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[Schoq]

This year, alongside with other goals, I want to have a post in the "TIGSauce's most epic post" thread. Tips?

[Manuel Magalhães]

Dreams do come true.

[s0]

Hey guys,

I've kinda noticed kickstarters being featured less and less in gaming press as time goes on, as well as less and less quality projects being listed on the site. I mean hell, at the time of posting this, there's like, 5 projects that have garnered enough interest to get more than $10,000 out of 364 live projects.

What's on kickstarter now...

At 02:50am PST for January 14th I currently see 119 live campaigns in the Video Games category. You may have different search filters toggled.

Currently the top 4 ranked active campaigns are Shadowrun: Hong Kong at $315208, Into The Stars at $81124, Drift Stage at $36222 and NF Magazine at $25920. There are others that raised more but are in their slowdown periods like The Grisaia Trilogy at $370093. Some newcomers like Identity at $40148 are starting to enter their slowdown period and dropping in the rankings.

Every year since 2011 the press for games on Kickstarter dries up going into November and won't fully recover until February. There has been a general decline in the small and medium sized projects getting covered. If a campaign is very uncertain to make its goal, then there is usually very little coverage. When some of the crowdfunding focussed blog columns like Kickstarter Katchup stopped posting it hurt the small projects. Only this week of January did Kickstarter start getting back to normal as was expected based on past years.

Kickstarter is still very viable. It just didn't reach optimistic targets for 2014. Execution of campaigns is much less forgiving for many reasons discussed in the thread Mittens linked. I also see some of the smaller types of campaigns (Like a small $3 priced game) edging towards extinction because they can't compete against the advantages that a $15 priced game can have. I've found it very interesting that many people in that thread held the perspective that Kickstarter is both saturated and that being saturated is bad for their chances of being funded. There are low points in the annual cycle like the past five weeks when Kickstarter is far from saturated, but the external press environment is so poor. This can also happen in summer. Kickstarter addicts can be bored waiting for any interesting campaign to launch. Last November and the launch of Kickstarter UK were times when the platform was crammed full of too many projects. September can also be a month when the largest campaigns come out in full force. What I observe is that the presence of many good quality campaigns at once actually helps campaigns, while a lack of other good campaigns can be harmful to the few good projects that did launch.


The trailer for the pitch video, art assets, music, project thumbnail were not holding Poncho back from my perspective. Project updates were more about news and shout-outs instead of the more important objective of elaborating what the game is. It is a weak part of project, but not serious enough to sink this particular campaign. The "quality" or experience levels of backers was on the very high end. I see many Kickstarter regulars with hundreds of projects backed. To me this indicates Poncho was a very good fit with the indie gamers that frequent Kickstarter. It is an indicator the game itself is good. I remember being impressed by the scenes in the forest. It does suffer Fez comparisons. Presskits is a massive topic to cover. The project lacks enough of a hook about the story of its actual development. The presskit was weak because it loses in the battle of general vs specific points about a game. The world is much more impressive to me than the gameplay, yet the presskit prioritized the gameplay mechanic before the world. I would have done the reverse and focussed on the world, then the mechanics. It is not that the gameplay is weak. It is that the world outshines the gameplay for me. I can see how the current presskit could be easily dismissed by overworked bloggers. It was too ambitious with the write-up while not providing much for a blogger to easily discuss with his or her readers.

I looked at the graphs for Poncho first to make notes, then I go look at the reward text. Some details like the plateau at the £10 tier was because it was locked; I ignore that because it couldn't grow. Even before reading the reward text the graph looks abnormal in the £7 to £50 range. When I do read the text the rewards don't flow well at all. It looks like the rewards were significantly holding the campaign back by making it much less efficient per backer at covering funding distance. This to me looks like one of primary reasons the campaign failed, even greater than lack of press. With the backer numbers you were seeing the campaign could have been funded if the tiers were performing normally. By being so inefficient with the backers the campaign was receiving, it needed to aim for many more backers to tip towards getting funded.

