The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

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LobsterSundew
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by LobsterSundew »

April has been a bad month for the video games category. I look at the current most popular campaigns and many of them aren't that impressive compared to even recent months. The only one that impressed me was Little Devil Inside with its pitch video, but the rest of the project page needs a lot of work.

Teddy Terror's project thumbnail is likely hurting it. From the outside the project looks a lot worse than it really is.

Ultimate Chicken Horse is an example of a thought out pitch video.

Deadwood: The Forgotten Curse is a very good example for how to reboot a campaign better than before.
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evilkinggumby
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by evilkinggumby »

I backed deadwood then and am re-backing it now. Because of that, though, I am holding off on smaller projects for the time being unless something really POPS for me as i am tossing $100 at deadwood and that's about all I can do currently for my monthly quota.

I will say it has gotten kind of light for projects as of late. projects worth their salt, i guess. I am glad I am finally getting a few updates on my long running projects (like finally another Asylum update).
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

This launched today: Herald - An Interactive Period Drama

The style and animations look really good. There's a short demo, and the project pitch is very polished and well put together. The goal is in Euros, but seems pretty low, I think they'll have a good chance of overfunding if what they've shown so far is any indication. Although it was launched on a Sunday for some reason, as you always recommend against, Lobster, so it seems off to a bit of a slow start!
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LobsterSundew
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by LobsterSundew »

Deadwood's campaign shows negative $26,158 for April 19th. I had not paid enough attention to the composition of its funding. Update #8 discusses that Kickstarter's staff warned them they could be suspended for suspicious activity. It lost three $1,000 tier backers. The number of unallocated backers remained at 8. It looks like a lot of unallocated funding was cleaved away from backers downgrading. There could have been something odd like multiple $1,000 tier backers actually pledging $10,000 which stood out to some anti-cheating bot.

Launching on Friday, Saturday and Sunday should be avoided because it is a poorer time for traffic. When Monday comes around the campaign often looks dead-on-arrival and then is met with apathy. A late Sunday launch used to be part of a strategy to have the campaign end at a better hour of the final day. That strategy became obsolete in late 2014 when Kickstarter allowed project creators to independently set the ending hour for the final day.
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evilkinggumby
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by evilkinggumby »

Yeah I am skeptical with Deadwood now but I am going to wait it out and see what happens. It ids a right odd situation.

Herald looks really good but..damn.. why is it they're looking for such minor funding, yet their budget for marketing is almost as much as what they're going to spend on artwork? I have seen that on other projects too. I guess I don't rightly like large swath's of a project's funding going to just marketing. I understand it is a necessity to get the name out there, but when t hits close to 1/4 or 1/3 of the budget it starts to sound like AAA publishing where marketing work almost overtakes a project's cost.

I'm also getting to where I have a lot less interest or faith in serial adventure games. This is a "Part 1" and I have a nice cluster of single episode adventure games that never got past chapter 1 and so you are perpetually stuck wondering what happened.
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

The pitch video for Herald is too long, but I skimmed through it and they say they've been working on the game for a year now, and the funding is to finish it. That could explain why so much is going to marketing.

I'm not that excited about episodic games either, especially from an indie. Big studios have a hard enough time getting episodes out as it is.
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evilkinggumby
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by evilkinggumby »

RightClickSaveAs wrote:The pitch video for Herald is too long, but I skimmed through it and they say they've been working on the game for a year now, and the funding is to finish it. That could explain why so much is going to marketing.

ahh so it's backend funding.. i guess that does pop up on KS a bit. I can't recall if I have backed campaigns looking for this too often, but it would mean quicker turn arounds on investment since so much is already done. Actually come to think of it, one of the first game projects I backed was American Mcgee's Akaneiro game and it was motly built but needing money to get it online, finished, and multiplayer implemented. Game got released eventually and it was 'ok' but the biggest feature I wanted to see (multiplayer) never got implemented so I haven't touched my account at all.

also, Deadwood did a twitch feed from their entire crew's pc's to show them working on a few assets, answer questions and generally connect with their backers. It was really fun and had a decent turn out (about 20 viewers logged in and 900+ viewing anonymously). I'd say if you guys can do that for your kickstarter at least once.. WOO. even if it's via google hangouts since you ar eall over the map. :) or just Matt so he can answer lots of silly questions.
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matt
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by matt »

We've done a few live stream Q & A things on twitch. We'll definitely do at least one during our next campaign. They are fun, but they take a lot of time and the turn out was never great because we had trouble picking a time that makes everyone happy. I suspect during the campaign there will be more interest in that sort of thing. :)

I am also vary wary of episodic games in the indie space. It is very easy to run out of money or to get diminishing returns on subsequent episodes, so it isn't "worth" continuing. I haven't gotten much of a chance to play it yet, but Republique seems like an example of it done right. Bringing the game to other platforms during development seems like a good way to supplement the cost of making the new episodes. While one might say it takes time away from creating future episodes (and that might have partially been the case with the redone PC assets), sometimes you are totally art constrained and your programmers have time to work on new tech for the other platforms.
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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LobsterSundew
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by LobsterSundew »

Take a look at the execution of the campaign for Lantern. It only has $1, $5 and $6 reward tiers with a $20,000CAD goal. It launched and is set to end on a Saturday. It has a length of 14 days. It looks like it actually has a game.

Part 2 of Broken Age is released this week. Within the last 10 minutes I received a link to a Humble Store download page.

I went a showing of a vampire film that had raised $446,666 on Kickstarter. It was good. There was only about 7 other people in the entire theater.
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evilkinggumby
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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Post by evilkinggumby »

haha i remember that film when it kickstarted. looked possibly funny, possibly terrible.. so I passed on it. Glad you actually got to check a theatrical release. that'd NEVER happen where i am, sadly. I'd likely have to run to NYC IF it played there..

I backed Victoria Jr. by referral that looked kool, but it's more a graphic novel/short story collection than a game. Still it managed to hit it's goal, a few stretch goals, so getting a basic physical copy also nabbed me a few bonus things to ship.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/95 ... ictoria-jr

Not much else out there drawing any interest.. I guess this is a spring thaw and everyone's prepping for summer campaigns?

Glad you are considering doing more Q&A's Matt. I'm looking forward to the next twitch stream tomorrow for Deadwood so I am sure yours will be right fun too.
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