KickstarterForum.org

First-timers and people thinking of launching a Kickstarter need to take a moment to read this post. I'm writing it seven days into my own Kickstarter, so you can call it "current." It's most certainly relevant, as the risk involved in running a campaign are the same amongst all types of KS projects: that is the risk of FAILURE.

My analog card game, N30N City RUMBLE (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/da ... ity-rumble), which is running into the ground on Kickstarter as I write this.

I was off to great start, raking in 18% of the funding goal by Day 2 and Kicktraq predicting that the project would get 146% funded. I was thrilled. But at 8pm on Day 5, the pledges LITERALLY stopped coming through the door. Why? Why, I kept asking myself. I did everything right.

Look at my Kickstarter page. It's one of the best-looking, funnest project pages ever conceived. This isn't boasting on my part. I spent the better half of three months drafting and reconstructing that page. Every graphic and piece of text has been touched or edited in some way, and the page was cross-examined by many KS "experts" off of TGC and marketing aficionados on dA.

I have 100% confidence in the product I have created. From the art down to the mechanics... it is a fully-functioning, original, and beautiful looking game thanks to WILDE Rudy and GENZOMAN. Speaking of GENZOMAN, we have a celebrity on our team, who has worked on similar titles such as Double Dragon NEON and River City Ransom: UNDERGROUND. I even nabbed some decent press along the way, mainly because of my virtual tutorials and free PnP.

So what could possibly be happening?

I labored intensely for eight straight months making NCR a reality. I don't mean that I spent a couple hours here and there, either. I mean, I quit my shitty day job and lived off of a small inheritance while dedicating approximately 1,300-1,600 hours creating NCR from the ground-up--card arts, templates, PR, websites, storyboards for the video, graphics for the Kicktstarter--EVERYTHING. Much more talented artists than myself came into the picture later once I had my third prototype ready to go.

I don't know any better way of saying this: Kickstarter is an elite club; and if you don't have the clout or money to throw into your campaign... I'm sorry but I don't care how good your product is, cos your effin toast!
I've currently paid almost $400 in ads to make up for my lack of online presence, but get this: I haven't got one pledge since uploading them. Guess maybe I'm doing something else wrong... well, hopefully I didn't waste my inheritance and 8 months pursuing my dream!

We'll see what happens.

I am so sorry this is such a struggle for you. It is hard when you know your project is worthy but you just don't have the exposure you need. I am in generally in the same boat and I am searching for ideas too. This is my first campaign and I just thought my project would magically take off. As someone told me before... don't give up on your dream. If this campaign is not successful take what you learned and try again. Or pursue your dream via different avenues.

Good Luck!

Thank you, Mad Monster! And right back at ya!

But honestly, I will probably not return to Kickstarter with a game design. I might try a comic book, or something smaller in scope. It just seems to me that Kickstarter already has it's cliques and circles, and I'm not in the "it" crowd. Lol. But we'll see. GL out there, man!

Have you asked your FB friends to SHARE the link?

Oh yes! I have some very supportive friends. But I don't know that many people in real life, and it seems that most of the online personalities I've been corresponding with sort of disappeared when my project went live. But hopefully our ad campaigns turn things around.

What I could use is an official review!

It looks good to me and you still have 21 days left with over 4k raised. Good luck to you.

If I could offer one critique, maybe it would have been good to see you actually pitch the video...so we could hear your passion behind the project, your story of how you quit your job to work on this would have reflected well with some of the creators out in the world.

Again, best of luck.

Hi Davy,

Your page is great, but I wonder if part of the problem is that you don't have any reward tiers between $1 and $29. I don't usually even consider the $1 pledge (I've done it once, when I just wanted to stay in the loop, but usually I want a cool reward or early access to a game, etc.), although I think it's a good tier to have, and I have never pledged more than $20. I'm usually at $5 or $10 but will go $15 or $20 if the nudge up is really good.

For people with not a lot of disposable income (especially if they contribute to a variety of crowdfunding projects), $29 may be intimidating. Your rewards are pretty sweet, but perhaps you've reached the end of the first round of people willing to spend a bit more and you could benefit from adding some smaller reward tiers?

You could offer some game art (you have really nice art!), listing in the credits, thank you in a newsletter, a sample card, signed thank you/certificate/whatever, or some other small rewards for the lower levels. Some of those rewards could be either digital or physical, although obviously the physical would mean shipping.

