Backer awards for AVWW art Kickstarter (canceled)

[cupogoodness]

Hey folks,

We're gearing up for Valley's upcoming art Kickstarter, and I'm looking for a little brainstorming help with the backer awards. If you have any specific ideas regarding the incentives, this is where they should be directed.

Here's what I've come up with so far. Keep in mind the tier amounts are mocked-up, the team had a very small discussion previously to this, but nothing below is set in stone as of yet:

There's a few awards for the lower tiers that seem like no-brainers: mention in credits $5 level, digital copy of the soundtrack $10 level, a (giftable) copy of AVWW or one of our other titles $15 level, and so on. Is that a solid enough line-up? Or should we consider going outside the box a bit at the lower levels?

Perhaps mix and match packages can make up the middle levels, although I'd like to come up with something other enticing options than just that for the $25-$100 levels. For instance, what about rewards relating to art? Since that's what the Kickstarter is focused on. Would that be of actual interest to certain potential backers?

For the higher tiers, $150, $250, $ that's where I get pretty clueless. As a guideline, we're trying to avoid physical awards entirely (or at least at the lower/unlimited reward tiers) as to avoid the sink of giving nearly half your projects funding back to Kickstarter and fulfilling these awards. It's apparently happened several times in the past, taking the project organizers by surprise (not the good kind) as it ended up having a major negative impact on how much can actually be put toward development.

That said, when I look at these higher levels on successfully funded projects, they almost exclusively have some form of physical product offered (usually needing to be delivered by mailed), along with many of the lower tier awards tacked on which is something we'd likely look to do as well. I suppose the idea is that once that level of donation is reached, project owners plan ahead of time to take a certain percentage of that individual pledge and put it toward the cost of that particular physical reward.

So is a really bad ass poster of the new AVWW box art plus the aforementioned lower tier awards worth $50 to interested parties? Weird example since it's not in the higher tier, maybe a better example would be: Is an evening with Chris, Keith, or Pablo worth $1000? Would someone pay $2500 for all three...at the same time? Only one way to find out, right?

So yeah, some assistance on these in particular couldn't hurt.

Any suggestions on the topic are greatly appreciated. Since we each have our own tastes, we're looking for a variety of perspectives to go into this. That is, what would motivate those who may be interested in making a pledge (hopefully they're already excited about the project in general as well). That, I think, is what's going to give the Kickstarter the best chance to succeed.


Update from Chris: We're not going to run a kickstarter after all.  See the last post in this thread.

[freeformschooler]

For the $100-$250+ dollar range, instead of physical rewards, have you considered allowing backers to suggest some minor thing to implement in the game? Doesn't have to be large or unreasonable (think spell or enchant or item), and it would avoid the whole "exclusive reward" problem. Then again, this costs money too... but hopefully not as much as a giant physical package.

Of course I can't put enough money in to do this, but I think it is worth it for the people who believe in the project.

[keith.lamothe]

For the $100-$250+ dollar range, instead of physical rewards, have you considered allowing backers to suggest some minor thing to implement in the game? Doesn't have to be large or unreasonable (think spell or enchant or item), and it would avoid the whole "exclusive reward" problem.

Yea, things like "We'll add your spell idea", "We'll add your normal-monster idea", "We'll add your boss-monster idea", "We'll add your overlord-monster idea", "We'll add your infestation idea", "We'll add your enchant idea", "We'll add your spell-modifier idea" are pretty common (conceptually) in backer reward lists, and I think that's a good avenue to investigate here.

The key is saying on each of those backer reward descriptions "within reason, up to 5 hours of developer work and $50 of new art" or whatever, depending on the reward tier value; and it has to have a limited number of allowed buyers of that backer tier as even if 1,000 people all plunk down $200 each for a new spell doesn't mean we'd actually be willing to make 1000 new spells

But yea, the idea is that the new stuff goes into the game for everyone, so none of the hullabaloo about exclusives that only some people get.

[madcow]

One thing that I've noticed people love in kickstarter's is some vanity fluff added in their name or by their design, I have a few suggestions to that effect.

The first I suggested in the art thread, but it likely got washed out in all the posts. Custom epitaphs as seen in this thread: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9512.0.html
Let contributors add in the text to one of the randomly seeded gravestones (text subject to approval of course) so that somebody's message could be planted somewhere in the game. Every X-dollars could let you add another epitaph as well. Might be a good idea to add a character limit to the epitaphs. Tweet-sized maybe.

Second, customized NPCs. Not necessarily custom art or anything. But basically let some of the rescuable NPCs come from a pool of "premade" characters as opposed to randomly generated. Then the player could pick the age, mood, profession, and name. If you added a sort of bio/history section for rescued NPCs, they could fill that in as well.

Third. Don't just do boring credits for contributors. Instead make a building or tower that goes in the settlement that has the names IG. More like an IG memorial instead of just a dull scroll of contributors. The tower could have different wings for the different level contributors as well.

[Cyprene]

I know it's the AVWW kickstarter, but a lot of fans of Arcen are way more into AI War than AVWW.  I know I am.  So maybe some AI War based-rewards would be nice? 

