Brainstorming thread about the next Kickstarter campaign.

[matt]

Wow, thanks for the really detailed write up! I actually read your alpha guide from start to finish, so I'm familiar with the different ways of doing early birds.

The two hybrid early bird tiers is a good idea! I hadn't thought about that, but rewarding the community seems like a really great idea! I'll be sure to keep the $25 tier and $1 tier as well. It's good to know that worked!

[LobsterSundew]

I saw in the Polygon article that the campaign is looking at launching in July.

Here is a screenshot of a spreadsheet with launch and end dates for July 2015. Hopefully the formulas were correct.
http://i.imgur.com/cpaFNT0.png
I've already removed dates that would have the campaign launch on a Saturday. Cells in various shades of green are the first ones to look at for dates to run the campaign. Cells in brown are better than cells in white. White cells are still viable. Pink and purple are cells for Fridays and Saturdays which should be avoided if possible.

The next step is to look at what is happening around those dates. Conventions, AAA game releases, other Kickstarter campaigns' end dates, etc. which I haven't fully done yet for July.

I quickly had these notes:
Minecon is July 4th to 5th. Not too worrying.
ScrewAttack's Gaming Convention is July 17th to 19th. A bunch of famous YouTubers go to it.
Quakecon is July 23rd to 26th. I'm not worried about this one.
Gamescom is August 5th to 9th. This is something to worry about. It is like a mini E3. There are the options to try to end before or a bit after this convention.
PAX Prime is August 28th to 31st. Another thing to be concerned about, but the campaign may be finished before then.

July and August looks rather dry for big AAA game releases. There will be the hype trains in August for Mad Max, Metal Gear Solid V and Mighty No.9 about to release when September starts.

[matt]

Thanks for the chart! That's really helpful. I was thinking of July 7th through August 9th since starting on a Tuesday and ending on a Sunday worked well for us last time, but I wasn't thinking about Gamescom! Perhaps 7/14-8/16 would be better?

Thanks for pointing that out!