Since it’s quieter in the middle of the campaign and I’ve gotten a lot of questions from other developers, I thought I’d make this post. Many are also planning a crowdfunding campaign or wondering why their campaign is not successful.
So if you have any questions regarding Kickstarter or crowdfunding games, here is your chance:)! I try to take a little time every day to answer all.
(I am not native English so forgive me my mistakes)
If the thread is an Ask Me Anything (AMA) about planning and running a successful Kickstarter campaign, I think this is the appropriate section. A link to the campaign gives context to the questions. I have some questions, too!
How long did you take to prepare the campaign before launching it?
What influenced your choice of campaign launch days?
How did you decide on your funding goals?
What did you choose to highlight in your campaign, and why? What of those things do you feel has most contributed to its success so far?
What kind of feedback are you seeing from early backers versus mid-campaign backers?
Did you work with any marketing services or other parties to plan the campaign? If so, can you reveal any details, such as what they helped with, what changes they recommended, etc.?
How has your experience been with Kickstarter? With press? With streamers/bloggers/social media?
I started preparing since late October 2020 half time and in November almost full time. So i prepared the campaign 3 months full time. Sounds crazy:p but Kickstarter is really a full time job!
So launching on weekend is worst (during Covid a bit better) and Tuesday is the best day which Kickstarter recommends. So i launched on Tuesday. Most backers are from USA so i launched on 7AM PT even if my time zone is GMT. What is important too, that i initially wanted to launch mid February but launched earlier on January 26th, I did that because many big campaigns were announced for February and it started to get crowded. Thank god i was already done with 98% of my campaign preps and thought, there is no sense to wait longer and maybe get overseen later.
So the trailer is one of the most important media for Kickstarter. I spend very long on it and it was hard to do because i am no video editor. I even commissioned an American voice actor for it. The trailer is around 2 minutes and 30% (!) watched it to the end which is a high number. So i would say the trailer did a lot for me. Most people like especially the aspect that the blobs help you with farming and everday tasks and are not only for battle.
I didn’t notice a difference between early and mid campaign backers. What many people ask for is multiplayer and coop, which i will not offer because i didn’t design the game for it. So that is like the number one question lol. Regarding feedback its really positive and mostly “the blobs are so cute” !
I chose the absolute minimum to be able to survive one year (additional to my own savings) without starving. So its important to know that the game is not only funded with Kickstarter but also with my own savings. When studying other Kickstarter campaigns i noticed that Kickstarter momentum drives a lot from success and many add additional content with stretch goals. So i decided too for this approach.
I didn’t work with marketing services until now but considered it before and also contacted some. Our talk wasn’t very deep, it was mainly about calculating a ROI.
Kickstarter stuff is very supportive and i can really recommend to contact them! I didnt contact much press myself and the one i contacted ignored me:p i got mainly visibility with Twitter and so some press sites also wrote about the campaign. I have very good experience with streamers/Youtubers. Especially mid sized but highly specialized content creators helped a lot to get backers and visibility. For me it were creators for the monster taming and farming genre.
I’ve noticed that, like Ova Magica’s Kickstarter campaign, many successful campaigns start with a low goal. Reaching that goal early helps build momentum. It sounds like getting to stretch goals early also improves engagement.
Are you working with a publisher? (Don’t feel obligated to answer any questions. I’m curious about these things, but I understand if they need to be confidential.)
How many newsletter subscribers and social media followers did the game have when the campaign launched? What percentage of them do you think have contributed to the campaign so far?
How have the number of subscribers changed during the campaign? How have the number of Steam wishlists changed?
Any other advice or warnings for other people who are considering crowdfunding campaigns for their indie games?
I am working with Top Hat Studios! Thanks to them i can offer console versions for the game which helped a lot for Kickstarter. My dream was always the Switch console and i developed from the beginning with the Switch in mind and now it’s possible for me!
I didn’t have many newsletter subscribers, but over 1000 pre-launch followers on Kickstarter. On launch an email is send to them and many backed on day one. This was one of the biggest reason for the fast success. I had a bit more than 2.1k-2.3k(forgot exact number) followers on Twitter and Top Hat Studios had around 12.5k. I am myself super active on twitter.
On the Kickstarter Dashboard currently backers from Twitter are the 4th highest number with 6,21 %. Backers from Kickstarter email are currently listed also very high with 5,33 %.
For Twitter i am not sure but i got between 300 and 500 more followers (i forgot my exact number before). Currently i have around 2700 followers. Steam wishlists didnt change a lot, but I also didnt focus on that. The Steam link is currently placed at the bottom of the Kickstarter page. I wanted to prevent people leaving the Kickstarter page. After Kickstarter i will concentrate more on increasing the Steam wishlists.
The most important thing is not to rush and launch when you already have a small community and pre-followers on you Kickstarter page. The first 48 hours are very important for a campaign. It decides a lot for the whole success and outcome. So my advice is, do not launch without a community.
How did you develop that first community? How far along was your game before you started showing it off publicly? What kinds of things did you post about - new features, interesting moments from already-existing features, anything else?
I joined twitter in April 2020 especially for the game but not yet with kickstarter in mind. I was very active on twitter, tweeting almost every day and interacting a lot. I also joined communities for my game genres, which is are farming and monster taming. Especially the monster taming community is very supportive and many backed my game. I also reached out to some Youtubers. Before KS releasing 3 free tech demos on itch helped me a lot too. Especially the 2nd and 3rd because some people did a let’s play and uploaded it on YouTube.
Actually I shared my game first public here in the Unity forum. I decided to make it public when I was happy with the general art style and base concept. I didn’t want to share like very “ugly” prototype things. So the game core/base was already quite far in development. For the game content itself i only had some locations done, most pretty empty. But 2020 was a very productive year. In my WIP thread for the game you can see some of my progress.
On twitter or social I noticed that gifs and videos work best. I mainly shared gifs of gameplay and new features I implemented. I also interacted a lot with other people on twitter. Many indie devs helped me and supported my Kickstarter launch!
Nice responses. I have seen your project already few months back or so in WIP.
I do wonder, have you tried engage reddit at any point, to gain followers, promote game, or campaign?
If so, what is your experience with re-edit and experienced outcome?
What other communities did you try, besides already mentioned?
Yes i tried, but reddit has a very strict self promotion rule! In some subreddits it’s max 10% which is allowed. Sadly i do not have a pet or other glorious hobby i could post in other subreddits. So my options are very limited on reddit. But the few semi popular posts i managed to do do secured me some backers and pre-followers for Kickstarter! So my experience is, when you can pull off a popular post on reddit it definetly converts into backers!
Closing as off topic and self promotion. General discussion is not a place to advertise. WIP is place to show your Work In Progress, but it needs be more than just a link to to a kickstarter.
!