Interview: How Brandon Sanderson is reshaping the Kickstarter Landscape (Exclusive)

Few authors hae a tendency to shake things up as much as Brandon Sanderson, the mastermind behind massive fantasy series like Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive. Earlier this year, Sanderson worked with gaming company Brotherwise Games to launch a Kickstarter campaign for a new tabletop roleplaying game based on his fantasy worlds. At first, this RPG was announced to be set in Roshar, the world where The Stormlight Archive takes place...but Sanderson loves surprising his fans, and before the campaign went live it was revealed that the RPG would expand to include all the worlds in his fictional universe, known as the Cosmere.

Needless to say, the Kickstarter campaign was a massive success. It was backed by 55,106 people, raised over $15 million and set a new Kickstarter record. As of this writing, Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG has raised the most money out of any game crowdfunding campaign on the platform, a record which was previously held by the Avatar: The Last Airbender RPG, which raised $9.3 million.

What makes this all even more impressive is that this isn't even the first time Sanderson has smashed expectations on Kickstarter. Back in 2022, he crowdfunded four Secret Project novels on the platform, raising a staggering $41.7 million. That's still the record for the most money ever raised for a Kickstarter project. And before that, he crowdfunded various leatherbound editions of his novels. All of those campaigns were fully funded; most notably, The Way of Kings leatherbound campaign pulled in $6.7 million off a comparatively modest goal of $250,000, a success which even shocked Sanderson and his team.

The consistency of Sanderson's successful crowdfunding campaigns is reframing what's possible on Kickstarter and with crowdfunding. To learn more about the secrets of his success, we spoke with Kickstarter Head of Games Midge Clayton. Clayton previously worked with Exploding Kittens, the company which produced an all-ages card game (also called Exploding Kittens) that still holds the record for the Kickstarter campaign with the highest number of backers. She's been in the gaming space for years and has some unique and interesting insights into what Sanderson is doing that's working so well on Kickstarter — and how the Cosmere RPG is a little different than the author's previous crowdfunding campaigns.

Read on for our full discussion with Midge Clayton! This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

DANIEL ROMAN for Winter Is Coming: Hi Midge, thanks so much for taking the time for this chat today! As you said before we started, this is your first interview as Kickstarter's Head of Games. I was reading online that you were involved in the Exploding Kittens Kickstarter, right? So what's that journey been like?

MIDGE CLAYTON: That's a slight misnomer. I worked for Exploding Kittens for three years and I worked on their last Kickstarter campaign, but I did not work on the main Kickstarter campaign. The amount of time and effort that we spent, when I was at Exploding Kittens, talking about it to like show the growth that a company can have and basically how much of our product was fan created...a lot of our conversations around Exploding Kittens had a lot to do with crowdfunding and the community effort behind it, especially because Exploding Kittens, while it's absolutely a family friendly, funny little game, sometimes you talk to a buyer and they'd be like 'Exploding Kittens?! That sounds violent.' And it's like, it's not, we promise it's literally for families, it's for kids. And so we would bring up the Kickstarter a lot to talk about the journey that we've gone on and how many families back to the first campaign and are still backing their campaigns today.

WiC: I could see how that would be an interesting thing to explain. I love Exploding Kittens, for the record. So, Brandon Sanderson. Obviously, he has had not just the one most recent hit Kickstarter, he's had a string of them. So first I need to ask, how familiar are you with his works? Did you know of Brandon Sanderson before he started taking Kickstarter by storm?

MC: Absolutely. Before I worked at Kickstarter, before he took Kickstarter by storm...just from the nature of being in nerd space, if you will, I was familiar with his work. I think that so much can be said about the community behind it, and that's really what it came down to, is that he has done a great job of cultivating his audience and cultivating his community — or his team has, I guess, him and his team. I mean, so much so that they have their own convention, right?