Of the last few Kickstarters I've pledged to, here are their pledge levels below your $29 level:

$5, $15, $25. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/la ... ideo-games
$5, $10, $10, $13, $18, $20, $25. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jo ... usic-album
$1, $10, $20, $25. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/45 ... the-deeply
$1, $10, $12, $15, $20. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ch ... ral-damage

All of those lower tiers had far more pledges at these levels than the higher levels.

Your higher pledges are great, although if I were you, I'd add some tiers between $250 and $1,000 just in case someone was willing to spend more than $250 but not go as high as $1,000.

You do have some time left on your Kickstarter campaign, and I wish you good fortune in making it all the way! I'll be publicizing a Kickstarter campaign next week, and I'm currently compiling information on where and how to publicize/share it.

Man, I feel you. Granted, my project is cleaning up illegal dumping in rural areas that the local county government and state boards aren't able/won't touch and converting the land to productive agriculture... SO, KS may just be the wrong venue from the ground up. BUT, between all of my farming/bee keeping/enviro friends and colleagues on Facebook who've mentioned that it's a great cause and even shared the link, only 2 people have signed up in as many days. LOTS of 'hey, great idea... good luck' emails back to me personally, but nadda in the way of even $5 support from the people who claim to really care about this very thing. I think you're right, though... not only do you need to have that great idea, and a great presentation, but you gotta know the right people to get the support.

You should be careful about what you wish for, as you might well receive it (i.e.: your assertion that what you "need" is an official review).

I took you up on your invitation to read your posting that started this thread. I followed that up by accepting your invitation to look at your KickStarter page for this project. That said, I don't agree with several of the assertions that you made.

Your assertion that your KickStarter page is one of the best-looking, funnest project pages ever conceived is mere opinion, not established fact. Even at that, it is your opinion, and not necessarily anyone else's. That you then follow such a bold assertion up by declaring that it isn't boasting on your part flies directly in the face of the obvious - that it is, indeed, boasting on your part.

Let us assume that you're right, though - that your KickStarter page is one of the best-looking, funnest project pages ever conceived. Then, if that is the case, why are you now lamenting about this very same project is currently running into the ground?

It is worth taking cognizance of the fact that an idea conceived is not the exact, same thing as an idea executed. If that which has been conceived is not the problem, then what does that leave but the execution, or perhaps the marketing.

It must take a special kind of talent to take one of the best-looking, funnest KickStarter project pages ever conceived by the human mind, and run it into the ground. So, who is responsible for running such a sterling concept into the ground? It's your project, right, Davy? So, where - exactly does the buck stop with this project? With you, or with someone else?

Of course, you also asserted that you did everything right. Yet, your project is running into the ground? If you did everything right, and I mean every last thing, then all the more special a talent it must be, to take one of the best-looking, funnest project pages ever conceived, and do everything right, but then still run all of that goodness right into the ground. Plus, to make matters even worse, you've managed to take a project that has been named a KickStarter staff pick, of all things, and run it into the ground, after such a promising start. Yet, you did everything right?

But, further down your chronicle of lamentation that is this discussion thread, you then unilaterally declare that KickStarter is the problem, by virtue of it being what you characterize as "an elite club." Well, if you know that it is an elite club, why did you create a KickStarter project page in the first place? Were you simply gullible, or did it take you a long time to come to that conclusion.

Of course, when one contemplates that another guy tried to use KickStarter to raise a measly ten dollars, just so that he could make some potato salad, but then at last count he had over six thousand backers pledging more than fifty-two thousand dollars to support his project, that pretty much guts your claim that KickStarter is an elite club. Ten dollar project goals hardly evidence an elite club.

To make matters even worse (can they get worse??), you have 100% confidence in the product that you created. Which begs the question why you're now going all sour grapes about the project page that you created for it resulting in it running into the ground. Now, let me get this right, Davy - KickStarter gave you wide latitude in creating your project page, but you managed to come up with a page that is now running into the ground? But, none of it is your fault? Just who - exactly and specifically - constitutes this "elite club" of which you now complain?

I will accept at face value your claim that you labored intensely for eight straight months making Neon City Rumble a reality. No, wait! You called it something else. What was it? Oh, I recall, now. You chose to call it N30N City Rumble, instead of Neon City Rumble.

