I know a few were following our fund raising attempts on Kickstarter, so I wanted to post this follow up. We are relaunching our Kickstarter campaign with a revised funding goal, revised reward tiers, and revised video that is wayyyy less boring than the original teaser trailer.

We fell far short of raising the money we needed on our first attempt (we only managed to raise $500 of the $5000 we had hoped for). However, we learned a lot from our first attempt on Kickstarter, and got some great suggestions on how to improve its overall appeal.

Even though we did not achieve our goal in fund raising, it was still a great success in marketing, community building, and finding our audience. Overall, it didn't impress the typical TouchArcade user very much. However, there is a large following that grew over in the BoardGameGeek community, as well as with many tactical strategy game fans. They helped point out similarities in our game to classics like X-Com and RoboSports which we had totally overlooked!

Their feedback and response has helped us refine our marketing message, and hopefully define our niche much more clear.

Our new campaign has a much lower funding goal of $1000, this is the bare minimum needed to pay an artist and get an additional layer of production quality polish put on the game. We thought it was worth one more attempt at fund raising with a more refined presentation because we really want to include the in-game illustrated art and cut scenes with the initial release. Also we'd love to be able to release it as soon as possible, so the funding could help us take additional time off real world work to dedicate to finishing the development.

You can check out the newly launched Kickstarter campaign (and pledge if you like) here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bravadowaffle/roboarena-asynchronous-multiplayer-tactical-ios-ga

Even if we fail a second time to raise the needed funds, I'd still recommend it to any developer looking to release a serious game. It's a tremendous learning experience and it's awesome free marketing. You get to see exactly what kind of person your game appeals to, and get to communicate directly with, and find, your biggest supporters (those willing to pledge to your project). Every asset can be reused later for other marketing purposes, and if you are a no name developer who is new to the scene, it's a great way to get some quick initial exposure!

What do you think of the new attempt? Better than the old one? Any marketing suggestions for getting the word out?

Haha, yea... well the tips were gleaned from other successful campaigns and post mortems, so they should still work. More likely I didn't follow my own tips with the realistic funding goals.

I probably could have pitched the game a bit better too... I'm just not 100% sure how. You get a million and one suggestions, and half of them contradict the other half.

I will probably relaunch the campaign with a much lower funding goal so that I can at least afford to pay the artist to make a few cut scenes for the intro and exit of the game.

It will mean we can't take the time off from work needed to get Multiplayer working right out the door, but that's the way it goes.

Additionally I learned a lot about what rewards to offer, and will be restructuring the tiers next time to include that they get a free copy of the game, and that they will get to be a part of the private beta and get to design some multiplayer levels as well.

So we'll see. It's a learning experience!

Well, I figured I would update this thread for those who are interested with the news from our campaign... in that there isn't much news. We have 10 days to go, and are only 10% of the way to our funding goal.

We have been featured on various gaming sites like pocketgamer.biz and gamasutra, but that didn't result in much as far as pledges go.

Perhaps we set our sites too high on the ultimate funding goal, or more likely, we just don't have a big enough audience with a game that is a casual tactical strategy game like X-Com but with no violence, blood, zombies, and/or angry feathered creatures.

On the plus side, we have been featured in a number of large board game blogs and websites, and have grown a small but very loyal fan base of people who are super excited to get to play the game and even host tournaments on VGG. So as far as getting the word out there and getting our name known, that part has been successful.

Typically funding on projects comes in two waves- the initial push, and then at the end of the campaign from all those who were watching. So here's to that final wave! 10 days to go...

At the moment, my biggest suggestion for all you who are thinking of running a campaign is to build up a community of fans BEFORE you launch your campaign. Then prep them to help you promote the campaign once you launch. If you do that, you are more likely to pick up enough momentum to get it off the ground.

We really should get a group together to promote each other's indie game campaigns or something. That would be super cool, and increase the chances of running successful campaigns by a lot.

Doesn't the new google chrome app store only take a 5% cut of the profits now? That's pretty dang competitive... http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/11/google-makes-chome-web-store-available-worldwide-adds-in-app-pu/

yeah i'm kind of disappointed in kickstarter, but there are alternatives, or even just normal paypal donations. it'd be nice to see a generalized script that would do what kickstarter does (e.g. showing a meter of how much money has been donated, and allowing people to donate particular amounts for rewards) that someone could implement themselves on their own site

There is! Check this out if you run wordpress: http://wpmu.org/7-ways-to-collect-and-track-donations-with-wordpress/

Only down side is that if you don't have a built in audience or fan base already, you are screwed. Using a service like indiegogo, rockethub, or kickstarter gives you the added bonus of possibly getting more community exposure.

