It's fairly common in the boardgame industry, especially for boutique games like 7th Continent, Gloomhaven, or Kingdom Death: Monster.
These games don't fit well into the general mass production/sell in your local game store/keep stock on hand long term and sell online models. Too heavy, too many specially cards, too weird of a form factor, etc.
The 2017 Kickstarter campaigns for all 3 of these games were actually their second runs - previous KS had run and generated a lot of hype for the games, and were massive hits the first time around.
A lot of the time you are betting on a designer with a past track record. Other times you get drawn in by a concept that sounds interesting. But for these second production runs, it's more just pre-ordering a known quantity that doesn't lend itself to constant general availability.
These games don't fit well into the general mass production/sell in your local game store/keep stock on hand long term and sell online models. Too heavy, too many specially cards, too weird of a form factor, etc.
The 2017 Kickstarter campaigns for all 3 of these games were actually their second runs - previous KS had run and generated a lot of hype for the games, and were massive hits the first time around.
A lot of the time you are betting on a designer with a past track record. Other times you get drawn in by a concept that sounds interesting. But for these second production runs, it's more just pre-ordering a known quantity that doesn't lend itself to constant general availability.