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[marcgfx]

Why would he want to revolt against his master though (dough)?

you gave the answer yourself: why would anyone want a master.
as soon as he is separated, the development/experience changes, views change. maybe you should not even start with "seemingly loyal". the experiment could just fail.

but then there is also an issue with the slice of bread. for pan to become bread he needs to be baked. maybe that could be the view-changing experience? he gets baked (now we are in stoner territory). so he could start out as loyal dough, gets baked and becomes the rebellious pan who no longer wants to obey a collective. he even likes to get toasted...

[Zizka]

you gave the answer yourself: why would anyone want a master.

Well, the way I see it, Pan was created as a servant to The Dough. He doesn't know any better, that's what he was created for. It's sort of the same thing as in Cybersix:

The heroine of the series is the eponymous character, Cybersix (more properly Cyber-6), a leather-clad, genetically-engineered superhero who by day masquerades as a male high school literature teacher, and by night battles the monstrous biological weapons of her creator.

Besides, we're all servants to someone else  , but I digress.

as soon as he is separated, the development/experience changes, views change. maybe you should not even start with "seemingly loyal". the experiment could just fail.

I like the idea of a failed experiment, it's very plot convenient. 

So, The Dough wants something more advanced than his robots and decides to create a clone of himself by using some of his body. The experiment goes awry (the machine to create Pan is the toaster) and following a massive electric storm/explosion, Pan acquires control of both the toaster and gains freewill.

I think that's pretty good really. I wish I could find a good reason for him to revolt and refuse to obey (so that he can be put into a cage in the first place which would lead to the tutorial level). I could use: "I don't want any master" but it's sort of weak, I mean, it lacks punch. I mean, it's not really compelling.

In Batman Begins, Bruce is told to execute a prisoner of the League of Shadows. By this simple action, he becomes an antagonist and also displays his good nature. I'd like something similar with Pan.

I was trying to think of an order he could disobey. It's difficult because I haven't figured out an agenda for The Dough either (which I think is necessary). I mean, The Dough should have some sort of purpose, an objective. It sort of falls flat if it just stays home and just do nothing at all.

Almost there though, almost there. Just those couple of details and I'll be pretty much set.

[Zizka]

Hello, hello, hello.

3 weeks into development already, how time flies. And yet, so much has happened during those three weeks. I went from being alone with a simple concept to being a team of three. I feel like the game progressed tremendously in such a short time. I mean, in less than a month really.

I’m also very grateful for the people working with me. It’s always dodgy with the internet, you never know who you’re going to meet. Well, the people I’ve met have been great so far. They’re involved in the project and are real professionals in their area of expertise. I’m always careful when saying things like those because it’s usually right after that some big disappointment happens but! Here’s to hoping things will keep going well.

Today’s blog will be entirely about the kickstarter. So if it’s not an aspect of indie game developing which interests you, you should wait for the next devlog to have news about the game .

KICK STARTER:
I would say almost all of my time is going into preparing the KS at the moment. I pester people with questions (sorry oldblood!) and just generally study other campaigns, make my own statistics and try to infer some conclusions about my findings.

I.Income Tax 1,711$ (26%):
The first thing I did was to check on the taxation of the crowdunding. In order to determine how much would be taxed, I had to take into account my income.

I would say I make roughly 20,000$CAN a year (yes, I’m a starving artist). Normally I would pay this x in income. If the KS of 6,500$ succeeds however, it would increase my income to 26,650$, which means I would pay more income.

If I look at the taxation income rate of my country, I get the following:


A. is the amount of I would pay in income tax without the crowdfunding.

B. is the amount I would pay in income tax with the crowdfunding.

By subtracting B. from A. I can find how I much I will pay for the crowdfunding:
1,711$.

1 711$ represents 26% of the 6500$ I'm going for.

II. Licenses 60$ (1%):
The only license I think I need at the moment is the Game Maker Studio license. I used to think it was supposed to be 499$ but I mistakenly thought this was from a recent source. From what I understand the license is now 799$! 

Now, there are many versions of Game Maker: Studio. So there's also Game Maker Professional which is usually 99$ plus taxes but is 49,99$ at the moment. The difference between the two versions is that the latest can only export to Windows and Mac OS.

As of right now, I think the Pro version will do, as I can always buy more modules later if I have to.

So 49,99 + vat = about 60$. 1% of the total sum.

III. Kickstarter and Amazon share 650$ (10%):
5% for Kickstarter and 5% for Amazon. This means 10% in total is spent here. This means 650$.

Administrative Fees Subtotal: 2,421$ (37%).
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

IV. Composer share 800$ (12%):
800$ goes for the composition of the music.

V. Programmer share 800$ (12%):

800$ also goes for programming.

VI. Rewards 700$ (11%)
This, is by far the most difficult variable to take into consideration. It's really hard to tell how much you'll need to spend on rewards as you don't know who will pledge for what. I figured 700$ would cover it (I was thinking 500$ at first, then decided to play it safe with 700$).

I tried finding a general % for rewards out of your total on the internet but could find nothing.

Sub-total #2: Programmer, composer, rewards: 2,300$ (35%)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

VII: art and other fees/expenses 1,779$

This is the my budget for creating art. It's also my "cushion" which will be used for any other unforseen expenses (which are bound to happen), i.e.: if we blow the reward budget for example.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To sum things up:


_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rewards:

[Digital]

10$ (8$ USD): Digital copy of the game when it's finished.
I based this off what I saw in other KS campaigns. This is a first draft so I wouldn't mind changing this about.

15$ (12$ USD): Digital copy of the game and alpha access to the game.
This is a suggestion I got a lot from other people. Is 5$ enough to justify the 5$ increase? Who knows.

