Kickstarter backer tiers: feedback and more ideas, please!

[kasnavada]

$30 public early access (let's call it beta, since people understand that terminology)

People do not understand what beta means at this point. They'll assume its anywhere from 'working but not finished (an actual beta)' to 'prerelease version, but pretty much the same thing' (a AAA beta) to 'not actually a beta but we haven't removed the word from it yet'.

Early access isn't much better, but it at least still has a distinction from full releases.

A lot of people are starting to expect beta or early access to be a complete bugless balanced working game too... sigh. Basically anything that ain't a closed beta has to be finished. Due to the early access & stuff being abused so much. 

[tadrinth]

Hrm, after seeing the LOVELY sprite art Blue's putting together, I had an idea for another backer reward or stretch goal:

* Pick a ship from AI War Classic for Blue to visually update to AI War 2's art style. 

This art would *not* be present in the game directly, but would be available for modders to use. 

[windgen]

I think the mid-to-high backer tiers (starting maybe somewhere in the $30-$50 range?) should include an AI War Classic key.

Lots of good things come out of this:

• Players new to the AI War series would have a fully finished game to play immediately, if AI War 2 is too rough around the edges for their taste.
• Players who already have a copy can give it to one of their friends which may spread the AI War 2 news and grow the Arcen community by word-of-mouth.
• Doesn't take much time for Arcen staff to distribute this reward.

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

I think the mid-to-high backer tiers (starting maybe somewhere in the $30-$50 range?) should include an AI War Classic key.

Lots of good things come out of this:

• Players new to the AI War series would have a fully finished game to play immediately, if AI War 2 is too rough around the edges for their taste.
• Players who already have a copy can give it to one of their friends which may spread the AI War 2 news and grow the Arcen community by word-of-mouth.
• Doesn't take much time for Arcen staff to distribute this reward.

The problem with that is Arcen owes royalties to people for each sale, which would essentially cheat those people out of their money if we gave the game away at those tiers. The only way we could do it so that wouldn't be a problem would be for us to eat the cost of the game, which would cut into our AI War 2 budget pretty substantially and not be fair to AI War 2 backers. Chris used to have it for them, but pulled it down for those reasons. Right now, myself and one (maybe more?) other person has brought up using BackerKit to sell AIWC as an add-on, which would let us keep track of the royalties and keep the payment all "in the KS" to make it easier on the end user.

[Draco18s]

Right now, myself and one (maybe more?) other person has brought up using BackerKit to sell AIWC as an add-on, which would let us keep track of the royalties and keep the payment all "in the KS" to make it easier on the end user.

Me, probably.

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

Yup, I found the post. It was on the previous page lol.

[Vyndicu]

Just making that for deaf people like me. That Sound track would be an optional addon as opposite to baked into tiers.

It always irritate me that I could have gotten something else instead more useful. Not a huge deal breaker just something to think about.

[combatwars]

I don't know how to feel about the current trend where Early Access and Alpha/Beta are sold at a higher price than retail release. On one hand, you had Bohemia Interactive going into EA with ArmA 3 where the earlier you bought into it, the more you saved until it hit the price of $60 at retail release which felt nice as an early adopter. On the other hand, you have...well, almost every single Kickstarted game that sold early access for more money.

Anyways, I think you should add a few more tiers for multiple copies of the final release of the game. Since it's $20 for a copy(as per the unlimited KS tier), then maybe $36 for 2 copies, $52 for 3 copies, $68 for 4 copies, $84 for 5 copies, $100 for 6 copies, and so on.

[Tridus]

I don't know how to feel about the current trend where Early Access and Alpha/Beta are sold at a higher price than retail release. On one hand, you had Bohemia Interactive going into EA with ArmA 3 where the earlier you bought into it, the more you saved until it hit the price of $60 at retail release which felt nice as an early adopter. On the other hand, you have...well, almost every single Kickstarted game that sold early access for more money.