And so when you think about launching anything on crowdfunding — which is a community driven concept — it's gonna go so much further when he already has been cultivating and feeding them and nourishing them along the way. It's not like he woke up and was like, 'Hey, I'm a really famous author, I think today I'll start caring about my audience.' He's cared the whole time. And so that's a big part of it. And yeah, I think you'd be hard pressed to work in a "nerdy industry" and not know who Brandon Sanderson is. Especially now, but even before then.

WiC: Absolutely. It was funny, when his Secret Project Kickstarter hit, he was on the news a lot for that, and it broadened him to a lot of people who hadn't really heard of who he was before that point.

MC: Absolutely, I think it opened up a lot of people's eyes to both him and to what crowdfunding can do. And that it is not...I mean, sometimes it is, you know, three people in a basement making a really dope thing, but sometimes it's also someone who has done a lot of really amazing successful projects that's like, 'I really want to crowdsource these ideas. I really want to work with other people on this project and give back to my fandom,' in the same way that they've given to him.

I think it was really eye opening for a lot of people about crowdfunding. For example, like, my parents don't know anything about crowdfunding. And they were like, 'Oh, this is real,' when they saw it on the news, you know what I mean? They were like, 'Oh cool, you have a real job.' [Laughs]

WiC: That's hilarious. So you mentioned how he's looked after his fans...or how he and his team have, I should say, because that's a common misconception I see thrown around is that he's doing these Kickstarters...when in reality he basically has a mid-sized publisher working for him because of the amount of employees he has. So aside from just looking after his fans, what is it that you think is capturing people with this? Are there things that other creators should be taking away from what Sanderson is doing, in your opinion?

MC: So, especially for this game's Kickstarter, it wasn't Brandon Sanderson saying 'I can make an RPG book' and just trying to go out on his own, he worked with a trusted, notable company. And while I think we can say that the Brandon Sanderson fanbase is huge, it's still bringing in a core group of people from the Brotherwise Games community that are like, 'Oh this is a trusted thing.' This is somebody who didn't come into our industry and say 'I can do it too' and just like slap something together. He relied on industry experts, and I think that that really speaks volumes to the games community in a way. We are a very niche group and like the people who are backing Kickstarters...if you look at the games audience, they're very consistent. It's a very loyal fan base to Kickstarter and to games.

And while Brandon Sanderson is a huge name and we should definitely not ignore that by any means, I think the fact that he leaned on an industry expert really shows his level of dedication and care to his products and his fans, but also his appreciation for the space, because he took time to figure out who to work with, right? This was well thought out and well planned. Anything he does would have done very well, but I think the fact that it was so well thought out and so well planned for...even in partnership with Kickstarter, he and the Brotherwise crew used our internal Kickstarter marketing services and performance marketing and a lot of things like that. Currently that team is in beta, so not a lot of people have had access to them, but he and the Brotherwise team knew how to utilize the platform in a way that he might not have known how to do if he hadn't done the projects before. He also might not have known how to do it if he wasn't working with a games creator who had already been kind of through the ringer, if you will.

WiC: Yeah, and that wasn't even his first time working with Brotherwise, because they did a Stormlight card game, too. So that is really interesting, that idea of finding people in the niches you're trying to speak to, to come at them from a genuine angle. But at this point, he has had multiple successful publishing Kickstarters. Now there's this one with Brotherwise that is setting more records. So, kind of a two-part question. 1. What do you think is behind that consistency that at this point he's now had multiple in a row? And 2. how do you think this is changing the Kickstarter landscape?

MC: So, for the first part, I think that it really does come back to community cultivation in a way. Had he not done the Kickstarters he had already done very successfully in the publishing realm, and had Brotherwise not been a well-established brand...would it have gone as far? I mean, we'll never know. But you're teaching your audience as you go, you're teaching the community as you go. And so he started [saying], 'Hey, this is a big deal,' with the Secret Project one. I think that blew a lot of people out of the water. And he took that group...on a journey with him and taught them as he went, like, 'This is how I like to do this thing.' And if he hadn't had that lead up, would this have been as big of a deal? We'll never know, luckily.

