Blind Faith will not make a kickstarter work, if its the 2nd time round

So imagine, here's me, a couple of weeks before releasing a medium to large sized kickstarter project, my "boss" is asking for the rulebook, usually the last thing that's finished in a campaign before print, so if he's asking me to finish the rulebook, then the KS pages must all be complete? right? 

Nope, So I go to interview a prominent Youtuber in the games industry, and I have to use a half assed project page to go through. I see it.. I'm shocked, I make the excuse its a work in progress, 90% of what the Youtuber says, I already said to 'my boss', some things we both missed, forest for the trees.

I tell the creator, "This was embarrassing, this was worse than 1.0 KS page" He's upset, I think he pouted, promised to do better.. and then proceeded to do worse, deleted the all-in, took out images of things that were not quite done, but didn't put them back before launch with better ones.. just didn't put them back, all the videos he promised, gone.. 

Its not wonder when we launched it was dismal, it was a shockingly dismal launch, we turned it around, but at what cost.

How not to do a kickstarter.. post mortem

If its your first kickstarter, I think some audience will forgive you your janky page, missing bits, things that don't make a lot of sense. Not everyone, they don't all look to see how many KS's you've done, how many projects you've created, they just compare to what they know.. that's human nature.

But when they see a shiny project created with a project manager, a graphic artist, a marketing agent, a copy editor and several consultants. They compare to a page done by 3 dads part time. Its not going to be the same.

But a 2nd project? C'mon, the whole point of your first campaign it to study what worked, what didn't and fix it, get better, prepared better, and be ready to go to market. 

Why? Because first impressions are lasting impressions, and most KS projects have a larger number of first to your product customers than usual. You have to have your A-Game to this, each and every project.

What we did to solve some of this 

We turned it around, we convinced the owner this was not good enough, we delayed a month, rebuilt all the graphics, added all the animated gifs, did some videos, a lot of work, sleepless nights. We put in 40 hours a week on top of our families and jobs for 4 weeks, and it was 'passable' (not according to dice tower, but who cares what they say)

In the end we hit 200% funding (my lowest funded project % to date) but it was dismal, for all that work and effort, we should have done twice as much work and got twice as much money for our time.

I understand, Kickstarter are not about profit, but I'd like at least more than $5 an hour at some point.

So here's what you MUST do for a successful kickstarter, Especially if its your second project

Build some kind of Audience, at least ten times as many people as you need to fund. If you need $40 from 500 people to raise $20,000 for a minimum production cost run. You need 5000 people to be aware of your product launch.

Facebook advertising brought in less than 0.5% of views, we spent $5,0000 on 40 different adverts, with a range of 0.3% to 1.1% and barely raised $5-10k (not profit, just raised). We could have done better, but I doubt it would have been worth it for a niche product.

Don't rely on that as a number, having them out there, only helped stop all the comments from backers asking "why don't we advertise more" placating them that we were 'doing all we could'

Due to the time frame, we did not do enough pre-launch listings.

Pre Prepare everything, months in advance and get a LOT of feedback. (don't listed to all of it, but aggregate the main ones)

This was certainly our biggest downfall, the lack of preparation. Sure, I can say I was asked to help with only the rulebook 6 months in advance, and I started play testing against myself for months and months (developing mini solo rules as I was doing it). But the Campaign? I was asked a week before we launched to help and the entire thing needed a complete overhaul.

Pre-Prepare to Succeed and also to fail. What's your backup plan if you go down the gurgler, and what's your cut off date. Mine was 100% in the first 48 hours. We didn't hit it, so I argued against going ahead. I presented the facts for both going ahead and barely struggling to fund, vs, relaunch at getting 150%.

But I also prepared for 500% ( was shot down several times to try for that, and in hindsight I hope the "boss" sees that this was a mistake as at time of writing we are at 415%) I set out profitable stretch goals, sorted out plausible stretch goal costs, so when we were panicking to put in new Stretch Goals, we had some that would not burn us later. 

This isn't a normal marketing campaign in a normal company, this is public, under scrutiny, don't try to fake anything, you'll get found out and it'll burn you.

Several campaigns came out in 2020 and 2021 done by people from other countries, not used to the western way of doing things, and they were burned to the ground under witch hunts of 'bad practices'.

Possibly this is from several years of snake oil merchants in the past, trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the consumer, and the rise of the same in the 80s, the modern consumer is armed with several 'lists' of red flags that can pull a KS down into the pits of failure.. even if its a legit product, doing everything right, if they don't prepare their campaign for the 'key points's and have transparency up front, the KS mob will come and burn them down. its scary, I've been in the middle of several campaigns, as a creator, thinking its a legit campaign, and its starts to go down, and go down fast as the trolls pile in for a witch burning..  

Post Campaign Prep is just as important, what's going to happen when, and show this list to your backers. Even if you don't show it, have it, because you need to know when each part of the list goes ahead. When you need to get artists to finish, when you need copy finished, when the printers need the files to prepare the product. If you skip any of those, your project will be late (But aren't they all?).

Backers have gotten used to the lateness, and some companies have lost confidence as a result, so now, gain confidence by beating your own timelines, deliver early and get talked about as being one of the 'better prepared' companies.

If we'd have done all this, in my opinion, we'd have hit a million easily. The product we have is far superior to most in the same genre, just needs a lot more careful preparation in how its presented to the public.

King of Average says "Make Games not Campaigns", yet I'd change one word 'not' to 'then'/ the campaign is as important, but should be a 50/50 split. You're not selling a game over years to spread out your campaign skills & budget, you're doing it all as a one shot. and it should be done right.  

  

{Old Drafts} Why Buy a Game?

{Old Drafts August 2015, as part of my "drafts Cleanup"}

I look at the Mobile Games market, they're evolving faster than other markets, because of the ease of entry, the numbers of people entering the market, the consumers and their attitudes, So its a micro cosmos market to study.

