Post-mortem: Divine Space on Kickstarter.com

Instead of the preface

Here I will not talk about why we were on Kickstarter - I told about this in the previous article . I also do not plan to draw graphics, pour carriages of numbers and other things. All this is in similar post-mortems. Now I want to share my experience and tell what in my humble opinion went wrong and why the campaign did not raise the required amount. A small amount for Kickstarter, only $ 100,000.

Third of target amount

It would seem that Divine Space collected only a third and it was very far from the success of the campaign. However, this is not at all the case. In fact, the difference is only a few percent of the conversion of visitors into Becker. Our conversion was about 3.2%, a good conversion, which would be enough for us to achieve the goal - 5-6%. Elegant conversion of top projects - 12-13%, according to the authors of the projects. Here the logical question is: “But then, would you have collected only twice as much?” And the answer to it will be: no. The Kixtarer audience is very sensitive to the general mood, and if he sees that the number of backers is growing and the amount is not growing slowly, the project has not reached a plateau, then their number and payments will increase. At the end, the conversion dropped to 2.6%, which is natural: the project does not collect, it is watched but not supported. In the case of successful projects, the picture is just the opposite, the conversion in recent days takes off to the skies.


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Every missing percentage of conversion arose (or disappeared, somehow) not just like that, but for obvious reasons. I want to tell about them here, so that you, dear reader, would bypass this rake. The most interesting thing here is that these reasons are not related to the game itself or its quality. No, just the quality of the game itself, the art, the setting, even the shallow germ of the gameplay that we showed - all this was accepted by the target audience with a bang. But at the same time there were serious, critical drawbacks in the “parameters” of the project, which, unfortunately, were not in my power to change.

Problem # 1: video and editing

The video was supposed to be not only original, but also entertaining. Hooded figures were conceived as an allegory of many similar scenes in science fiction films with a hint of villains-publishers who, according to many players, rivet endless clones and farms. In the original idea were planned all sorts of funny moments - luminous eyes, smoke from the mouth, hands of Darth Vader, and so on. Unfortunately, the creators of our film simply did not have enough time and energy. In addition, as I wrote in the previous article, we didn’t have time for a rehearsal, as a result of which we look quite miserable and funny on the video. That is, the funny thing was not the video, but us. Alas, funny is not in a good way, like Charlie Chaplin or Tim Scheifer in his video, where he is funny and charming. Being funny on the video does not contribute to the belief of the backers in the team. But this was not the worst thing in the video.

The fact that absolutely everything is noticed is a discrepancy between speech and lips. In my opinion, this is what made the video inoperative. The viewer did not believe in what was happening on the screen, did not believe in us and, as a result, did not believe in our project. Without exaggeration, I can say that I received at least two hundred reviews that we have "the most monstrous installation in the world, and the speech does not match the lips."

Problem # 2: Target Platform

The biggest problem of the campaign (and the project as a whole) is that it was designed first for the iPad. I was initially against it, but they convinced me that “this will be a small game for trial”. Blame, fool, correct.

It was an absolute missing from the target audience, which is currently formed on Kickstarter. It was a blunder by the audience of space game lovers. It was a spittle in the face of all lovers of role-playing games. Moreover, it was a hit in the pain point of the players who are not just not interested in games for tablets, but treat them sharply negatively. Never before have I received so much negativity from players, right up to open insults and ridicule on the forums. The main idea of ​​the masses today, "such a game can not be good on tablets" and "you do something scanty, as always on mobile phones, and you, serious players and fans of space games, try to play it!"

I know what the games on tablets will be in a year or two, but our target audience is not game developers. These are ordinary people who cannot predict the future in this way. They live for today, and in this context they are absolutely right. Similar games compared to what they love, tiny, scanty and uninteresting. The loud claims that Divine Space is an AAA title for tablets contributed to their even greater fury. Divine Space caused players to doubt the developers' normality, since, in their opinion, "the PS is always done first, and then ported to mobile phones." In some ways they are right. I believe that the PS version would have already been released.

Summarizing, I can say the following. Your target audience should LOVE your project, then everything will be fine. If there is something that annoys them, then it will definitely play. If you assume that a particular property of your project does not like the target audience, do everything possible to get rid of it. Because even if only 10% of people do not want to support your project because of this, you can lose much more than 10% of the amount collected.

Problem # 3: freemium (free-to-play)

Fremium (it is free-to-play, free-toplay) is the third nail not in the coffin of the campaign, but right in its heart. Thanks to the many games in which this (beautiful in theory) model has turned into pay-to-play or pay-to-win, many players sincerely hate it. For those who do not know what it is: these are games that can be downloaded or installed for free, but in which especially valuable items are sold for money. In especially evil and cynical games, energy is sold, without which players involved in the process cannot continue to play and have to pay. In the case of pay-to-win in games, conditions are created that players in almost no way can pass certain levels without paying the game. In severe cases in multiplayer games, those who pay, get a huge advantage over non-paying players and turn them into meat. It so happened that the majority of players who hate free-to-play were our target audience. In other words, they are willing to pay for copies of games, they are willing to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars in support of projects interesting to them, but they are not ready to pay games with free-to-play. Of course, not all players are like this, otherwise we would not have collected a third of the required amount.