But I do think that part of it is that he taught the audience as he went along, he took them on a journey with him, and that helps to cultivate trust and community, but also excitement, right? Like you're on the journey of the Brandon Sanderson campaign, what crazy thing is going to happen next, is an energy that I think the fan base thrives on. And so I think that helps grow it in an immense way.

MC: And then for the second one of how it's changed the landscape of crowdfunding, I think that's a really interesting question. I think that we still have a lot to see from the sonic boom, if you will, we haven't seen it all...but one thing that I'm really pleased about is that instead of people being like 'Oh wow, I'm never going to hit that level,' they're like 'How do I get to that level.' Instead of being intimidated by this new record, people are like, 'Okay, cool. Now we know that we can do that much. That that's a possibility.' And so it's honestly excited and invigorated the community a lot.

I think that also part of that is we are seeing first time backers along the way. So we are growing our own backer community. And so there are creators that are seeing their own potential audiences grow just because they engaged with this Kickstarter campaign. And so I'm really pleased that so far no one has been like 'Oh, woe is me, I will not hit this number ever.' Everyone's been excited, everyone's been like, 'Cool, this is the new goalpost.' And I think that that's huge. Because I do think it's pretty easy to tell yourself, 'Wow, I'm never going to hit that record number.' But you can, and he did, and someone else will again. Like, records are made to be broken, right? So, I think that that's one huge part of it.

I also think that pre-campaign marketing has probably been emphasized a lot throughout this campaign, and throughout the duration. When we look at the whole [picture], this wasn't just done in 30 days. This was done in six months, something like that, with the way that you're communicating with your fan base, but also you're working with your resources. Before I came on at the company, Brandon Sanderson and the Brotherwise team were already working with the former Head of Games. And so they worked with us throughout the entire process. They've kept us very much in the loop and they've kept us very much informed, especially if they want to do something unique, something that's not in our normal playbook that they want help with.

And I think that that's something that we tell creators to tell us as soon as possible and to work with us on stuff. And I think that it's really easy, especially as you're working on a big project to be like, 'Yes, I'll do that,' and then not do that or, or do that, but not in the same way. And now this gives us the opportunity to be like, 'No, see, really do it!' So, it's honestly providing a huge resource to Kickstarter because there's a lot of like very good behaviors or good examples where we can point to this and say if you do things like this...I mean, we can't say you'll raise $15 million, but we can say your success rate will increase, we can say that the more we're all clued in and the more we're all involved we can help each other out.

And it also obviously speaks volumes to our performance marketing team, which like I said, is a beta team technically and the concept is that they they are Kickstarter's internal marketing team. So it is an additional service, but they are able to target existing Kickstarter audiences better than you might be able to if you are using other [methods]. We're all trying to pinpoint our own audience, but the Kickstarter audience is built in so we can look at it a little more granularly. And we don't give out crazy information about that because we obviously have privacy laws in place, but it does help us test advertising, do things like that in a way that we weren't really able to before. And so just kind of telling the world or telling other creators, 'Hey, these are the steps that Brandon Sanderson and the Brotherwise team took,' really helps us.

WiC: That's really interesting. So with this new program that's in beta and things like that, are you hoping people want to work more directly with the Kickstarter team, versus running their campaign without that level of communication? Is that something Kickstarter is trying to build more into the future?

MC: Yeah, I would say definitely. Our goal is to ensure that every creator is communicated with in some way, shape, or form. So that might not be as in depth as a sit down meeting, it might be email exchange and things like that, it kind of depends on the duration of the campaign because we can have anything from like a month long campaign to a week long campaign. So there's a lot of little factors that pull into it. But I think our goal is to always make sure one, that our creators feel supported and that they know at the very least that we are a resource even if they don't want to lean on us in that way. And two, they realize that it can go further, the more we do lean on each other. So, yes, I would say that definitely, that's something that we're trying to kind of instill. I kind of want to take the mystery away from Kickstarter, if you will. I want to take away the mystique of like, 'oh, how do I talk to somebody that works at Kickstarter?' Well, you just...go and talk to us. It's really easy.

