Well, a few months ago a fellow Gaf indie developer, Duderino from JV5 Games,
did some post over her talking about their oncoming game Air Dash. You may
perhaps remember it while looking at the picture below;
They did a
kickstarter for Air Dash Online (Oct 11, 2013 - Nov 10, 2013),
targeting $355,555. Three days ago they canceled the project.
I assume Duderino to be a serious person so I guess something went wrong
during or prior to the kickstarter project and I am interested in what went
wrong. Talking about being funded is nice, yet talking about some of
intricacies may serve the indie scene to a broader extent.
I know of this game from this thread, I've seen it before, but I had no idea there was a Kickstarter. I think that in itself describes the problem.
Some of you know I ran a quite successful kickstarter. Unless you have some big pre-existing fanbase at your disposal or some high profile status to where everyone will come talk about you without you lifting a finger, there is some amount of hustling that ought to be done before and during the campaign to get awareness out. I did.. I think 11 interviews, and had numerous stories across various indie and gaming sites, including some coverage prior to the campaign. Most of those pieces didn't individually raise a lot of cash, but all together they feed into an increased awareness of the project that I think helps push it along. There are some people who see something and go check it out, there are other people who hear about it, don't check it out, then hear about it again later and decide "oh, this must be a thing, I keep hearing about it" *then* go check it out, so getting those stories on different sites helps.
You'll even have a section of really generous, enthusiastic individuals who love your project, PM you words of support constantly, and go around telling everyone they know to back the thing. These people really exist, I wouldn't have expected it, but I had a number of them and they still keep in touch, which is nice.
I could be absolutely wrong, but just based on the fact that I haven't heard about the Air Dash campaign I'm guessing that not enough hustling was going on. The idea is good, the game looks good, the video was well done and persuasive. $375k is a high bar, and I can't pretend to know how to raise that much cash, but the fact that they fell so short seems to be indicative of a problem with awareness.
Edit: I rewatched and I have a couple new thoughts.. I think this may have been a bit of a harder sell because the game was presented so briefly and blandly. There's not an overwhelming sense of style or variety in the early footage available -- It may be a bit hard to spark someone's imagination with just this. I've been saying again, privately and publically, that I think if you want a KS to catch fire, one of the key components is presenting it in a way that sparks' peoples imagination. If something seems to make people think of parts spread across the garage floor, it's not as romantic or exciting. You want to identify a desire of an audience and set up your video to spark their imagination. For example, I knew there was a lack of HD Metroid-likes and a significant desire for them. That's part of why I came up with the game, and in presenting the game we really emphasized those characteristics that made Metroid feel special that we also care about -- Isolation, atmosphere.
I think ADO would benefit greatly from a bit more development and a more polished and exciting looking vertical slice and really present it in an up close, exciting way. Don't just explain what the key points of the game are or what makes it special in words afterwards; Do it in the gameplay footage itself. And why was the gameplay footage mostly shrunk into tiny windows? There was little enough of it as it was, why make it harder to see?
Ultimately this is Monday morning quarterbacking, and I'm running my mouth, so take it for what it's worth. Sometimes something catches on or doesn't catch on for reasons I can't understand. There's a lot of X factor at work in these.
And actually, if you wanted to make the thread Jobbs, that would be super dope.
okay!
maybe another day it will return.