20$ (16$ USD):
*Digital copy of the game
*Alpha Access
*Digital soundtrack
*Instruction Manual (pdf)

This is, according to KS, the average amount backers will go for. I noticed, by examining other campaigns, that there's a huge difference between the 20 and 25 dollars gap (major drop in backers). So I think it would be wiser to remain under the 25$ while making the rewards as interesting as possible. If this turns out to be the most successful tier, I thought it would be better not to include any physical rewards there so that I don't end up with very high shipping fees.

[Physical]
40$ (32 USD):
*Digital copy of the game
*Alpha Access
*Digital soundtrack
*Instruction Manual (pdf)
*Postcard with original sketch

Admitedly not the most attractive reward. This is just a testing balloon. I want to provide many different tiers so for some of them ideas don't come up as easily.

70$ (56$ USD):
*Digital copy of the game
*Alpha Access
*Digital soundtrack
*Instruction Manual (pdf)
*Postcard with original sketch
*A pixel portrait where the face is put instead of Pan's face. This is put in a frame too and sent.
I think this has quite a bit of potential. The difference between this tier and the previous increment is quite high but it involves a lot of time pixeling the face. It also involves fees like color printing and buying the frames.

100$ (80$ USD):
*Digital copy of the game
*Alpha Access
*Digital soundtrack
*Instruction Manual (pdf)
*Postcard with original sketch
*A 3d model of Pan (printed with a 3d printer)

I like the idea of sending something 3d. It was Sahand's idea. I'm not sure whether or not I should add the pixel portrait as well in the package though. Maybe some people will want both.

200$ (163$USD)
*Digital copy of the game
*Alpha Access
*Digital soundtrack
*Instruction Manual (pdf)
*Postcard with original sketch
*A 3d model of Pan (printed with a 3d printer)
*Digital portrait in frame
*Portrait of the backer in game

I was wondering what kind of present would be appropriate to have someone's portrait in the game. Shovel Knight asked for 200$ so that's what I did as well.

300$ (242$USD)
*Digital copy of the game
*Alpha Access
*Digital soundtrack
*Instruction Manual (pdf)
*Postcard with original sketch
*A 3d model of Pan (printed with a 3d printer)
*Digital portrait in frame
*Portrait of the backer in game
*Design an NPC or mini-boss in the game


That's the highest tier I've thought of so far. Shovel Knight had 31 backers for 300$ and over (2%) for a total of 16,500$ which represented 5% of the total amount.

Moonman stopped at the 1,000$ tier, which I find wise.

Steel Assault stop at 599$. They're also doing super well with 3,013$ out of 8,000$ after 8 days only (37%!)

Stretch Goals:

I thought I would need to detail and describe this right off the bat. Moonman[/i] doesn't mention them right away and it's also not mentioned for Steel Assault[/i]. I guess it's safe to say it's not necessary when starting out. I'll still plan them ahead of time though.

Aaaaaaannnnd that's it! A lot of reading for sure. Probably's going to be the least popular log but I really had to sort things out in my head and on paper and I wanted to share this here too because it's part of indie game development although certainly not the most interesting aspect for everyone.

Next time I talk about Kickstarter, I'll talk about getting the word out there about your game. I don't mean to say that I'll explain what you should do but what I found out about it.

P.S.: I've downloaded a documentary about KS (it's a .pdf) available here:
https://cinemadocumentaire.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ssrn-id2088298.pdf

and

http://scraftuk.served.assets.s3.amazonaws.com/Sponsorcraft-handbook.pdf

[Canned Turkey]

This planning is so in-depth, I think the only unknown is how much you'll raise.

If you ever stop making games, you should become an accountant.

[LStro]

It's crazy how you've proceeded through development and planning so quickly on this project. I'm very interested in seeing how this all plays out! Will follow this for sure.

[Zizka]

@CannedTurkey:
Haha, thanks  . Well, I’d rather design games for the moment . I want to make sure I give this my 110% so if it fails, I can’t blame myself for not doing everything I could have.

@Lstro:
Yeah, I guess things did move quickly didn’t they. I do spend 4 to 8 hours every day working on STG so I guess that has to pay off eventually. I'm happy you find the project interesting anyway. Those little messages are always nice to read and a boost to the whole team's motivation.

In my previous log I talked about certain documents I was going to read in regards to Kickstarter campaigns.

So I read both document carefully and took some notes as what appeared to me the most important aspect.

A. Importance of Social Network:
This is a bit of a problematic for me as I don’t have many facebook friends (or friends in general) and very seldom browse facebook…

Conclusion: Make friends and build a network.

B. Stretch goals:
25% of projects are 3% over their goal. If we’re part of those 3%, we’d be getting 325$ than our goal which is pretty much nothing. So we have a chance out of 4 to get that 3%... This is important to know so I was sort of counting on stretch goals to go far beyond 6500$. The again 6500$ is fairly low so I guess there’s a good chance we could go beyond the total by quite a fair bit.

50% get 10% over their goal. In our case, this would imply 650$ more… it’s not bad but not something we could really reinvest to really improve the game.

11% reach 200%. Now that’d be awesome!

Realistically speaking, I think the safest bet is to be part of the 50%...

Conclusion: expect 10% more funding at most.

C. Self-funding:
Another strategy is essentially to ask for more and to self-fund whatever gap remains at the end of the KickStarter.
There’s a 10,000$ limit to single donation but this restriction is irrelevant here because our goal is less than 10k.
I really don’t have any money to self-fund however. Maybe if there’s a few hundred bucks missing but that’s it really.

Conclusion: don’t rely on self-funding.

D. The Matthew Effect:

From what I understand it’s all about achieving what is considered a “high quality” project. Such projects attract backers who in turn attracts more backers and talk about the game in other media.

So I have to make sure STG has reached this high quality level before launching the KickStarter.

Conclusion: reach that high quality standard (whatever it might be).

E. Being Featured

According to the study I’ve read, being featured is strongly associated with success. All the more reason to base the ks presentation on Moonman’s KS (they got featured). So I think this is a very good reference for all potential KSers out there.

