I know a few were following our fund raising attempts on Kickstarter (our original thread is here), so I wanted to post this follow up thread. We are relaunching our Kickstarter campaign with a revised funding goal, revised reward tiers, and revised video that is wayyyy less boring than the original teaser trailer. We fell far short of raising the money we needed on our first attempt (we only managed to raise $500 of the $5000 we had hoped for). However, we learned a lot from our first attempt on Kickstarter, and got some great suggestions on how to improve its overall appeal. Even though we did not achieve our goal in fund raising, it was still a great success in marketing, community building, and finding our audience. Overall, it didn't impress the typical TouchArcade user very much. However, there is a large following that grew over in the BoardGameGeek community, as well as with many tactical strategy game fans. They helped point out similarities in our game to classics like X-Com and RoboSports which we had totally overlooked! Their feedback and response has helped us refine our marketing message, and hopefully define our niche much more clear. Our new campaign has a much lower funding goal of $1000, this is the bare minimum needed to pay an artist and get an additional layer of production quality polish put on the game. We thought it was worth one more attempt at fund raising with a more refined presentation because we really want to include the in-game illustrated art and cut scenes with the initial release. Also we'd love to be able to release it as soon as possible, so the funding could help us take additional time off real world work to dedicate to finishing the development. You can check out the newly launched Kickstarter campaign (and pledge if you like) here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bravadowaffle/roboarena-asynchronous-multiplayer-tactical-ios-ga Even if we fail a second time to raise the needed funds, I'd still recommend it to any developer looking to release a serious game. It's a tremendous learning experience and it's awesome free marketing. You get to see exactly what kind of person your game appeals to, and get to communicate directly with, and find, your biggest supporters (those willing to pledge to your project). Every asset can be reused later for other marketing purposes, and if you are a no name developer who is new to the scene, it's a great way to get some quick initial exposure! What do you think of the new attempt? Better than the old one? Still think it's hopeless?
Only around ~$150 actually. Either we don't know enough people, or they just don't like us very much. So that was encouraging at least because we really wanted "actual" fans to get interested, not just those we already know. And a little more good news is that we are now already up to 30% funding and it's been less than an hour since launch! Very encouraging!
Thanks guys! Glad you like the new campaign. I'm working on one more scene to put at the end of the trailer video. A big finish with lots of cool explosions chasing the robo as he runs. I'll let ya know when it's updated. Also, we are now 40% funded! Thanks Headcase and SkyMuffin!
hehe 40% sounds better than 10%.. but i feel the sum is oddly low.. not sure what will be achieved with 900$(after fees) that will make the game significantly better.. here in germany you would even need to pay taxes on such money so youd end up with 6-700 of that amount.. i know its a test but id still would like to see any pledged money being spend wisely.. and if the amount is too small i somehow can't see the efficiency of it.. :/ good luck anyway.. if you get all your old backers back you get to like 55%
Thanks! Your suggestions helped a lot in making the new video and campaign Mr. Ugly. I mentioned on the main page that the sum is as low as we could make it. This will let us pay our concept artist to make 7-10 illustrated cut scenes similar to the one we show towards at the end of the video. These cut scenes will be used to tell the story in the single player campaign, as well as give some cool intro sequences when the game is launched. This will give a better initial experience to users, and a more polished and production quality feel to the game. It was the absolute minimum we needed for that portion of the project. More would of course be welcome, and would help us speed up development with equipment/testing/marketing/taking time off work. And in the US, since all this money will be used as part of a business expense for Bravado Waffle, Inc, it can be written off and not taxed at all! For once, the tax laws work in our favor... Check out the Exclusive avatar we're offering Kickstarter supporters: This time, I hope our rewards for backers are much more interesting and enticing. We want to give back as much as possible to the pledgers.
hehe i'm to old to find an "cool" glasses wearing robo something attractive hehe.. as for the 1k.. well maybe you give the give some shares on imaginary millions to be earned so he can draw the cutscenes, polish all ingame assets (which they need to) ... and he can become rich maybe.. as for the thins kickstarter supportes get.. maybe you should communicate the price of the game.. ? some other kickstarter projects (thats was for desktop tho) did this.. it was like pledge 5$ and get the game(10$) , which then was like 50% off.. if people can make a bargain they might be willing to tell their friends that this is an easy way to get the game for cheap.. this is still the case in your case.. but not very well communicated.. (if you plan to release it for more than 1$ else its an price increase of 0.01$!!!! hehe ) good luck this time around
Hey BravadoWaffle! Sorry to hear it didnt go through. I didnt have much luck either . Its really hard promoting a kickstarter project. Im going to give a different approach this time for Block Ninjas and just use google checkout and have the rewords purchased instantly so they get the satisfaction of helping and get the rewords right away instead of waiting till the end of the project; hoping for it to succeed. Plus you get the money right away to help in funding. Good luck & thanks again for building the papercraft for your video.
Funding Successful! Well, we did it. RoboArena has been successfully funded on Kickstarter! And in just one week! We've still got 27 days to go, so there's no telling the heights it could achieve! Thank you everybody here on the TA forums who helped and supported us with pledges and/or suggestions. We learned a lot this time around and were really able to step up our game with promoting and getting the backers. We didn't bother with a press release or with emailing a ton of websites this time, instead we focused more on having a better overall video (which I just updated with a better and funnier ending...), better rewards, and cross promoting our campaign from within Kickstarter itself. Despite not getting featured in any way on the site itself, the game seems to have picked up momentum and interest! In fact, we seem to have started a small trend on Kickstarter of people cross-promoting others in their own campaigns. It's pretty cool, and it's a good way to make connections and build a community spirit within the system as well. I think it's great obviously! Can't wait to see how much we can raise, and we plan on using every penny of it to improve the game! It's totally worth a try for anybody currently working on a game!
congrats on your success! As I mentioned recently I am considering going the KS route myself. I am expecting it will require a good deal more than $1K for what I want to do, however.. we'll see how it unfolds
Ideally, your game will appeal to a much wider audience than mine too. Plus your network is much wider than ours is. Plenty of iOS games there raise $5k+ so it's not an unreasonable goal to set. Best of luck when you do!
Nice to see you got it on the second go around. I found your project on Kickstarter previously and your old video didn't hit home. I'll check out your new one. Congrats! Guess I'll have to give it a whirl on my next game as well!
now spend the money on wimen and alcohol.. Dont forget to take your cam with you. But you have a long time togo, so maybe you even break the old 5k mark, good luck
Woah - you've hit your $1,000 already! Good job! How would you check if someone is a backer in app though? With their UDID?
Thanks, we are stoked! Are you referring to the custom Avatar we are giving to backers? There's a few ways we can go about implementing it, from checking the UDID to having them enter in a special code to unlock the avatar (which I believe is more preferable). After everybody confirmed they had entered in the code, we would remove the unlocking option from the game in a subsequent update. Perhaps we'll come up with a more elegant solution as we get closer to release, but we'll figure it out!
