The Belarusian team of game developers gathered at Kickstarter $ 83,577
The Belarusian game development team Aterdux Entertainment managed to raise $ 83,577 on Kickstarter (out of a planned 50 thousand). The crowdfunding campaign dedicated to the release of the second part of the game " Legends of Eisenwald, " was supported by 2729 people.
I bring to your attention an interview with the project manager Alexander Dergay, who shared his invaluable experience in conducting a crowdfunding campaign in a foreign territory.
Who had the crazy idea of ​​the project on Kickstarter, how did the team members react to it at the very beginning, why did you decide to try it?
')
We follow the news in the world and once we came across an article about Tim Shaffer and Kickstarter. At that moment, we already realized that we did not have enough money to complete our game, and I suggested that we all start our project on Kickstarter. We began to monitor different projects, to consider how much money we need.
How to prepare for the publication of the project? What was read, whose experience was studied?
We mainly looked at different projects on Kickstarter. Though we looked at the projects of Tim Schaffer and Brian Fargo , they did not focus on them, because our situation is completely different - very few people knew about us. Therefore, we looked at small successful projects, FTL in particular. We also studied a lot of different “how to” on the Internet about how to present your project on Kickstarter. Unfortunately, we did not find any information about the games. It would have helped if by the beginning of the launch they realized how important the promotion of the game is in the media. By the way, now there is a new interesting group on Facebook: Russians on Kickstarter . Everyone who is going to create their projects there in the future, we highly recommend this group.
Who led the project? Was there someone in charge of the project management team on Kickstarter, or was it all done together?
All the ideas we discussed together. And then distributed tasks. Victor Armonik mostly worked on update texts and others, I mostly translated everything, communicated with backers on Kickstarter and in various forums on the Internet. It took a lot of time to discuss various “strategic” issues - what information to publish, what additional rewards to do, etc.
How confident were you of success?
We were sure that we would collect our amount, and all the questions that you would do if you did not collect it, and answered that we would collect it. Still, we asked for funds at the very minimum and we really believed in our game. And by the end of the campaign there was already a fairly large coverage of our project in the media, so the question was only how much we will collect at all.
How was the required amount collected? Were there any peak or, on the contrary, failures?
There are several peak moments: the first time when the creators of The Banner Saga recommended us to their backers, Stoic Studio - you can see the inflow on the site kicktraq.com. Then we released our video with a demonstration of the combat system, which also attracted a lot of people. And 4 days before the end, a very popular gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun wrote about us.
What feelings were experienced when the required amount was accumulated? How did you celebrate success? ;)
When the necessary amount was accumulated, we almost till the morning argued about additional funds - what they would be spent on. In the end, we considered how much it would cost and put it on a vote for Beckers. We did not celebrate success, only after the end of the campaign we went all together in a cafe and then slept for a few days (not from the cafe’s hike, from lack of sleep during the whole campaign :))
What do you think was your secret to success? What have you done to make it happen?
I think our success lies primarily in the fact that we love what we do, and this is noticeable. Our video on Kickstarter has collected a lot of positive comments. The most important thing was that it was necessary to bring all this to a large number of people. About us began to write a little. We did not stop, and eventually got to the big sites. The main thing was not to give up, and we did the best we could for the rest of the campaign. Plus, we maintained very close contact with many active backers and listened to their advice and recommendations. One of these backers was the editor-in-chief of the German gaming site, pcgameshardware.com, which helped us a lot with the coverage of our game and project in Germany.
Were there any moments that you, from the height of today's experience, consider erroneous? If there was an opportunity to start a project from the beginning, would you correct something in the style of project management?
There were a lot of mistakes, and we were glad to make them now, and not during the release of the game itself - all this could turn out to be much more painful for us. First, we launched our project on Kickstarter on Saturday, and the first press releases were distributed only on Monday. Now you see that it is desirable to give information about the project before its release. And do not run it at the weekend. Secondly, we counted on the fact that if we already have an alpha version of the game, while other projects have only ideas, we do not need to provide much information. As a result, we did not create a sufficient amount of promotional materials, and this had to be feverishly engaged during the campaign itself. Thirdly, to write press releases, it is desirable not only to translate them from Russian into English, but to write them immediately in English, and this should be done by a person for whom this is the native language. And even better is to hire a PR agency, which we did at the end of the Kickstarter campaign.
What advice would you give to people who in the future will start their crowdfunding project?
