The Banner Saga - After the Kick But Before the Start

Stoic's Alex Thomas writes on Gamesbrief about the process of running a Kickstarter campaign, based on their experience with The Banner Saga. This article doesn't talk the game itself but might be worth a read for those who like looking behind the curtain:

So far every project I’ve watched has suffered from the same mid-campaign slump. The novelty of your project has worn off and your most enthusiastic backers have already signed up, but it isn’t close enough to the finish to attract the procrastinators and the people who like to feel like they made a difference at the end (like me). It seems to me that regardless of whether you’re asking for ten thousand or half a million, you’ll stall out about half-way through your campaign.
Again, this is where Kickstarter as your full-time job comes in. When this occurred during out campaign we had raised a lot more than we expected and felt confident that we’d be able to produce the full trilogy we had originally planned, so we offered the full game to anyone who had pledged at $50 or more and saw an immediate and massive boost in pledges which largely helped to keep us moving during the slow middle. We also took this opportunity to do a lot of written interviews and podcasts that got new eyes on the project.

More information.

Thank you for sharing!

Even if your not planning to run a kickstarter campaign, it's a very interesting read.

Rock Paper Shotgun does a weekly round-up of KS games now, and a surprisingly high number of them offer no updates during the five weeks they're open for funding. Unsurprisingly, these ones often fail.

Fantastic read for me. I hope to be starting a kickstarter soon, in a month or two for Unfettered, and I've been scouring the internet for these kinds of retrospectives and tips for running a kickstarter campaign. This is easily the best article I've read yet on the topic.

I'm mostly on the right track, but I definitely picked up a few tips from this as well.

Quite an interesting read, a real boon to anyone considering starting such a campaign, in my opinion.


-Carn