11 days remaining until August 1st. There may be even less time to prepare the project page if e-mails to press are sent including a preview link before launch.
About Kickstarter itself:The waves of low-effort July campaigns really started after August 15th. Sometimes there are days in good months where every new project has a pitch video. Then there are days when seeing project without pitch videos or any graphics on the project page body become common.
System Shock ends in 7 days. Prey for the Gods ends in 15 days. Wizard of Legends ends in 15 hours. Learn Japanese To Survive! has 25 days to go. Those are the top 4 in popularity for the category. Ikenfell, Fictorum, Buck, Xydonia, Best Buds and Mongrel are ended this upcoming week.
A bunch of dead campaigns that had launched during E3 week and immediately stalled have now cleared out of the category.
Jim Sterling made a video for Pigsodus which may have saved its campaign with that boost. Kologeon had a Jim Sterling video back in June revive that campaign.
http://i.imgur.com/KowC3jG.pngKickstarter has recently added some new "Superbacker" thing next to some frequent backers' names in comments sections. I'm also seeing a "+ curate" button on my screen that has a function I'm not familiar with. Maybe Kickstarter does a thing like Steam curators in the future. There is already the
pages system for organizations. An example is the
Internation Game Developers Association has a page on Kickstarter. 2016 has had lots of tweaking done to Kickstarter itself.
There are 155 live video game projects on Kickstarter. It can often be over 200. The category feels slower right now except for the activities of System Shock and Prey for the Gods.
About project page preview:The project page graphics seem to progress first, then the progress with the text lags behind. The animated pixel art is one of the strengths to leverage, but it can be easy to get distracted producing lots of little animations. There isn't much non-placeholder text available to critique. It often takes many iterations to polish up text.
"KSP" could be expanded to "Kerbal Space Program" for those that aren't familiar with the game.
At the moment a pitch video hasn't been uploaded. There is the standard advice of don't waste the precious first 30 seconds and try to show gameplay very early in the video. If a game isn't from a famous developer then many visitors can give up on a pitch video if it is taking too long to show them what they want to see. Videos starting with 2 minutes of a developer talking to a camera can be a chore.
Animated GIFs of gameplay are often an easy way to split up paragraphs and decorate the project page after other elements are in place. A screenshot can convey tons of information very quickly, but an animated GIF of gameplay can convey even more.
Be careful of not wasting too much vertical whitespace with the final version of some of the graphics. It takes more effort to scroll down the taller the page is.
The description is currently "RPG Game based on Super Mario RPG mechanics to learn Japanese vocabulary and kanas (hiragana and katakana)." A more streamlined version would be "Use Super Mario RPG mechanics to learn Japanese vocabulary and read kanas." If someone didn't know what "hiragana" and "katakana" are, then that person likely wouldn't know was "kanas" are. Another direction would be to remove "kanas" to have "hirigana and katakana".
There is an extra space in front of "No good deeds goes unpunished!". You could remove that space or keep it there. What's important is to keep it consistent after deciding. Right now some paragraphs are starting with that small indent while other paragraphs don't.
A demo is a strong advantage over many of the other campaigns right now that are just concept art. The project thumbnail, description or near the very top of the main body of the project page are candidates for spots to tell visitors there is a demo available. A badge or banner on the project thumbnail stating there is a demo would probably work best in this case.
The first 50 characters in the project title influence the project URL. It is possible to change the title after launch. What this means is many campaigns launch with a simpler title to produce a simpler URL and then edit the title to be longer. The project creator account can use the vanity URL option to influence the part of the URL after "projects". If you don't use the vanity URL you get assigned a bunch of numbers instead. If you do use the vanity URL be very careful of spelling because there is no second chance to edit it.
Project thumbnail images are generally huge potential time-sinks due to constant reworking and significant differences in opinion. Kickstarter changed the dimensions of project thumbnails in 2016, so Super Toaster X has those black bars on either side as a result. Remember one of the important things about a project thumbnail is that text is readable at the reduced zoomed-out size. The bottom left corner needs to have room for the heart icon to appear if the game gets staff picked.
About project page's key information:One of the most important pieces of information is the supported platforms. For gamers on Windows they usually have no worries. For Linux and Mac gamers they sometimes need to hunt for answers. The most common places to present that information are the project thumbnail, the project title and/or the project description because that way the information can be seen while in the project discovery area.
DRM-free and how the game will be digitally distributed are important issues to many frequent backers. The FAQ section may have to clarify stances.
The game engine may need to be clarified. Demo footage showed the Unity3D splash screen. GameMaker is mentioned in the history. RPGMaker was used for Slimongo.