We knew that we would have this problem. But even I didn’t imagine its full value, especially after working with Russian players who were more or less loyal to the Fremium. Maybe the Fremium would work for some other games with a different target audience, I completely admit it (the same farms or cityville).

Problem # 4: the inability to buy / pre-order the game

This problem stems from the previous one and, I believe, this is the biggest drawback of this project. The Fremium model deprived the campaign of the opportunity to offer players a copy of the game for half its cost (or slightly less / more). Most of the backers pay mainly in order to pre-order a copy of the game they like with a huge discount and get a bunch of different bonuses from above. The main thing for everyone is still a copy of the game, which they either would not otherwise receive, or would still buy but for a much higher price. In our case, the Fremium model creates a situation in which players will get the game for free. And a huge number of them have a reasonable question: “Why should I pay now, if I already get it for free? Bonuses are great, but the main bonus is a free game! ”. Or "Let others pay for me, I will play when the game comes out." Writing texts that “the game will not work if you do not support it” does not work.

We consider the missed conversion

Returning to the conversion. Now you can roughly assume and calculate what we have lost by launching a campaign in this form. As I wrote above, our conversion was at the level of 3%, then rising to 3.5%, then decreasing to 2.8%. My assessment is based solely on personal experience and a vision of how other projects work, comparing hundreds of campaigns and dozens of different viewing and conversion statistics. You can agree or disagree with me, but the assessment is as follows:

On the video and the lack of synchronization, we lost quite a bit, about 0.25% -0.3%. On the platform at least 1.25%, on the farmium at least 0.75% and in the absence of a paid copy of the game at least 1%.

The higher the percentage of people screened out by the project’s flaws (or properties), the higher your lost income. And most importantly, the dependence here is not linear, but exponential (or on a similar schedule): for example, 10% of fallen backers will reduce your fees by 10%, and 15% will reduce the profitability of your campaign by 20% and so on. Of course, these figures are conditional and for different campaigns they will be different, but the essence is exactly that. Conversely, the higher your initial conversion, the higher the campaign fees. That is why at the very beginning I wrote that the difference is not in $ 60 thousand, but only in a few percent. And that is why all those who have passed Kickstarter say: "Your first days should show very good results and powerful growth, then your campaign will be successful" or "Do not start until you are sure that your first days will be very successful."

That is, along with this “cumulative anti-bonus”, our conversion losses are roughly not 3.3%, but all 4-4.5%. That is, I am sure that with different campaign settings, our conversion would be at least 7% and by the end (in the last two or three days) it would increase to 9-10%. This would be more than enough to successfully achieve the goal.

Lack of a clear campaign launch date

Until the very last days I can’t get a clear answer when we start the campaign. The answer came suddenly and it seems like "we are launching now or as soon as possible." This made it impossible for me to do a so-called warm-start when press releases with a clear launch date are sent. This gives the press an opportunity to study a project, prepare articles or reviews, and ask developers questions. Unfortunately, the press releases "we are making the game and will be running on Kickstarter ... someday, probably this month ... or maybe next ..." do not work. There was almost no heating, with the exception of some preliminary agreements with small editions (they all wrote about us, thank them for that great).

This affected the number of views / visits to the project: it turned out to be a record low for 44 days:


The lack of a start-start did not affect the conversion, it affected the low number of views: only 19,943. It is very, very small. For example, Legends of Eisenwald generated 46 thousand views and collected $ 83 thousand. Moreover, the average payment in Legends was $ 30, while in Divine Space - $ 53. That is, again, even with the same low number of views and the “right” conversion, we have (supposedly) collected about $ 74 thousand. If we consider that mass behavior also works during views (the more they back, the more they write and the more views; the more views, the more backers and the more they write), then the target amount would be achieved. This is a vicious circle, it can work for you or against you, depending on your project.

Ratio of beckers “living” on Kickstarter and “newbies”. In fact, it is 1 to 1, but the balance of forces was changed by Becker, who supported the project with a sum of $ 5000.

Alone in the field

I had to deal with absolutely everything, except for illustrations. It means working with the press and texts, communicating with backers and the community, working with forums (more than three hundred), coordinating backers who helped us, monitoring statistics, writing and translating updates, editing video and much, much more. One is very hard to do and there is simply not enough time for much. We have not received publications in the "big" press and I believe that for this reason. In addition, when the whole team is doing something else (as my now former partners decided), this is very demotivating. That is, if you are doing a project, but only you are interested in Kickstarter, and your team or partners are not in the same boat with you ... I do not advise you to waste your time on such an activity. Unless you want to gain invaluable experience and check your reserve of forces.

