conversation with a creator or backer who lives on Kickstarter, and leave a review with your take: is crowdfunding getting harder, better, or just different?

Transcript

Welcome Back After 14 Years

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Welcome to the show. You're listening to Funding the Dream. I'm Richard Bliss, the host. And if you have been listening to this show for quite some time, let's say 14 years, you will recall that over those years I have sometimes recurring guests. And today is no different because my guest was on the show back in 2012, so many years ago when he was just starting out. And I am thrilled to have him back. So I want to welcome my guest, AJ Porfirio. AJ, thanks for joining me on the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Always a pleasure. Uh yeah, when you reached out, I was just immediately anything you you need. I mean, I'm I'm always I want to do it. So and I love your show. Your show was a big part of my journey in and learning how to use crowdfunding Gigser. So I'm always happy to come back.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Well, I appreciate that. And especially because it's been fun to watch how 14 years ago. Well, okay, let's just to reset for the audience. What was it 14 years ago to 2012, maybe even been 2011? I'm trying to see if I maybe I missed an episode, but in 2012, 14 years ago, what was going on then? I mean, uh, first of all, oh, sorry, hang on, let's tell the audience who you are. Sorry. Uh AJ Perferio is the founder of Van Ryder Games, and their game that you probably know is called Final Girl, which is currently on Kickstarter Series 4. And so there we go. I've just told everybody who you are, because I know who you are if we've known each other for so long. Right. So let's talk about how you what it was like when you started and where we're at now with Van Ryder Games today.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yeah, I mean, it was back then. I I really had no intention of making a board game business when I even started getting into sort of the hobby and and I wanted to just kind of design a game. I I specifically uh wanted to play a solo game, and back then those were a lot rarer. Yeah, if any, I mean it's very difficult to find something like that. And I found myself in a situation where I wanted to play a game, but I didn't really have people to play it with. And so I had the the genesis of this entire company was well, just design, I'll just design my own game that I can play solo. Wasn't to make money off of anything like that. And so that led down a path of uh finding a few different websites and and resources, the gamecrafter.com being one of them, which allows you to make essentially print and play one-off copies of a game. Uh then shortly after Kickstarter finding Kickstarter and seeing, oh wow, people are crowdfunding their ideas for not just board games, but many other things. But board games in particular was kind of really becoming a kind of prominent thing. But I mean, back then it was a whole different world where you know there were many five to ten thousand dollar, fifteen thousand dollar projects was considered just a great success and like something that could launch your your idea, your business. Whereas now you're routinely seeing six-figure, seven-figure projects, and and something like that would be seen as a very small project, or maybe even an unsuccessful project. And so the landscape and and the world and the the board game hobby and industry has changed, just changed dramatically since then.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, and so let's talk about Van Ryder games and that change, because it was just you. Uh, you had just, if I recall, was having a baby right about that time.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Um, yeah, that was our that would have been our third. Uh we have three boys, uh my youngest son Leo, who a lot of our fans now know as King Leo because he appears on we do playthroughs together on YouTube and things like that. So he's he's becoming a little known in our in our community.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Oh my gosh. And I remember when he was still not known on the planet Earth. He was just right, yeah. And so, and so now we go from you to now King Leo. And tell me about Van Ryder Games. Where has it now grown to? You said this wasn't your plan, but here you are.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, I mean, I you know, I I didn't think it was my plan, uh, but I always have had an entrepreneurial spirit. I have a uh I feel like a pretty good business mind. And so yeah, it just kind of took me that way. And then Kickstarter kind of like opened up that thought, right? Like, oh, like wow, you can you can raise money, right? Like, I could actually make more than just a few copies of of my games and try to sell them. And so that was it kicked off, and you know, I did the first game.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

And what was that first game?

