About bloggers:Pixel Prospector's
Video Game Journaliser is a place to start. There are many sites out there that don't make the list because they just started. There is also searching out where similar games were covered. The press kits for those games sometimes feature where they were covered.
Lists of contact information for video game bloggers do occasionally appear, but the problem is maintaining them. They become useless very quickly. The large sites also churn through freelancers.
The 8 minutes per e-mail average includes the research and writing process. Find a relevant site to cover you, identify a blogger there who has similar tastes, find contact information, modify template email, re-read over e-mail to improve and spellcheck, re-read e-mail again out of nervousness and then click send.
Ideally every e-mail would be custom, but in reality some are going to start become e-mail blasts (with hopefully some mail merge automation happening to swap names). The sites you are most likely to get covered by get customized emails. The largest news sites also get customized emails. Lower priority sites get less and less customization.
A way to reduce the time per e-mail during the campaign is maintaining a spreadsheet about who to contact, why and what their interests are. As you casually read gaming articles, you can make note of bloggers who might like your game and details like a similar game is one of their favourites.
Finding bloggers takes time. The harder part is providing them with "fuel". Sometimes a game gets covered because it produces a great headline that will get clicks. Sometimes a game gets covered because it allows for exploration of some topic about video game culture as a whole. Sometimes it is an underdog story or an amazing mechanic. The problem with many 2D Atari-2600-pixel-art platformers was that most of what could be said about them had already been said in previous articles.
About Thanksgiving:Monday, October 10th is Thanksgiving in Canada. I may be unable to track campaigns on October 11th as a result of travel.
About appealing to anime fans:I have 2 notes.
It is possible to have references like the Tsunderplane and Tsundere Cactus in Undertale. There are various types of character descriptions in manga such as dandere, deredere, kuudere and yandere. There is a chart on Imgur.
http://imgur.com/gallery/yCJO1zxSuper Toaster X does kind of fit with the Time Bokan/Yatterman type of classic adventure-comedy from Japan. There are robots shaped live everyday items or animals. Yatterman even had a robot character Omotchama shaped like a box. These shows didn't really gain much real traction in North America's fandom until recently with stuff like Yatterman Night. I remember many people where I live didn't know who many of the non-Capcom characters were when the fighting game Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars came out for Wii. A female Doronjo-type himedere-type character could be added to the game.
About the project preview:The project thumbnail image will be 218 pixels by 122 pixels in the project discovery area. It is important to check how legible it is at that size. Other factors are the pitch video play button appears in the middle and the staff pick heart appears in the bottom left.
The television newscast at 8 seconds into the pitch could be zoomed in more. You can ask yourself if the bunny-ears antennae needs to be visible. Instead of black un-used areas, consider using a backdrop of that dark blue like at 47 seconds in.
From what I'm seeing the text can flow better. Here is a current paragraph:
"The language is learned by powering up the hero's offensive and defensive abilities by accurately using Japanese vocabulary cards. Using the right abilities at the right time involves thought and strategy as well."
Below is a version that reads smoother to me:
"Learn by powering up your hero's offensive and defensive abilities by accurately using Japanese vocabulary cards. Using the right abilities at the right time involves thought and strategy."
Conveying the core gameplay loop will be important for a game like this. There is the option to take a screenshot of a battle and add information to it like arrows pointing and describing parts of the HUD. This is where I'm most concerned about the project right now. It has been a concern for awhile. If the gameplay looks impenetrable or confusing, then potential backers will simply move onto the next project. The objective is to quickly and clearly convey what the game is. For a very unique game it requires more hand-holding. Think of it as similar to a tutorial.
At 13 seconds into the pitch is the dojo. At 17 seconds in is exploring the dungeon. I wonder if the video works better with the dungeon exploring scene appearing where the dojo scene currently is. It is a much more visually impressive scene. I do see the "Practice before the dungeon" textbox in the dojo clip. If moved it could be something like "Practice between dungeons." If pressed for time, it might not be worth changing it now.
$12,000 CAD would need to aim for around 480 backers to reach 100% funded. For a $10 anchor tier (offers the game) it could be 375 to 700 backers to reach 100%.
A short-term goal would be to raise $1,800 (15%) before the first weekend the campaign encounters. Another short-term goal would be to raise $3,600 (30%) before halfway. Ideally the campaign would achieve at least 56 to 102 backers at launch to have enough momentum for the Kickstarter trough period.
Achieving 650 backers at launch would have a strong chance of keeping the campaign from falling out of the top 20 rankings this October. For comparison, back in summer that number would be 240 backers. That should provide a sense of how different the level of competition is since then. Super Toaster X would need at least 41 backers in its first 48 hours to not fall below the current 20th spot on day 3. There is the risk that the level of difficulty will increase, but I expect it to become easier in November.
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