NA » [Homebrew] Kickstarter

Homebrew Kickstarter

Jun 24, 2015 at 3:33:28 PM

Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >

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I want to make a kickstarter page for my homebrew Alisha's Adventure, but I have somewhat stupid question. If I get funding for the project, what should I do with the money? I've been making this game by myself for free. I would like to be able to hire some other creative people to help me with the game. Possibly someone who is good at programming C (I only know ASM) to make custom development tools, a graphics artist with a similar enough style, a gameplay designer, and a music guy. I could use another ASM programmer, but I would need to explain a ton of stuff.

Edited: 06/27/2015 at 01:39 PM by NintendoAge Moderator

Jun 24, 2015 at 3:47:25 PM

bunnyboy (81)

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You need to figure out how much money is going where long before doing the kickstarter. People who just say "give me $20k" usually fail, while saying "give me 5k for an artist, 5k for music, 7k for rewards, 1k for fees, etc" is much more likely to succeed. To know those costs you will probably have the specific people already picked too.

Not knowing what you need will also make the estimated delivery hard!

Jun 24, 2015 at 3:47:25 PM

bunnyboy (81)

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double post!

Edited: 06/24/2015 at 03:47 PM by bunnyboy

Jun 24, 2015 at 4:21:01 PM

arch_8ngel (68)

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At a minimum:

(1) budget for a musician (you can buy full rights to contract-composed songs by the track)

(2) budget for artists (you tend to pay by the tile for contract work, or you could find somebody that does the whole job at a fixed cost)
-- also, if you're going to have box art or posters/swag you'll need another artist for that work

(3) budget for a certain quantity of cartridge hardware for people that pre-order (or boxes, manuals, etc)

That goes with Brian's comment regarding the "for rewards" category, assuming a physical copy of the game is at least one of the rewards tiers.

(4) finally, budget yourself some kind of fixed payment for being the programmer -- i.e. pay yourself

The lower the number you can make work the more likely it probably is to clear the funding hurdle rather than fizzle out entirely.

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Edited: 06/24/2015 at 04:21 PM by arch_8ngel

Jun 24, 2015 at 4:27:24 PM

thesubcon3 (148)

(Jeffrey Wittenhagen) < King Solomon >

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As I'm about to launch my Kickstarter with a Homebrew game attached on Friday I have a million little things that we could go over. Shoot me a PM of you get serious and we can talk!

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Jun 24, 2015 at 4:45:06 PM

bunnyboy (81)

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List a million things here, it is all very interesting

Jun 24, 2015 at 5:00:49 PM

thesubcon3 (148)

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Originally posted by: bunnyboy

List a million things here, it is all very interesting

Haha. As soon as the madness calms down a bit I'll create a guide on my blog for sure!

My main recommendation, for starters, is to research as much as possible. I talked to a Kickstarter guru who works at the company and he said he has talked to thousands of people starting projects and apparently I planned mine extremely well. Make sure everything is covered.

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Jun 24, 2015 at 5:31:15 PM

Shiru (0)

(Shiru Shiru) < Meka Chicken >

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I'd say, the thing you'll need before of anything else is previous experience of developing and delivering a project of at least somewhat comparable complexity (like, maybe twice simpler and smaller), and not just as a programmer, but also as a project manager - so you will know for sure what and how you're going to do, including how much money you need and for what exactly. We already had enough Kickstarter campaings from people not really knowing what they promising and how they're going to fullfil the promises, and I think it may make harm to the whole homebrew scene after a while.

Jun 24, 2015 at 5:33:20 PM

bunnyboy (81)

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Yup I have seen lots where it is very obvious from the start it will fail, and not necessarily because the product is bad. Like the RetroClarity where they couldn't show their device working well, hadn't picked a final design, and tacked on random devices. Then look at Lizard which had a very playable demo on day 1, video of the game already running, very clear rewards with descriptions, and went past it's reasonable goal.

Jun 24, 2015 at 7:36:40 PM

thesubcon3 (148)

(Jeffrey Wittenhagen) < King Solomon >

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Originally posted by: bunnyboy

Yup I have seen lots where it is very obvious from the start it will fail, and not necessarily because the product is bad. Like the RetroClarity where they couldn't show their device working well, hadn't picked a final design, and tacked on random devices. Then look at Lizard which had a very playable demo on day 1, video of the game already running, very clear rewards with descriptions, and went past it's reasonable goal.

See that's where research comes in. If I was going to have a game associated with my project it had to be not only someone that has released a NES game before, possibly a first for KS that I've seen, and I also had to know them personally.

So in the end, if you haven't produced a game before, concentrate on that first. Then take a special project to KS.

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Jun 24, 2015 at 9:10:06 PM

M-Tee (27)

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I've backed a few kickstarters, and I've never backed someone unless:

*they've completed something similar (or the project is complete and they just need distribution money.)