And so part of that on my end is more public speaking events and things like that. We plan to do a lot more panels and a lot more resources in that regard. Because we also recognize that, you know, there are thousands of campaigns launched on Kickstarter every year, and there's three of us on the games team. It might be impossible for us to talk to every creator, but we want them to at least feel like they know where to go if they need to talk to us. And that they have enough resources available to them that maybe they don't have to to us, maybe they can utilize the resources and feel well supported.

WiC: One bit of bookish discourse that I saw recently was people complaining along the lines of, 'I wish people backed small indie Kickstarters with the same fervor they do for the Sanderson Kickstarters.' And the response to that is often that the rising tide lifts all boats, this has helped Kickstarter in general. And I wanted to get your opinion on that. I don't know how many people Sanderson has brought to Kickstarter, but I presume a fair amount of his own fans have become backers on the platform. Now, do you think this is a situation where it's helping the community at large, or is he taking air out of the room for other creators?

MC: That's a great question. This has been kind of like an age old question. I've worked in games for eight years now and I remember at like my second convention ever with one of my companies, somebody asked me, 'You guys are getting to a certain size, should you still be on Kickstarter?' And it's the same question right? Are you taking or are you giving? And I think that in most cases you're giving. In the Brandon Sanderson case you're giving. There are people who have never backed a Kickstarter before, and would never be on the platform perusing what exists, if they didn't see the Brandon Sanderson campaign. And some of it is the sensationalism. Some of it is not just, 'Oh, I'm a big fan of him,' some of it is, 'Holy cow, I'm hearing about this crazy thing and I want to be part of it.' And from that like, yes, you will see that those people do then find other campaigns. With that in mind, it is one of those things where we do see it is a rising tide.

We also see that more campaigns get backed around large campaigns. Like sometimes creators will ask us the question of, 'Hey, can you tell me if any other big campaigns are launching at this time? Because I don't want to compete,' but it's really not a competition because you have their audience and your audience on the site at the same time. You might get some of their audience from that. You might not, but you're certainly not losing anything.

Also, it would be impossible for us to be like, 'Oh, yeah, there's no big campaigns launching in the next month.' There's just too many campaigns all the time, which is great, a good problem to have. But I do think that there is this common misconception that people are taking air, and [they're] not. It's really more like feeding the fire, if you will. Giving air, giving oxygen.

Editor's note: It was confirmed after this interview that out of the 55,106 backers for the Cosmere RPG campaign, 10,636 are first-time backers new to Kickstarter.

WiC: That's a great turnaround on that metaphor. Because yeah, you're right, this is not the first time I've seen it going around. I remember that was a discussion when his Secret Project Kickstarter launched and it's still a discussion now...but it seems like generally with the amount of people who have been inspired to go to Kickstarter...I don't want to say it's so much more, but you can see the obvious effect on a lot of these communities. His Secret Project Kickstarter had a really big effect on publishing. Do you foresee there being a similar sort of ripple effect with the tabletop community? Or less so, because that was already such a well established community?

MC: I think it's a little bit different. It's like a a happy marriage between the two where I've already had conversations with people that are in publishing that now want to take on the concept of, 'Can we make a board game? Can we make a tabletop RPG? How can we engage with this audience further?' And it really is like a happy little like marriage of the two, where the publishing world is seeing the success of the Sanderson campaign as an opportunity, and the gaming world is also seeing it as an opportunity.

And so I think that we will see more mash ups, more things like this role playing game or like the Avatar: The Last Airbender role playing game, where we're taking existing IPs and entering the world in a heavier way. I think that also this will help bring down the intimidation factor that exists around RPGs, because ultimately, you could buy the Cosmere role playing game and you could buy it to play it...you could also buy it to just get more information about the world. Because that's what it is, it's a supplementary book of some sort, right?

So I think that that's changing how people think about it, because I can almost guarantee you that not all 55,000 backers are going to actually play the game. A lot of those people are just going to read the book because they want more information about that world, and so I think it is opening up people's eyes to the concept of, what could we do.

