Essay on kickstarter campaigns

[chemical_art]

Random notes regarding kickstarter:

     1. Kickstarter is used to raise initial capital. It should not be used for expansions

Kickstarter is a logical means for companies to fund their first game if developers lack the resources to fund it themselves in the event that publishers or other traditional monetary resources view their ideas as not worthy to invest in. Backers may feel otherwise, and thus ideas can be funded that otherwise cannot. However, just like money received from more traditional sources, funds raised through kickstarter/crowd funding will also present unique challenges. I will discuss these later but let's start with the question of one person/group forming multiple kickstarter campaigns.

The first question I have when I see a second kickstarter after a (wildly) successful first one is “Why is it necessary?” The first kickstarter is given on the assumption that the developer has no money or no leverage to use for a loan. However this reasoning is gone with a second kickstarter.

There can be reasons why but left to the imagination it only leaves worry. Such as “Did the first game not make money? Is the developer not confident this new idea will make money? Did the first game flop, and the developer wants to move on? ...” I know everyone thinks differently, however, the player shouldn't be the one forced to fill in the blank. This leads us to the larger issue unique to kickstarter...


     2. For better or worse, Kickstarter is a PR battle

In a stock market, there are both public and privately traded companies. Private companies are mostly left to their own means to raise capital without help from consumers while publicly traded companies may ask for capital from investors on an as needed basis.

Relevant to this board, Arcen is a private company. They have never asked for public investment. Arcen only has one request: if a product is “good” then one should buy it. As a result, they have freedom to reveal how much or little about anything they want. They are free, as long as finances allow, to have a few duds as long as their stronger products keep them alive.

I would consider Kickstarter games more like publicly traded games. There is a very long lag time between funding and releasing of the product. The development stages are just as crucial as the actual funding time. Pre-alpha of course there can only be so much to say but communication is key: sharing the details of what is currently being worked on will go a long way. Once alpha and eventually beta is released, it will be important for developers to explain the decisions they made regarding what features were kept or discarded and how they will continue forward. If for any reason a company leaves out a feature before 1.0, it is absolutely necessary they explain clearly why it wasn't included. They should also provide a timeline on how and when it will be implemented. All future PR should be devoted to these features with the exception of perhaps balancing.

However, there is much more to be said and there are factors that make good PR a new normal rather than a  case of simply going above and beyond.

     3. Kickstarter has matured.

Kickstarter has matured, and like many industries, that means competition has increased drastically. The golden age may not be over but the easy age certainly is. This is nothing new. It happened for the internet with the “dot com” bust and this phenomena has happened in many many other genres as well. It is the nature of any business.

No longer is it enough to just have recognizable name or idea with just a few pictures. At one time that was enough but now the bar is much higher. There are many reasons for this but a few are unique to kickstarter. Unfortunately, I do not have “hard numbers” from research to determine these exact causes; therefore, I can only makes guesses. I wish I had data but I would wager that compared to 2 years ago the average “experience” of backers has increased. By “experience” I mean the average number of projects supported (succeed or failed).  While imagination is a very powerful thing, I would wager as well that the number of ideas that bring an instant “buy” goes down although I think that phenomena happened slowly. There are only so many wasterlands / total annhilations to make sequels of,

The end result is the same. For a kickstarter to succeed, it MUST completely and utterly wow a backer on its page which is getting to be harder and harder to accomplish. This leads to a bold assertion of mine that...

     4. For a kickstarter to really succeed now, the PR must start before the kickstarter.

This is where things get hard because I feel a need to dive into human psychology. I'll say upfront I have no formal training in psychology so I can't tell you the why. I can attempt to tell you the what. Long story short: A good kickstarter needs to provide strong results across its entire lifespan. If it is too short, there won't be enough time to collect funds and allow proper word of mouth. If it is too long,  then word of mouth has the potential to become a hindrance because players “on fence” won't fund something that isn't projected to win anyway.

The solution is to get the word out before the kickstarter starts. Let the most dedicated fans get excited and let word of mouth work its magic. For this to work, an “all-of-the above” mentality is needed. Everything should be utilized from pictures and videos to wallpapers and interviews!

Here is an example of advertising:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/human-resources-an-apocalyptic-rts-game/posts/1020423

This article does a lot of right and wrong. It is right in that it provides a lot of easy to share methods to spread the word for HR. You got some animations, some avatars and some wallpapers. Good stuff.

The bad: It came two weeks after the kickstarter. Very bad. This should come out before the kickstarter. These are precisely the tools that are needed to get hype up but they came way to late.