To give an idea: an unfeatured project has a 30% chance of success… a featured project… 89%! So yeah, it’s all about being featured.

Conclusion: Get featured, .

F. Duration
KS of 30 days have a 35% chance of success while 60 days projects have a 29% change of success.
Conclusion: go for a 30 days campaign.

G. Predictors of success:
Kickstarter finds that projects that reach 30% of their target have a 90% chance of success.
Conclusion: 30% of 6500$ is 1950$. If we reach that, we’ll most likely reach our goal. The first stretch is getting that 30%.


H. Dry month:
Things always get slow in the middle.

Conclusion: Don’t panic if things slow down in the middle.

I. The majority of the funds arrive at the end of a KS.

Conclusion: Don’t panic if things slow down in the middle.

J. The importance of Facebook:
A project creator with 1,000 facebook friends is twice as likely as a project creator with 100 friends.

Conclusion: This is problematic. I don’t like having people I don’t really know as facebook friends. My brother probably has thousands of friends though, maybe he could promote the KS on his facebook. I’ll have to check with him.
I hope I could just create a facebook page for Super Toaster Guy… maybe I’d have people standing in line to become my facebook friends. Gah, I really need to get with the program and become social media savvy.

They say I need to create a relationship with the audience before asking for money. I don’t mind that though. I always reply to messages. This is very important to me quite simply because it’s the polite thing to do. I’m always surprised when creators ignore questions or comments, I think it’s pretty rude.

H. Soft Launching:

Conclusion: Soft launch: tell people one month ahead before the launch. This, apparently, will have a positive effect on the outcome.


I. The final date:

Conclusion: set a deadline at the end of a Sunday. Donations are often given during the weekend when donors have more time.

J. Humor and video

Conclusion: I think I’m pretty funny so I could something funny for the video. Well, it’d need to fit with the preview of course.


K. video length

Conclusion: Keep video between one and two minutes. Two minutes max.

L. Explain yourself

Conclusion: Say who I am, what I’m doing and why. I don’t think this was in either Shovel Knight or Moonman though…

M. Rewards

Conclusion: Keep cool rewards under 50$.

N. Promotion:
The articles I read said to promote locally… I don’t know. I live in a very small city way up North. Maybe I could contact my university… They offer a program in making video games. Contact the mayor? Ask him to encourage local artists?

O. Twitter

Conclusion: I’m reading conflicting reports about twitter… the actual of impact of twitter doesn’t seem to be that great.

P. Contact the press:

Conclusion: It’s worth a shot, I have nothing to lose really. The advantage of living in a small town is that I’m probably the only one launching a KS in the whole town so it might make the news.


Q. Companies and donations…

I’m not sure how that would work really. Which company would want to donate to my game I wonder? In exchange for what? Surely not a pixel portrait or something like that.

R. Updates

Conclusion: It said to update often… not sure how often that would mean. Once every two days seems a good idea to me. I’m going to prepare so much stuff ahead of time.


____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So that’s about it. I didn’t want to post this in a new log as I find two logs in a row about kickstarter wouldn’t be maybe that interesting. I hope this was informative for the rest of you guys as well as other indie developers who are currently considering a KS.

In the next log we’ll go back to talking about what interests most: the game!

[Zizka]

I thought long and hard about what devlog 22 should be about. I actually have one draft of 5 pages written but it was mostly about taxes and quite frankly, it wasn’t interesting (I was boring myself writing it). I decided to pursue my taxes investigations at a specialized website about finances *fanfare*.

I’m waiting for some more programming and music news to go more in-depth about the game but it’s been two days since the last log so I thought I would write a little something (being on page 4 = disappearing in oblivion).

So I’m mostly going to write about the devlog itself and some inspiration behind the art of the game as well as show an in game mini-boss.

So some quick news about the game:

Music with Trev

:
So Trevor has finished setting up his studio. He has started working on the SFX for the game. The next thing on his list will be Toilet Guy’s stage score. There would be little point in sharing the SFX on their own so I’ll wait until they’re integrated in the game.

Programming with Sahand

:
Sahand is busy coding the water physics. From what I understand is very complex (and stressful)! This, of course, is for the Toilet Guy stage which, as you know, takes place in a bathroom. Considering how much effort he’s putting into it, water will certainly be taking a more important part in the game’s levels than I had envisioned in the first place.

Art with me(I haven't even done a logo for me just yet  ):
As you’ve seen from my messages, I’ve been mostly busy looking into the KS and taxes and just about everything related to it. That and advertisement.

Now that I have a better idea how both work, I’ve gone back to drawing. Not much to show this time around, I’ve got a few things started but nothing polished enough to show at the moment.

Deo Devil (original concept idea by Nev):

I originally designed this one to be a regular enemy. It then dawned on me that it was pretty big compared to Pan so I decided to turn it into a mini-boss.

He’ll have two attacks: spraying a poisonous cloud and swinging his arms around (they extend like razors in SF II).

(there's an outline missing around of his foot at some point, this'll be fixed).

The next blog is mostly going to be about concept art. Shovel Knight was clever to rehash their concept sketches in their rewards. Pro games do that too, providing concept art as rewards (although I find it’s pretty lame as a reward so I’ve decided not to include that in the game).

This is a nice change (change, the ultimate remedy to routine) to pushing pixels around and a good opportunity to practice old fashioned pencil drawing.

Stats, stats and stats and devlogs
You’ve probably guessed it by now but I like stats. I find numbers have a lot to say if you listen to them as they often represent what people do as opposed to what they say they do.

So, is the game getting more popular?

Number of days STG is active: 25, three weeks and four days

Devlog Views per day (average): 147.
It’s actually lower than this now. Games always have a view boost at their very first message which somewhat boosts the average a bit. I think it’s more like 130 in reality.

