My name is Kortyell Davis, i started naoulex studios about a year ago. I hope to develop an MMORPG for the OUYA Gaming Console, if you support this idea, then you may want to help fund the project to make this game possible. the url is here
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/naoulex/story-quest-for-ouya. Or if you generally want to give advice on the game, you can reach me at
[email protected] Thanks guys!
Comments
I'm not trying to be critical, but Kickstarter can turn into a very bad thing when projects get funded and don't work out. Some people have been sued by backers and gone into bankruptcy (http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/22/why-this-jilted-kickstarter-backer-decided-to-sue-why-he-was-right/). $15k sounds like a lot of money until you actually start working with it - it really doesn't go too far.
> Anti piracy measures are needed and it doesn't haves to interfer with the concept of open console
Even outsourced artists are expensive - we outsourced a small amount of pixel art to Brazil and still ended up paying ~$2,000. How are you going to convince artists to do fully textured and optimized 3D environment art for an entire MMO at under $6k (and this is assuming you're handling all the programming yourself)?
For dev time, even small RPGs take 6 months to develop. For experienced game devs, an MMO built with a full team would probably take a minimum of one year to develop. When you're making estimates for project length, make sure to account for all the time you will need for bug testing/fixing and polish. MMOs are hands down the most difficult kind of game to make - a lot of AAA companies are either closing or going heavily into debt on MMOs. Just be very careful when planning for this, if you do hit your funding goal - make sure you've fully thought everything through regarding your expenses.
If you think $2,000 is overpaying - the average industry salary for an artist is around $70,000 a year. I'm not doubting that you could do this game, I was just genuinely interested in whether you're fully aware how expensive game development is.
The point of not using free assets is to give your game a consistent look and style. We paid our outsourced artist to create original 2D art that matched our established style. Sure we could have used royalty free sprites from somewhere on the net, but they would have looked completely out of place. Imagine if Picasso, Warhol, Dali, and Da Vinci all worked on a single piece of art without knowing what the others were doing. You'd have a piece of art with no consistent style. If that's not a concern of yours, that's all well and good, but I was asking my questions with the assumption that you were going to use original assets.
I do sincerely wish you the best of luck with this. I was just genuinely curious as to what your game plan was for development. I hope I haven't come off as arrogant - that was not my intention.
Five things people look for in a Kickstarter campaign
· An interesting game idea with the pre-order at a reasonable tier.
· Evidence that the developer has the ability to complete the project, such as a previous success or a gameplay prototype/demo.
· A project that looks like it will reach its goal. Some people don't pledge until a project is already over the line, or they hit the Remind Me button and check back at the end of the campaign.
· A developer who's enthusiastic about the game and the backers who are helping to make his dream come true, particularly if the game wouldn't be possible without Kickstarter.
· A project creator who is engaged with backers, answering questions in the comments and posting frequent updates on various parts of the game and how the campaign is going.
Building the campaign page
The biggest tip I can possibly give to anyone hoping to get funded through Kickstarter is to work your ass off in preparation. Research successful and failed campaigns, build up as big a pre-launch audience as you can, and spend the time to make your campaign page look as professional as possible. You get only one chance to make a first impression, and on Kickstarter it counts for a lot. Successful campaigns also usually introduce the developers behind the game and roughly break down where the Kickstarter funds will be going. You're asking people for their money, and they deserve to know why you need it.
Making a project video isn't an exact science, but over the years a few strong trends have emerged. Almost all successful projects show the game in the first minute of the video, along with a brief explanation of what type of game it is and what the core gameplay involves. Even if the game is very early in development or all you have is art assets, people want to see what it is they're backing. Keep the pace fast by touching only briefly on each feature; people who want to know more will go on to read the campaign page text, which can be as long as you like. Remember that both the campaign page and the video can be updated at any time during your campaign, so be sure to update them in response to feedback.
Selecting and pricing rewards
The most popular reward level for video game Kickstarters is almost always the lowest-priced tier that provides a digital copy of the game. Free-to-play games can't offer this incentive and have a much harder time getting funded; offering microtransaction points just isn't the same. Digital editions seem to perform best at the $10 or $15 level, but we had some success at $20. It's also extremely important to offer something really good at the $25 level, as Kickstarter reports this to be the most popular pledge level across all campaigns by far. If the basic copy of your game is available at $10 or $15, try to upsell people to $25 with a special limited edition or other unmissable rewards.
For larger rewards, a good general rule is to design the reward so that upgrading from the previous tier is a no-brainer. Predestination's $40 beta access tier included two copies of the game to make sure that it was mathematically good value for money, a strategy that worked extremely well. Some people also need a physical edition of the game they're backing, so offering a well-priced collector's edition or DVD box is an obvious choice. The most popular limited edition rewards usually include some kind of authorship over the game, such as the backer's name being included in the credits or the ability to design part of the game or name an NPC.
Stumbling blocks with reward tiers
One of the most common mistakes new indie campaigns make is having too many confusing reward tiers when the project launches. Try not to flood backers with dozens of tiers that are all very similar, as it makes choosing between two tiers more difficult. If you want to offer players a minor choice between multiple editions or rewards, don't create separate reward tiers for each. Just write the options in the reward text, as you can include the choice in the final backer survey after the campaign.