*they don't have ridiculous stretch goals

*they have very realistic reward tiers

*they have their team chosen and expenses clearly laid out.

I didn't back the Super Retro Squad KS (from Mario Crossover infamy), but that project's failure was obvious when they announced 16-bit AND 8-bit graphics (among other things). One, their "16-bit" stuff was really generic compared to their other stuff, and two, it showed a clear lack of understanding of how much more time that stuff takes to make.

EDIT: Couple that with the fact that they were building the game with entirely different software than the one game they had previously completed, and it seemed pretty doomed for disaster. Sad, though. Because I really like their 8-bit homage character designs.

Edited: 06/25/2015 at 12:35 AM by M-Tee

Jun 24, 2015 at 11:07:36 PM

bunnyboy (81)

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Originally posted by: M-Tee

Couple that with the fact that

Something get cut off there?

I actually don't mind the crazy stretch/rewards, as long as the normal ones are reasonable. If someone has a 10k tier that they know nobody will get then it doesn't hurt anything.

Jun 24, 2015 at 11:16:36 PM

thesubcon3 (148)

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Originally posted by: bunnyboy

Originally posted by: M-Tee

Couple that with the fact that

We threw in a few of those in ours... I like to call them, "Might as well tiers". Some would be really cool tiers though

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Jun 24, 2015 at 11:29:17 PM

thesubcon3 (148)

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The other thing to keep in mind with Kickstarter projects is you can't cater to everyone's specific wishes or goals, especially when it comes to pricing. You need to price things so you can actually realistically make it happen!

Not everyone can afford to do a $60 NES CIB like Sydney Hunter and actually pay all expenses like: kickstarter fees, taxes, pay all the cart parts, boxes, labels and the programmer. At $60 Rob would basically have to pay money out of his pocket to make the game! That to me is ridiculously cheap for Collectorvision and there will definitely be people thinking that is how much it costs to make a NES game, when in fact it is just not realistic to do for an individual person (on Kickstarter). That just leads to me to having to explain why the extra money, aka in Promo Video #4 going up tomorrow I explain the KS overhead, charitable donations, etc.

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Jun 25, 2015 at 12:41:09 AM

M-Tee (27)

(M Tee) < Eggplant Wizard >

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Originally posted by: bunnyboy

Originally posted by: M-Tee

Couple that with the fact that

Thanks. Yeah, I finished that up with an edit.

The problem comes when stretch goals or rewards greatly surpass the scope of the project. These are often not nearly as well planned out, and what would result in a project that fizzles out instead of being completed. I've often seen Kickstarters when I wouldn't want them to hit their stretch goals because I know the additional effort to produce what's promised there can't be paid for with the amount of money they're raising - or - will exponentially expand the development time.

Edited: 06/25/2015 at 12:41 AM by M-Tee

Jun 25, 2015 at 8:46:10 AM

Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >

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In other words, I should wait until I'm almost done with the game before I publish the Kickstarter page.

Jun 25, 2015 at 8:53:07 AM

arch_8ngel (68)

(Nathan ?) < Mario >

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Originally posted by: Aaendi

In other words, I should wait until I'm almost done with the game before I publish the Kickstarter page.

That is one method. (where the kickstarter is more of an ordering system to fund manufacture/publishing of the cartridges)

Another would be to have the core game fully developed and the kickstarter could pay for improved music and expanded graphics.

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Jun 25, 2015 at 9:06:23 AM

thesubcon3 (148)

(Jeffrey Wittenhagen) < King Solomon >

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Originally posted by: Aaendi

In other words, I should wait until I'm almost done with the game before I publish the Kickstarter page.

Not necessarily. What we are saying is that you need to make sure that you can actually produce the product you are selling people on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is a great way to gauge interest for what you are doing. EG: If it won't sell, you can stop the process and not waste time on something that won't sell. However before you are at that point, what we are all saying is you #1, need some experience making and distributing what you are selling via Kickstarter (For example this isn't my first gaming book!), and #2 you need to make sure if you do go to Kickstarter, that everything is thought out properly and you have realistic goals.

I, for example, do passion projects, so basically I am going to Kickstarter this time as a way to reach a much larger audience than would be possible on my own. Our thing is that, my piece of the campaign is the book, which aside from editing, is completely written and ready for publishing.

However the other aspect of the KS is, if our project isn't funded and people aren't interested on a massive scale, Rob will not have to dedicate time to completely develop a RPG. We feel that is a perfect use of Kickstarter as something like that allows Rob to gauge the overall interest of his product.

So on my side, if this has huge interest, it'll be very clear that I need to continue writing and publishing books! For Rob, it'll show how large of scale it's possible for him to go with his games. And for both of us, it'll show how well collaboration between multiple projects will work.

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