Total of devlogs:: 22
I started with daily devlogs (sometimes twice a day). I found this too time consuming however so I’m now more like a devlog every two days. There’s really no point in doing too many of those anyway. I try to update the game with a log when it’s down to page 3. Once you’re on page 4, people don’t really bother going all that way back to read there so it’s a good time to update things before then. It takes about three days at most on average (depending how active the other logs are) to get bumped to page 4 anyway.

Behind the scenes:
This is a new section I’d like to have where members of the team will share a bit of info about themselves related to the game. I’ll always keep it at the very end of the log so people not interested in that kind of stuff can just skip it. I’ll provide them as they come about, so there’s a good chance it’ll more often than not be about me. One thinking of one “behind the scene” topic in each log.

What influenced you most for the graphics?
Jamie Hewlett. That’s the guy who drew the concept of the characters behind the band “Gorillaz”. He’s also the author of “Tank Girl”.

Wonderful.

I find his drawings just explode with personality. He’s created a style to call his own.

Another inspiration, is, of course, Earthworm Jim (according to Wikipedia, sketched by Doug TenNapel in the first place). I actually didn’t think it was a very fun game. The graphics saved that game because at core it was pretty average (to me, it was highly rated all over the place). But the graphics, oh my!  Just look at the cover of the game.



So that’s what I was inspired by. These two things, mostly.

The idle animation for Pan is actually inspired by Jim’s own (from what I can recall, I didn’t check). I remember him looking from side to side and thought it was just the coolest idle animation I had seen at the time for the SNES.


(I'm wrong, he does nothing of the sort).

Apparently, Jim could also leave his suit, this is a coincidence however, I didn’t know he could (I didn’t actually get that far into the game). Same thing for the grapple, I read on Wikipedia that Jim could grab on stuff with his whip. Another coincidence. The grapple system in STG is very different however (and I dare to think, more fun).

I guess another similarity is that they both can shoot and use a part of their body as a weapon. I had actually planned to have an electro-sword as a melee weapon (the blade would extend like a high voltage Star Wars saber) but Greg (who commented before on the log) said he didn’t think it really fit the setting. At first I was reluctant to ditch the idea but the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with him. Swords are pretty cliché as a melee weapon (even if I thought the idea of a sword made of electricity was pretty damn cool). Maybe I’ll still include the sword as an extra ability, we’ll see.

As for the game itself, one fun aspect was that it offered variety. It had its pros and cons (some level types were really a bore to me) but at least it didn’t get too repetitive.

“Behind the scene” is sort of voluntary so it’s not something I’ll force on other team members but if one of them volunteers to write a little something, I’ll make sure to share it here.

Annnnd that’s it!

[JobLeonard]

So I looked at this and thought "that's not how physics works, the toast would fall down as fast as the toaster!"

Then I thought about it some more, and realised, no, if it is the toaster that jumps, the toast's moment of inertia would cause it to push town on the spring inside the toaster, compressing it while the toaster accelerates upwards, then pushing the toast up outside of the toaster. So it is (more or less) physically correct! Although my gut feeling says the effect is exaggerated, and the timing slightly wrong.

More importantly: why on earth am I even having an inner debate about the correctness of physics involved when we're talking about an anthropomorphic toaster + piece of toast?!

Anyway, skimmed through the thread, love the whole thing!

[Canned Turkey]

why on earth am I even having an inner debate about the correctness of physics involved when we're talking about an anthropomorphic toaster + piece of toast?!

Suspension of disbelief.
For the sake of immersion, you don't care when something you don't expect to happen does, (anthropomorphic toaster)
but when something you are expecting doesn't happen, you notice. (laws of physics).

[LobsterSundew]

It's really hard to tell how much you'll need to spend on rewards as you don't know who will pledge for what.

This sentence caught my attention. There are ways to start to mitigate this problem. Backer behaviours can be observed from past campaigns and understanding those behaviours allows for rewards to be manipulated to better achieve goals. Spreadsheets can be used to estimate backer distribution and from that the expected costs as well. Part of what makes it possible is factoring out time and just focussing on what the project would look like at 100% funded. It is still requires a lot of work. What I keep seeing for video game campaigns is a positive skewed curve for backers peaked around the tier that introduces the pre-order for the game, another concentration in the $30 to $40 range that overlaps a bit with the curve from the pre-order tier and then another at $90 to $100. Because that first curve's peak depends on the price of the pre-order tier I've had to group campaigns by price to be able to look back at how well similar campaigns did. The future is not known, but potential futures can be anticipated and strategies formed.

If the originally expected percentages were going to be 50% of backers at the $10 tier and 20% at the $12 tier, an incentive to load more low-variable-cost reward content into the $12 tier is that it could shift backer preferences so it becomes 45% at the $10 tier and 25% at the $12 tier (Pushing the right tail of the curve out). This makes the campaign more efficient per backer at covering funding distances. A distance of $60 can be covered by 5 $12 backers or 6 $10 backers. Sometimes every bit of efficiency counts.


Here are some comments on the draft for the rewards. All prices below are in U.S. dollars because that is the currency my subconscious is more comfortable with on Kickstarter. That is a bit bizarre because I'm Canadian.

▪ $1 tier ▪ A $1 reward tier can be very effective when it actually offers something of value such as being named in the credits or in a list at the back of the PDF manual. A $1 backer boosts the popularity ranking as much as a $10 backer, which is why some projects get suspended for allegedly spamming $1 to increase the project's visibility.

▪  $8 tier ▪ The tier that introduces a copy of the game is one of the most important tiers to get right. It is where the first curve peaks. The price is low enough, but what there should be is an incentive for people to pledge now instead of waiting for it to go on sale. Humans often act in self-interest, so it is good to provide them opportunities that are in their self-interest. Being listed in the credits can be effective for some people. If a project creator wanted to price being named in the credits higher, there is the compromise for later reward tiers to have backers listed under more prestigious sections in the credits.

