Retrieved from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242117
Kickstarter is a website where anyone can request funding for a creative project. Common project types include short films, music albums, and video games. The projects are funded by many individual contributions, and the individual or group that starts the project only gets the funding if they reach a goal that they set, in a certain amount of time. Kickstarter has the potential to raise very large amounts of money for game projects. One recent example is the card game Exploding Kittens by Elan Lee. Exploding Kittens is a humorous card game, where players take turns drawing cards, and attempt to be the last to draw an exploding kitten card. The Kickstarter campaign asked for $10,000. They received $8,782,571.
Not every Kickstarter project is massive and raises millions of dollars. Every day smaller Kickstarter projects are started, funded, or fail to reach their goals. One of these smaller projects that was successful was one that I created with my brother titled Evolve with eVubble!2(Earlier I wrote a post about our company). Our Kickstarter project was on a much smaller scale. We only asked for $1,750, but this was still a huge deal for us. It helped us publish our first game and start our company. Overall Kickstarter was a great experience for me, and I learned some valuable lessons.
One assumption that I had about Kickstarter that proved to be incorrect for us, was that it would be a great way to get exposure for our game. Even more attractive than the potential of getting funding was the possibility that thousands of people would learn about our game through Kickstarter. At the time of writing, there are 188 live video game projects on Kickstarter. I thought that being one game in hundreds of games on a popular site would give us a greater chance to be discovered, compared to being 1 in hundreds of thousands of games on the App Store3. The reality was that our project was not high profile enough to be featured on Kickstarter, and even though it was funded, it was ranked very low in the video games category. I imagined that with all of this exposure, if we were funded, it would be through hundreds of people who pledged one or two dollars. This turned out to be the opposite of what happened. The majority of our backers were friends and family who donated much larger amounts. We were successful because of the generosity of friends and family, not because of the exposure of a popular website.
So, what do the big Kickstarter projects do right that allows them to raise millions of dollars? Are they just lucky? I think that a small scale fundraising effort, like ours, is achievable for many people. However, it takes a lot to create a successful project that pulls in lots of money. I think that one key to the success of these bigger projects that isn’t immediately apparent is that they drive much of their own traffic. It is certainly necessary for a project to have a great concept and a high quality video, but these alone are not enough for a project to be successful on a massive scale. Many of these project creators have large followings on Facebook, Twitter, and their blogs. Perhaps they have deep connections in the game industry with game journalists, and other high profile developers. Before their Kickstarter is even launched, they have people writing articles about their game, and have a dedicated following that is eager to back their game. Only after a project reaches a certain level of popularity through this original traffic does it benefit from being featured by Kickstarter, and reach a higher level of exposure.
With all of the talk of successful Kickstarter projects it is easy to overlook the failures. While the actual percent of Kickstarter projects that fail depends on the source, the consensus is that about half of Kickstarter projects fail4. Even the funded projects are not guaranteed success. Often times project creators promise more than they can deliver, or are unable to respond to the incredible demand for their ideas. Take for example the Exploding Kittens project. They originally thought they would have to make about 500 copies of the game. Now they are tasked with making over 200,000 copies, not an easy task for a small team of people5.
Overall, I think that Kickstarter is great for indie game developers. It allows many indie developers to raise funding for game projects, while still maintaining all of the creative control. However, creating and running a Kickstarter project is a lot of work, and should be seen as a gamble that may or may not pay off.
Sources:
- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elanlee/exploding-kittens
- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1084442592/evolve-with-evubble?ref=nav_search
- http://www.pocketgamer.biz/metrics/app-store/
- http://mashable.com/2012/06/21/more-than-half-of-kickstarter-projects-fail-does-it-matter/
- http://mashable.com/2015/02/20/exploding-kittens-8-7-million/
I think kickstarter is a really good platform for games that will resonate with a specific audience. If you look at a project like Exploding Kitten it is in a sense a prime example of internet culture, I mean it is cats. If you look at most successful kickstarters they are niche in a sense. The pebble for instance was a great kickstarter and their second is going on now. When the original pebble kickstarter was happening though most people didn’t want a smartwatch, it was seen as a novelty. It was funded though because a bunch of people who had had always dreamed of tech like it funded it. I think kickstarter isn’t good for traditional projects, it has to be for things that are truly innovative so that people that have always wanted something like it will fund it to above and beyond what they asked for.
To this day I’m still confused about kickstarter. It’s not the concept of it, it’s the idea of how some things get funded. I remember a while ago there was a kickstarter for potato salad. Potato salad… and it got backed by hundreds and thousands of people. It baffles me how some things get so popular like that.
Despite all the confusion that I might have with kickstarter, I do find it to be an extremely helpful thing for indie developers. It also makes me wonder in what other ways kickstarter can help their featured projects. Because I’ve only found out about certain because of other people who follow the kickstarter site. Its not often that you hear about the community of kickstarter or how projects get advertised. If kickstarter doesn’t already, they should try to advertise a bit more or work out a deal with different websites to try and spread the word of certain projects.