There were too many £5 tier slots. It has become increasingly apparent from watching Kickstarter graphs that an early-bird that lasts into the middle of the campaign's run is like poison. It saps the backers from the following tiers. The £7 and £15 tiers both started to take off after the £5 tier filled up making the campaign a bit more efficient. It was too late by then. There is also the problem of a big pricing jump from £7 to £15 after the £10 tier was locked. Backers are very price sensitive in the lower priced rewards. Doubling in price from one reward to the next open one results in many backers not upgrading their pledges. This too added to the inefficiency per backer.

With more press and aiming for at least 270 additional backers, Poncho could have made it. It was closer to tipping towards success than you might think. At around 500 backers the press start to pay more attention to a small campaign. With a small funding gap, upgraded pledges from backers can help cover the missing amount but only if the rewards don't fight back with the flow. Poncho was close. It did slow down rapidly from the launch window, but it faired through the Kickstarter trough far better than many of its peers. It never was close to completely stalling out. It looks like the campaign was finally achieving the momentum it needed near the end, but ran out of time. It also missed the next wave of new campaigns by a few days. That would have significantly helped its last 48 hours because of the press being generated by the new launches. A reboot would have been an option since it achieved over 30% funded. With more effective rewards it could have been 50% to 80% of that funding goal with that many backers.

[alvarop]

what are you, some kind of gaming justice warrior ? ?? ?

[mushbuh]

In order to glorify how much I love this place I decided to create a little thread for people to post some of the most epic posts ever posted in these forums.

[Fallsburg]

One single anus: I have one single anus. I poop a lot more than other people but I still just have one single anus.
A wild fuckin imagination: I spend a lot of time thinking about going on missions with Wolverine. We're about to jump out of the plane which is going sooooo fast and he's like "So what's your name?" and I say "Wonderbread". "Wonderbread?" he says. "White, sliced, ready to go," i say pointing to just below my belt line. other variations of this scenario are about my ass. we're really tough and strong, the job is difficult, but together we win in the end.
Me and Wolverine are a great team: he couldn't do it without me.
I have only the vaguest memories of seeing a urologist at a hospital when I was young. I don't remember a lot of my childhood but I remember some dude had to peep my pecker for medical reasons. I'm circumcised but I didn't see men's dicks, asses, and other stuff like that until I got the internet so I didn't know about this at all. My dad caught a jeep to the brain and left us so I don't know where he is anymore and I don't want to talk to my mom about my dick: So it goes, my dick will just have to remain a mystery. That's life.
Don't know what the word hacker means anymore: used to be like, a guy who could mess up your computer and eject the cd drive and stuff like your computer was popping a boner lol but it was kind of scary even though site unseen you knew instinctively you could kick his ass. Now lots of people use this word to mean something completely different, but i dont actually know what they mean. what is a life hack? WHen that guy couldn't cut off yuki mishima's head Rofl. No seriously there's some idiot who puts butter in coffee as well who "hacked his biology" by putting a different kind of milk in his coffee. I don't know what it means any more. You can get like these gels and shampoos and stuff specifically for washing women's pussies. you can use them even ifyou're a man. just some hacking advice, keep the change kid Lol
Highly advanced brain: other people debate about who bruce lee could beat up, but i know immediately with 99% confidence when asked
I use martial arts training solely to retain the ability for explosive movements of the hips: so that I can shake the last drop of piss, pee pee if you will, without having to use paper (I think a lot about the environment
You know that smug sense of superiority people exude in arguments on line on message boards where guys pretend to know things but are clearly googling them for the first time and are better than everyone at everything: well i have that sense of superiority but for irl things. so when i'm watching the news it's like Guantanamo huh? Big deal. I could do much more fucked up sex stuff to Arab men than that.

[sergiocornaga]

have you noticed the way quote from cave story watches over every post from within his own little button? he looks down upon every post on this website, as if to say, well, i see your post. but it's no cave story.

