Hit Thirty Early: Reaching the Tipping Point on Kickstarter

Kickstarter released a trove of interesting metrics covering their two-year history. The big revelation? 90% of projects that reach 30% funding will succeed. That's a very low tipping point and just confirms my instinct that the "opening weekend" is a huge pacesetter for the rest of a fundraising campaign. So, here are some key takeaways:

1) You want to reach 30% as early as possible: That means your marketing has to be top notch before you ever launch a Kickstarter campaign. We benefited from a looong, public development cycle with Do. Four years of forum threads, blog posts, AP reports, and countless tweets is a lot of build-up. You probably don't need to wait that long, but make sure people know about your project.

2) Assume you're putting up half: Get good, solid quotes and estimates from your vendors, but assume that Kickstarter will only raise around half of the funding you need. You're doing this so that you don't abdicate your responsibility to see the project to fruition. Knowing that you're putting up at least half the dough keeps you honest and shows the public your commitment to the long haul. It also makes the goal not seem so daunting to the individual backer. And lastly, you'll reach 30% of $4,000 way faster than 30% of $8,000.

3) Reaching 100% is just Phase 1: First of all, congratulations! Now begins a new narrative in your marketing plan. Now it's about offering incentives based on economies of scale at 150%, 200%, and so on. Include a mix of exclusive incentives for high-dollar backers and low-cost incentives for backers who've been with you since the beginning.

There's been a flurry of blog posts from people with their own thoughts on how to succeed at Kickstarter. Each comes from a different perspective and context, so let's take a quick look at each.

» 3 Ways to Get My Money on Kickstarter: Rob Donoghue shares what he looks for in a kickstarter campaign and highlights a few actual counter-examples.

» Kickstarting Do and So Can You: I feel a little self-serving linking to this one, but Christoph Sapinsky breaks down some simple actionable tips that are very valuable.

» How to Succeed or Fail on Kickstarter: An actual survey of funded and unfunded kickstarters in the board and card game categories. Fantastic responses in this post, people. I highly recommend it.

Achievements

I was reading a few blogs on Gamasutra.com yesterday. I don't understand all the hullabaloo over achievements. Game companies have really honed in on achievements. Why is it now that they focus on it? Games have always had achievements.

An achievement is just a goal with a guaranteed reward. Games have almost always had goals.

Mario has goals - Beat Bowser, save the princess, collect the stars.

Asteroids has goals - Survive. Blow up that Asteroid.

So then do all games have achievements? Games need a goal. An objective. Well can you play a game without a goal? How about chess? I think you can play chess without a goal. Have no opponent and just move pieces around. It's a game about a 8x8 field and movement. It's not a very compelling game, but it's still a game. This because I believe games are simply playgrounds. A place to play.

A playground implies a lot of things:

Rules. -Swings and slides behave in a certain way.

Limits - A playground is a specific area.

Safety - you shouldn't die playing a game. (Well extreme games can harm you.)

The heart of a playground is a place to play. The weird thing is, play can be defined at an activity without a purpose or a goal. I don't think play is useless. Play is how we learn and experiment. Which means *gasp* learning is fun.

A game is just a place which encourages play. Goals and Achievements are a simply method for encouraging play. They are a motivation device.

I have ADD. As such I've had many coaches and tutors who've taught me create my own goals, schedules, and deadlines. Finish this paper by this date. Go to this class then work on this homework. All these things are tools to get me to do something. They're there for the motivation. The difference between goals and achievements is that achievements have a guaranteed reward.

Just as a goal motivates without a guaranteed reward, you can have a reward without a goal. People can play a game entirely because they like collecting coins. Some people work at a job entirely for a pay check. I've worked a lot of shitty jobs. Fast food, paperboy, janitor (which is

literally a shitty job.) The work itself is not fullfilling, I just wanted the money.

