KickstarterForum.org

sbriggman wrote: ↑Tue Apr 21, 2015 6:47 pm Hi Sal,

Great questions!

I have ran 7 Kickstarter campaigns over the years and am about to embark on an eighth! The seventh was my first boardgame Kickstarter which, after one failure due to the 1sy UK lockdown, was successful a few months ago. Huzzah! The eighth I plan to run in June is the first expansion pack for that game.

- Have you learned any new skills (marketing/social media)?
Every project teaches me something new. The last one taught me so much as it was a very different animal to my previous campaigns that had mainly concentrated on funding our annual SF/Fantasy/Gaming event and not producing an actual board game. Biggest takeaway skills wise from this last one? Keep the faith right up until the last minute and don't be tempted to cancel your funding unless that's part of your financial strategy from the get go.
- Have you gotten any backers you don't know?
Yes, it was wonderful to see backers coming on board who initially were friends and friends of friends but then blossomed into the wider gaming community. As ours is an introductory level board game meant as a recruitment tool into the hobby, we attracted lots of parents who wanted the game to teach their children about the hidden complexities of even the most simple mechanics.
- What has been frustrating?
The mid-funder lull. It's always there, it's always frustrating and the voices in your head that tell you that you'll never succeed seem to be magnified by this ever present quiet period. My advice? Keep posting and updating and staying excited about all the awesome things about your project as though you're in a room of a hundred different potential new backers every day. Keep the energy up but be sincere, nothing says 'burnout' like a tired host telling the same stories in ever increasingly tired tones!
- How did you motivate yourself daily?
I decided to run a 60 day campaign to give folks the opportunity to save from a couple of pay cheques if they wanted to. What that meant was that I had to keep myself motivated, hydrated and energised for 60 straight days. It was exhausting! What helped, because we were locked down in the UK three days after we went live ... sigh ... was the fact that my game is both solo and up to 5 players so even if the rest of the family were busy, I could still do live play throughs while babbling away to myself about the future of the gaming system we've created (the Storm system, based on simple, 6-sided dice), and future expansion plans, which really seemed to excite people. We also asked for and then played live on stream people's homebrew scenarios, using the game system and board pieces, which also worked rather well.
- Are you planning on starting a business if your Kickstarter goes well?
My business has been book publishing since 2012 (Fantastic Books Publishing) but we only opened our gaming division when we saw the disparity between the games most folks play once or twice a year with their families and the tens of thousands of amazing games in the more complex, wider tabletop gaming arena. I wanted to create a gateway game, a stepping stone into that world, that would be fun for not only kids but for adults like me who were intimidated by very thick, impenetrable rule books or hours of character creation. That's why I rolled out Fantastic Books Gaming.
- What tools or websites do you recommend (others than this one haha)?
I fell for many paid services that came to nothing, but would suggest the professional marketing services for offer through Fiverr, particularly those who offer to write and distribute press releases for around the £200 mark, We got a lot of traction for the Gorgon's Loch through that. Facebook ads are ok, as are Twitter promoted tweets, but it's mainly about connecting with your audience not on a macro level but on a person to person 'have you seen this, would you mind checking out my new system/game/idea, I'd appreciate it?' level. Sounds kinda cheesy but most of our backers I've ended up having conversations with personally and in some cases they've helped me fine tune and polish the game too.

sbriggman wrote: ↑Tue Apr 21, 2015 6:47 pm Hi Sal,

Great questions!

In answer to the subject question, definitely a mixture of both, but in my view that's kinda what Kickstarter is about. It's a red hot cauldron of awesome folks, hypercritical types, fans, haters, buyers, retailers, etc. and they all want to know whay you;re taking up screen time.

I have ran 7 successful Kickstarter campaigns over the years and am about to embark on an eighth! The seventh was my first boardgame Kickstarter which, after one failure due to the 1st UK lockdown, was successful a few months ago. Huzzah! The eighth I plan to run in June is the first expansion pack for that game.

- Have you learned any new skills (marketing/social media)?
Every project teaches me something new. The last one taught me so much as it was a very different animal to my previous campaigns that had mainly concentrated on funding our annual SF/Fantasy/Gaming event and not producing an actual board game. Biggest takeaway skills wise from this last one? Keep the faith right up until the last minute and don't be tempted to cancel your funding unless that's part of your financial strategy from the get go.
- Have you gotten any backers you don't know?
Yes, it was wonderful to see backers coming on board who initially were friends and friends of friends but then blossomed into the wider gaming community. As ours is an introductory level board game meant as a recruitment tool into the hobby, we attracted lots of parents who wanted the game to teach their children about the hidden complexities of even the most simple mechanics.
- What has been frustrating?
The mid-funder lull. It's always there, it's always frustrating and the voices in your head that tell you that you'll never succeed seem to be magnified by this ever present quiet period. My advice? Keep posting and updating and staying excited about all the awesome things about your project as though you're in a room of a hundred different potential new backers every day. Keep the energy up but be sincere, nothing says 'burnout' like a tired host telling the same stories in ever increasingly tired tones!
- How did you motivate yourself daily?
I decided to run a 60 day campaign to give folks the opportunity to save from a couple of pay cheques if they wanted to. What that meant was that I had to keep myself motivated, hydrated and energised for 60 straight days. It was exhausting! What helped, because we were locked down in the UK three days after we went live ... sigh ... was the fact that my game is both solo and up to 5 players so even if the rest of the family were busy, I could still do live play throughs while babbling away to myself about the future of the gaming system we've created (the Storm system, based on simple, 6-sided dice), and future expansion plans, which really seemed to excite people. We also asked for and then played live on stream people's homebrew scenarios, using the game system and board pieces, which also worked rather well.
- Are you planning on starting a business if your Kickstarter goes well?
My business has been book publishing since 2012 (Fantastic Books Publishing) but we only opened our gaming division when we saw the disparity between the games most folks play once or twice a year with their families (I don't need to name 'em, right?) and the tens of thousands of amazing games in the more complex, wider tabletop gaming arena. I wanted to create a gateway game, a stepping stone into that world, that would be fun for not only kids but for adults like me who were intimidated by very thick, impenetrable rule books or hours of character creation. That's why I rolled out Fantastic Books Gaming.
- What tools or websites do you recommend (others than this one haha)?
I fell for many paid services that came to nothing, but would suggest the professional marketing services for offer through Fiverr, particularly those who offer to write and distribute press releases for around the £200 mark, We got a lot of traction for the Gorgon's Loch through that. Facebook ads are ok, as are Twitter promoted tweets, but it's mainly about connecting with your audience not on a macro level but on a person to person 'have you seen this, would you mind checking out my new system/game/idea, I'd appreciate it?' level. Sounds kinda cheesy but most of our backers I've ended up having conversations with personally and in some cases they've helped me fine tune and polish the game too.