The best board game of 2017 is a wildly entertaining romantic comedy generator

Not all of the good games in 2017 necessarily even qualify for the Spiel des Jahres or the Kennerspiel des Jahres. E.g. Gloomhaven, 7th Continent.

Also, one should consider group dynamics. Who's to say if everyone on that panel valued the game that won equally? Perhaps they all had their personal favourites, but chose a different game as it was the least contentious. All you can really say about a decision made by a panel is that it was the best decision they could make on aggregate, not that it was a true reflection of individual preferences.

All that aside, "best game of 2017" is really just "best game I played in 2017". I honestly don't know when we're collectively going to grow past handling subjective comments in an objective way, but I hope its soon.

In this case, the authors are two guys who have already produced some niche game. This is actually their second kickstarter campaign, and they delivered for the first campaign so I am pretty optimistic to get something. But I agree that it requires some blind faith.

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.