734 backers are currently pledging £18,479 (73.9% of the £25,000 goal). 4 days are remaining. The campaign needs to raise an additional £6,521 to meet its minimum goal.
The project has been around the 15th in popularity for the video games category. It is important to try to stay in the top 20 spots. Below the 20th popularity rank, potential backers will have to click the "Load more" button to find the campaign.
Overall the project page is excellent from a graphical perspective. The animated GIFs are well done. The project thumbnail is eyecatching to me even if it is a bit dark and hard to see on mobile. The pitch video conveys what the game is and sets up the atmosphere. There has been consistent high quality project updates. The table-of-contents on the project page for the updates about locations, automations and deep space flora was very well done.
--- Part 1 - About the reward structure's performance ---
Here are graphs about the campaign so far:
http://i.imgur.com/plxjy4Q.pngThe £10 tier acts like a canary-in-the-coal-mine to indicate the health of the campaign's momentum. Most backers are expected to pick the cheapest tier that offers a copy of the game. Over the last 72 hours the campaign has been gaining momentum. On May 26th the campaign came back alive around the same time it was greenlit for Steam. Before then it was seeing slowdown causing that hump shape (from less y-axis gains in backers). Tim Schafer's tweet was on June 1st.
The £7 tier was full by the 3rd day in the campaign. The campaign successfully transitioned from the £7 to the £10 tier. This is good. Many campaigns fail to survive that transition.
The £55 tier and its £45 early-bird version did well for both contributing at least $3,460 (18.7% of the current allocated amount pledged).
In general I consider less than a 75% drop in the number of backers from one tier to the next to be acceptable in the range below £100. If there is a drop of more than 75% it can indicate a problem with reward tiers up-selling. The drop in the number of backers from the £10 to the £15 tier is close to acceptable. The £10 tier is for the game while the £15 tier adds the soundtrack. I wouldn't worry too much about that drop.
The £17 tier initially looks like a poor performing tier until seeing that it is an offer for an extra copy of the game. If the £17 tier wasn't there the rewards structure would have a significant jump from the £15 to the £25 tier. Backers are more sensitive to price increases in the low-priced tiers. The effect is similar to how mobile gamers can see a $0.99 priced game as fine and a $1.99 priced game as a significant price increase. A jump from £10 to £20 can feel larger than a jump from £110 to £120. Since the £17 tier is for an additional copy of the game it may not appeal to many backers as a potential tier to upgrade to. There is the opportunity to insert a new reward tier between £15 and £25 tier that offers something different to hopefully get some £10 or £15 tier backers to upgrade their pledges to it.
There is £3,348 in unallocated funding. That is 18.1% of the total amount raised. Unallocated funds come from backers that don't select a reward tier (unallocated backers) and the extra amounts pledged above the price of the reward tier (like shipping costs or add-on rewards). The risk of unallocated funds is that it sometimes partially inflates the funding progress of the campaign. It means a dev can receive less than expected. Shipping costs go towards shipping, not the actual development budget. Ignoring the unallocated funding the campaign is sitting at 60.5% funded (instead of 73.9%).
The £250 and £700 tiers recently received backers. Most of the largest reward tiers will see activity in the first 72 hours and the last 72 hours.
I feel some of the pricing in the reward tiers is about 10% to 20% too high compared to what other campaigns usually set, but it would be difficult to fix that this late in the campaign's run. I've seen comments on Reddit that also support that reward tiers have been a problem for people deciding to pledge or not. The lack of Linux support is a greater issue for myself as a currently Linux-only gamer. Lack of Mac support may also be hurting the campaign. It is hard for me to tell if the pay2win complaints about some rewards are harming the performance.
--- Part 2 - About the final surge ---
Fabular's campaign is scheduled to end on Jun 14th at 15:00 PDT. E3 2016 happens to be June 14th to 16th. Each year E3 has been an extremely tough time to run a Kickstarter campaign. The last half of December is potentially worse, but not by much. All the announcements, teasers, leaks and trailers from AAA gaming publishers takes priority for bloggers to cover. Unless an indie game already has presence at E3 it can be difficult to get coverage.
£6,725 more is needed to meet the £25,000 goal. I see about £1,908 more that could be expected to come from current backers upgrading their pledges near the end. That leaves a £4,817 gap. The average pledge per backer for Fabular is currently £25.18 although the unallocated funds means that value is slightly inflated. It is closer to £20.73 per backer when the unallocated funds are ignored.
At an average of £20 per backer it would take 337 more backers to cover £6,725 or 240 more backers to cover £4,817. At an average of £25 per backer it would take 269 more backers to cover £6,725 or 193 more backers to cover £4,817. For perspective, it is very possible for a Kickstarter campaign like Fabular to do around 200 backers in its last 48 hours. However, that would be at an easier time of year to run a campaign. Around E3 things get unpredictable. Remember the campaign for Shenmue 3 launched during an E3.
Even in the rough patch around E3, Fabular could still get enough backers becuase 200 additional backers is relatively a small amount. If Fabular had to do around 340 backers to reach its goal that would be more concerning. Don't give up hope. Success on Kickstarter is often about just getting close enough to your funding goal that the missing amount fills in on the final day. The Thunderclap campaign needs 32 more supporters to reach its goal.
Kicktraq shows a trend to £21,224 (84%). Kicktraq does not anticipate the final surge starting when reminder e-mails are sent out in the last 48 hours of the campaign's run.
BackerTracker shows a trend to £25,561 (102.2%).
Kicklytics shows £17,104 (68%).
SideKick is showing a 78% success probability.
I wouldn't expect Fabular to raise much over its minimum funding goal, but it does look close enough that it should get funded. Pledge upgrading may be a significant portion of the funds. Since press coverage may be so difficult, it increases the importance of engaging with backers and focusing on social media. Making project updates becomes more important during the last few days. Fabular has already had a series of very strong updates. One of the reasons livestreaming at the end has become so popular for devs is because it can encourage more pledge upgrading.
A potential huge mistake can be to not make a project update on the final day when a campaign is still just slightly below its goal. There were campaigns that backers assumed would already be at their goal amounts, but then those campaigns failed because not enough people were around at the end to upgrade their pledges because the devs went silent. I was a backer of Alpha Colony and that campaign is scarred into my memory. That campaign missed its $50,000 goal
at just $28 short. If I had been awake during the final hours someone like myself could have easily chipped in $28 more, but most of the backers didn't know the campaign was so close. Two easy assumptions were that Alpha Colony's campaign was already dead or backers that had checked in earlier in the day saw the surge and then assumed it was obviously going to reach its goal. If Fabular's campaign is getting close, then let existing backers know about it. It is okay to do multiple project updates on the last day giving status updates about how much funding is left to go.
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