Cary Zhang just gave me one of his books from his class - Everything Bad is Good for You: Steven Johnson. In the book Steven makes a case for popular entertainment. In it he uses an example of Troy Steele (which was taken from from Julian Debbel) Troy played Ultima Online. He played it a lot - he even was a grandmaster blacksmith. To become a grandmaster he had to grind the blacksmithing skill for literally months. (That sucks!) Steven Johnson asked the question 'why would anyone do such a thing if it is so mindless and unrewarding? Especially considering Troy had a fairly mindless day job - a carpenter building molds. Steven believes the answer is because of gratification, specifically delayed gratification.

I think a better question would be to ask, why does he work as a carpenter? What makes him do the same monotonous thing every day? Why would anyone work a mindless job? The only reason I can think of is for the paycheck. In other words, for the reward. If the task itself is dull and boring you create interest by adding a reward structure. In the case of Ultima Online the reward is building a bigger house or getting to a higher level. In the case of a shitty job, it's getting paid. Troy Steele is in it for the reward.

A paycheck, a quest for epic level gear, and a Star from Mario are essentially the same thing. They are a reason to play. What happens if you take that away? With a shitty job, take away the paycheck and people will stop working. Take away the Stars and no one plays Mario. Take away the epic level quests and people stop logging in.

Or do they? Will people play a game without a goal? Of course. They will do it for the fun of it. They like jumping around with Mario. They find their job fulfilling. In other words they have intrinsic motivation. They've set their own goals, and made their own achievements.

I think it's more important for a game designer to create mechanics and systems that are enjoyable for their own sake. Motivation is more of a symptom of a good game than it is a cause. I wish people would write more about what makes a good mechanic, instead of what makes a good achievement.

Week 5 [Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple]

Poster Project

So I had a major technical problem with this project haha. For some reason Photoshop would not allow me to enter text! I had to open this in illustrator and just do my text there, hope it doesn't hurt my grade. Anywhoo, the reasoning behind my poster is basically to help prevent child pornography. I chose to go the route of the evidence/polaroid taken of the child in bath from behind the closed door to show that no where is safe. You really don't know when or where a crime against your child may occur. Even the innocent pics a parent may take of their child at bath time could get in the wrong hands at some point. I feel my design is effective because it shows the snap shot as a crime. It doesn't have to have a ton of text explaining itself, it just shows the hard facts.

Evil Hat's New Logo

Fred Hicks discusses the odd brand juxtaposition of Evil Hat's logo on kid-friendly products like Happy Birthday, Robot!:

"It ends up being a little weird to grab hold of a copy of HBR, flip it over, and see an aggressive, shark-teeth-baring evil hat glaring at you from the back cover."

Working together again on Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and looking forward to future products, Fred saw a need to evolve Evil Hat's logo and branding a bit. Offered a few quick ideas, mainly to streamline the hat's silhouette, use the brim as a mouth, and use a less horror-themed typeface so the hat takes the spotlight.

Fred just posted the new logo suite and it looks great. It retains Evil Hat Production's essential brand, but sets up the company for a long and prosperous future. Look for the new logo on Do. :)

I'm never not playtesting. [T-Shirt]

A few months ago, I quietly uploaded this t-shirt design to the shop. As I recall, there was an ongoing discussion about the pros and cons of playtesting. I posted this design as a bit of a joke.

Though I may call one of my games "finished," I'm never really done tweaking it in my mind. And certainly when I play someone else's games, my mind is turning over all the nuances of the design, trying to hack it for a new theme or bolting together different mechanics. The process never really ends.

If you feel the same way, grab this t-shirt from the store. Giulia already has hers, as you can see up at the top of this post. She says, "True to the spirit of the shirt, here I am trying to eat soup with chopsticks." True to the spirit indeed. Keep at it, Giulia!

» I'm Never Not Playtesting - Dark T-Shirt

Interview with Ministry of Entertainment

Grant Chen of the Ministry of Entertainment (MiniEnt) emailed me a while back to do an interview. We were going to do it over Skype, but the ongoing layout marathon for Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple left my schedule very tight.

We discuss my game design process, what was cut from Do, making binary choices interesting, emergent complexity, and the loooong road from conception to production. Hope you dig it!

We conducted this interview over email for a few days, so my apologies if I'm even more long-winded than usual. :)

» MiniEnt: Interview with Daniel Solis