Immediately before the $8 tier is an opportunity for an early-bird reward tier, but the starting price is already low. Having an early-bird version of the immediately following tier may be the more effective choice at covering distance early in the campaign, but a good old discount on the game is sometimes very good at getting the number of backers up quickly.

▪  $16 tier ▪ Again and again it is shown in the graphs I see that a big portion of gamers are willing to pay for earlier access to play a game. It is close to $15 which is the price of some other indie games, so this game may be competitive that way. The tier also includes the soundtrack which is something I like. One of the hardest decisions can be if the soundtrack should be introduced before alpha/beta access or vice versa. Getting the order wrong can result in a barrier for some backers upgrading their pledges. Having the two introduced together is a compromise that can work.

▪  $32 tier ▪ I really like postcards as a rewards because they can be cheap to fulfil while they can be displayed as an art piece. I have a few postcards on my wall from backing Kickstarter campaigns. A 4x6 postcard fits a 4x6 photoframe. There is an issue with this tier.

I suggest strongly considering the option of postcards to be an add-on type reward or branching the rewards structure so there is a digital-only route through most of the rewards. It may actually result in increased sales of postcards to $8 tier backers or avoiding unnecessary costs of including postcards in the higher priced tiers to people who may not want postcards.

A jump from $16 to $32 is actually close to being a bit too big. The percentage of the increase is important to keep in mind. The human mind is a bit odd in that many people are swayed more by the percentage size of a discount than the actual dollar size of the discount. A study I'm recalling from one of my college texts about inventory pricing asked people if they would go to the other side of the street to buy a product at a discount. Some people were told about a $10 product that was $5 off, while others were told about a $20 product that was $5 off. People were much more enthusiastic about the $10 product even though both opportunities saved $5. It was how big a percentage chunk off the regular price the discount was. I need to eventually re-read that textbook to find that study again. It is one explanation for why early-birds for large priced reward tiers don't seem to do well. A similar thing has been noted with Steam sales how people can be more enthusiastic about the size of the percentage off sticker that Steam displays for a game. They might not pay attention to a $2 game that is 5% off ($1.90), but when it is 30% off ($1.40) it finally catches their interest as worth looking at. A developer on The Banner Saga mentioned in an interview how iOS users can buy expensive coffee with little thought, but then treat the purchase of a inexpensive game as a serious financial decision.

From the $8 tier onward I recommend the price should never double between rewards tiers until the rewards start to be priced over $100. In reality it should sometimes be much less than doubling in the lowest priced tiers to try to get more backers shifting their pledges up. Multiple reasons to upgrade to the next tier can also help pull backers from the lower priced tiers up into the medium priced tiers.


Here are some comments on the conclusions post.

"Make friends and build a network."
It is often repeated in the game development forums that building a following is important. Whatever the minimum goal amount, it is good to aim to get at least 15% funded in the first week. Ideally a campaign would exceed 30% or more in its first week. This is so the campaign has enough momentum to endure the Kickstarter trough effect because some momentum is shed during that period. One strategy is to postpone launching a campaign until a game has enough of a following that reaching 15% is almost guaranteed, but for some developers this strategy takes to long.

"Expect 10% more funding at most."
Projects often fall into the categories of failing by a large margin, just barely surpass 100% (Because there was still a funding gap in the last 48 hours to fill) or get significantly over-funded (The popular ones that hog the top of the popularity rankings).

"The Matthew Effect"
The network effect can also be used to help understand how regular Kickstarter users will gravitate to popular campaigns because they are popular. There is also the problem that there are many Kickstarter users that will not pledge to a campaign that looks like it could fail.

"Get featured"
Getting to be a staff pick can be easy if there is an inspiring true story behind the project itself. Sometimes it is just luck.

"Go for a 30 days campaign"
30 days is the best length. There are strategies that warrant longer lengths, but that would be a giant write-up.

"Soft launching"
A good strategy. More time can be better. A week is not enough. I've seen project creators scramble to try to build followings in 48 hours what it took other developers months to build. The result is burn out.

"Keep video between one and two minutes. Two minutes max."
Many campaigns make the mistake of going on for too long with their pitch videos. It can be tiring to watch a 15 minute pitch video.

"Set a deadline at the end of a Sunday"
Sunday nights can result in a bigger final countdown haul. Sunday is my favourite day for ending a campaign, but only if a project meets a list of conditions. Part of it is a big write-up for how the work week for bloggers unfolds. It takes a week of preparation in advance of the Sunday to coordinate. It is very easy to mess up the execution for a deadline on Sunday. For a small project I think Mondays and Tuesdays are a safer recommendation. The decision partially depends on how risk adverse the project creator is.

"Say who I am, what I’m doing and why."
Very important information to have, but the easy mistake is to not realize the order the information needs to be presented in. The game itself must come first, then information like who is on the team. Threshold is how not to do this. Starting with developers talking into a camera when they aren't famous is now considered a strong turn-off on Kickstarter. Many potential backers now want to see gameplay immediately because there is more than one project they are taking a look at in that session of browsing the discover area.

"Keep cool rewards under $50."
The medium priced reward tiers below $100 are what can make or break a campaign. A campaign can go from needing 900 backers to poor rewards that will need 2,000 backers to reach the same funding goal.

"It said to update often… not sure how often that would mean. Once every two days seems a good idea to me. I’m going to prepare so much stuff ahead of time."
An acceptable number is one update at the end of the first day, followed by another update for that week and then weekly updates until the end where there is an update before the last 48 hours, then during the final countdown and then an update about the aftermath of the countdown. This is what I would describe as normal, but I don't want to discourage more updates than this. The concern is that I can see an update every 2 days burning out the project creator very fast. A general rule is that if there isn't something important going on, then don't have more than 1 update per day. The projects that spammed lots of little updates that are barely more than 2 sentences drove backers crazy and were quickly unsubbed. It is highly recommended to have some content prepared before launching so one does not have to do an all-nighter to get a promised update out in time. It can be as simple as sitting on some gameplay footage and animated GIFs until they are needed. Reducing the amount of time consumed going into project updates during the campaign can free up time that can be used instead for promotion or sleep.


