Pocketopia edges tabletop closer to Steam, for good and ill

Another contender for the heavyweight title of biggest crowdfunding festival has stepped forward, and the crowd seems to be going wild. Pocketopia, which launched yesterday, collects 61 projects — both RPGs and board games — under a single umbrella. The host, BackerKit, describes them as “portable, easy-to-learn” designs and borrows its campaign format from the similarly named Pintopia series. It’s flashy and increasingly reminds me of the preeminent video game distribution platform Steam, in both form and user functions, which is not an unalloyed compliment.

Both -topias are the brainchildren of BackerKit community lead Jason Furie and apply a “rising tide lifts all ships” approach to crowdfunding for creators without much of an organic following. It isn’t too dissimilar from last November’s Mothership Month, hosted by Tuesday Knight Games, except that Pocketopia is managed directly by the platform. Mothership Month, and both Pintopias, were definite successes, so there’s logic in borrowing as much of the previous foundation as possible.