Kickstarting your game the right way

I think the biggest misnomer about Kickstarter is that people don't realize the work you need to do in order to have a successful campaign.

You're pretty much running a business.

My personal advice would be several things:

-Establish a name in the game community before launching your Kickstarter. It could be as small as being a regular contributor at a convention where you talk to a lot of people and those people know you're a cool person that loves games or as big as starting your own game channel on YouTube and get followers.

-Plan plan plan. Your game should be pretty much done by the time you launch the campaign. In addition, your business plan and your manufacturers should be ready to act right away. It's difficult enough to keep up with the Kickstarter campaign when it's actually happening, so if you're still developing your game while the campaign is going, (if you don't have a team already) you won't be able to devote the time you want in your game and then you'll have a crap game and a bunch of people expecting something you can't deliver.

-Research and ask advice. I think (?) there's forums for people that do Kickstarters, I'm not sure. I applaud you for asking for advice, that's the first step.

-Have a team. There's going to be so many things you need to be aware of that you'll be easily overwhelmed with the logistics. This is why so many established businesses do Kickstarter well; they have a team that has specific functions. Create a team...even if it's just your family. The more you devote time to your product, the better quality you'll give. If you're doing everything, you'll devote less time to the project and will likely show in the end product.

-Start small. This is my personal advice. If you can do a complete campaign with a small project, you'll have the experience necessary to do a bigger project. If you do a big project and you fail (which happens a lot), you'll be left with a bad reputation and a bitter taste in your mouth.

Anyways, that's my advice. Take what you want from it.

Disclaimer: I've never run a Kickstarter

But, I've listened to podcasts, read as much as I can & read enough comments on projects such that I determined that I don't want to run one myself. You seem determined & willing to put in the effort up front so that's a good sign to start with.

One thing I've noticed is that these days, with modern communication methods, people think you are ignoring them, & therefore your project is risky, if you don't respond within about 2hrs (& preferably 1hr). I've come across projects where the developer was managing it on their own & didn't notice & respond to questions in the comments on their Kickstarter for a week (& in one case until almost a month later when the project had closed).

Time zones makes this difficult to manage on your own so try to find some people you really trust to help answer queries 24/7 in the lead up & during the Kickstarter. Even if they just acknowledge the questioner & prepare a list of outstanding queries for you to answer when you wake up it shows that your team thinks everyone is due the respect of an answer as soon as possible & that engenders some respect back.

Good luck

Exactly what I was going to say.

Start with Stonemaier's blog. Spend time reading it. Read it two or three times. Take notes.

Then go read the blogs from Minion Games' James Mathe here: http://www.jamesmathe.com/category/kickstarter/

Once you've gotten through those two, you're ready to START thinking about your Kickstarter.

Take your time. Do it right. Build an audience before you launch. Have a good amount of backers (in the ballpark of 25-40% of your total funding needed) lined up (and hopefully guaranteed to back) before you hit launch.

Don't get discouraged if things aren't going well. You can always cancel and relaunch after correcting issues. There is no stigma attached to having cancelled a project on Kickstarter as long as you show you've learned lessons from it and applied that knowledge.

It couldn't hurt to emulate this guy:
http://www.bgdf.com/node/18584

In Canada we have this Elite gaming group called "The Game Artisans of Canada".

The collective is divided into local gaming chapters supposedly for the sole purpose of designing new and exciting board games.

Unfortunately in my Province (Quebec), we do not have a local chapter. This is for a couple reasons: it's a French vs. English issue. Learning more from my coach, he told me that the French community have a well built network of events for French speaking board game enthusiasts. The English community have ZERO in comparison. My coach tells me that the reasons why the English community has so little is because it's difficult to bring the right people to the table...

Getting back to The Game Artisans of Canada... I initially spoke with a representative in Calgary who referred me to a representative in Ottawa who couldn't give a shit (pardon the expression) about me. Perhaps this was a French / English rift - sort of you poor SOB you live in a Francophone province where all they want is French everywhere...