[keith.lamothe]

I know it's the AVWW kickstarter, but a lot of fans of Arcen are way more into AI War than AVWW.  I know I am.  So maybe some AI War based-rewards would be nice?

Since all the net revenue would be going towards AVWW, doing work on other products as a reward would basically have to be non-paid or Arcen is losing money out the other side.  Which isn't totally out of the question, but I'm sure you'd understand that we couldn't do a whole lot of that.

[Aklyon]

The memorial could be nifty, but where would you put it?

[mrhanman]

I think character art based on the likeness of the backer would be a big seller.  Obviously, only a limited number would be available.

[Kinasin]

For the $100-$250+ dollar range, instead of physical rewards, have you considered allowing backers to suggest some minor thing to implement in the game? Doesn't have to be large or unreasonable (think spell or enchant or item), and it would avoid the whole "exclusive reward" problem.

Yea, things like "We'll add your spell idea", "We'll add your normal-monster idea", "We'll add your boss-monster idea", "We'll add your overlord-monster idea", "We'll add your infestation idea", "We'll add your enchant idea", "We'll add your spell-modifier idea" are pretty common (conceptually) in backer reward lists, and I think that's a good avenue to investigate here.

The key is saying on each of those backer reward descriptions "within reason, up to 5 hours of developer work and $50 of new art" or whatever, depending on the reward tier value; and it has to have a limited number of allowed buyers of that backer tier as even if 1,000 people all plunk down $200 each for a new spell doesn't mean we'd actually be willing to make 1000 new spells

But yea, the idea is that the new stuff goes into the game for everyone, so none of the hullabaloo about exclusives that only some people get.

The implementation of new things into the game sounds awesome honestly.

[LaughingThesaurus]

A lower-level 'implement stuff in the game' kind of reward could be something like a character name. IE, their name (or name of choice) gets added to the pool of character names. Is that possible?
Actually, is it possible to have specific first+last name combos come up as random names?
I mean, I doubt it would end up causing problems...

Edit- Ooh, on the subject of memorials, could you add some kind of object to the settlement that actually has the chosen monikers of all of the contributors? Examine it, and the whole list of names comes up, or something like that. Kind of like the spellgem/difficulty stations.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Isn't there loads of space inside the settlement?
It'd just be somewhere like the other stuff is.

[Aklyon]

I'd been thinking more about whether it would be in the town by default or not by where would you put it.

[Maledictus]

Forgive me, but this sounds a bit off to me. Have (personalized) stuff put in the game if you donate money? I recently bought the game and to put it bluntly, this is not what I signed up for. I suppose there will be some sort of filter so that idiotic ideas or silly artwork doesn't make it into the game, but buying the right to change the game? That's what it sounds like to me. I assume you would make sure that the game's vibe/mood/atmosphere doesn't change because of this, but why would I want to see names of people who apparently paid more than I did, in the game? In the credits, sure, but in the game?

New content is appreciated, but this... It could potentially be as jarring as putting adds on billboards in there. It affects all players; not just the ones that pay to get their thingy in there, also the ones that already paid. I'm not entirely sure that this is fair.

I joined the Grim Dawn kickstarter a while ago and their system is much more appealing to me. I have no problem with certain people getting items/skills/pets that I don't get, because that is nowhere near as invasive (to me) as having, say, an obelisk in the settlement that has loads of sponsor names on it; what I don't see doesn't affect me. Things like physical rewards also appeal more to me, like the artwork stuff and perhaps even an action figure/statuette or numbered edition box set. Artwork could also be made available in a digital hi-res (professional printer-ready, like high quality PDF) format, one can have it printed and put in a frame by going to a good print shop. If the studio people that do the artwork create a couple of unique nice atmospheric pieces, well, I'd pay for that.

Just an opinion, and if everybody else disagrees it's a non-issue I suppose. But I had to say it.

[Aklyon]

No one said you have to pay to be in the credits, if you're helpful enough.

[keith.lamothe]

Forgive me, but this sounds a bit off to me. Have (personalized) stuff put in the game if you donate money? I recently bought the game and to put it bluntly, this is not what I signed up for. I suppose there will be some sort of filter so that idiotic ideas or silly artwork doesn't make it into the game, but buying the right to change the game?

That's what the whole "within reason" bit in every single such reward description would be for

But yes, the approach does have problems.  I'm not concerned that we would put something stupid in the game (we wouldn't), but I am concerned that it would be difficult for someone to know whether the idea that they want in the game would be "approved" by us; and if they plunk down their money and only after being charged hear that "sorry, we can't do X because of Y, can you pick something else?" ... yea, not a great customer experience.  And I don't think it would be a rare problem: speaking from experience, at least half of new content ideas from a wide userbase are totally out of the question for one reason or another (not necessarily that it's bad ideas, just stuff that tramples all over one or more non-negotiable requirements the game has to meet).  And if they had to specify their idea before/during making their pledge and we had to approve or send it back... yea, not a great experience for us either.

So in the end I'm not sure if it's such a good idea, unless it's at a high enough $ tier that we can afford that sort of back-and-forth communication before the pledge even gets made or whatever.