I don't have a graph for Shovel Knight because I wasn't collecting daily tier data back then. Here are graphs for Moonman. I plan to make a new set of graphs for Steel Assault after midnight EST this Friday.

It also caught my eye that today Daydreamer has a "Gluten free" badge on its project thumbnail. There could be humour by using Pan's world to poke some fun at trends in health food like the trend for how gluten is now seen as a bad thing even by people without celiac disease.

[oldblood]

Some excellent feedback above.

[Zizka]

@JobLeonard:
I think your reaction is understandable. Even if something is fictional, you would still want it to jump properly. I acutally thought the toaster would fall faster because it's heavier/more denser than a slice of bread.

@Lobstersundew:

I should begin by saying that I contacted Lobstersundew via PM after reading one of his message in the Moonman thread. I was well impressed by in-depth, informative message about Kickstarter. I had been roaming about the forum and the internet to this type of analysis backed up with data (as opposed to impressions given at a whim).

So I told him I hoped he would share his expertise when the time came for my own KS campaign. A couple of days, I am rewarded with the best advice I've been given about running a KS! Honestly, you should consider being a KS consultant (as a side job). I'm sure some people would be more than willing to pay you a % of their KS for you to manage it.

So, my reaction to the actual message:

Part of what makes it possible is factoring out time and just focussing on what the project would look like at 100% funded.

Yup, totally agree and that's what I did.



In order to determine what other campaigns ended up spending in % in rewards, I'll need to look at the data which is available.

For Shovel Knight, interestingly, the way the funds would be invested are not mentioned on the Kickstarter page. It's not mentioned on their website either besides this quote:

We stopped any and all spending that wasn’t absolutely crucial to the game and the game’s Kickstarter. Having already budgeted out and frozen big amounts like Kickstarter reward costs, we were down to the day to day

I'm really surprised that wasn't mentioned anywhere.

I couldn't find this information for Moonman's campaign either.

I thought explaining how the money was invested was a given in KS campaigns.

Steel Assault provides a graph:
The cost for reward is unfortunately merged with other expenses so it's hard to say how much was planned for this. 



I'm going to go on a limb here but I would think that not mentioning how funds are invested is a drawback for backers. It would be for me to be honest.

Bandits and Bounties also doesn't mention how the funds would be spent, so there's no way to know how much was planned for rewards. From what I understand it's unfortunately not doing so well having funded 15% after 33% of the total campaign has passed. Hopefully things will pick up.

I guess the only sure way to know would be to ask people who successfully funded their game and ask what % they spend on rewards in the end. Otherwise, it will just be approximations.

If the originally expected percentages were going to be 50% of backers at the $10 tier and 20% at the $12 tier, an incentive to load more low-variable-cost reward content into the $12 tier is that it could shift backer preferences so it becomes 45% at the $10 tier and $25 at the $12 tier (Pushing the right tail of the curve out). This makes the campaign more efficient per backer at covering funding distances. A distance of $60 can be covered by 5 $12 backers or 6 $10 backers. Sometimes every bit of efficiency counts.

So what you're essentially saying is to aim for the 12$ backers by adding a bit more content as rewards instead of focusing on the 10$ "bare minimum" tier. Ok, I get it.

$1 tier ▪ A $1 reward tier can be very effective when it actually offers something of value such as being named in the credits or in a list at the back of the PDF manual. A $1 backer boosts the popularity ranking as much as a $10 backer, which is why some projects get suspended for allegedly spamming $1 to increase the project's visibility.

See, I never thought people would be willing to back a game for 1$. I thought people would essentially back up a game only if they could get the full game at release. I'll definitely add a 1$ reward.

▪  $8 tier ▪ The tier that introduces a copy of the game is one of the most important tiers to get right. It is where the first curve peaks. The price is low enough, but what there should be is an incentive for people to pledge now instead of waiting for it to go on sale. Humans often act in self-interest, so it is good to provide them opportunities that are in their self-interest. Being listed in the credits can be effective for some people. If a project creator wanted to price being named in the credits higher, there is the compromise for later reward tiers to have backers listed under more prestigious sections in the credits.

I could have the 1$ backers in a "special thanks" section at the very end of the credits and 8$ backers more in view at the very beginning of the credits. In other indie KS, they don't mention what the retail price is going to be, here's a quote for Shovel Knight:

10$: Get a digital copy of Shovel Knight for PC, hot off the digital presses!

The game was acually sold for more than that on retail. Why didn't they mention that right off the bat? I think it's a good incentive to back the game: "Normally it would sell at 15$ retail but you can get the full game at 10$ if you back it now". It seems to me like a missed opportunity campaign-wise.

▪  $16 tier ▪ Again and again it is shown in the graphs I see that a big portion of gamers are willing to pay for earlier access to play a game. It is close to $15 which is the price of some other indie games, so this game may be competitive that way. The tier also includes the soundtrack which is something I like. One of the hardest decisions can be if the soundtrack should be introduced before alpha/beta access or vice versa. Getting the order wrong can result in a barrier for some backers upgrading their pledges. Having the two introduced together is a compromise that can work.

The reason I thought about having the soundtrack with the game at the 16$ is because the number of backers drop tremendously past 25$. It's also why I decided to have the digital rewards under the 25$ "barrier" in order to limit the amount of backers who'll require investments in physical rewards.

I suggest strongly considering the option of postcards to be an add-on type reward or branching the rewards structure so there is a digital-only route through most of the rewards. It may actually result in increased sales of postcards to $8 tier backers or avoiding unnecessary costs of including postcards in the higher priced tiers to people who may not want postcards.

I didn't know add-on rewards were possible. The part in bold is very true.