I would agree, I just changed the video to show more of the gameplay mechanic as an experiment since I had lots of people complaining that the trailer didn't explain the game in depth enough. It's a bit of an experiment, but I think I'll be changing it back to the trailer video I had before. Thanks I Smell!

Yea, I'm testing various videos to see what works. It's hard to tell!

Well, no matter what, I think this project is going to be a success in that we have gotten some awesome marketing out of the deal. We've found a fanbase and gotten our game and company on the radar. We've got some fans who are super excited, and this is the best (and only worthwhile...) advertising you can get as an indie developer!

Once we release it, there will be people waiting for it to come out, and hopefully the word will spread from there. We are getting featured on Gamesutra tomorrow hopefully (with an expanded and more indepth version of the list I posted here), and I'm also talking with a reporter from a major Chicago newspaper who is interested in covering our story, so hopefully those two items will bring in a lot of new traffic and pledges!

I think the real key is to follow the Galaxy Quest adage: Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

edit:

We were featured on Gamasutra here with 10 tips to running a successful campaign: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/StephenDick/20110504/7554/10_Tips_For_Raising_Funds_With_Kickstarter_For_Indie_Game_Developers.php

And here's a great article explaining the other options out there (for all you international peeps): http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6369/the_crowdfunding_revolution_.php

Hope it helps!

Just wanted to say this game looks amazing. It's like Carnage Heart all over again! Love it! Our own game is very similar to this and uses programming Robos to do your tasks. We focus more on the multiplayer competition opportunities that this kind of mechanic opens up, but we also have a story puzzle mode.

I think it's awesome, and I wish I had a windows box to play it!

Hey guys, I'm Stephen the game designer for Bravado Waffle Studios. I think games were at their funnest 12-15 years ago, and we seek to introduce this new generation of gamers to what it means to play truly fun games

Yea, it's a bit frustrating. Although, even with limiting themselves to the US they seem to be doing just fine. I love their system and its polish too. The principles apply to any crowd funding site you choose to go with.

As a bit of an update-

We've been having trouble getting the pledges we need for our game, I've been sending tons of traffic to the campaign, we were even featured in PocketGamer: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Bravado+Waffle+news/news.asp?c=29486 (yes... I'm proud of that) so I think it might have been my pitch and my video.

I'm trying a different approach this time, walking people through the game and talking a lot about it instead of the fluff that I was talking about before. What do you guys think? Is it better? http://kck.st/fBso2k

Hey guys, long time lurker, first time poster. We are close to the release of our iOS board game called Robo Arena which is inspired by Robo Rally. We're super stoked!

Like most here, we've bootstrapped the development for the past seven months. Now we're trying to raise some funds on Kickstarter to finish the art, polishing, testing, and start marketing. Here's the link: http://kck.st/fBso2k. I'd love your feedback and thoughts on the game play and the campaign in general!

I'm sure most here are familiar with Kickstarter as a crowd funding platform. It's an amazing way to get the word out about your ideas, get much needed funding, and gauge general market interest as well. I wanted to post a few tips and suggestions that I've gathered from hours of research to help any who are thinking of starting a campaign:

• A video is a must. It is probably the single most important factor in determining success.

• Tell a story, be personable. People donate to the designer as much as they donate to the project, so be as likeable as possible and tell people your story.

• Set realistic funding goals and durations. Kickstarter is all or nothing, so be reasonable with how much you want to get. Remember the money is coming from your biggest fans. Also don't drag the campaign out too long, the most excitement comes at the beginning and the ends of the campaigns.

• Personally thank your supporters in the updates. A major benefit of these platforms is the community building aspect of the game. Directly interact with your supporters and thank them.

• Give cool and unique rewards to your supporters. The more creative the better.

• Study up. There's a ton of great successful campaigns on kickstarter, study what worked and what didn't work and use those lessons in running your own campaign.

Those are just a few suggestions to running a good campaign. Has anybody here found success on Kickstarter? What tips would you share?

Us indie developers have to stick together, so if you are going to run a campaign, let us know so we can support it!