Deathfire - Editorial @ Matt Chat Blog

The Matt Chat Blog has a new article about what it takes to achieve kickstarter success, and uses Deathfire as one example.

I don’t want to give the impression that I think Guido did a bad job or didn’t deserve to meet his funding goal. Heck, I pledged the highest to his project than any so far. I really liked the project and was excited about stuff like the Rat Faction and the mysterious complexity he kept referring to in his German games. It’s probably my disappointment with this Kickstarter (and a few others near to my heart that also failed) that led me to try to help him so much. But if he (or anyone else) wants to try for another Kickstarter, I think they’d do well to focus on identifying with their audience as gamers first, developers second. They need to sell themselves well, but also a fulfilling role for the viewers, who (after all) want something more than just a game at the end of this. We want to feel that we’re part of something larger, and the guy values our goodwill and enthusiasm as much as our money.

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He makes some very good points and again brings me back to the observation that a lot of Kickstarter projects could benefit from consulting with people who have marketing experience. Developing games and marketing are two very different areas, some people can do both well, many can't. This isn't an area most developers have to worry about as publishers generally push the product. Since Kickstarter circumvents the publisher, the developers need to have a well thought out plan on how to attract backers and the key is absolutely identifying and understanding the audience.

Of course, the article doesn't discuss other factors like the holiday season and what seems to be a recent uptick in RPG projects looking for funding.

Edit: Also curious just how good of a job these projects do leveraging the data mining stuff Kickstarter provides. Swen has either a blog or backer update for D:OS where he posted screen shots of some of the data tracking and it was very clear not only was he paying attention to the data, he could analyze it and adjust his plans using it. It's a very fundamental practice but it's surprising how many normal companies fail to properly leverage their own data.

Yea the D:OS kickstart was almost a complete failure. He did an excellent job adjusting midway; was a bit surprise he actually had time to maneuver. The mandate is also another kickstart that started very poorly. It makes me wonder if 60 days should be the norm. I guess the inverse issue is that kickstart takes a huge amount of effort though with 60 days perhaps they could start a bit slower ?

Guido also is older, concentrating possibly a lot more on gamedev than he is open to marketing techniques.

I think Guido did a fine job of marketing the Kickstarter, but the game itself just didn't seem to find a large enough audience. Kickstarted games like PoE, Wasteland 2, T:ToN, and Div:OS could rely on a dedicated fan interest that significantly helped with the task. If you don't have that, then you either have to shoot for a smaller share or find a way to really impress and tantalize the potential contributors.