When we started the Kickstarter campaign for Guns of Icarus Online in December of 2011, we were in the later stages of prototyping, so not only did we needed funds, our goal was to also get the word out, start building a community of players, and enlist people to help us test. With that, we set a goal of $10,000.
The campaign ended up being 352% funded with over 1200 backers and $35,000 raised. The campaign was the 8th highest funded game when it ended. As a testament to how much Kickstarter has grown, we later did a second successful campaign for an expansion called Adventure Mode ending in May 2013, raising $198K (with an additional $25K via paypal), and that was the 53rd highest funded game when it completed. At the time, we realized that Kickstarter was amazing, and it would fundamentally change the relationship between developers and fans/players, but we couldn’t have predicted how soon and how spectacularly. Running and succeeding in two Kickstarter campaigns for the same game was interesting and challenging to say the least. Here, I’ll break from chronology and compare the two campaigns a year and a half apart to draw some lessons.
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