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The Soapbox: How to run a successful Kickstarter campaign
The past few years have seen an absolute revolution in the games industry, with an explosion of studios securing funding through crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. In a time when banks worldwide are tightening their belts, Kickstarter represents a lifeline for indie developers and a way for the bigger studios to work on their own projects free from the need for outside investors or publishers. But with the growing number of projects seeking funding each year, developers are facing stiff competition and the rising challenge of running a successful campaign. Most developers don't release all of their stats or write up advice and insights following a successful crowdfunding campaign, and those who do are often lost on obscure blogs that don't appear when you Google for advice. But I'm in the unusual position of both being a games journalist and having successfully Kickstarted a small game project (unrelated to MMOs and my work on Massively). Six months ago, I ran a campaign for my new sci-fi 4X game Predestination, and in the process I learned some valuable lessons on what works and doesn't work on Kickstarter. We've since published the campaign stats and gone on to help a few other campaigns hit their goals. In this article, I run down the lessons I learned the hard way during the Predestination Kickstarter campaign and give some advice for developers hoping to get funded.
Kickstarter hits a million backers, impoverished design students rejoice
Despite these shaky economic times, people still have the time -- and money -- for modded Arduino kits, iPhone lens and air guitar mods. Kickstarter users have now pledged over $100 million to projects, with the number of backers leaping from around 250,000 in September last year to over one million. The crowd-funding site is marking the occasion with visualizations of its vital statistics, showing, among other things, that one-time backers make up the bulk of investment. With over 13,000 projects green-lighted so far, projects still vying for our investment dollars include a caterpillar-tracked smartphone robot, a bike light that attaches to your spokes generating an 8-bit light show and an energy recovery unit that picks up on heat from a dryer exhaust. If the idea of heat exchanges gets you all hot under the collar, check out Kickstarter to help give the creators a fiscal foothold.
