Brass: Pittsburgh and the $9 Million Sequel Problem

Grant: Welcome back to the Design Deck. I'm Grant, Miles is here, and okay, so get this. Nine million dollars. Miles: Nine million dollars for a board game. Grant: Brass: Pittsburgh on GameFound from 37,000 plus backers. According to BoardGameWire, that puts it in the top 10 board game crowdfunds of all time. Miles: And it cleared its $500,000 goal in 43 minutes. Minutes, not days, minutes. Grant: 43 minutes and 32 seconds to be precise. I checked. Miles: Of course you did. Grant: So the big question today, does that number tell us anything about the design or is it just Birmingham's reputation cashing a very large check? Miles: Honestly, that's the whole debate. We're going to dig into the three mechanics Pittsburgh actually adds, decentralized markets, coke, and oil pipelines. and ask whether any of it earns its place at the table or just layers on top of what Birmingham already solved. Grant: And then there's the endgame mechanic, that little extra feature tacked on in the final stretch, added over a million dollars after the campaign technically should have ended. Miles: So here's where it gets interesting. Roxley CEO Gavan Brown went on record saying deluxe editions have become an arms race and he wants no part of it. Then the campaign offered a $125 Collector's Edition and a $350 bundle. Grant: The math on that statement is a little fuzzy. Miles: Just a little. We'll get into all of it. Grant: And we land somewhere real at the end. IP gravity and design quality run on separate ledgers. The table is the only honest verdict. Miles: Alright, let's find out if Pittsburgh earned its $9 million. Grant: Starting right now. OK, so get this. Brass Pittsburgh, $9.1 million. 37,000 backers. A $500,000 funding goal cleared in 43 minutes and 32 seconds. Miles: 43 minutes. Grant: And BoardGameWire confirmed it lands in the top 10 board game crowdfunds of all time. We're not talking niche tabletop footnote here. Miles: No, we're not. And the number that gets me is Gavan Brown's own ceiling. He told BoardGameWire he thought four million was the most likely outcome. Eight million possible, but unlikely. Grant: The campaign doubled his ceiling! Miles: Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is wild when you think about what that number actually represents. Grant: So here's where it gets interesting for me. I read that like an auction result. 37,000 people put money down on a game that hasn't shipped yet. That's not enthusiasm. That's a market signal. Miles: I'm with you on that, but here's the thing, Grant. What exactly is the market voting for? The Design, the IP, the brand trust Roxley built off Birmingham? Grant: All three probably, which is exactly why the number is hard to read cleanly. Miles: Right, because Brass: Birmingham is currently the top-ranked game on BoardGameGeek, so you've got the sequel to the best-rated game in the hobby raising $9 million. At some point, you have to ask, is that a design verdict? Or a franchise bet. Grant: I mean, when Ferrari drops a new model, it sells out before anyone's driven it. Miles: Fair, fair point. Grant: And there's one more thing. This run on GameFound, not Kickstarter. Roxley's CEO said GameFound has features Kickstarter simply couldn't match at this scale. That's a deliberate platform switch after 10 campaigns on Kickstarter. Miles: So the platform itself is part of the story. Grant: 100%. Gamefound even introduced an endgame mechanic where every new backer reset a 10-minute countdown to the campaign's end per Wargamer. That's what kept it alive past its original close date. Miles: So the campaign had its own game mechanic. Appropriate, honestly. Grant: Very on brand. Miles: But here's where I keep landing. $9 million tells you the audience showed up. It does not tell you the design works at the table. Those are two completely different questions. Grant: The math on the campaign doesn't tell you if the game is good, and everyone who backed it knows that. Miles: So what did 37,000 people actually pay for? Because the mechanics are where this gets a lot more complicated. Grant: So here's the actual question 37,000 people paid to answer: What did Roxley change, and does it matter? Speaker 3: Right. And there are three editions that playtesters flocked as genuinely different. GamesRadar got Brown on record about all three. First one, Decentralized markets. Grant: Okay, so for anyone who hasn't played Birmingham, in that game you sell resources to one central pool. Price is set. Everyone draws from the same well. Pittsburgh scraps that. Speaker 3: Now you sell to connected cities. Your network determines where you can sell, which means two players in different corners of the map are operating in different economic realities. Grant: That changes the network valuation math completely. In Birmingham, a link is a link; here, a link to a city that needs iron is worth more than a link to one that doesn't. You're not just building rail, you're building access. Speaker 3: Brown said historically it reflects how different regions actually pay different prices for commodities in the Gilded Age. The theme carries the mechanic, which I love. Birmingham's canals were elegant, but they never quite grounded the economics in anything recognizable. Grant: Second mechanic: Coke, new resource. Slow to set up, takes planning, but pays out four VP per cube sold. That's a significant premium. Speaker 3: It's a patience tax. Miles: Yeah. Speaker 3: You're betting on a long set up for a big late game payoff. Think of it like Wingspan's egg engine: low value early, compounding late. Speaker 4: Exactly. And if