Hey Chris,
So generally I'm just a lurker here, but I figured I really want to see you guys succeed, so if ever is the time to post, now's the time to do it.
Mostly everything in the kickstarter tiers looks good now, but I had a couple of comments on it:
- As noted by you and zharmad above, make sure you just have a "And everything from Mark 1 backer and earlier" sentence when you're doing the rewards on the kickstarter. It helps make things legible and shows people exactly what they get for backing at that higher tier. Then you can have a graphic or list below that states everything included in each tier in detail.
- I know you're not thinking about stretch goals too much, but you might want to state which tiers get stretch goals. Right now it just looks like everything above the 1$ pledge will get the stretch goals, but say you fund an entire expansion: Do the people who bought multiplayer packs get multiple copies of the expansion? (Probably not. Which then leads to my next point...)
- Add ons: You may or may not want to do add ons. If you do want to do add ons, I would try and keep them as simple as possible to avoid confusion. (Ex: An extra copy of AI War 2 - Add 20$ to your existing pledge.) This also means you'll need to do extra work at the end of the campaign, or use a pledge manager, so be careful. If you don't do add ons, I think it would be wise to have a tier that is a "Just the games" bundle. (For backers who don't care about designing anything, but just want a bunch of copies of the game to play with their friends.)
- Make sure you carefully distinguish between background factions/minor factions/alien race factions. Otherwise people might get confused and think it's just a repeat of the earlier tier.
Finally, and this is a bit of a personal preference, but let's talk about Early Bird tiers:
- I despise early bird tiers. If I get to a kickstarter and I see there's loads of early bird tiers all taken up, the odds are good I just won't back. If I do really want to back the game, I'm likely to watch the early bird tiers like a hawk and swap down to one as soon as I get the chance. Basically what this means is that, even for those people that later on increase their pledge to a higher tier to help support the game, other people will swap down and you don't actually get as much of an increase in money.
- Regardless of my distaste for early bird tiers, they are really good at doing one thing: Providing a huge surge in the number of early backers. Normally you'll see all but the highest limited tiers vanish early on. This doesn't necessarily translate to the kickstarter doing well, because backers can still cancel their pledge before the end of the campaign, but it can help build hype. Here's what I mean:
1) Kickstarter launches. Limited tiers disappear. The backer mentality is, "HEY, I SHOULD GRAB THIS NOW IT'S LIMITED. I can always cancel later". Kicktraq (a website that tracks what value a kickstarter is heading too) reads like you're going to 2 million dollars.
2) Middle of the campaign. Small to average amounts of growth, with usually some people cancelling their limited tiers as updates come out because they change their mind, bills, whatever reason. This leads to other people swapping to the early bird tiers for a better deal and you actually losing money if you're not gaining that many new backers.
3) Then there's usually a spike at the end as the 48 hours left reminder hits and everyone who was on the fence decides if they're backing you or not.
- If you do end up doing early bird tiers anyways, I would suggest having a minimal difference between the tiers. (Like, 5$) That way people who come late don't feel like they're missing out on a great deal.
When you actually do launch, I highly recommend doing daily updates. You can talk about small sections of the game you have planned, lore bits, the history of AI WAR, design segments on certain parts of the game, show art from the game. All of this generally just serves to build trust (you're actively communicating) and to build hype (OMG this game is going to be so good).
Finally, be careful when you put your release date. Be generous, and give yourself a couple extra months. That way, if things work out as you plan you can tell people you're releasing early and people will be happy instead of being bitter that you're two months late.