The New Bar For Board Games

SPEAKER_00 5:12

The first game we ever did was called If I'm going down, and we raised just over ten thousand dollars. Uh, I think we had 186 backers or something around there. And I mean, that was a wild success at the time for me personally. I was like, oh my gosh, like this is awesome. And I learned a ton of stuff. The game wasn't what you would call a market success or anything like that. It we only ever did the one print run. Uh, I guess it's a little bit of a VRG collector's item at this point. Um, but I learned so much what to do, what not to do. And from there I thought, okay, like let's try this again. And I I started making designing my own others of my own games. I did a third-party game, if you remember Tessin, it was a real-time two-player card game, just a really small box, uh, 108 or so card deck game. And I learned how to publish other designers and I learned how to make another game. And and it was just this iterative process of learning more and more, uh, which you could do back then, you can still do it to today, but there's much a much higher like expectation today of like, well, you have to have a hundred thousand dollar plus Kickstarter, or you're you're not successful, right? So like things have definitely changed. Uh, and I'm not saying anyone says that specifically, but there's that feeling, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Like there is, because some of the things that have changed, and I can remember a conversation you and I had, and what I've talked about is that the productivity quality, excuse me, the pre-launch quality of the video, the product, the playtesting, the rules, the artwork, the minis. It has you talked about game crafter, which was great. Print and play, put one off. Here, here's my here's my demo. Hey, back it, give me ten thousand dollars. That you can't can you do it that way anymore?

Final Girl Series 4 By Numbers

SPEAKER_00 7:07

No, oh no. I mean, if you can our page is still up. If you if anyone looked at that page and you said, Hey, if this launched today, would it fund you? Everyone would just say, No, absolutely not. There's no there's no possible way. Um, it's to your point, right? Like the bar is just raised and continues is continuing to be raised all the time. Um, and so that was that was a fun time where like you truly could kind of just not have a lot of resources and and and throw it out there, get a project funded, yeah, and and make it happen. Uh, and that doesn't mean that I didn't and others had didn't do the best they could, and like with what they had, it absolutely is true. It's just like many things now the the competition is it's grown so much. I'm I'm so thankful to have gotten in really close to the beginning. Um, because I mean the competition now is just such that where you have to do all those things you've said, Richard. Like if you want a shot, you gotta have a finished game essentially and amazing graphics and spend thousands on marketing and videos and and other things.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

And I noticed in your uh currently you have a uh Kickstarter uh running right now called Final Girl Series Four. And I noticed in one of the comments, somebody asked you about meeting your shipping dates. Are you gonna be able to hit it? And I was interested in your response or a member of your team's response that the minis were pretty much done, the cards were pretty much done. Now, that takes capital. That takes money. And so this is kind of your point is that you can't do that if you're just shoestringing it anymore, can you?

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah, for sure. And and we particularly with Final Girl, it's an immensely successful product line at this point, and we've been able to do some different things, like in this series specifically, some of the feature films, as we call them, which are the killers and location boxes, uh some of them have already gone out to retail. Like we have a retail distribution aspect to our business as well. And in this one, we sort of built up to the full series box. Whereas historically in series one through three, when we offered the full box on Kickstarter, that was the first time you get any of it. And so we did we've done things a little differently this time, but all that to say, yeah, we have a lot of that capital from previous business. And and yeah, if you're coming at it for the first time, you you either have to raise that money yourself, put that money in yourself. Um, or I like to say all the time, you know, you can trade in a lot of ways time for money, but things that you're not an expert in, that's going to take an immense amount of time. Whereas if you could just pay someone to do it, you're probably gonna be much better off.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Um, your series four that's running, uh, at the time right now, at the time of this recording, got 10 days left. Uh 6,800 backers thereabouts, and 1.5 million dollars of funding. That's a lot of money. Now, right before we started recording, you said that hey, you have a shot at breaking your record. What's the record for Venrider Games?

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Our record it's just shy of 2.1 million. Uh, that was for series two of Final Girl. So you've got 10 days to get about 500,000 more. Uh, and we're I think on track to do that. It's gonna depend on the final push, of course. Uh historically, and in series three and series two, we got about three hundred thousand in the last couple days. Uh, so if we if we if we do that, I think we're gonna we're gonna break it. It would be great.

Ending Era One Without The Bundle

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Is this the last is this the last final girl series?