an opponent blocks your Coke chain before you cash out, you've spent actions on a dead branch. High risk, high reward layering. Speaker 3: Then there's oil pipelines: players prospect an oil field, build the pipeline, and the pipeline owner collects rewards every time oil moves through it. You're not selling the oil, you're selling the infrastructure. Speaker 4: That is a genuinely different ownership model. The asset doesn't If an asset doesn't deplete, it earns passively. That's a completely different strategic object than anything Birmingham had. Speaker 3: And it's thematically coherent in a way that feels earned. Rockefeller didn't make his fortune selling oil; he made it controlling how oil moved. Pittsburgh is literally modeling that. Speaker 4: Wargamer flagged Crown Jewels as the fourth structural piece: powerful in game scoring industries that Birmingham flat out doesn't have. Late-game Arc changes entirely. Here's my honest read: the Three Grant: Mechanics work together. Decentralized markets mean your network has asymmetric value. Coke rewards patience. Pipelines reward infrastructure thinking. Crown Jewels reward planning the endgame for move one. It's layered complexity, not just added complexity. I'm on both sides of that a little bit. Layered is generous. You could also say it's Agricola adding a new resource type. typing calling it a sequel. Miles: That's harsh. Grant: I mean, I get it, the mechanics are good, but the real question is whether Pittsburgh earns its right to exist next to the BGG number one game, or whether it's coasting on that address. Miles: Which is funny enough exactly what Brown asked himself before he started designing, and that's a whole different conversation. Grant: Yeah, and that one gets interesting fast. Okay, so here's the question that's been nagging me since we dug into those mechanics. Miles: What's that? Grant: Does $9.1 million tell us anything real about design quality? Because I keep coming back to this. That number is a verdict on Birmingham's reputation, not Pittsburgh's. Miles: I mean, partially, but I think you're underselling what Brown actually did here. Grant: Walk me through it. Miles: So, BoardGameWire interviewed Brown after the campaign, and he said starting this project felt like making the Matrix. Matrix Four. Wow. Nearly 10 years between titles he knew he couldn't just throw something together right Grant: See, Miles: Grant: that's a great line, but saying the right thing and doing the right thing are two different markets. Miles: but he backed it up according to BoardGameWire heavy development only started in November 2024 he was working on it every single day and his stated posture was that he'd gut entire systems if they weren't landing Grant: Okay, that's actually a meaningful data point. November 2024 is not a long runway for... Away for a game this complex. Miles: Which tells me the identity was still being discovered deep into the production window; that's not comfort zone design. Grant: Fine, I'll give you that the process sounds legitimate. But here's my pushback: Brass players are among the most analytically sharp people in the hobby. Brown even said it to BoardGameWire: they'd be absolutely uninterested in a cash grab. So the audience was already going to scrutinize this harder than almost any other release. Miles: That's exactly my point, Grant. The scrutiny is higher, which means the design burden is higher. Brown knew the crowd that was watching. Grant: I'm on both sides a little, because think about Pandemic Legacy versus base Pandemic. Matt Leacock didn't reinvent the pathogen system. He layered consequence and persistence on top of it. The comparison isn't is this new, but does the new thing justify the sequel's existence? Miles: And Roxley put it almost exactly that way. Brown wrote publicly that each new Brass title is required to prove its right to exist through new mechanisms and fresh storytelling. Grant: So he announced the standard he'd be held to, then had to actually meet it. Miles: Which is either the most confident design move I've seen or a hostage situation he created for himself. Grant: Both, Honestly. Miles: Here's where it gets interesting though: the backers who came in day one, they weren't buying Pittsburgh, they were buying the trust they built with Birmingham. Grant: Exactly; and trust is not the same as a design verdict. Miles: Right. Grant: The campaign can succeed on franchise momentum and the game can still disappoint at the table. Those are two separate ledgers. Miles: So the real verdict doesn't live on the Gamefound page; Grant: It lives on the table, and Pittsburgh hasn't shipped yet. Miles: which is actually what makes the campaign choices so loaded: how Roxley ran this crowdfund- And those choices either back up the design values they claimed or they cut against them. Grant: And that's worth pulling apart, because some of those choices get really interesting. So the campaign mechanics-let's go there because this is where things get genuinely interesting. Miles: The endgame clock, yeah. Grant: Okay, so get this: Brown told BoardGameWire he had literally never run Endgame before; never even heard of it until Roxley's director of operations mentioned it was already running on their campaign. Miles: So Gamefound suggested it a few days before the end and it just happened? Grant: That's the whole thing: every new backer resets a ten minute countdown timer. Campaign keeps going as long as pledges keep coming. According to Wargamer, that mechanic added over $1.2 million above the $7.87 million total when Endgame kicked in. Miles: So more than a million dollars generated by a feature