Hi Anthony,
When I look at your project, video, presentation, bio, degree, motivation and ideas on how to promote your project I think to myself - How could this not get funded?
But as you may be experiencing, gaining backers is more difficult than imagined.
I think it's important to first try to simplify what is in fact a very complex set of circumstances that lead to success and turn it into proverbial thoughts. And while this is always possible to do, we can still benefit from the idea, so here goes my attempt:
1. Success requires - Visibility.
2. And then a close second, success requires - A Great Concept.
Visibility is a requirement to success. Whether it be from Kickstarter, bloggers, gaming sites, Facebook, Twitter ... you need visibility and my guess is much more that anyone thinks. On Kickstarter your window of opportunity is small so you have to move fast. Repeat project creators know this, that’s why their projects are funded in the first few hours and first few days. This is not by accident, nor it it to get the project funded. It’s to make it visible. Then you must have pipelines to keep feeding the machine - everyday. Early momentum gained is sometimes easy. Momentum lost is always hard to regain.
As I designer I would like to think that a great concept is an innovative, unusual, interesting or better design, however, that’s not always the case. For crowd funding purposes a great concept must resonate with an audience. I believe your’s does but you need visibility.
As a gamer, perhaps this will make sense:
What you do right now is dictated by the clock, it’s ticking so adjust your game play. Focus on Impact and Results. Break your funding goal into a series of mini goals - $1,000-$1,500/day. Achieve these goals each day and adjust them accordingly the next.
Give people a stake in your success. What I mean is this - your project is really cool. I would love to be a part of it’s success, not so much it’s failure. So project that thought out. Let people know that they can be a part of the next Ouya or Double Fine. If you can’t sell that idea, with this project then you can’t sell. And from seeing your presentation, I know you can sell.
If I was a student about to graduate, I would jump at the opportunity to be a part of this. Think about how that would appear on a resume: “designed, contributed, assisted, ... on a successful Kickstarter launching of a start up game developer ...
If I was an employer that would capture my attention.
In my opinion anyones best road to success is to develop a large group of fans whose interest is greater than simply financial.
One final note: Check out this link to Sal’s Crowd Crux piece on Seth Godin. Watch the video and don’t forget to comment. This will really help you.
http://www.crowdcrux.com/kickstarter-an ... community/James
. Let us know how the party goes.