SPEAKER_00 10:51

So we are calling this the end of era one for final girl. So we are gonna move into era two starting in 2027. And in 2027, when we do era two, basically what we're doing is moving to a model that doesn't require us to follow this series model, if that makes sense. Like right now, when we put stuff out, everyone expects five feature films and a series and a storage box, and you gotta have minis for everything, and you gotta have lore books and scenario, like and we've done this to ourselves. So, like, I'm not this is this I can point the finger at no one but ourselves because we we created this, uh, and it and the fans are part of it, right? Because they want this consistency in this specific uh model that we've developed, right? But what's happened is it's become it's become unwieldy. It's it's people that are now new coming into Final Girl are like, oh wait, like how do I get everything? Oh, I'm getting this, but but what about this? Or this is like a little extra you guys did. Is it part of the box? Like, so it's become it's become just a massive uh requirement, headache, if you will, to to to manage that. And so what we are doing is we're saying, hey, because you know we have tons of completionists in the board game world, if you're completionist, this is your chance to get everything in era one. This is if you're like the collector and you've got to have everything, this is what we're saying, get this. Once we move into era two, we are no longer gonna be basically helping anyone manage their client. If you still want to get everything, great, you can still get everything, but that's gonna be yours to manage as a consumer. We're not gonna bundle everything up in a nice big box for you, like, and it allows us more creative freedom to go make what we want, and that's what we're most excited about. We don't have to we want to make a feature film, we don't have to have four others lined up, right? To make sure there's a series of five. We want to make cool miniatures that we think are awesome, we're gonna go do that, and so it's exciting from that perspective. The you know, people who are completionists and feel like they have to have everything, it may not be as exciting for them. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Well, I gotta tell you, I looked at your project and I am a bit of a completionist if I look at my board game collection, and I was like, and and I do have Final Girls Series One. Um, and I thought, wow, it's only$800 to back$799, and I could get it all. And then it's like, wait a minute, wait, time out. Because I have grandchildren, yes, I'm but I also have a job, I have a life, I have a wife. It's like, uh, dude, you need to go recheck your uh priorities, and so but I have to tell you, it crossed my mind. It crossed my mind.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Well, and that's the great thing about Final Girl is you can go as hard into it or not as you want. I mean, the entry fee for just the starter set to get the core box and feature film is you know under$50. Yeah. So a lot of people and a lot of people want to pick and choose what they want, and that yeah, so like we we really have options for like all the the whole spectrum. But like eight, I know eight hundred dollars sounds like a lot, but compared to what you're getting value-wise, I mean it's easily. I think we we calculated that you're saving like over$450 or something first.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

No, no, it was and a lot of headings. It sounds like a lot, but it was like, oh, I think that's actually doable. Now, could I do it where the wife doesn't notice it on the credit card? And then when it shows up, where do I hide it so she doesn't see that it got added to the board game collection? That's the biggest where do I hide the new games?

Stretch Pay And Crowdfunding’s New Tools

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah, we're I mean, we were talking about developments, right? Like one of the developments in the crowdfunding world has been, and and Game Found, I guess gets first credit for this, but Kickstarter now does it also, which is stretch pay slash uh pay over time. And so you can break up those payments into I think on Kickstarter it breaks it up into three payments, right? Game found, you can set it to be any number of payments you want.

Crowdfunding Versus Retail Revenue

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Well, you bring up an interesting point, and that is the expansion way beyond where Kickstarter started, which was just I can remember when I first started the podcast, and right around the time you were and I talking, Kickstarter was still kind of seen as like, oh, yeah, that's where people who can't make it go to get money. Well, now we've had so many spin-ups. Game found uh is one of them. Uh we've seen so many other ones, and people who have built entire businesses around the concept of crowdfunding with add-on tools and backer kit and um uh a variety of things. And so we've seen that continue to grow. Do you see you continuing to turn to crowdfunding um for your projects? Because you told me what what percentage is crowdfunding making up of the Van Ryder effort?

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah, so it's I mean it's very different from year to year and project to project. Uh obviously, we get we do a vast amount when we do a final girl project, uh, but some of our other projects, you know, maybe in the tens of thousands or or low hundreds of thousands, it just depends. And so uh crowdfunding in general, uh particularly when we do a final girl project, probably makes up close to half of our revenue for that year. Um, but not quite. I think our retail distribution now has eclipsed uh even that amount. Um, and so we are established now into game stores and and we are doing a significant amount through that channel. And so I I'm not one of these people who likes to say never. So like I don't I don't want to say we'll never do a even say we'll never do a final girl crowdfunding again, although the intent is we don't have any plans for that. Uh however, I still think it's a great tool for new games, unproven games, to kind of put out to the consumer base and let them decide, right? Like, hey, do we want to do we want to pack this? Do we want to help uh bring this to life? Uh and we kind of make a decision every for every game. We've done several games that we just put them straight into retail distribution with no crowdfunding. I think it's it's a for us at least, it's a project-based decision.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Got it.