the designer didn't even know he was using. Grant: The math on that is a little uncomfortable, right? Like, at what point does a campaign mechanic become a design decision with real consequences? Miles: Here's where it gets interesting for me: that mechanic works because the underlying demand was real. You can't manufacture urgency out of nothing; there had to be people on the fence who needed one more nudge. Grant: Sure, but the nudge is still manufactured. I spent fifteen years watching markets. Countdown timers are Manufactured Urgency one oh one. It works because Loss Aversion is hardwired. That doesn't make it honest, it just makes it effective. Perspective. Miles: Totally. I'm on both sides a little bit. If the game is real and the demand is real, is the clock actually misleading anyone? Grant: Eh, maybe not misleading, but it's worth naming. And then you layer on the Collectors Edition tension and it gets more complicated. Miles: Right, because Brown says According to BoardGameWire that deluxe editions have become sort of an arms race and Roxley tries to go the other direction. That's a direct quote from the CEO. Grant: And yet Miles: Yeah. Grant: there's a one hundred twenty five dollar Collectors Edition on the campaign page and a three hundred fifty dollar full series bundle. Miles: Yeah, yeah. So you've got a publisher who's articulating a philosophy against the arms race while simultaneously running a campaign that has a premium tier and a super premium bundle. That tension is real. Grant: Brown did acknowledge a specific misstep in the campaign, per BoardGameWire. Speaker 3: He didn't dodge it-I'll give him credit for that. Miles: And to be fair, they drew a hard line somewhere: the Artfolio Gift for Collectors Edition backers, per the BoardGameWire interview, was art only, no gameplay content. Roxley has a standing rule: no gameplay exclusive crowdfunding content. Everything game related has to be available after the campaign. Grant: Wait, that actually matters. A lot of publishers at this scale use exclusives as leverage. That rule cuts real money out of the campaign. Miles: It does, and that's the distinction worth drawing. The Collector's Edition is expensive components, not locked mechanics. The line between premium production and arms race is fuzzy, but they at least drew one somewhere. Grant: So where does that leave us? A campaign that raised over nine Nine Million Dollars, using a mechanic the designer stumbled into, with a philosophy that says resist the arms race while still offering a three hundred fifty dollar bundle. Miles: You'd be surprised how often the stated values and the economic reality don't perfectly line up; that's not unique to Roxley. Grant: No, it's not, and that's exactly the question the last segment needs to sit with, because all of this, the end game clock, the addition tiers and the nine million dollars- None of it tells you whether Pittsburgh deserves to sit next to Birmingham on a shelf. Miles: The table does that, and the table hasn't spoken yet. Grant: So what does any of this actually mean for the next designer sitting on a sequel idea right now? Miles: Here's the hard truth: you cannot read this campaign as a design verdict. BoardGameWire confirmed Brown himself expected four million, maybe eight, tops. He got nine point one. That gap is IP doing most of the heavy lifting. Grant: Right, and that's the lesson-the number tells you what the franchise is worth, not what the game is worth. Those are two separate ledgers. Miles: So, if you're writing a sequel, your first question can't be "What mechanics do I add?" it has to be "Why does this game need to exist?" What does it do that the original genuinely cannot? Grant: Brown anchored the "Essentials" edition at the exact same MSRP as Birmingham sells at Target-eighty dollars. According to BoardGameWire, that was a deliberate call to give non collector players a real entry point. That's a design philosophy baked into a price tag. Miles: And I think it works as a signal, but it also tells you something: even Roxley felt the pressure to justify the ask to a broader audience, not just the collector tier. Grant: Exactly; you have to earn the sequel twice-once at the table, once at the wallet. Miles: Right, which brings us back to the only question that actually matters here. Grant: Pittsburgh hasn't shipped. Miles: Pittsburgh hasn't shipped; we have nine million dollars of expressed intent and zero hours of play at scale. The campaign told us what people hope the game is. Grant: The table will tell us what it actually is, and that's the verdict we're waiting for. Miles: Come back once it's in people's hands. That's when this conversation gets really interesting. Grant: All right, that's a wrap on Pittsburgh. Miles: And honestly, I'm still not sure we settled it. Grant: We didn't, but I think that's the point. The campaign total is a data point, not a verdict. Miles: Right. IP gravity and design quality run on separate ledgers. The table's the only place that closes the argument. Grant: Which is why that oil pipeline conversation stuck with me. Miles made the Rockefeller comparison and I had to just sit with it for a second. Miles: You were quiet for like five seconds. That's basically a lifetime on this show. Grant: It really is. But if that mechanic holds up at the table the way it holds up on paper. Piper, Pittsburgh earns its number. Miles: That's the show. If you've got a game you want us to take apart, find us at thedesigndeck.com or tag us on social. New episodes every Thursday. Grant: Subscribe, leave a review if we earned it, and we'll see you next week. Miles: Thanks for listening.