I have played a lot of strategy games but there is a sentiment that I have seen with other activities (sports, military, theater, etc). One can not expect to do well without proper preparation. You do not go play a sports game without training. With the exception of improv, you don't perform in front of an audience before learning your lines. The same is applied to kickstarter. The kickstarter should not be the means to spread the word, rather it is the finale to a successful PR campaign.


Conclusion:

So what can be gleamed from all of this? I propose that a successful campaign depends on the ability of the developer to maintain the narrative from start to finish. It should start with a strong PR campaign to generate interest before the actual kickstarter begins. This must explain in an honest and earnest manner why a kickstarter is necessary. If there are some usual questions such as a second kickstarter after a successful first one then they will be answered first by the developer. It is imperative these questions are answered well because if they aren't then they will be viewed with suspicion by a mature audience.  The narrative must continue throughout the kickstarter to ensure that the positive momentum is maintained. After the campaign it is important that features are actually delivered. Developers should not launch another kickstarter campaign until the first one is complete.

[chemical_art]

That was a lot! Much larger then I thought it would start later.

Later on I will post about how this relates to PA and HR in particular

[chemical_art]

PA had a strong kickstarter. It managed to emphasize a unique style of game of Total Annihilation with a team who has had experience in this genre.

However, now that I am reading through the opening sections of the PA kickstarter I realize it was more lucky then well run. It's first video after the opening came 8 days after it initially started.  I wouldn't have thought it, but the project didn't actually get funded until 13 days. Iimpressive, but when you see the whole total I really thought it came earlier (It had a very strong late game due to some savvy stretch goals). It got lucky because almost 55% of it came through word-of-mouth, which to me is sources other then kickstarter or the game's own website. The idea was just so awesome (and kickstarter so young) people were practically throwing money just at the idea.

 I bring this up because one simply cannot look at HR without looking at PA first. PA it seems was not particular run. However, it did not matter because the idea was strong and the demand was high. But the problems would show up later.

Time is short, so this grammer is short, but I want to get one more point in. I didn't realize Uber made a game before PA. They never mentioned it.  They made a game called Super Monday Night Football. Uber never mentioned this pedigree before, and I wondered why. But I heard rumors, that before SMNC was just Monday Night Combat. The fans of these games complained that when MNC lost steam Uber made SMNC, and they also said that when SMNC updates slowed to a crawl. Then PA came about, was funded, and then (according to the fans) the game was practically dropped. I don't know if this is true, but the very fact players think this was happening would explain some more of the later errors that plague HR.


No time to edit, sorry!

[eRe4s3r]

I am going to be disagreeing on (2), based on what I gathered from basically a few years of comment threads on bluesnews

Kickstarter (for games) is about hope, inspiring and expectations. Not primarily about getting the word out. Not the hope of the developer, but the hope of whoever reads the game description (at most 2 pages and often only the TLDR at the bottom) and watches about 2 to 5 minutes of video (that's the most most people give a project). If a KS fails to draw those early lookers in it will utterly fail. No amount of PR will safe that project.

The hope means this: People have a mental image of a game after reading said text and watching the video, this translates directly to whether people WANT to play that game (that they envision) right then and there, so it makes them give money to the project in the hope that whatever comes out at the end is what they envisioned it to be, this can often be fundamentally different from the game actually pitched. Sometimes, rarely that vision is out-performed by the game that releases at the end.

And this is all Kickstarter is about. Projects fail because they fail to inspire a vision and hope of someone with money willing to pledge that money. Good Kickstarters make the intro so tasty and inspiring that many many people want to play that game right then there, BEFORE IT ACTUALLY EXISTS (Pillars of Eternity is a good example) but also Star Citizen and that game where part 2 is still missing in action for some absurd reason... ehm.. Broken Age.

The more you inspire a vision in people about "how this game that doesn't yet exist is going to be" the more people will support your project. Assuming you make a game people actually want (Making a FPS with a 20m budget is probably gonna fail big time, because people already know what to expect from that genre, so they have no vision.


In my opinion, the number 1 reason big projects fail is in some way of course PR, but it is not the PR you mean, it is not the "getting the word out" pr the makes or fails a project. It is the first page, the first video. If those don't inspire the very first people that look on it your project has failed. I've seen a lot of projects that sound really neat if you read update 7... 6 days after the KS started, except nobody is gonna read that that hasn't already pledged for your project. Unless you get very lucky and a MAJOR youtube channel pushes your KS (Ie, pewdiepie or TB) and the chances for that are astronomically low. I've only even heard of Pillars of Eternity through a youtube channel.