AI Hype Trust And Board Games

SPEAKER_00 17:18

I know there's other companies that everything they do, it's gonna go crowdfunding or nothing they do, everything's gonna go retail. We are at least for now sort of we ride the line of yeah, like uh deciding based on each project.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

All right, as we wrap up, uh one of the questions that I want to ask, and this is just on everybody's mind, AI. Okay, and AI is made up of a variety of different things. I have one opinion about AI, oftentimes my opinions are contrary to the general population. Where do you see AI? And let me be clear. When I talk about AI, I'm not talking about artwork. Okay, so when I say AI, I am not talking because that's a whole different topic, right? In the especially in the board game industry. That is not what I'm talking about. When it came to game design, game play testing, game work, are you seeing uh an impact of AI in the space?

SPEAKER_00 18:14

So I'm definitely seeing it in the industry um being adopted. And again, referring to obviously the artwork side is a particularly the hot button topic. Yeah, that's almost what we're talking about here, right? Um but even elsewhere, I mean we had someone on our project, I think, in the comments asking us today if we if we used AI for any other elements. Uh and so I I think that even outside of artwork, there's a just this stigma that's been created over use of AI for anything supporting creative work. Um and I think the reality is that the general population is definitely somewhere in the middle. Um, the board game industry is very almost seemingly anti-AI. Um that's kind of how I perceive it. I because of that, I'm not gonna get into any like personal opinions I have, but I will say to this point, we haven't leveraged any AI tools for design or development or artwork at all. Um and we just have to see how that develops. Like, sure. I think that it'll be very interesting to see where it goes. My my my last thing I'll say about AI is I still I use AI from time to time to ask questions, right? Uh about anything, right? Uh, but particularly I've used it to ask about myself, board games, and I still to this date do not get what I would consider accurate answers, uh, in particular for things like board game rules or things about our games. People will come into our Discord or our community and say, Oh, I asked about this rule and AI said this, and it's completely wrong. And so I'm kind of waiting for that shoe to drop. Like, yeah, like I want to see accuracy. Like, so I personally just have a hard time trusting AI for really anything. I know that I'm here, I hear anecdotally all these things. Oh, it's great for this, it's gonna change the game for this. But like when it can't accurately answer simple questions for me, I struggle to then believe, oh, I can hand over my financials in a spreadsheet to this because like why would I why would I trust it? So it it's it is a it is a train that's not it's not going anywhere, right? And if you want to get in, you know, in the way of it and stand on the tracks, then I'm not saying you, I'm just saying generally I know anyone like hey, go ahead, but like it's it's not stopping, and it's we're going to see developments in it, and there could even come a time where it's like, hey, if you don't adopt this thing, the competition is is just gonna fly by you. And so while I have while that's my kind of my opinions on it right now, I'm I'm definitely keeping a close eye and and figuring out where are they?

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah, I use it, I use it heavily, uh three to four hours a day, probably nonstop on AI. Um, I have it as a chief of staff. So right now, uh I have multiple versions of AI all linked together. So right now, you and I are having this conversation. My AI is listening to our conversation. It's going to take this transcript as soon as we're done, and it's going to drop it into my G drive. My Claude AI, my chief of staff, knows it exists there. It will now, when I go into my claude, I'll say, hey, um, I just had a conversation with AJ. Can you go take out of it any deliverables, especially when I'm talking to my clients? And it'll go and read the transcript. It'll then look at the projects that I have, the um the proposals I have with other clients and my framework. And it'll say, okay, well, you and AJ talked about this. He promised this, you promised that. Here's your deliverables, uh, here's some dates. You're uh you're kind of overbooked here. You've already got a week of this. Are you sure you didn't overcompass? Would you like me to write the proposal? You want me to create something for you? Here I'll just pull it from. It then goes and reads my emails and tells me, and by the way, an email just dropped in for this project. Uh, you need to respond to it because there's a deadline on this, and they need to unnumber. Oh, by the way, your revenue is sitting like this because of proposals. This one hasn't been delivered. You sure you don't want me to go to all of that is my AI. And at that point, it actually hasn't created anything. Nor have I asked it to go out and answer a question for me out on the internet. Instead, and so when I see AI now, there's one thing I have been doing it with AJ, and that is I love Traveler. You familiar with Traveler, the RPG?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Oh, right. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