Separately, I want to thank two people for their continued support (both moral and technical, work with texts and the press) throughout the campaign. They are Rinat Bakiyev (whom I met in our group “ Russians on Kickstarter ” on Facebook) and Thomas Watson. I do not even know how I met Thomas, it happened somehow after the launch of the campaign, and I consider myself very lucky. If such people appear in your project - you are lucky, appreciate them. Not as an advertisement, but as an advice: there are many people in our group who are interested in crowdfunding and are ready to join different projects, sometimes they ask me to recommend someone. If you need an ally, then a place is better than our group, today I do not know. Like-minded people who will even unload you a little and support you in difficult times are priceless. No kidding.

And at the same time, cut off people who promise help and support, but when the moment comes they do nothing. They will spend not only your time, but what you entrust to them will not be done on time. So for example, it happened with Russian-speaking forums, where out of three hundred about God wrote about us

And yet...

Despite the fact that the audience had practically no reason to support us (and there were serious reasons to NOT support us), we collected a rather large amount. This means that the project was really good. Throughout the campaign, I received many excellent reviews from colleagues who, over several decades of work in the industry, have achieved much more than I did (for now). One of the letters sounded like this: “I am surprised that you collected so much. The game for the iPad, and even free-to-play - I thought you would collect much less, despite the fact that your game is simply gorgeous. Why, why aren't you doing it for PS? ”But if someone says that these were just compliments ...

Feil? No, this is an incredible success!

I received three offers to purchase the project and / or the whole team. One sounded like this: “We don’t really care how much you are worth, we agree.”

The second, much more interesting offer I received from one of the world leaders in the gaming industry (today, first of all, it is mobile games). For obvious reasons, I will not say what kind of company it is, but I have not received any offers yet. In addition to the full funding of the entire project, raising the salaries of all employees to a normal level, management was well aware of what Divine Space is. How long will the development, what is actually needed amount for a full release. The company took over all marketing and promotion. Guaranteed that Divine Space will appear in the top of mobile applications on the launch day (and, following their success, I have no doubt about this). Dropping all the details, I estimated my personal gain after two or three years (after certain events) at $ 1.2 - 1.5 million.

The third offer was to simply buy all the rights and the team from my partners (and, probably, from me too) and continue the development.

Why did it happen so? Because they found out about us. During the campaign on Kickstarer I was able to show the project, its strengths, my vision of the future of mobile games and what they will be in a few years. There is no self-praise or boasting. If your campaign on Kickstarer or analog is active, updated every 2-3 days, you move mountains, so that everything will work out for you, then they will know about you and they will notice you. And if your project is really promising, you will not be lost. Or not?

Success! .. No, this is the maximum epic fail in the game.

Partners with whom I worked refused all offers, did not even begin to consider offers to buy. The reasons seemed ridiculous, unreasonable and unprofessional to me, but I will not voice them here for ethical reasons. Let me just say that to prosrat such an offer, which all small developers probably dream of ... it's just incredible. It was a great opportunity to work with professionals, who probably already have hundreds of games. Learn to gain experience. Yes, I would have had to shove my pride to hell, but this experience is worth much more. Yes, and from a financial point of view, this proposal was such that start-ups fall out once in a lifetime. For me, probably the most important thing is not the loss of material goods, namely the opportunity to learn how to do business from those who do it the best in our industry.

What was the alternative? Divine Space is no more. Will he defrost I do not know, and it is unlikely I will continue to produce it in this case. What is this game without me? It may be good, but definitely it will be no longer Divine Space and not something that I so hard created.

So is the epic fail?

Not. Despite the epic of this last file, for me the campaign as a whole is more than successful. She gave me an incredible experience and many contacts, which only at the end of the campaign began to work. I met with journalists and PR people; stars of the gaming industry, who collected several million $ on Kickstarter and with talented teams that collected $ 200-500 thousand. I learned that in the first place it is valued in the video, how to make it as tasty and popular as possible. I learned what not to waste time and effort, which is not worth the effort that I spent on them. I got acquainted with the Beckers and in practice I saw which rewards they needed and were interesting for, and which ones would not work. Therefore, as long as crowdfunding grows and develops, while it remains popular, I will move in that direction.

Now I am working on three projects that are likely to appear on Kickstarter (or on some other site). Two of them are gaming, I am now forming a team of one. The third is directly related to crowdfunding and is aimed at solving the problems that I encountered during my own campaign. It’s too early to disclose the details, but I hope that thanks to this project, small teams (including domestic ones) that started with good projects will be able to significantly increase their chances of success and press coverage.

I wish you all success in the raging sea of ​​crowdfunding and I hope that this post-mortem will be useful even if you do not make a game, a game for tablets or mobile phones or a game with a frimium.

As always, a special thank you for the indication of errors, typos and inaccuracies.