But what The Game Artisans of Canada seem to do quite well is COLLABORATE on games - different people like Graphic Designers, Illustrators and Game Designers all live within this well oiled community of gamers. And their people (from what I have seen) do produce great quality in terms of game appearance. I can't tell from game play - because I've never heard about most of their games...

Which brings me again to Jamey. If an ORGANIZATION with Chapters around Canada cannot produce the NEXT "Scythe", how in earth did Jamey do it?! He must be a real people person - because I would estimate that "The Game Artisans of Canada" dwarf in sheer numbers alone the resources and connections that are possible (and that's only across Canada - EXCLUDING Quebec).

So maybe if you're part of "The Game Artisans of Canada", you might have some people who can credibly push your game (in the right direction so to speak!)

Cheers.

Absolutely. Anyone looking to build a crowd and gain peoples interest and appreciation should be doing all of that at minimum.

Without making use of my online store I have a mailing list of about 200 people for my current game project. This is through networking and social media.

When I did my first run at Kickstarter for the game a couple of months ago (relaunching in the new year with lessons learned and major improvements made to the campaign with input from helpful backers), about 20% of the backers were directly from Facebook. 20% is a major percentage. To put that number in perspective, 45% of the backers were direct through Kickstarter. 10% from Kicktraq and the remaining 25% were from a variety of other sources, including my email list and other referrers (reddit, instagram, bgg, blogs, etc).

When people sign on to a mailing list it is to receive semi-regular updates on the subject matter they signed on for. That is why you need to build a mailing list. That is why you would contact someone you met at a convention. Using services such as Mailchimp makes it easy to keep track of them all and send out updates. Mailchimp and similar services also provide you with statistics as well, including how many people actually opened that email and clicked on any link provided in it; this is valuable info to have!

You're not looking to befriend people or form a relationship (outside of a business/potential sales contact). You're looking to make initial contact with them, get them interested in your product, then keep them in the loop as to major developments. This helps keep them interested, and when the time comes provides a higher likelihood they will back the project.

Yes, you're constantly shooting off emails to people you don't know. That's part of marketing.

A mailing list can be similar to Facebook likes, but it's far more likely to be people who are genuinely interested in the product as they've had a chance to look at it, touch it, get a feel for it (those who sign up for it at conventions/meetups/flgs/etc anyway) and they are indicating they want to continue to be informed by signing up for it.

Even Facebook provides benefits when utilized to somewhere near it's full potential. There are a number of facebook groups that are a wealth of information AND potential customers; you just have to figure out how to work the system properly and efficiently.

Let's face it; effective networking, building an audience, marketing a product and selling that product to the end user IS a full time job. It takes a lot of time, effort, skill and patience and it takes having a thick skin to push through all of the negatives that come with the job.

If the job is not your (or someone else's) cup of tea, it's probably best left to someone who's cup of tea it is, else you're just spinning your wheels and going nowhere fast.

I'm really new & don't have much of a following, but we attend conventions, big & small, when we can. Yes this is costing us $ but we are treating it as a hobby so we just keep the costs within our hobby budget. At the conventions we get a few likes for Facebook & some people will leave their email address on our surveys (we use a digital survey so they type their emails in so we don't have to try & read it). After the convention we send out a short email thanking people for trying our stuff & then we send out a quarterly update & remind people to follow us on Facebook for more regular updates.

We don't have a big following but we do have about 60 people follow us on Facebook (about 10 are family or friends) & around the same number on email (I'm not sure of the overlap but I do know some people opted to only do one as they asked when doing the survey if they could as they didn't want to give their email or don't use Facebook). From this small group we get feedback on prototype pics we post up & some volunteer to help test if we send PnP's.

We haven't run a Kickstarter, & at this stage I'm not keen to run one, but even at this stage I'm having to remind myself to keep in touch with people just so they don't forget about us.