Here is info about scheduling a campaign in June you may find useful. I've been closely monitoring how Kickstarter campaigns perform for a few years now.
--- Part 1 --- Looking at potential times to run a campaign.
Here is a table of possible dates to run a Kickstarter campaign in the near future:
http://i.imgur.com/u0XTEoB.pngRed is bad, green is good and white is okay based on the weekly traffic cycle.
● In general I can't recommend launching or ending a Kickstarter campaign on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. Those dates are colour-coded red. I've watched many good quality campaigns that launch into weekends fail to get traction. Bad starting dates for a campaign are already eliminated from the table so they aren't a distraction. Bad ending dates harm the potential for how much the final days can raise.
● Mondays and Tuesdays perform very good for both launching and ending. They are colour-coded green.
● Wednesdays are okay for both launching and ending. In a good month a Wednesday can be considered nearly as good as a Monday or Tuesday.
● Thursdays are special. They are poorer for launching a campaign, but actually good for a campaign deadline. For launching the campaign, it immediately goes forward into a weekend which is generally bad for performance. Launching on Thursday often risks blogger coverage getting delayed until Monday. If ending on a Thursday there is all the exposure from the earlier Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to help if the campaign is pushing to just reach its goal by its end.
● It is good to launch in the morning and schedule the deadline for the evening in the Eastern Daylight time zone of North America where most backers live. Launching in the evening means wasting lots of time at the start when fewer people are around overnight. Ending in the morning means the campaign could end while many potential last-minute backers are still asleep or at work. This can be rough for European developers due to time zone differences. There is the feature to specify a specific end time for the campaign. It is very useful. If that option isn't used then the campaign will end on the last day at the same hour of the day that the campaign launched on the first day.
● On the Internet there is the common Kickstarter advice to only run a campaign for exactly 30 days. What I've seen is that it is far more important to properly synchronize with the cycles of traffic the platform receives. Blindly conforming to a length of 30 days creates problems. Being closer to 30 days in length is generally better, but 1 to 4 extra days can help the campaign end at a much better time. There are many disadvantages to running a longer campaign like 40 to 60 days.
--- Part 2 --- Looking at what events will be happening around the campaign.
June is one of the harshest months out of the entire year to run a video game Kickstarter campaign.
● July 4th is Independence Day in the US. Running from May 31st to July 4th initially looks good in the table, but July 4th complicates things. Potential backers can be out celebrating instead of being bored on the Internet and deciding to browse gaming blogs.
● June 12th has an event being held by Electronic Arts. I don't know much more about this.
● June 14th to 16th is E3 2016 in Los Angeles. Getting press for an indie game becomes a nightmare if one doesn't have presence at E3. During E3 there are many AAA gaming announcements and trailers that bloggers will give priority because they get way more clicks. Even if an indie game does get covered, the post about the game can be quickly buried by new content faster than usual. Bloggers that attend E3 can get sick with convention flu after attending so their output suffers. Some of the larger YouTube Let's Play channel creators also go to E3 so they can't respond as quickly to make videos.
● June 23rd is rumored to have a Steam Summer Sale begin. A Steam Sale can be a difficult time on PC gamers' wallets. While they can still be backing Kickstarter campaigns, the size of individual pledges may be smaller than normal around this time.
● June 24th is when Mighty No.9 is supposed to release. That game may damage the reputation of crowdfunding if the final product is not what people wanted.
● July 7th is Mirror's Edge Catalyst's release date.
● Sometime in July a playable demo for Yooka-Laylee is expected for backers that pledged high enough.
● June 6th is the anniversary for World War II's D-Day landings.
● June 10th is the WarCraft movie in theaters.
● June 19th is Father's Day.
● June 24th is the Independence Day Resurgence movie in theaters.
● July 1st is Canada Day.
● June 3rd is Chronicles of Elyria's Kickstarter campaign deadline. This could be a good thing if it brings in lots of traffic for the Kickstarter category during its final days.
● June 29th is scheduled launch on Kickstarter campaign for System Shock Remastered. From the look of the teaser trailer this could be one of the strongest campaigns of the year to compete against. It also means people being drawn to the platform that may check out what other campaigns are active before they leave.
● Kickstarter has an update to itself scheduled for June 9th. In the past this type of update results in new features, but also redesigns to project pages. There is apparently a new collaborator feature which is why the privacy policy for Kickstarter was recently changed.
--- Part 3 --- About strategy.
The easiest months of 2016 to run a campaign have already passed. A month like April is a paradise compared to the summer months for campaign performances. From June onwards it will be rough until improvements in late August or September. While June may be a rough time to run, that does not mean many campaigns can't get funded. Many are able to get funded in these months. If Moonlighter can hold a good popularity ranking it could get the traffic it needs. It does look strong enough that it could survive in June.
Delaying a launch for too long may weaken the attention the recent successful Square Enix Collective campaign was able to generate. The Collective is a great form of pre-launch marketing. Moonlighter's run there also helped get it some good coverage.
Pre-launch marketing and building up enough of a fanbase are ways to overcome poor timing. The general idea is to raise at least 15% of the goal amount in the first week. To achieve stretch goals it would be better to raise at least 30% in the first week. With enough preparations a campaign can raise 100% in its first day and not have to worry about what time of year it is.
One option is to launch around May 30th and try to rush to 100% funded before it gets really bad around E3. The first part of June isn't really that bad. This is easier said than done. The campaign may have to endure significant slow-down in the middle and then work hard to rebuild momentum in its second half. Another issue is that bloggers are usually e-mailed a preview of the project the week before a campaign launches so they have articles ready to go on launch day. A May 30th date may rush that process. I do not know how complete the project page draft is.
If there are enough followers already, then the campaign doesn't need to worry as much about getting the traction it will need. There are ways to estimate if there is enough of a following yet, but I'd need to have an idea of how large the minimum funding goal is and some of the pricing of the main reward tiers. The process involves trying to figure out what is the expected average pledge per backer (many factors are involved), then dividing the minimum goal by that average to get the number of backers to aim for. When you know how many backers you need, then a marketing plan can use historical conversion rates to try to estimate how much exposure is needed or how much pre-launch marketing is still required. The design of the reward tiers can me optimized to try to reduce the number of backers needed to reach 100%. The scope of the game could also be modified to get the minimum goal low enough that the current number of followers can provide enough initial momentum to get it funded.
Once you pick a date, there are tactics like setting up a real-time countdown on the official site to try to focus backers to pledge on the very first day. A Thunderclap campaign can be useful. There are options for what to do for early-bird reward tiers. Teaser images and trailers can be used. In general you try to promote the game around before the campaign is live and provide backers reasons for them to want to pledge on the first day. A $10 backer on the first day can be more valuable than $10 backer on later days. Kickstarter campaigns are often about getting enough momentum.
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