It's also important not to offer too many physical rewards. A lot of projects offer t-shirts and other goodies as rewards, but they can be very expensive and time consuming to make and ship. Remember that fulfillment of rewards has to come out of your own pocket, and so will eat into your goal; there's no use hitting 200% of your goal on paper when half that's going to be splurged on t-shirts and pen drives. However, we also found that some backers will pledge only if there are physical rewards such as a collector's edition. A good general rule is to try not to offer physical rewards for tiers below $100.
Many campaign owners also aren't aware that they can change rewards that haven't been claimed yet. This came up during our campaign when I noticed that a few people almost immediately picked up the $500 tier but nobody had touched the $1,000 one. I upgraded the $1,000 tier from one in which the backer's name would appear on a plaque to one that let the backer design one of the game's core races, and six people jumped at the chance. Lowering the unclaimed concept art rewards from $300 to $250 had a similar effect.
Five red flags to avoid
· Asking for a lot more money than your game should require, or not explaining what the money is for.
· No campaign video or a poorly written campaign pitch. You wouldn't pitch to an investor without preparation, and you are asking people for real money on Kickstarter.
· No gameplay prototype or very little work done on the project yet. People want to see that you've already put in a lot of effort but now need funding to overcome hurdles.
· The project is still in the idea stage or has very few hard details. Some people are happy to back projects based solely on the idea, but many need something a lot more tangible and convincing.
· Unprofessional conduct in comments, forum posts, interviews, or articles.
Engage with your backers
Be under no illusions: If you want to run a Kickstarter campaign well, it will become your full-time job for a month. You can't just throw the page up and wait for the money to start rolling in, as people are generally apprehensive about pledging to campaigns in which the creators are quiet. A good rule of thumb is to respond to every question in the comments and send each new backer a thank-you message. It seems like a lot of work, but in several cases we found that just starting this conversation eventually led to large pledge increases.
If you're an indie developer, a significant portion of your backers will be brought in through word of mouth. Remember that your backers want your game to happen just as much as you do, and many of them will help spread the word. Use funding milestones to encourage existing backers to post about the game on Facebook, Twitter, and any game forums they frequent. People will naturally help push you over your goal and stretch goals and will be most active in the final hours of the campaign.
Marketing and media coverage
While blogs continue to predict Kickstarter fatigue, the people backing crowdfunding projects are as enthusiastic as ever and many projects still get coverage in the gaming media. It's always worth sending news updates to the major gaming news sites, but we actually found smaller niche blogs that focused on our particular genre to be far more receptive and helpful.
If your game is on the PC, contact Rock Paper Shotgun about being entered into its excellent weekly Kickstarter Katchup article. As long as your project looks like it might make it, it should be included in the feature every week until you hit your goal. This was the largest individual contributor to Predestination's pledges and writer Adam Smith is very enthusiastic about Kickstarter, so I can't understate enough how important it is to contact RPS. We also tried to have at least one big update per week so that news sites had something interesting to report on, and updates with videos performed significantly better than those with just images and text.
One of the most surprising things we found was that 56% of our pledges came from Kickstarter itself through pages like the main Video Games Discover page. Your project will appear on this page if it's included in the staff picks or becomes one of the top 12 most popular projects. Kicktraq has a similar effect if your project gets a lot of pledges, but in both cases you absolutely must get the ball rolling yourself. The easiest way to get into the Kickstarter Popular list and become visible on Kicktraq is to try to get some some day-one media coverage and build up a following of fans and friends who will pledge on day one. Since both sites use your average pledges per day as part of their metrics for popularity, this will shoot you up the lists immediately. Once there, the extra exposure will help keep the project in the top 12 for a while.
Wrapping up
The unfortunate reality is that not all good games succeed on Kickstarter, but don't pull the plug half way through the campaign if the numbers don't look good. Instead, hit up your current backers for advice and use the remaining time on Kickstarter to build an audience for a later second attempt. Many of your backers will have pledged to dozens of other projects and are the closest thing you'll find to Kickstarter experts. They're also already interested in the game, and their feedback and day-one pledges can help make a second attempt successful.
The final few days of a Kickstarter campaign are the most intense; this is the period in which you'll get the most viewers, and you'll have to work hard to convince people to pledge and upgrade. Remember that every Kickstarter campaign gets a surge of pledges at the 48-hour mark when everyone who clicked the "Remind me" button gets the reminder email. Have a big update ready for this and someone manning the comments section to respond to questions as they come in. We also had massive success running a livestream for the final few hours and inviting other project owners on to speak about their games, an idea that Jeff Mc Cord popularised with his Kickathon event.
Running a Kickstarter campaign isn't an exact science, but there are a lot of small things you can do to improve your chances of success. If you're planning to crowdfund a game project, hopefully some of these tips will help you get the pledges you need. If you have any follow-up questions about running a campaign, how the back-of-house tools work, or my experience of running a campaign, please ask them in the comments and I'll respond as soon as I can.
Real Campaign Stats:
http://predestinationgame.com/2013/01/06/kickstarter-success-wrap-up-post-with-stats-and-graphs/