how to fail kickstarter and live happily ever after
DESCRIPTION
How a carefully prepared Kickstarter on an educational game failed and how, and how this as a shipping effort was a positive experience anyway.TRANSCRIPT
How to fail a Kickstarter and live happily ever after
Pietro Polsinelli @ppolsinelli
For Impact HUB Florence, October 23rd 2014.
See dashboard https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/masondixon/genio-playing-the-renaissance/dashboard
Also other videos. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUMxaHDEKFfnLMJ5fSxNpKRA
Technicalities
Kickstarter is “all or nothing”. This makes people take a stance.
Many options in crowdfunding, but very few realistic options.
See the doc: the diagonal
Who owns it?
Bad position with your “friend”.
Preparing
A working prototype.
Game mechanics: but needed to cheat (problems started early).
Promo
http://licorize.com/applications/licorize/site/buzz-and-press.jsp
- and also I had Marco Matarazzo
- Templates, lists ...
- Launch day (with Francesco Pallanti)
- Tackle people that... do pay
Lessons learned.
Da Vinci games: pop & science on Leonardo. One year of posting.
Leonardo game escaping commonplaces. Also ambition of expressing the “fermento” of the age, and for it to be educational.
Tirari e Alzari: a book on cranes… yes, just on cranes.
20
Launch (day)
Everything ready …. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NgOPdw6lzMMJsqvyM1T9rBCYhQEYhmbAAObRurkr7uM/edit#
48 hours on Repubblica home page: 1 pledge
Tried many ways:
http://www.pinterest.com/ppolsinelli/leonardo-da-vinci-games/
FB, Indiedb, Steam, Reddit, …
Did try… (beware: carefully timed scams)
Failure: why?
USA press bias against Kickstarter.
Culture financing is not grass root.
Not the geeks. Everybody wants geeks.
- Pick an educational theme- Moreover its on a corner of education that is of interest for a happy few- Exclude geeks by not having playable prototypes- Start without a follower community nor established record in the gaming community- Use a funding platform that is viewed with high suspicion by gaming journalists
Crowd – funded culture: not easy.
Take say bit.ly: failed to reach USA.
(SHOW VIDEO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo Single lesson: also from United Breaks Guitars. Evoke admiration is not
offering participation. Too clever, scary. 30
- Got it. The guy of guitars taught me why my Kickstarter failed: does it connect the reader and the author? It doesn't.
- The second point is the absence of major influencer acting.Got the reasons, I think.
Post mortem
Shipping is “the best thing that ever happened”. This is shipping. This is an exploratory field.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1319777239/gates-of-horizon-a-space-conquest-mmorpg
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-town-of-light
“Ah launching a crowd funding is a full time job”
The point is exactly the opposite.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1194145503/star-wars-farts-reinventing-star-wars-through-fart
to talk
Da Vinci farts?
Post Kickstarter: the opportunities of shipping
38
- Consulting requests, working as game designer
- Indie respect -> projects running
- I am experienced
Happy?
My twitter stream is mostly dedicated to game design:
http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli
A blog on game design
http://designagame.eu