Why sell it cheaper up front when the people willing to buy in Early Access are also willing to pay more for it? That's just leaving money on the table.

Games get cheaper over time because the market at $X gets exhausted, but there's people who might pay $X/2. Selling the Early Access copy for less just gives you less revenue.

Plus, making Early Access cheaper than release encourages people to buy the Early Access version who really *shouldn't* be playing a pre-release version and will just get annoyed that it's not polished yet. You don't want that.

Anyways, I think you should add a few more tiers for multiple copies of the final release of the game. Since it's $20 for a copy(as per the unlimited KS tier), then maybe $36 for 2 copies, $52 for 3 copies, $68 for 4 copies, $84 for 5 copies, $100 for 6 copies, and so on.

This just clutters up the tiers and makes it confusing for people who don't want six copies. If they're going to do that, make an addon on backerkit to add additional copies for $15 per, or whatever.

[dfinlay]

You could also throw in AI War Classic and/or some of your other games as add-ons. If you did them as add-ons for somewhat less than they normally sell for, it would effectively be a way to drum up sales for some of them and that way, there are no royalty issues, since you can pay them out of those add-on amounts. (Though, you'd have to add extra to the total needed funds for that, I suppose. Might not be a great idea).

Is there a way to have certain optional add-ons/bonus costs in Kickstarter that don't contribute to the total? Perhaps set up for shipping? If so, the royalty amounts of add-on games could come out of that. If not there probably should be.

That said, it is a common enough thing to do and I'm sure the royalties issue's come up before. It might be worth seeing what other studios have done.

[Captain Jack]

You could also throw in AI War Classic and/or some of your other games as add-ons. If you did them as add-ons for somewhat less than they normally sell for, it would effectively be a way to drum up sales for some of them and that way, there are no royalty issues, since you can pay them out of those add-on amounts. (Though, you'd have to add extra to the total needed funds for that, I suppose. Might not be a great idea).

Last I heard the royalty issues were making calculations difficult since there's no way to tell how many units of Classic we'd sell and thus what percent of the funds would be available for AI War 2.

Is there a way to have certain optional add-ons/bonus costs in Kickstarter that don't contribute to the total? Perhaps set up for shipping? If so, the royalty amounts of add-on games could come out of that. If not there probably should be.

We're not doing any physical rewards. We do have a buffer budgeted, but taking money out of the buffer always gets you in trouble.

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

You could also throw in AI War Classic and/or some of your other games as add-ons. If you did them as add-ons for somewhat less than they normally sell for, it would effectively be a way to drum up sales for some of them and that way, there are no royalty issues, since you can pay them out of those add-on amounts. (Though, you'd have to add extra to the total needed funds for that, I suppose. Might not be a great idea).

Last I heard the royalty issues were making calculations difficult since there's no way to tell how many units of Classic we'd sell and thus what percent of the funds would be available for AI War 2.

I think what he is suggesting it to make the AIWC an add-on, which people can say "Hey, I want this" and throw some extra cash to it, while still keeping the amount of AIWC sold easily recorded. The biggest problem with that is that last I heard, we don't really want to drum up sales for the old games. We would rather you throw an extra $5 towards the KS than buy a game, since we get more of the money from the KS and it helps ensure we reach our goal.

[Matruchus]

Why is there no design your own ship tier? This is definitely an option that I personally think a lot of people would love a lot. Those plots and faction stuff is probably not so interesting for people who come to Ai War for the first time but shipbuilding option is something else.

[kasnavada]

No news Kstarter today ?

[wyvern83]

Why is there no design your own ship tier?

There is, Fleet Engineer,but it's very limit at only 3 backers available, is for designing an AI only fleetship visually and mechanically using existing mechanics and goes for $1500 or more.

Given there are fewer ships at least on the player side of things with more emphasis tech upgrades for customization this time around I'm not too surprised. If the background human factions had made it into the 1.0 budget it would have been perfect choice for a good tier reward of this type though.