[Canned Turkey]

Teenagers are like the human equivalents of vegans.

[s0]

When I was in highschool I was just starting out learning programming With THe Big Boys. (Something that wasnt html or LEGO MINDSTORMS) and i took a computer science class. By the middle of the class I was at the point where I understood most of what I was doing and was able to kind of just phone it in. The teacher was really laid back and a cool person. She didn't care if people played games as long as they did their work. Since I didn't care that much I would give out my work to people if they asked, and eventually around 8 kids relied on me to do their work.
This kids really loved memes, they were really into gigga puddi which was big at the time. Since all they did was pretty much spout memes I decided I would try to get them to start saying stuff that wasn't actually memes.

I would do stuff like "Hey, I don know how to do the homework so I forgot it... JK BUT WOULD BE LAUGH!!" and eventually they would start to reply with JK BUT WOULD BE LAUGH to certain things. Another one was "DOINKERS! I DID IT BAD!" and "OOPSO, HERE WE GO"

[rj]

he/she is a really gross antiquated construction. you could use 'they' and 'them', its better - up to the minute political correctness gone mad. more generally useful. also wrks for nonbinary. ladies, gentlemen and distinguished guests, man woman and child. he-she is a slur, it's the way PT Barnum would talk about an act. ambiguous, doesnt respect the subject. not so pc.

i think they - the sprites - were drawn at scale and then not cleaned up very much.

[gimymblert]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

[Canned Turkey]

all of momos base animations are done. finally.

damn child labor laws

[Superb Joe]

god damn me and to a separate but equal extent paul eres are good

[Netsu]

Paul eres helped me through my career in the fast food industry


I used to print out tigsource posts from rinkuhero, devoering all the knowlegde he had posted.
At my lunch breaks & social events I would ignore my fellow fastfoodworkers and sit in the lunch room corner. Highlighting and circling posts
that I had printed out I liked and simply phrases I could remember while I worked. I tried to explain why pauls posts were so
more different then the usuall tigsource post but they didnt get it - their amused smiles showed it all.

Eventually they taunted me, I would of normally lashed out, but paul wouldnt do that so I wouldnt either .
I didnt blame them for treatng me different, they saw me as a threat. someone different. I didnt expect them
to appericate pauls writing style or prose.

Soon my love for paul eres posts consumed me.
I would sometimes go to the freezer and just sit there with a scrap of pauls posting in my pocket letting the frost get slowly bit my plastic gloves.
I didnt shiver, there was something warm about the way he talked. I would sit there idly until someone called me by the name my
parents gave me. I told them not to call me that but to call me by my tigsource username.

The rest of the workers got jealous of my relationship with paul and tried to break me by making work difficult.
They called me a wrinkle-hero, and a noob. They wanted to sever my relationship with paul.
It didnt work.
Eventually I was called into the store mamangers office.
He told me there was complaints
he told me that I cared more for paul then the store.
I said paul was twice the man he was.
he slapped me and told me to get out

I was about to hand in my apron but I spotted someone I knew in the window

it was paul. He was here. He was with me the whole time.
Paul had a smile only paul could give
This is worse then a room of c+ programmers with gamemaker paul said
Paul turned to the store manager and spoke
I am very hard to anger, I might seem angry but Im not
paul grabbed my hand and we ran out together.

Its been about 8 months since Ive left that job

as paul held me I knew one thing

I was a saturated dreamer now.

[Impmaster]

I love this.

[Netsu]

I don't know, memes this long are pretty unwieldy.

[s0]

how would u even fit this much text on a image marco

[gimymblert]

that series of posts wasn't epic stap!

[vinheim3]

i'm still in the age of meaning the concept that spawns the pictures when i say "meme", not the actual pictures u dums

That's right, the actual pictures are called image macros, not memes. How many weeds are you guys smoking?

[Schoq]

meme is just another word for picture now, deal with it