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[george]

This made my Monday.

Andrew Plotkin, aka zarf, aka man writing games and contributing tech to the community for the last 15 or so years, opened up a Kickstarter last night to go full-time indie writing IF. In about half an hour he had $1000, and this morning he's at $7000.

[deathtotheweird]

Whoa, very nice. This guy sure loves IF games.

Stuff like this is heartwarming, glad it worked out for him.

[Bood_war]

That is pretty great, I have to say.

[Peevish]

That tears it, I'm making a Kickstarter page. If IF can get kickstarted to $8,000 in one day then Kickstarter has arrived as a decent platform for game devs.

Now I just need to pick the project to Kickstart...

[guille]

Kickstarter can be good for starting a game project as long as you can back up what you are offering, just like Zarf, who's been into IF games for so long and has contributed so much.

Sadly, I have seen tons of crappy projects, where some clueless teen with no previous game experience posts some sketches and expect people to ditch $30,000 to him so he can make his dream MMORPG. Of course that's not happening, but it's bothersome to see this kind of projects flooding the project pages.

I mean, some people are taking it the wrong way. Like an easy shot at trying something you would like to do, but you have absolutely no idea how to do it. Just like it happens with all that shitty vaporware in the Apple App Store and the Xbox Live Indie Games market. People are always looking for shortcuts. 

[Peevish]

Definitely having experience helps. If you have something finished that people can touch or watch, they'll be more likely to throw you some money for more of it. It's also been pointed out that success on Kickstarter has much to do with how well you promote yourself once you've started it.

But really, I'm starting to realize how important having a good video is. All the projects that are big success stories have awesome videos. You have to make your project compelling to watch, and if you make a shitty video people think you'll make a shitty project.

[jrjellybeans]

I love Kickstarter and definately think it's a great way of gaining funds for your game!

Congrats to him for reaching his goal on day 1.  I think that really proves the value of Kickstarter...

(There was a woman recently who got her game funded as well.  She got something around 20,000 if I remember correctly).

[Evan Balster]

I had a wonderful experience with my own Kickstarter.  There's a lot of support out there for good interactive projects, and with some luck you can even get featured by the Kickstarter team!  Without a mention in their weekly newsletter I might not have made my goal, much less doubled it.

I managed to skate by with a terrible video, though I think that's actually not uncommon; Gameful did it too, among lots of other successful projects.  I think people can respect not having the resources to make a high-end video when you're begging for your development funds.


In Zarf's case, I think he had quite a following to begin with (the IF community) hence his especially wild success.

[george]

...and he broke $24,000 today!

[ink.inc]

When I saw the thread title, I thought that Kickstarter HQ literally blew up.



But this is cool too, I guess.

[bento_smile]

...and he broke $24,000 today!

Oh wow, that's awesome! 

[superflat]

Oh that's great!

I just played his game, Shade, the other day after watching Get Lamp.  And it genuinely inspired me...

[PKBT]

Dang, that's pretty impressive.
I have yet to see any of his works, so I might as well do that right now.

[HyperEXTurbo]

oh wow, maybe i'll use kickstarter when I can make a good demo of my game

[george]

Just wanted to share:

714
BACKERS
$31,337 
PLEDGED OF $8,000 GOAL
0
SECONDS TO GO

[Hima]

I've always liked Interactive Fiction. Now I'll go and try all of his previous work 

Too bad Kick Starter is for U.S. residents only

[Melly]

Aw, are you kidding me? You have to be a US resident?

Shit, there goes my latest plans.

Are they thinking of broadening their operations or are they gonna stick to the US?

[tsameti]

Zarf was on a pretty awesome panel discussion at PAX East this past year. He's got a hell of a lot of passion for what he does, and he's been at it for the years it takes to deliver a quality product.

The funny thing was that part of the panel talk was dedicated to how embarrassingly unhealthy it is to go into business doing interactive fiction. Although, heh, that's probably still true. 31 grand investment for a man with near on a decade experience?

Wish you the best of luck man. Make it happen.

[Oddball]

Are they thinking of broadening their operations or are they gonna stick to the US?

They are waiting for Amazon to start allowing international bank transfers, which as far as I'm aware they have no plans to do. I don't see why they don't switch to another company that already deals in international eServices. With Kickstarters popularity they'd have no trouble getting PayPal, or whoever, to match Amazon's terms.

[Dragonmaw]

Are they thinking of broadening their operations or are they gonna stick to the US?

They are waiting for Amazon to start allowing international bank transfers, which as far as I'm aware they have no plans to do. I don't see why they don't switch to another company that already deals in international eServices. With Kickstarters popularity they'd have no trouble getting PayPal, or whoever, to match Amazon's terms.

The problem with PayPal is that they are liable to freeze the funds. See Notch and his debacle with them over Minecraft, or when they shut down the Goon-related donation efforts to Hurricane Katrina.