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[My Escape]

Hey Everyone!

I'd to share the latest episode from My Escape's and Lunar Giant's My Giant Podcast.

In this episode, George Hufnagl and Jay Margalus interview two independent developers who’ve run successful Kickstarter projects. Phil Tibitoski of Young Horses (Octodad) and Ryan Wiemeyer of The Men Who Wear Many Hats (Organ Trail) join us to talk about the dos and don’ts of running your own Kickstarter campaign, and the benefits of crowdsourced funding vs other funding methods.

Hope you find it helpful!

http://mygiantpodcast.com/running-a-successful-kickstarter-campaign/

[kamac]

Might be worth learning from!

[My Escape]

See what? I've no idea what you're talking about.  *back pedals slowly, away from spotlight*

Kidding aside, it was a fun episode to conduct. Our guests provided a lot of insight and their lessons learned are surely going to help us and, we hope, other developers.

Cheers!

[kamac]

See what? I've no idea what you're talking about. 

I've meant something like

"I see what you did there, to make it succesfull" 

[grhufnagl]

Gotcha - I thought you were referring to the name of the podcast, which is simply a combination of our developer names. Obvious name is obvious.

[Klaim]

1. don't rely on it
2. follow kickstarter guidelines: makes objectives clear & limited
3. don't listen to people online

[Evan Balster]

4. Have a project that is interesting to both you and other people
5. If it's personal, explore your feelings about it.  Openness is very good on Kickstarter.

I happen to have been Kickstarter's 2010 game project of the year, mostly because of Klaim's #1 and my #5.  See here for the essay that ended up getting me featured.

[My Escape]

6. Thank you very much

Some good points of advice. Thanks to both of you and thanks to Evan for sharing his experience. Congrats on the selection, Evan!

[Subtle Stone]

Thank you so much!

[nico]

Thank you for this. I haven't listened to the entire thing yet, but it's always a treat to hear others share their experience and what they learned.

[My Escape]

You are both very welcome. Glad that this was helpful to you. Thanks for taking the time to listen!

[redsungames]

 Well I'm not running a Kickstarter campaign, but I am running an IndieGoGo campaign. (This is mainly due to the fact that I am a one man team, working in Japan.) This thread has be very helpful, and I shall keep updating my campaign. If anyone has any suggestions for my campaign feel free to PM me.

You can see my campaign here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/88181?c=home&a=526887

[Christian Knudsen]

You can see my campaign here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/88181?c=home&a=526887

You should really fix the stretched images. It looks horrible and definitely won't help in getting people's support.

[iJohn]

Showing your personal feelings about your project seems like a must for a successful Kickstarter campaign. As a backer, you're not only pledging funds to the project itself, but to the creators. For them to put themselves out there on the line and represent their project personally takes a lot of guts, and I respect that. (of course they'd also have to have a good product)

I'm actually prepping a Kickstarter campaign for an iOS game right now! Looking to put up a postmortem after the whole thing and share some tips/ do's/ dont's like other people did. Crossing my fingers it'll be a successful one.

[AzraelKans]

Well, I cant speak from experience, but I have heard a few things about successful kickstarters that make sense.

1.-Give people what THEY want and nobody else is doing.
Game developers today are either involved in corporate "popular" games(COD, Zombie, sports and dance game), personal games (artistic or otherwise) or experiments(games we really don't know if they work or not). The most successful Kickstarter projects are about giving games some people want and for some reason or other no one is doing. Nostalgic 80 games and franchises, niche genres etc.

2.-Consider it a presale.
People who donate to your kickstart may have several reasons to do so, but the most prominent is the most simple one, they want to have your game, period. Consider each donation a presale, because basically thats what it is. If someone donates a large ammount offer something extra especial (they desserve it), but most people just want to play your game. So make sure you promise things you can actually deliver. (on time)

3.- You HAVE to sell your game.
This may seem obvious, but.. getting a Kickstarter started is just 1/100 of the work, you need people to get interested in your project you need a great sale pitch and ways to make the message reach as lot of people as fast as possible. If the reason you are doing a kickstart is because you don't have good advertising or don't know how to reach people. You are not off to a good start.