1977, thereabouts. So I have to do it.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Yeah, I think you told me about it before. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

And I've taught my AI to run as a DM for a Traveler campaign.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

And what I've also taught it to do is to actually create antagonists so that it knows the bad guys, but I don't. It has a threat matrix that it's constantly updating that I don't see. So I've taught it to operate in conjunction with what I'm doing. Well, the reason I bring this up is because I'm seeing more and more where if you were to throw out a scenario on AI, let's say in the back of your rule book and said, here, enter this prompt if you'd like to experiment playing through a simulated five-minute exercise of Final Girl to get a feel for it. Um, we're starting to see how AI, not a souped-up search engine or a hopped hopped-up word processor, but instead a companion that allows you to interact. So my idea is I I think, and AJ, I feel like it's back to 2012, and here I am talking about something that's coming because back then it was Kickstarter, it was going to change the world. It did. Um, now I'm saying that from a gaming standpoint, I think AI is going to have a massive impact on the positive. And again, let's stay away from the artwork side of it, but uh on the playing side.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

So I wanted your perspective on that as well, because mine is Yeah, uh I think I think a lot of people have challenges and concerns and issues with all the creative elements, right? Like if we just said, hey, go enter this prompt and make your own, like let like RPGs, this is a lot more, it's a lot more uh possible because RPG RPGs tend to be a lot more free-flowing. And I mean you're by design, someone creates an adventure, right, or a campaign for an RPG. And it's also a little bit by design that rules are a little bit more like guidelines, whereas like a board game is these are the specific rules, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:13

So very structured, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

So that there's that piece of it, and you know, there's a contingent that want their creative works that they consume to be created by a person, and I understand that. Uh, my as a business person, what one of the things, not everything, but one of the things that's very important to me is that we should be able to monetize our work. So if there's a scenario one day where we get comfortable with how an AI is working and we feel like that it can be properly monetized so that we get benefits of someone using that and and using our game system, then maybe I will consider that. Um, and we will consider, I mean, it's not even just me at this point, we're a whole company of people. Uh I think you told me 10.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Is that what you're up to?

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Uh over 10, yeah. We have over 10, uh, several part-timers. Uh, like I said, we have our own warehouse now. Does that count? Are you counting your kids? So some of my kids have worked part-time before, none are currently, although Leo he's he does some of the video stuff and and he gets rewarded in his own way from his dad for that. Uh, but he is he is getting to where we'll probably will add him to payroll soon. Uh oh no his 14th birthday will be uh next month, and so that's kind of the the timeline we're in. I mean, he'll be part-time, right? And and and doing some of that stuff. But yeah, we've had we have had uh our kids contribute in different ways. Um, and so but yeah, it's it's a blast. And of my three, he's the one most he's he's a gamer, right? Like like you and I, and he loves games. So uh the other ones, they have their their interests as well, other interests, and that they they kind of pursue. But Leo, yeah, he's he's the gamer. He's got a future, yeah. He's got a future with us, I think.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

AJ, this has been great. Uh walk down memory lane a little bit, talk about what's kind of what's coming and uh the success that you're seeing. I I love the success that you're having with Final Girl Series 4. Um, oh, I think it ticked up even while we've been talking. People are still uh they're still backing it out there. Uh how how can people find out more information about you? You mentioned a Discord channel.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah, our Discord is our by far our home base for our community. We have active activity going on there day and night, all hours of the day. Uh a robust, just uh community of fans, willing to answer rules, questions, engage, talk about things. It's it's my favorite place that we have. Uh, and so you can reach that. Uh, there's a link on our website, vanridergames.com. We're on all the socials, uh Facebook and Instagram and and X and whatever else. Um, so we're we're out there. Google Van Rider Games and or ask your AI, I guess, if that's that's what that's that's what's happening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

All right. AJ, thanks for thanks again.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

All right, Richard, appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

You've been listening to Funding the Dream. My guest has been AJ Perferio from Van Ryder Games. We've been talking about Kickstar a little bit, talked about one of my favorite topics recently, AI, but we're also talking about how things have shifted and changed. And maybe things are a little bit different out there, but that doesn't mean you should give up hope. And uh, it's always nice to see somebody having success because AJ was with me 14 years ago. We've made so much progress. Thanks for listening. Be sure to check out uh AJ's site and uh his games. I highly recommend them. I want to say thanks for listening. Take care.