WiC: And the books have a lot of gorgeous art! I was looking at them just this morning, and like you said, even if you're not playing it, these are really, really nice just to have on your Cosmere shelf or what have you. So looking back, you've been involved with Kickstarter for a while before you were even the Head of Games. Are there things you think creators should be keeping in mind for the future? Like thinking about maybe the trends and the directions you see things heading, is there any advice you'd give to new creators?

MC: My biggest advice is transparency and taking people on the journey with you. It's being a real person. Yes, people care about your IP and yes, people are going to buy the thing to play the thing, but they also care about you. You are coming to crowdfunding for a reason and so is your backer, and they don't want just to act like it's a store, they want to go on a journey with you. And I think that we have seen for years that conscious consumerism is the mindset, where people are thinking through, 'Why am I supporting this? Is this something that aligns with my values?' And so giving people that background if you're comfortable with it I think is huge.

WiC: That makes total sense. Alright, a couple of last, fun questions! First, what media have you been enjoying lately? Shows, books, games, anything like that.

MC: TikTok. I've been watching too much TikTok and it goes across all forms of life. I don't know that I actually encourage people to be on TikTok...but it does keep me well informed, it goes through everything from a book to a board game, to the news, to the hottest new like eyeliner and stuff. So, it's unfortunate, but that's the thing that I'm on the most probably in terms of media.

WiC: Do you think it's important for people doing Kickstarter campaigns to have a toe in the TikTok world?

MC: I do think that it is. I mean, I think that it is all audience specific, right? So if you know that your audience is, you know, of a certain age, like they're Gen Xers or something, you're probably not going to find them on TikTok. But if you're trying to target the younger audience, or a fresher audience or something like that, I think that you will want to be utilizing TikTok. But I do think it's audience to audience, because some of them you'll know just won't be there, or not enough of them are there for you to really put the effort in that you would need to, to get a return.

WiC: Last question! Are there any games you'd like to plug that you think our readers should know about?

MC: I mean, there's so many good games. Gosh, that's a hard question. There's the SINK! RPG which I'm really obsessed with. It's a Pirate 5e system that is all like traditional style tattoos. I backed it and I got a temporary tattoo sheet, which I'm really excited about. And I like when people do creative things that fit for their project. So like, the temporary tattoo sheet really works for them.

And another one that's coming up is the Smurfs RPG. It's obviously such a funny little concept, right? Who knew that people wanted a Smurfs RPG? But the things that they're doing that are very like...for the fandom, I think are really interesting. Also, they're giving away a board game if you're one of the first people during the first 24 hours to back, you get a full board game too. I've seen people do freebies but not that big of a freebie.

So those are the two, I would check out. One because it's interesting and I love the temporary tattoos and the other one because I think it's also crazy interesting. And I want to see who's there. I want to see who's backing the Smurfs RPG. Is it people who back the Cosmere or is it families? I don't know.

WiC: Yeah. Totally. what is the age demographic for the Smurfs RPG? Now I'm very curious. But both of those are really unique, so that kind of leans into that idea of servicing your specific fandoms.

MC: Absolutely.

WiC: Really cool! Thank you so much, this has been such a pleasure.

MC: Awesome. It was so good talking to you.

A massive thank you to Midge Clayton for taking the time to chat with us all about Kickstarter and the record-shattering Cosmere RPG campaign from Brandon Sanderson and Brotherwise Games. If you want to learn more about Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG, you can check out the campaign's page here. It is still open for late pledges through October, so it's not too late to get in on the ground floor of this next exciting chapter for the Cosmere.

As for Sanderson's written works, the next book on the way is Wind and Truth, the fifth novel in The Stormlight Archive and the capstone to its expansive first arc. We'll be covering the book extensively as we get closer to its release on December 6, so check back if you're as excited to see what happens next for Kaladin Stormblessed, Shallan, and Dalinar as we are!

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