Introduction

Hey, fellow game developer! My name is Liviu Boar and I am the creative director of a small independent Romanian studio called Stuck In Attic. Last May, we successfully Kickstarted our point and click, "Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure", and it was one of the greatest experiences we've ever had, on both a professional and personal level. One year passing has been enough time to think back on the campaign and its aftermath, and distil our experience into a sort of guide that I hope you will find helpful in your own crowd funding effort. 

I've decided to break this guide down into three articles:

My intent when writing this pretty lengthy guide was to provide indie game developers who want to turn to crowd funding with exactly the kind of information I was desperately seeking more than a year ago, all nicely gathered in one place. Hope it helps!

Disclaimers and Attributions

First and foremost, I am not an expert on crowd funding, or on "the Industry" ( I'm not even sure I am in the Industry, but that just might be me not paying attention). What I am is a guy who had a dream of making his game, came to Kickstarter, and got funded by awesome people from around the world. Now that it happened, I think I kinda know how to go about his crowd funding business, and that's exactly what I'm sharing with you, so please take this series of articles as such.  

Fair warning: this is a series of rather long articles mainly aimed at devs that are seriously considering Kickstarter for their game. I tried to squeeze in as much helpful information as I could, so brevity was out the window from the get-go. Don't say I didn't tell you so.

Before we jump in, I want to acknowledge my main source of information for our campaign, A Lobster's Guide for Video Game Projects on Kickstarter . I recommend you also read it if you are serious about Kickstarting. Keep in mind that it's already three years old, and Kickstarter is an ever changing medium, but it is still essential information, and a fascinating read in and of itself. 

Is Kickstarter Right for You?

In case you are convinced the answer to this is "Hell yeah!", feel free to scroll down to the section called "The Pre-Launch M-Word", you tiger you, but I still recommend reading on nevertheless. This thing took a lot of time to type, you know?

The first thing you need to take into account is that Kickstarter means building the game together with your backers. Yes, really. They might not physically be there with you as you're 01001-ing the nights away, but they will want to, and will love to get involved. If that's Okay with you, you are right for crowd funding, and remember that the more you make your backers feel engaged and in the loop, the  better everyone will feel about the project, and the more funds your campaign can potentially raise.

On the flip side, please  give crowd funding a long thinking over if you are on the non-communicative side and/or tend not to react well to criticism. The overwhelming majority of Kickstarter enthusiasts are really, really nice people, and they expect the same from you. If you tend to go radio silent for months while in production, or have a hard time communicating in general, please let your backers know in advance. They might appreciate your honesty and be cool with it, but please keep in mind that the nicer and more communicative and transparent you are, the better for the campaign.

What It Takes 

We successfully Kickstarted Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure in May 2016 to the tune of ~$56,000 out of a ~$40,000 ask. We are a team of two guys and one girl from middle-of-nowhere Transylvania, Romania. Gibbous is our first PC game, and our first crowd funding effort. I'd say we did pretty good for ourselves - we did not break any funding records, but our Kickstarter experience was intense and superb - probably the best month of our lives - and it made sure our dream of working full time on the game came true.

What I am trying to say here is that if three dudes like us with no experience or connections whatsoever did it, so can you. You just need a kick-ass game - but you're on that already - and you need to be smart and honest about your campaign. Hopefully this article can help in that regard.

We absolutely loved Kickstarting. I hope this guide will help give you the same experience.

Let's get crackin'!

When to Kickstart?

More precisely, at what point during the production cycle? It is definitely a multiple correct answers thing, so here are a few potential situations and how to approach them:

Please think twice about Kickstarting at this point, for your project's sake and the backers' alike. That stuff maybe could fly back in 2012 if your art was exceptionally good,  but people will need to see a lot more in order to trust you with their money in the Year of Our Lord 2017. Take some time, produce some more pretty graphics, build a prototype. 

Stop right there. I am not doubting your very good intentions - you might even be Kickstarting in order to afford said programmer, but most people will not perceive that as a good thing. A lot of them have gotten burnt on beautiful looking pitches that amounted to nothing, because without a programmer they stayed just that - pretty graphics that went nowhere. It's cool if you already have a programmer and you want to hire one more, but please keep in mind that Kickstarting without a coder on your team is a very, very risky proposition.

While I don't doubt that your prototype is fun, remember that we humans are shallow, shallow beings that really love shiny pretty things (I'm earning my daily bread exploiting exactly that; trust me, it is so). The first thing we notice about a campaign are the pretty pictures - especially the moving ones, hence the animated gif reigning supreme over each and every campaign page.  Hire a talented graphics guy! If you can't afford one, at least don't just throw up your first art pass and say "Screw it, it'll do". Give it another go, make the visuals as impressive as you're capable of. 

Whatever ends up on your project page should be the best looking thing you can come up with.

It's awesome if you have a working prototype - it will really boost confidence in your campaign, because you proved that you can actually pull this game thing off, but the vast majority of backers might just be pleased with its existence and not even download it. Again, it's good that it's there, because it instills confidence. Make it as pretty as you can.

This is how our prototype looked when we launched the campaign. 

We spent around a year working on and off on a vertical slice of our point and click adventure - high resolution hand-painted art, detailed tradigital animation, SFX, music, 40+ minutes of gameplay, voice acting, the whole shebang. Some of our backers have not downloaded our demo, but it put their minds at ease to know that we are not some amateurs bumbling around in the dark. Building the demo also gave us a great idea of how to build the entire game - that's a huge advantage of vertical slices, but some genres like adventures do benefit from this approach a lot more than others.

A lot of campaigns actually do this. We didn't have to, because we had the demo; as a backer, I'm cool with mockups - and so are most people on Kickstarter - but only as long as you are confident  that you can recreate everything later in the game, to the best of your abilities.

We are getting enough bullshot crap from AAA pre-launch hype campaigns, let's at least stay honest on Kickstarter. You are also setting your own bar very high if you choose this route, so make sure you can live up to it, otherwise it might backfire on you in the future. Our game looked a lot less impressive when we Kickstarted compared to how polished it is now, and backers appreciated the evolution. Don't let your final product be disappointing compared to the pitch. 

Alrigh