Study, see what others do, communicate with others, ask for advice - the experience of others is always very useful, and, as they say, it is better to learn from the mistakes of others.
upd: meet the hero of the interview with Alexander Dergaya under the nickname aterdux . After the publication of the article, good people gave him an invite.
I bring to your attention an interview with the project manager Alexander Dergay, who shared his invaluable experience in conducting a crowdfunding campaign in a foreign territory.
Who had the crazy idea of ​​the project on Kickstarter, how did the team members react to it at the very beginning, why did you decide to try it?
')
We follow the news in the world and once we came across an article about Tim Shaffer and Kickstarter. At that moment, we already realized that we did not have enough money to complete our game, and I suggested that we all start our project on Kickstarter. We began to monitor different projects, to consider how much money we need.
How to prepare for the publication of the project? What was read, whose experience was studied?
We mainly looked at different projects on Kickstarter. Though we looked at the projects of Tim Schaffer and Brian Fargo , they did not focus on them, because our situation is completely different - very few people knew about us. Therefore, we looked at small successful projects, FTL in particular. We also studied a lot of different “how to” on the Internet about how to present your project on Kickstarter. Unfortunately, we did not find any information about the games. It would have helped if by the beginning of the launch they realized how important the promotion of the game is in the media. By the way, now there is a new interesting group on Facebook: Russians on Kickstarter . Everyone who is going to create their projects there in the future, we highly recommend this group.
Who led the project? Was there someone in charge of the project management team on Kickstarter, or was it all done together?
All the ideas we discussed together. And then distributed tasks. Victor Armonik mostly worked on update texts and others, I mostly translated everything, communicated with backers on Kickstarter and in various forums on the Internet. It took a lot of time to discuss various “strategic” issues - what information to publish, what additional rewards to do, etc.
How confident were you of success?
We were sure that we would collect our amount, and all the questions that you would do if you did not collect it, and answered that we would collect it. Still, we asked for funds at the very minimum and we really believed in our game. And by the end of the campaign there was already a fairly large coverage of our project in the media, so the question was only how much we will collect at all.
How was the required amount collected? Were there any peak or, on the contrary, failures?
There are several peak moments: the first time when the creators of The Banner Saga recommended us to their backers, Stoic Studio - you can see the inflow on the site kicktraq.com. Then we released our video with a demonstration of the combat system, which also attracted a lot of people. And 4 days before the end, a very popular gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun wrote about us.
What feelings were experienced when the required amount was accumulated? How did you celebrate success? ;)
When the necessary amount was accumulated, we almost till the morning argued about additional funds - what they would be spent on. In the end, we considered how much it would cost and put it on a vote for Beckers. We did not celebrate success, only after the end of the campaign we went all together in a cafe and then slept for a few days (not from the cafe’s hike, from lack of sleep during the whole campaign :))
What do you think was your secret to success? What have you done to make it happen?
I think our success lies primarily in the fact that we love what we do, and this is noticeable. Our video on Kickstarter has collected a lot of positive comments. The most important thing was that it was necessary to bring all this to a large number of people. About us began to write a little. We did not stop, and eventually got to the big sites. The main thing was not to give up, and we did the best we could for the rest of the campaign. Plus, we maintained very close contact with many active backers and listened to their advice and recommendations. One of these backers was the editor-in-chief of the German gaming site, pcgameshardware.com, which helped us a lot with the coverage of our game and project in Germany.
Were there any moments that you, from the height of today's experience, consider erroneous? If there was an opportunity to start a project from the beginning, would you correct something in the style of project management?
There were a lot of mistakes, and we were glad to make them now, and not during the release of the game itself - all this could turn out to be much more painful for us. First, we launched our project on Kickstarter on Saturday, and the first press releases were distributed only on Monday. Now you see that it is desirable to give information about the project before its release. And do not run it at the weekend. Secondly, we counted on the fact that if we already have an alpha version of the game, while other projects have only ideas, we do not need to provide much information. As a result, we did not create a sufficient amount of promotional materials, and this had to be feverishly engaged during the campaign itself. Thirdly, to write press releases, it is desirable not only to translate them from Russian into English, but to write them immediately in English, and this should be done by a person for whom this is the native language. And even better is to hire a PR agency, which we did at the end of the Kickstarter campaign.
What advice would you give to people who in the future will start their crowdfunding project?
Study, see what others do, communicate with others, ask for advice - the experience of others is always very useful, and, as they say, it is better to learn from the mistakes of others.
upd: meet the hero of the interview with Alexander Dergaya under the nickname aterdux . After the publication of the article, good people gave him an invite.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/146013/
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