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[Bmud_Team]

Hey guys, I've been wandering for a while now, what do you guys think makes a successful Kickstarter campaign? What would make you consider backing the project and/or sharing it on social media?

[Cobralad]

project not sucking

[Superb Joe]

beloved niche ip you already licensed and a stick it to the man narrative

[Armageddon]

a stick it to the man narrative

Yeah we hate those dirty publishers men who funded our games for the last decade.

[SirNiko]

Show some work that demonstrates you've made good progress on your project prior to funding. Have a team ready to go, or better yet, have a prototype to show.

[ironbelly]

Sell the sizzle and not the steak. Looks over substance. Concept over reality. Having one or more "famous" names behind you doesn't hurt either.

Also... 30 days instead of 60. 1 dollar rewards for "low goal" games. And back lots of people/form a social network of Kickstarter advocates before starting.

[LobsterSundew]

In my opinion a successful Kickstarter campaign often depends on two parts.

The first part is avoiding the accumulation of too many mistakes. Launching too early in development with not much to demonstrate, launching before there are enough fans, picking very bad timing (launching on Friday can be horrible), having ineffective rewards or not keeping backers engaged with regular updates can be individually big enough mistakes to make a campaign's chances plummet. It can sometimes be as simple as a bad project thumbnail image harms the initial momentum. A campaign can make a few big mistakes and still succeed, but too many sink a campaign. Poor execution can still drag down campaigns like Wildman, Human Resources or RED ASH even if there are famous developers behind them. Perhaps the biggest mistake is to break the trust of backers before their pledges have been collected.

The second part is the game itself needs to be perceived as worth supporting. Just being a good game instead of a great game might not get people excited. Not appealing to a large enough niche limits growth. Being awesome means more press coverage. Really big success requires the game to be hyped enough to get word of mouth propagating. There are at least one or two video game campaigns per month that I rush to notify others I know who pledge to a lot of Kickstarter projects. The very successful campaigns like SUPERHOT, Hyper Light Drifter, Bloodstained or Darkest Dungeon create a general feeling of being a noteworthy events or a noteworthy cause.

What projects I share on social media are the projects that have more potential to become something great. I have lower standards for what I actually pledge to. A good development story, interesting premise, Linux support and a fair price can get me to pledge.

[Fenrir]

I think the most important (assuming you have a great project with a great presentation) is to have a solid first day! Stats say that achieving at least 40% of your goal on day 1 almost assures you to succeed, so you'll really need to prepare your launch to be sure to reach as much people as possible at the beginning (by creating an alert mailing list for instance).

[ProgramGamer]

Catering to the food industry?