So to me, Kickstarter is about Hope. Projects that fail to inspire that hope fail. Currently I have a very good sense for when projects fail. I could tell you for example that if you were to KS a game like KSP just with a different spin that you can properly explain in the first page of your KS and visualize properly, you'd with some certainity rake in 1 to 4 million easily. Lots of people are hooked on that game concept, and KSP is the only one delivering it. But if you don't explain that game concept concisely on the very first 5 paragraphs, and in the video, with nice artwork and maybe some preconcept flash (or anything) animation then even that very in-demand game concept won't find funding.

PA by the way, had a huge push by coverage from youtube channels back then as well. ^^

[Toranth]

An interesting essay.  Kickstarter has certainly changed things amongst my friends and acquaintances that buy games.  It has generated lot of strong opinions on both for and against, as they've had good and bad experiences.

As to your points, I'd say #2 and #4 are dead on, #3 is not really a big matter.  #1, on the other hand, I strongly disagree with.  I'll get to that latter.


In my opinion, I think part of the problem is that Kickstarter is misunderstood, by both the developers and the customers.  Early in your essay, you said it should be used when the "developer has no money or no leverage to use for a loan".  To me this says that you look at Kickstarters as a way to form a public Venture Capital group, by selling public 'shares' so to speak.  In other words, I think you look at Kickstarter as a form of investment.
Others seem to look at Kickstarter as a fairly typical developer-customer interaction, like a pre-order (on steroids).

And that is where I think the problem is.  I think a better comparison is the old tradition of artistic patronage.  A patron would give money to an artist, and would expect a work back in return.  The patron would usually know the artist by reputation, and may give general direction about the work produced, but the exact details of the final product were often not known until the job was done.

Developers like the idea of the traditional developer-customer buying and selling of a specific product, because a) it is familiar and b) it abrogates responsibility for the product from the developer to the customer.  "Buyer beware" is a pretty firm tradition in most Western nations.  As long as there was no fraud, making a bad buying decision is not actionable.
Some of the customers I've spoken to like it that way as well.  Simple and familiar, they basically know the rules. 

Others, however, look at it as an investment.  I know one individual that put more than $1000 into a board game's Kickstarter, then was very upset when the final product didn't match what had been discussed at the beginning.  He felt that as a major contributor, his opinion should have had more weight than others.  They also get upset when a product fails, and they lose their "investment" with no recourse to any recovery.  That lack of accountability is what makes Kickstarter different from traditional Venture Capitalism, and it's been a real surprise to some people that funded failed projects.

When all parties look at the transaction the same, there's little problem.  It's when they disagree as to the basic nature that problems occur.  And that's why I think it would be better if everyone tried to look at it the same.

In the Patronage tradition, the patron had significant power over the artist.  The patron, usually a single person, had the money - and all the artists wanted it.  A poor product would damage the artist's reputation, hindering any further career.  A bad reputation led to other artists being funded first.  A few centuries ago, a bad enough product could result in the artist being hauled into court and thrown into debtors prison.  A few centuries before that, the patron's displeasure could be expressed through assassins in a dark alley.
However, in the Kickstarter case, there are many patrons and only one artist.  No individual patron has enough power to damage the reputation, livelihood, or health of a developer.  They can only do anything en masse - which leads to your point #2, which I heartily agree with.  PR is 50% of a successful Kickstarter.  If the developer can keep most of his customers happy (or at least not unhappy) then the few that remain can be ignored.  (I'd say the other 50% of success is having your design 99% done before your even start the Kickstarter - products with vague and aspirational designs rarely seem to work out well).  This doesn't mean the developer controls the relationship, though.  The developer is still dependent on the patrons, for money and for reputation.  But by trying to mix store-like or investor-like relationships, they want control without responsibility.

And that's where I think PA failed.  They failed to manage expectations, and failed to heed to desires of their patrons.  They thought to treat them like normal customers, that can be handled one-by-one.  The first hint of this was when the alpha access started being sold on Steam.  The reaction was very bad, yet the developers did nothing to solve the problem.  They just waited for it to go away.  That's also how those chose to handle all the other problems that have arisen.  Instead, the mass population's discontent became permanent, and carried over into the next Kickstarter, where it killed Human Resources.  Had they done as was suggested here and in the PA/HR threads and taken the time to satisfy people before attempting to proceed, they would have been much more likely to succeed with the HR Kickstarter.

I hope that other companies finally start paying attention to the fact that they DON'T have the power in this particular developer-customer relationship, and start acting accordingly.

[Toranth]

Now, as a different post to switch topics a bit, my response to your point #1.

In my mind, while 50% of Kickstarter is PR - advertising and managing expectations - the facet that determines the actual final product is usually how complete the design is before the Kickstarter even begins.  And that's why I think Kickstarter is VERY well placed to fund expansions and sequels, over new products.