Another important piece is the core concept of the game. For some projects this is very simple. SUPERHOT's "Time only moves when you move" accompanied by an animated GIF of its firefights was enough to immediately convey the concept. Doing a good job usually means the player will be able to imagine playing the game. For a complicated premise the objective could be to have them be able to see how they will benefit (learn some Japanese) from playing the game.
Episodic games need to be careful when they are explaining their scope. There is the risk that story arcs never get completed if an episode financially fails. Sometimes people want to know how many episodes are planned or want an option to pledge to a reward tier to receive all future episodes too. Episodic game projects can also have complicated decisions about what stretch goals should be. There is the argument of more features versus securing funding for more episodes.
The order that the audience encounters information is also important. Some information most people won't care about. Other pieces are critical and should be served as soon as possible. The music and art sections may take priority over the section about the team. A link to Slimongo: Rise of the Slombies may need more presence. That past game could be more of an asset than you realize.
About preview of the rewards:The rewards fit together into a simple
rewards sequence or a more complicated branching
reward structure. Most of the major work for the reward tiers doesn't get tweaked just before launch, but there are often minor tweaks that happen all the way up to the few hours before launching.
There are 9 tiers. 4 of them are priced below $30 where you should expect most of your backers to reside. Overall it is a rather plain looking set of tiers. There are many campaigns both successful, and not, with plain tiers. Some campaigns have a few interesting tiers. Some campaigns have amazing tiers that grab attention. Great rewards often depend on what opportunities a game can present.
A $1 tier can be very powerful for assisting a project's popularity ranking because the number of backers is a more important metric than the amount pledged. If the reverse was true Kickstarter's rankings would be very exploitable because people could just pledge large amounts and reduce the size of their pledges before the deadline (which is something that still happens). In the slow
Kickstarter trough period after a campaign's first week a $1 backer can be as important as a $10 backer for keeping the campaign going. However, there are strong and weak versions of a $1 tier. A $1 tier that offers some sort of value (while having virtually no cost to the project creator) can be far more effective than a $1 tier that is just a thank you. It could be a single mp3 file download, a desktop wallpaper or at the extreme end even to be included in the game's credits.
There needs to be a reason for self-interested gamers to support the campaign now instead of waiting for the game to release. One of the most effective options besides a discount is to include backers in the game's credits. Moving the credits mention from the $25 tier to the $10 tier could be far more effective at attracting backers.
At $10 there isn't much room to do a discounted early-bird tier. There are scenarios where an early-bird tier can be harmful. They can really help with initial traction, but they sacrifice efficiency at accumulating funds and some campaigns don't survive the transition for early-birds to normal pricing. An early-bird for the $15 tier could be an option, such as a $10 to $14 priced tier for early-access.
A physical copy of the game may not have enough margin at $50. Shipping for Canadians can get expensive. Even an extra amount added onto the pledge to cover shipping risks not being enough. Rates can go up and currencies can devalue. The Americans below the border have it so much easier in this regards.
Physical copies of a game can be a very popularly picked reward tier, but a problem that haunts physical copies is having to wait until after the release of version 1.0 and a few patches so that the physical copy is a stable version. Having to wait until a stable version can create significant delays. The alternative of sending a beta version can be problematic due to sometimes game-breaking bugs. Collectors will usually want the game shrink wrapped if they are thinking about future resale. There is also managing backers expectations by explaining what form the physical release will be. Some people expecting cardboard boxed games in CD cases ended up getting simple DVD cases. Some disliked receiving a flashdrive in a box instead of a disc (flash memory has long-term storage issues). To avoid extra VAT in Europe some flash drives may even be sent empty/unformatted. Some backers may be expecting a paper manual. Some may expect one of the classic PC gaming box sizes. Different disc duplication services can also have different levels of quality control.
The highest priced tier is $200. When there isn't a tier that contain a large pledge like $1,000 then that creates a disincentive for such a large pledge to be made. For even a small project I'd often suggest a rewards structure that spans to $2,000 or $5,000 because those pledges can happen. The big problem to avoid is stretching out the reward tier pacing trying to climb to a specific large price point. That stretch makes upgrading from one tier to another less appealing or appear more stingy. It is more important that the lower tiers function well at up-selling. That is where most of the activity will be. It is also easier to later add large reward tiers after launch.
From experience the planning of $50 to $100 range continues to be a difficult range to fill. On many campaigns its became trouble. Rushing from $50 to $100 skips a sometimes great performing region around $80. The $50 to $100 range often ends up personalized for each game to have rewards that don't work for many other games like naming an NPC or having a special icon next to any guild a backer creates. I don't have a close enough understand of what the current design of the game is like.
A mistake in the past was some campaigns wasted lots of time remaking and redoing the art for reward tier graphs, matrices or explanation section. The artist would keep having to redo and redo the graphics. If text placeholders had been used the artist could have waited until close to the launch date to finalize the graphics showing the reward tiers.
Community