From the $8 tier onward I recommend the price should never double between rewards tiers until the rewards start to be priced over $100. In reality it should sometimes be much less than doubling in the lowest priced tiers to try to get more backers shifting their pledges up. Multiple reasons to upgrade to the next tier can also help pull backers from the lower priced tiers up into the medium priced tiers.

Very wise, I'll do that for sure.

I've saved the graph for moonman on my hard drive, will study it this weekend.

"Set a deadline at the end of a Sunday"
Sunday nights can result in a bigger final countdown haul. Sunday is my favourite day for ending a campaign, but only if a project meets a list of conditions. Part of it is a big write-up for how the work week for bloggers unfolds. It takes a week of preparation in advance of the Sunday to coordinate. It is very easy to mess up the execution for a deadline on Sunday. For a small project I think Mondays and Tuesdays are a safer recommendation. The decision partially depends on how risk adverse the project creator is.

I guess my project falls in the "smaller project" category Sunday, Monday or Tuesday would probably work out ok.

An acceptable number is one update at the end of the first day, followed by another update for that week and then weekly updates until the end where there is an update before the last 48 hours, then during the final countdown and then an update about the aftermath of the countdown. This is what I would describe as normal, but I don't want to discourage more updates than this. The concern is that I can see an update every 2 days burning out the project creator very fast. A general rule is that if there isn't something important going on, then don't have more than 1 update per day. The projects that spammed lots of little updates that are barely more than 2 sentences drove backers crazy and were quickly unsubbed. It is highly recommended to have some content prepared before launching so one does not have to do an all-nighter to get a promised update out in time. It can be as simple as sitting on some gameplay footage and animated GIFs until they are needed. Reducing the amount of time consumed going into project updates during the campaign can free up time that can be used instead for promotion or sleep.

Alright, duly noted. I wasn't planning to provide updates of a single sentence though, that's... unwise to say the least (besides, my logs are already novels on their own).

You're suggesting a lot less updates than I had mentally prepared for I have to say  . Once a week doesn't seem much from the get go. Shovel Knight had 18 updates over 30 days (but they did have stretch goals). I'll be preparing many of those in advance for sure. Heck, the game is about 10% in and I'm already reading up on KS!  Being last minute sucks for sure.

Well, I can't thank you enough for this analysis. It will definitely help reshape and reorient things.

[JobLeonard]

@JobLeonard:
I think your reaction is understandable. Even if something is fictional, you would still want it to jump properly. I acutally thought the toaster would fall faster because it's heavier/more denser than a slice of bread.

Now you're just trying to troll me

, right?

[Zizka]

Aw come on now, physics work differently in Canada. Besides, don't believe everything you watch on youtube! 

[Tuba]

Lot of potential here! Keeping my eyes on this 

[Zizka]

*I’ve decided to make the log numbers bigger from now on, no reason to keep them so small really, don’t want you all squintin’ and hurtin’ them eyes.

Yay! 4000 views! Thanks for your interest!

Just to give you guys an idea, it took 12 days to reach the first 2000 and 13 to reach 4000, so it took a little longer. On the other hand, though, 16 logs were written to reach the first 2000 as opposed to 6 for the second 2000. More specifically, it took 54 replies to reach 2000 and 40 to reach the second 2000. This means an increase of 14% in views per reply. I keep track of thread’s numbers daily so it’ll be interesting to see how the game has progressed. It’s not a huge increase but over a month period it’s respectable I think.

As for participation in the actual thread, 29 different members have participated in one way or another. 61 messages (65%) have been posted by members while I have posted 33 (35%). The distribution of messages are like so:


 
The most prolific members in the thread (besides me) being marcgfx, Quicksand-T and canned turkey.

Music with Trev:

No news.

Programming with Sahand:

Sahand has been programming water physics. Here’s a little .gif to show you what he’s been about:


Technically, Pan is going to get shocked by jumping in water and teleported back to the solid ground (as opposed to instant death, this generates too much frustration). Also, I'd like the ripples to look more realistic in the future but it's certainly a good start! 

Art with me:

I got a comment regarding the size of the life bar/energy on another forum saying that they were too small and indeed they were. So I redid both in order to get something more readable. I was also convinced to change the purpose of the bars. Liquid butter will now be health and the battery will stand for energy (let’s face it, it’s a lot more logical that way).


You’ve probably also noticed the percentage underneath the life bar. I thought it’d be good idea to know more precisely how much health is left.

Do you remember this?:


Sahand had previously coded a way for Pan to warp back to the toaster (which is quite ingenious). While I like the idea, just having Pan blink out and reappear in the toaster wouldn't do. So I did a little animation of him teleporting:


Behind the scene:

What do you listen to when you draw?

Most of the time, I listen to movies in the background as opposed to music, it's less repetitive when I draw for long periods.

Lately I've been listening to the Coen movies:
-Burn After Reading
-Barton Fink
-The Man who wasn't there (good piano music in this one).


Aaaannnnnnd that's it! 

[JobLeonard]

What if Pan its the water without the toaster?

[Zizka]

Heeeeyyy! That's a good idea actually! I didn't think about it! 

He could float? This could lead to some neat explorations options. He'd be vulnerable though, so I guess that'd be a trade off to not being harmed by water. Just need to figure out how it could swim around since he got no legs or arms. 

I just did the level start animation, might as well put it here:

[Zizka]

Hello guys, I hope everyone is doing well.

*As you can guess the title means “24” in Chinese.

I’m getting more mail about the project and that’s always a nice surprise. Means the game is getting more popular.

Music with Trev:

Coming soon!

Program with Sahand:

Another day, another build! I had been looking forward to this one. You’ll notice a lot of new things got implemented.

Narrative:

I’ve been considering something for a little while now which I’d like to talk about. This is part of the narrative.
Instead of having a single bread character from the dough, there would many. One to rescue in each stage. Those sentient pastries would form the “Breasistance”, a rebellious group who wants to escape the clutches of The Dough.

