Usually, this blog has been focused on the development history behind creating REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat. I share my thoughts on how the game came to be, it’s core mechanics, rules, and testing stories, etc. Not only to give insight into REDLINE, but to inspire or help any other game designers who might be laboring on a project of their own. But today I wanted to detour slightly from the norm and talk about something equally as important to REDLINE’s success. Kickstarter.
Without our successful Kickstarter campaign, REDLINE would just exist as files on a computer and nothing more. For an indie game to be successful it not only needs to play well, but be marketed well. And for small indie game studios like Saving Throw Studios, Kickstarter is a great platform to share your creation and secure the funding to actually get it made.
But.
Kickstarter is also an unforgiving beast. The platform has changed massively since its early days where a great idea by itself was strong enough to fund. The bar on what makes a project fundable has been raised massively since. Due in part to the fierce competition between creators for valuable backer dollars and the jadedness of backers who have been bitten by projects that failed to deliver. (Or simply heard one too many Kickstarter horror stories, of which there are many.) For better or worse, this is what Kickstarter is in 2021 and as a result you need to be well prepared for before jumping into the unforgiving arena of crowdfunding.
The list that follows is by no means comprehensive or gospel. Saving Throw Studios is just one little game studio with a single successful campaign under its belt. (And one that wasn’t) But if you are new to the Kickstarter game, then the advice below, based on our experiences should help . And though the list is focused on gaming, these lessons can really be applied to any type of Kickstarter.
The one thing to remember is that the learning curve with any kind of digital marketing is extremely steep. But Kickstarter is a mountain that comes with its own unique set of challenges.
10 Steps Towards Launching A Kickstarter
1. Its never too early to build audience: This concept is key. No matter where you are on your game design journey, it’s never too early to start sharing your ideas and progress with others. The biggest thing that separates mega successful Kickstarters from those that fund and those that fail is the amount of followers your project has. The more people are aware of your existence and excited about it, the better your chances of funding.
It really all comes down to that.
So jump into the deep end of the social media pool feet first and start sharing your game and its progress. Tweet about the concept. Hashtag some new art. Post the rules as you make them. Build an email list. The worst thing that can happen is you’ll be ignored and have the same number of followers as when you started. Zero. But you may catch some attention and a few follows along with it. Over time they may even become your biggest fans who can proudly say they were with you from the beginning.
Because they were.
Because you shared the process.
2. Build a community: Once you have some fans let them into the design process. Don’t just share aspects of your game with them, but give them a chance to provide feedback or even participate in its creation. Back when we were launching our Kickstarter for REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat we ran weekly Twitter polls that gave our community a chance to not only design a brand new efreet for the game, but also the card around it, complete with abilities, weapons and a name. And what they came up with, the Migidae, turned out pretty awesome.
How does this even affect a Kickstarter though? Well it’s not enough to simply have followers, you want to make fanatics out of them. And nothing will make a fan of your game into a fanatic faster than giving them some ownership of your creation. When they chip in to help make your project, in a small way, its now become their game too. They helped make it. Which means not only would they be more willing to back you when the time comes, but also share and promote and brag about how awesome your game, ahem, their game is to others.
That is a level of social proof and free marketing you can’t buy. Which is for the best as it’d be budget breaking if you could.
3. Know when your product is ready: As mentioned above, long gone are the days when you can successfully fund on Kickstarter with nothing but a strong idea. These days backers want to see as much of the finished project as possible so they have the best idea of what they are backing will ultimately be.
This means having finished art assets and game pieces, an accessible set of rules, a great logo, and whatever else your game may require to function. You could have a playable demo or a print and play prototype to share so gamers can get a better feel for what you game is all about too. Regardless, it’s a mistake to launch when your game isn’t “there” yet. Still more concept than fully realized product. Backers will see it as a work in progress (which all Kickstarters are to be honest) but not yet ready for prime time.
There really is no time table when it comes to game development other than what you put on yourself so take your time and make your idea the best it can be before you go for broke and Kickstart.
4. That doesn’t mean you need to be 100% done either: For a lot of creators it doesn’t make sense to wait and invest total time and energy into creating a fully finished game before launching. I mean, doing so kinda defeats the spirit and intention behind Kickstarter in the first place.
But as long as you have enough strong assets to share what your game is all about, you can still get away without having them all finished.
As REDLINE is an expandable card game, that meant we needed a large amount of cards for the game completed. Final art. Final frames. Final rules text. And enough variety to show how gameplay and factions worked. But that doesn’t mean we had every single card for the game made before we launched. It’s fair to say we probably only had around 60-75% “done”, but with our game, we felt that was enough to show REDLINE off. Funding simply gave us the chance to get the last 30% made.
The more you can show of your game the better. But be careful launching with too few assets.
5. Sizable expectations: When you start conceptualizing your game, it’s never too early to start thinking about what your end product will look like. Because as you build your game, it’s quite important to keep your size and scope reasonable.
One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with when creating REDLINE is wanting to make everything for it all at once. Forget 6 game mechanics, I have 20! Why make a measly 100 cards when it would be so much better with 300! More units! More factions! Miniatures! More backer rewards and cool swag! It’s so easy to fall into your own rabbit hole of awesomeness that you lose track of the ultimate goal of any Kickstarter. To fund.