The Whole Freemium model, Get in for free, play the game for free, and either hit a brick pay-wall, pay or quit, or quicksand of skill, and you need to either master the game or pay to get back to the ease of playing, or the game is still free, but you can buy a cool hat for your character, or asking the player, Hey you've been playing for over 20 hours, you obviously like it, why don't you give something back to the creators.. 

So I look at myself, and ask: Why don't I pay for these games? I'm a games developer, I went to Uni for 3 years to study games design, and yet I can't bring myself to pay a cent for a single game so far? How am I going to understand how to get someone in the market to pay for my game, if I won't buy someone elses.. Am I such an outlier?

Back up a step, I played computer games for years, but only paid for a handful of them, in the beginning c64 games were easy to copy, then later, learning to hack a game was a skill in itself, which got me into computing, then later I found it more interesting to make games than to play them.. I actually only like to play games that in themselves are problem solving games.

In Roleplay, I couldn't afford games as a kid, so I played my own, I borrowed books from friends, read them, took notes, and returned them, didn't ever run them, let along buy them.. So how can I expect someone to fork out money for my RPG if I won't for someone elses?

Well, I have to be an outlier I guess.. I'm not a consumer, I'm a creator. So I can't use my own thoughts and feelings on being a consumer to judge the market with..

So Back to Mobile, What would it take for me to buy into a game.. and then it hit me.. Minecraft, the last game I bought, in 2009, I bought in for two reasons, A) because I thought it was going somewhere that no other game had gone, and B) because I could create something that lasted.. 

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The General Thought was: If people don't want to pay for a mobile game, why don't they, and when they do.. why do they?

The Mobile market is a micro-cosmos-market that we can study, because its a persons free time, they usually have to 'connect' to the net (or connect to people) to play, people wont just pay for anything, but after they get interested enough.. they pay for something in game.

I don't know if I'd pay for GM up front, I'd need to see the "product" and see that indeed it is better than average.. because average is free. Maybe once I'm in the game, I might consider paying, but once I'm in for free, I sorta feel like I'm in already..


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Giving it for free vs Paying for it.. I'll come back the crude version at the end..

Players aren't just the consumers, they are contributors too, so Its actually harder to ask them to pay, You don't have a one way situation, sure the GM runs 80% of whats going on, but without the players 20%, its hot air.

I compare it to teaching a language, as a tutor, often. I need the student to want to be there, want to learn, do their homework and participate. I'll prepare the lesson, which can take as much time as the lesson itself, and which sux if they don't turn up, but at the end of the day, my skills are needed for the student to learn, because they want the skills in the language.

As a GM, I need the players to want to be there, want to play, do their own form of homework (character backstory, thoughts on what they want from the game) and participate.. I'll prepare the world, the background plot, the simulated environment, sometimes twice as much time as playing.. and while yes it sucks if they don't turn up.. we just continue the next week (worst is enough players to make it work, but the critical player isn't there) My skills are needed for the the players to have the enjoyment... but and this is the crux.. but, what do they want from the RPG session, that they can't get elsewhere, or for free? There is no clear understanding in skills or experience that will help them in the future.. so they don't compare it to a lesson, instead its considered just a fun activity.. 

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I can only compare it to the mobile games environment.. hundreds of thousands of games, for free. Hundreds of hours of artists and programmers to make these games, and one in ten will earn any money, one in a hundred will break even on costs, and one in a few thousand will make some money.. Studios come, make 2-5 games, if they hit the right audience with the right ideas with the right timing, they make 1 game which pays for all their costs for the time it took to make the 2-5 games, then they are broke and out. Many Studios don't get past the 2nd game, they don't make a cent from either their first or second and they struggle to make a third and they can't afford to make it any better, because artists want money and costs and costs and down the drain they go..

Rarely a game gets audience, ideas, timing and market penetration all together, jackpot, and they either go on to make more games, 100,000 companies and one gets to survive a few more years. Its all about economics.

An Indie game, by a westerner needs 10,000 players to pay $1 (profit) to the developer to cover costs/minimal life expenses. It takes 6 months full time artist & programmer (or split between more people) to make an average mobile game. 

Indie Games, and Indie Mobile Games have more developers coming to market than consumers are picking up smart phones and joining the market. Each Indie Dev needs 10,000 new consumers to discover his product, to allow the market to break even. 

Then add in, that a Romanian Developer can survive on $250 a month, he only needs 1,500 players to cover his costs, he can make a slightly crappier game, maybe even spend 4 months making it, and he's set.. but the smart ones, spend 6 months, grab their artist and programmer friends and make a slightly better game, and takes 20,000 players from the market, so there goes 2 indie developers in the western market.

The Market shrinks, so prices shrink, 

Is the Indie RPG Market headed the same direction? will a few thousand writers make games, some getting a few hundred sales? some getting none? one in a 100,000 actually breaking into the 'big leagues'?

Is part of the problem, that more indie writers are coming to market faster than people interesting in mobile games?

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2018 Review: How does this relate to RPGs, Are more RPGs hitting the market than people willing to buy them? I know some GMs who buy everything that interests them, even if they don't have the time.

I think I read that 1400 new RPGs were released since 2015. Even if 1/12th of that match the genre you're interested in, that still means you'd need to playtest every weekend a new group, with new rules for 2 years to find out which of the 116 published games work best for the scenario you are making..

Maybe I should review all the RPGs, and provide the results as a paid product? "Comprehensive list of all RPGs til 2018.. 2020, since It'd take me two years to research and include them all.

While I never included a title, nor conclusion to this wall of text.. I think I could say that maybe people go to D&D because there is too much choice, not enough clarity.. maybe the market needs some clarity..