I’d like to have a stretch goal where you can get to play as the characters you’ve rescued. I think this would add a lot variety to the game and selecting your character is always fun. This would mean a lot more work but I’d be up to it.
I’ve thought of a few ideas:

Dynamite Donut: expert in demolition and explosives.

Blade Baguette or Bayonette Baguette: A French baguette expert in close combat with blades (dual knives).

Speckendick Sniper: Slow but long range attacks.

The problem is that they wouldn’t have the personality of Pan. Another possibility is to have the option to switch characters at the press of a button just like in Castlevania III on the NES.

Maybe I should just keep them as NPC. I’ll see. I already have a good idea as they what they’d look like.

Art with me:

So today I thought I’d go more in depth about drawing stuff for the game and the process it implies. I thought it would interest you.

So this time around, I wanted to draw an aquatic foe for the bathroom level. Hopefully, this will be the last for this stage so that I can move on to other things. Not that I mind drawing characters, it’s certainly more fun that drawing tileset.

So anyway, a piranha seemed a good option, a mechanic one that is.

Step 1:
The first thing I do is use google image for a reference so that I can have better idea as to what a piranha actually looks like (as opposed to relying on my memory of what it looks like). So I type up piranha and use a picture I like. Then I launch Graphics Gale, open a new files and put them side by side.



Step 2:
I then zoom in, use a bigger brush and pixel paint the general shape. I then outline the whole thing in black to allow me to see better. This takes a minute or so. As you can see, it’s nowhere near presentable but I’m just getting started (that's the fish on the right in the picture above, in graphicsgale).

Step 3:
I try to refine the shape of the fish to make it look more similar to the reference.

It’s already much better. Now I have a good foundation to work on. I’ve exaggerated the maw a bit and would probably exaggerate it more too to make the whole thing more cartoonish.
 
Step 4:
Then I’ll toy around with colors until I find a combination I’m happy with.


Step 5:
It’s pretty close to being done. I then decide to add something a bit unusual. A periscope in this case.



Step 6:
And then I animated the whole thing. The animation is minimal in this case. I only had to redraw the maw, the rest I could just move around and modify a tiny bit.


I'd say the whole process takes about 2 hours. I picked up speed though. Back then it would've taken me 8 hours to do this. I just changed the way I worked really.

And so that’s how I do my little foes for STG. I hope you liked it!

Also, the “start stage” animation for those who might’ve missed it (then again it's my avatar too so, hard to miss really!  ).


Behind the scenes: by Sahand:

How did you get into programming?



It actually started out pretty silly: When I reached the age of ten, maybe eleven(don't know anymore D:), I only had to go 'till the end of elementary school, so you can imagine middle schools were already starting to lure innocent naïve children to their schools.

One of those schools' locations was very close to my elementary school, so they had pretty close bonds. Every year they organised free workshops for children with only 1-2 years to go for some schools. They had many different things, cooking, lego mindstorm and some more stuff. One of those workshops was making games.

Me, the kid that had only just discovered gaming and especially Legend of Zelda( oh how I love Zelda <3), was pretty interested in following that workshop, so I did. It was pretty basic stuff, they gave you access to a computer, gave you a printed book thingy with some tutorials and let you work.

Most people stopped after that workshop, since it wasn't that exciting and very basic. I however, loved the idea of creating your own game, creating a world of your own that you could fill with your imagination(okay, I didn't think like that back then, but I'd like to think that was my reason), so I continued using Game Maker. At first (first two, maybe three years) I sucked, but got enjoyment out of it and kept getting better and better. And now here I am, programming for a soon-to-be kickstarter game ^^

-Sahand, programmer for STG

Aaaaaannnnnddd that's it! A special thank you to Sahand for writing this little paragraph on his own free time. In the next log, Nev should have something for the next Behind the scenes!

[Zizka]

Hello guys and gals, (yeah, I know, the logo doesn't look as nice as before. I wanted a bigger one but I have yet to finish animating it).

Well, as it turns out, it takes no more than 2 days to get pushed all the way to page 5!

Ok, so a short devlog this time.

Music with Trev:

Coming really soon, no seriously.

Programming with Sahand:

Sahand has made a few more integrations in the engine. They might seem small but they’re significant ones. I think most people prefer to watch things rather than read them so I’ll just let this animated gif speak for itself.

Behind the scenes:

This time around I'd like to introduce Goulven, who's in charge of the level designs.

He took a bit of his time to write the following little paragraph:
How do you work on the levels for Super Toaster Guy?

Hi !
I'm Goulven, (Nev on Internet) the Level Designer of Super Toaster Guy.

I work on STG between doing my homework, it allows me to take a break and think about other things while remaining in a state of work.

My workplace is covered with empty cans of soft drink and remains of food.

I like to listen soundtracks of video games for the Sega Genesis as well as songs from soundtracks (Sucker Punch, Scott Pilgrim, Tron) as well as the STG theme.

Also I have a sort of "secret book" where I write what I learned on the level / game design with examples. It is really chaotic but I'm very proud of it.

To start a level design, I firstly makes a small sketch where I note the different routes and where I specify what I want to do for each screen (example: Screen Outside tutorial, Screen puzzles pipes, Screen boss ... etc.)

Secondly I make a lot of sketches of the same screen to find a idea and a form that suits me.

Then I work on a more detailed sketch by imagining it being played, with my book and a gamepad next to me, I always think about controls that the player will have to do.

The most important point is produce a finished level design (several screen with a beginning and an end) and send it to Zizka.

With feedbacks and ideas from TIG and Oniromancie Forums (French Forum) then I can imagine new screen and correct the ones I've already done.

And so, with time, the level design is more and more precise and rich.

The next step will be starting to make prototypes of his levels on GameMaker so that they can be truly tested.
This step will show design errors and be a big step towards the first public demo.

Stay tuned about our game.
See you soon.