But, your preference for gimmickry in naming the project aside, you spent two-thirds of one year laboring intensely to make this card game a reality. I've read of some who have spent far longer than that preparing to launch a KickStarter project. But, that aside, I am also willing to accept at face value that you previously had a shitty day job. There's certainly nothing wrong with quitting jobs that are shitty, be they day jobs or otherwise. You chose to pursue a dream. That's commendable - but, it's not without risk. Life, kind of like launching a KickStarter project page, comes with risk as a natural attachment and solid possibility.

Without even getting into the details of statistical data that speak to the sheer number of KickStarter successes versus failures, if you did everything right, then why did your four hundred dollars in advertising net you not a single pledge? Was the mysterious elite club of which you complain also responsible for creating the ads, or for selecting where you had those ads run?

I go to the trouble of posting all of this, not to beat you over the head with your lack of supporting logic, Davy, but to raise the possibility for consideration that you might just be too emotionally attached to your own project, and that your emotional attachment might - just might - be clouding your objectivity, which in turn just might be skewering your judgment. There's a reason why no man should be judge in his own case.

Personally, and this is just my opinion of one, mind you, I think that your assessment of this project is flawed. I think that some of the images on your KickStarter project page look really nice, but that there are quite a few that are taking the shine off of an otherwise promising project.

I'm far from a hyper-fan of neon images, although I love neon lights. Yet, after clicking on that Wilde Rudy image and exploring Darkdux's deviantArt gallery a bit, I quickly became convinced that your chosen approach to incorporating images into your KickStarter project page is undermining your ability to achieve the desired level of wow factor with page visitors.

Part of your project page's images have an EGA or even a CGA feel to them, as I sit and look them over, comparing them to one another.

The following image looks pretty doggone nice, Davy:

http://darkdux.deviantart.com/art/N30N- ... -469966149

I connect with it, visually. In other words, it has a lot of visual impact with me.

Yet, someone (perhaps that mysterious KickStarter elite club), opted to take this image, and shrink it down considerably, before incorporating it onto your KickStarter page. In the process, it lost the vast majority of its visual impact.

But, then again, what do I know? After all, I'm just some guy passing through this forum, offering an opinion in an off-the-cuff manner.

The reason that things fell off for you, pledge-wise, on Day 5 is likely due to new projects being created on KickStarter, and them taking your project's place (along with numerous other KickStarter projects' places, as well), in KickStarter's project queue for announcing projects.

My understanding is that it's called the Dead Zone. I can't claim credit for coining that term, but I do believe that more than just your own project have been subjected to that phase of life in the KickStarter lane.

On a personal level, I have only backed a relative handful of KickStarter projects, to date. None of those pledges, however, have been at the whim or the behest of any elite club. Whether you believe me or not, though, I leave to you to decide.

Of course, if KickStarter is really and truly an elite club, why you, yourself, chose to back KickStarter projects no less than thirty-two times - almost three dozen times - remains an unexplained mystery, in and of itself. For a guy who has done everything right on his own KickStarter project, it sure seems odd that it would take you thirty-two times of backing projects, before you figure out that KickStarter is an elite club.

Either you were really slow on the take, where figuring out that KickStarter is an elite club, or you are simply wrong in your assertion that it is an elite club.

For some reason, your posting made me recall something that actress Jodie Foster said in the movie, Contact, which I watched a few years back. In it, she said:

"Occam's Razor - It's a basic scientific principle, and it says, all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one."

If you truly believe that you've done everything right, where this project page is concerned, then belaboring the point of taking issue with your assertions would serve no useful purpose.

In any event, I wish you well with your project, Davy. Becoming negative about KickStarter would be a poor substitute for remaining positive about your own project and its chances for success.

Take care,

- Charles -

I'm really sorry to hear about your struggles. Have you maybe taken to twitter and asked some celebrities in the same genre as yourself for a retweet---George Takei, Will Wheaton etc? I know it sounds cheesy but the best ideas can fall on deaf ears sometimes and the message stands a good chance of getting some recognition if repeated through the mouth of someone with clout.

I'm having a tough time implementing that one for myself so it would be nice to see it work for someone else...What celeb is related to freaking ramen noodles?!