The more detailed your design is, the more specific your advertising can be.  At the same time, people can see exactly what they will be getting for their money, which goes a great distance towards managing expectations.  And most importantly, a well thought out design is more likely to have an accurate estimate of the funding needed, leading to better rewards and stretch goals.

I've only been willing to contribute to one product so far.  It was very thoroughly designed - in fact, it was partly complete at the time of the Kickstarter.  I knew what I would be getting in that case, and I got it.  However, the next product from the same company was not as well designed when that Kickstarter when up - and sure enough, the final product was not what I would have expected or wanted based on the presentation.

[chemical_art]

I am going to be disagreeing on (2), based on what I gathered from basically a few years of comment threads on bluesnews

Kickstarter (for games) is about hope, inspiring and expectations. Not primarily about getting the word out. Not the hope of the developer, but the hope of whoever reads the game description (at most 2 pages and often only the TLDR at the bottom) and watches about 2 to 5 minutes of video (that's the most most people give a project). If a KS fails to draw those early lookers in it will utterly fail. No amount of PR will safe that project.

The hope means this: People have a mental image of a game after reading said text and watching the video, this translates directly to whether people WANT to play that game (that they envision) right then and there, so it makes them give money to the project in the hope that whatever comes out at the end is what they envisioned it to be, this can often be fundamentally different from the game actually pitched. Sometimes, rarely that vision is out-performed by the game that releases at the end.

And this is all Kickstarter is about. Projects fail because they fail to inspire a vision and hope of someone with money willing to pledge that money. Good Kickstarters make the intro so tasty and inspiring that many many people want to play that game right then there, BEFORE IT ACTUALLY EXISTS (Pillars of Eternity is a good example) but also Star Citizen and that game where part 2 is still missing in action for some absurd reason... ehm.. Broken Age.

The more you inspire a vision in people about "how this game that doesn't yet exist is going to be" the more people will support your project. Assuming you make a game people actually want (Making a FPS with a 20m budget is probably gonna fail big time, because people already know what to expect from that genre, so they have no vision.


In my opinion, the number 1 reason big projects fail is in some way of course PR, but it is not the PR you mean, it is not the "getting the word out" pr the makes or fails a project. It is the first page, the first video. If those don't inspire the very first people that look on it your project has failed. I've seen a lot of projects that sound really neat if you read update 7... 6 days after the KS started, except nobody is gonna read that that hasn't already pledged for your project. Unless you get very lucky and a MAJOR youtube channel pushes your KS (Ie, pewdiepie or TB) and the chances for that are astronomically low. I've only even heard of Pillars of Eternity through a youtube channel.

So to me, Kickstarter is about Hope. Projects that fail to inspire that hope fail. Currently I have a very good sense for when projects fail. I could tell you for example that if you were to KS a game like KSP just with a different spin that you can properly explain in the first page of your KS and visualize properly, you'd with some certainity rake in 1 to 4 million easily. Lots of people are hooked on that game concept, and KSP is the only one delivering it. But if you don't explain that game concept concisely on the very first 5 paragraphs, and in the video, with nice artwork and maybe some preconcept flash (or anything) animation then even that very in-demand game concept won't find funding.

PA by the way, had a huge push by coverage from youtube channels back then as well. ^^

'

I agree in a lot of what you say, but what you describe is what the "early" phase of kick starter was. Sell a dream. Full stop.

However, from what I have seen, the bar has risen greatly. No longer is a "dream" enough. Concrete details are needed. If things are left vague, they simply are ignored. Precisely because, as you mention, dreams such as Star Citizen have to have delivered makes the population very skeptical. Or games are not "fully good" like PA. The first wave have games have passed. A simple description is not enough...at least for large games.... Certainly not for games wanting almost 1.5 million dollars.

[eRe4s3r]

That's very true, and I don't meant to say KS should have simple intro blurbs and descriptions. No, the more detail is delivered as precisely and informatively as possible, the better. As you say, the phase of projects funding themselves entirely on hope is over, but Pillars of Eternity was not just funded on hope. It had an actual tech demo to show, screenshots, detailed descriptions of game systems etc. pp. And all this served to capture the hope and imagination of a lot of people.

I've seen Kickstart projects (recently that weird art-project from some System Shock developers) where I thought "What the hell are they trying to do here?" ... I mean, their entire Kickstart page was about reward tiers and stuff, not actually what the gameplay was about.

And that is not a good sign. I had no vision of what the game would play like... and that is imo why projects fail (not because of my lack of vision of course, that is just an example that their presentation fails to capture an audience ;p)