Going crazy with scale is often kryptonite to your campaign. Because every addition you add also increases production costs. And if you aren’t careful you’ll easily find yourself with a bloated campaign that has no way in hell of funding because your funding goal is, well lets call it ambitious.
6. Minimum viable product: Most Kickstarter games fail because of this reason.
When developing your campaign, what your goal should be is discovering the least amount of funding needed to deliver the most basic version of your game to your audience. In business circles this is called finding the minimum viable product, or MVP.
Be aware! When backers first look at your game they will be eyeing two things. First of all does your game look fun, and is it polished. But secondly and just as important, what is your funding goal. Truth is, backers won’t fund a game that has little chance of meeting its goal, no matter how sweet it appears to be. Nobody likes disappointment. Nobody like a loser. And going through the pledge process for something that will never fund is just a waste of their time. Understandably.
So avoid bloat like the plague and get your funding goal as skimpy as you can while still meeting your production obligations. I’ve seen many Kickstarter games that looked amazing but failed to fund because they were selling a massively ambitious product that wouldn’t fund with ten times their current backer support.
Stay small. Stay nimble. Stay fundable. And remember if your game launches like a rocket you can always add the cool extras via stretch goals. Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?
7. Fudging your funding goal: There is a debate among Kickstarters over whether you should artificially lower your funding goal in hopes of “funding” within the first critical 48 hours. Right or wrong, immediate funding has become a type of measuring stick among Kickstarters to gauge what is “successful” or what isn’t.
I will always argue that any Kickstarter that meets its funding goal before the campaign expires is a successful one worth celebrating. But I am not the meta.
For our REDLINE campaign, we put our goal right where we thought we needed it to fund, which we did, in the final hours of crowdfunding. But now having gone through that experience, I would absolutely take a hard look at artificially lowering your goal.
For better or worse, not funding immediately these days almost puts a Scarlet Letter on your campaign. It’s a huge weight for your game to bare as the campaign conversation will eventually shy away from your game to focus on the funding holdup and reasons to explain the lack of progress. Additionally, potential backers who stumble across your campaign will shy away (see MVP above) when they likely would have pledged if you had already funded. That equals lost money. And that lost money can be substantial.
I’m not advocating you lower your goal so extremely low that if it just funds you wont be able to meet fulfillment. But funding out of the gate is critical. And a game that funds in 48 hours has an excellent chance of making up the difference over the life of the campaign since it will be perceived as a “winner”. Proceed carefully.
8. Know your budget: Fun fact. It’s expensive to make a game!
When we started REDLINE as a card game, one of the aspects we liked best about the genre was its affordability. It’s a card game after all, I mean how expensive could it be to make? We didn’t need plastic playing pieces, miniatures, or giant game boards. How pricey could printing cardboard be?
Turns out, plenty. Like most games I would imagine, art was a HUGE cost in the end. Especially so far a card game like ours where every playing piece needed to be fully illustrated. After art you need to factor in additional expenses like startup production costs, taxes, Kickstarter fees (5%) and processing fees (another 5%), shipping, customs, a game box, instruction manual, backer rewards, marketing and who knows what other money drain your particular game has. And notice I didn’t even mention the actual cost of manufacturing the actual game itself.
It’s a lot! And these numbers matter so make sure you double and triple check them as you work to create your ultimate funding goal and find that MVP.
9. The best time to launch: There’s a ton of data and debate online about when the best time to launch your Kickstarter campaign is or isn’t.
Typically the best month is March. May sees some of the most traffic. And December is the worst so don’t do that.
I’d argue that ideally it shouldn’t matter when you launch since if you’ve done your homework, you are bringing your own followers with you. A good rule of thumb is to expect about 10% of your followers and email list (you do have an email list don’t you?) to convert to backers so make sure you have math on your side before you launch.
Tuesdays are the best day to launch if you can according to statistics. Avoid weekend launches like the plague. Aiming for paydays on the 1st and 15th are ideal. And 8am EST is the best hour. Easy!
10. Failing isn’t failure: Truth is, a lot of Kickstarter campaigns end up failing for any of the reasons listed above plus about a dozen other.
And that’s totally fine. Our very first Kickstarter from back when REDLINE was developed as a mobile game failed spectacularly. It sucked.
But it was also a tremendous learning opportunity. Getting hands on knowledge about what not to do is just as important as learning what does. And though you can read as many lists and tips as possible, (like this one) nothing beats getting your hands dirty and experiencing the work it takes to get a campaign off the ground.
A lot of Kickstarters fail during their first attempt only to come back leaner and meaner the second time around to have successful campaigns. It happens a lot actually so don’t feel too bad if it happens to you. Just learn from it and start preparing for round 2.
And as I said in the beginning, Kickstarter has an incredibly steep learning curve with an entirely different skillset from that of creating games. It’s a daunting endeavor with no shortcuts. But quite rewarding too. You’ve been warned.
Kickstart My Heart
For all the challenges it brings, Kickstarter is still extremely viable and available to game creators. Some of the most funded Kickstarters of all time have been board games that raised millions of dollars. And there also may have never been a better time to launch your game on the platform too. In the COVID world we all live in now, gaming at home has exploded in popularity with gaming related Kicksatrters only becoming more popular as a result.
Anybody can do it if you put in the work.
Oh, and having a kick ass game doesn’t hurt either.