Kickstarter: After the Kick but Before the Start...

[Sean]

Check out our very own Alex's guest post on GamesBrief:

Hi, my name’s Alex Thomas. I’m the creative director at Stoic and we’ve been working on The Banner Saga after a shockingly successful Kickstarter campaign. We set out to raise $100,000 to help us expand our game content and ending up with over $720,000 once the doors closed on the last day. Since then we’ve also gotten a lot of attention from not just games press but other Kickstarter projects asking for advice on how we ran the campaign.

Make sure to read the entire article!

KICKSTARTER: AFTER THE KICK BUT BEFORE THE START

[Sylvan]

Excellent article. Lots of good takeaways here.

To illustrate your point about people coming to your project from a number of unusual places, I found out about it from the Cracked article you mentioned. Prior to that, I had only heard of Kickstarter in passing and wasn't really sure what it was. In fact, I registered an account to back this project after seeing how much passion you guys had for what you were trying to do. Now, Kickstarter is among the list of websites I follow to see what other new projects are out there. So bottom line, as you stated in the article, don't underestimate any sources of publicity.

[kad136]

This is an exceptional article with a lot of great information. I hope it reaches many developers.

[molamolacolacake]

Sylvan: Same here! I read a lot of the major gaming blogs, but I hadn't noticed Stoic's kickstarter until that Cracked article. Upon reading the article's description I immediately exclaimed, "Why haven't I heard of this already?! That sounds awesome!" and plunked down $50. You never can tell.

A very interesting article! I figured Kickstarter campaigns were a crazy amount of work, but the break down is great.

[lamaz]

Having followed TBS Kickstarter from the beginning I already knew much of the things mentioned in the article, but there still were some things that I didn't know. Like where the backers came from.

I personally read about The Banner Saga from Rock Paper Shotgun before it was even Kickstarted and immediately knew I had to get the game. At that time I had already backed FTL and like Sylvan I, too, started to visit Kickstarter regularly to see if there were any interesting projects going on. Then one day when I was browsing the site, spotted The Banner Saga and went

in an instant

The article was a very good read.

[Aaron]

In this case I’ve had a presence on Something Awful for a long time and got a great reception, but had never stepped onto RPG Codex before and things quickly went south.

So should we assume that this outfit is being run by Goons? :/

Too bad about RPG Codex, though judging by their reputation I'm not surprised.

[LoliSauce]

I actually heard about the kickstarter project in a Gamasutra article that released on day one of the campaign.

[Alex]

I've been a goon since 05, the other guys are generally unaffiliated. I go by Chewbot on SA.

[Kualtek]

Alex, you said that when you tried to venture into RPG Codex it went south quickly. Would you be willing to expand on that? I'm curious how you approached it and why you think it went south.