Kickstarter Anxiety Continued

I've been showing other devs our Kickstarter preview page and have mostly been encouraged ... except by Bob Berry and Jon Mavor from Uber - the Planetary Annihilation guys - who have basically told me, "That's a total do over!" and "Either don't show people that trailer at all or put a lot more time into it."

Yeah. That trailer. The one that's already Out There. Hmm.

Now ... we're not in Uber's weight class. We're just a couple guys working out of our homes and don't need to raise anywhere near the kinds of money they're used to to make this game. 

But they know what the hell they're doing.

We're estimating to bring the pitch up to where Uber thinks it'll be ready will cost around $5K (by way of comparison, I've spent less than $100 on this project so far, cash wise - time is another story) and take 2-4 months. We probably won't increase our funding target - sunk costs are sunk, after all - but that'll put us in this situation where we can succeed at the Kickstarter but still feel like it wasn't worth it. If we fail now, that'll be more of an, "Oh well, we failed, c'est la vie," sort of thing.

I hate when people ask me for feedback and ignore it. So I'm going to feel like an ass after this, no matter which way I jump, but ... oh people on the internet, what do you think? Trust the experts, take the larger risk which will potentially let us make the bigger, better game? Or stay the course, cash in on the good press we've gotten last week, and launch ASAP?

Comments

[Richie Bisso]

What's your budget? Trailer or no, you still might not make back that money... which will hurt if it's not budgeted.

[Richie Bisso]

*Trailer improvements or no

[Jeromie Walters]

I'm not in the industry, but I like reading your blog and am impressed with how far Energy Hook has come from the initial concept video. It makes sense to listen to those who have succeeded -- if you want to be successful, do what successful people do. But on the other hand, Kickstarter seems fairly hit or miss; you could fail now, invest $5k and fail later, succeed now, or succeed later (short $5k of course).

I think a bigger question is, "Do YOU think it's ready?" If not, maybe incorporate some of the suggestions. If so, pull the trigger and let the chips fall! :)

God bless, best of luck, and thanks for posting your updates... from a hopeful future indie still working as a web dev.

[Ronny]

Wait and do it right. I'm a big fan of yours, but after seeing that trailer it wasn't something I was interested in backing. Want you to do well, so take the time and do it over.

[rgbn]

1. You sound really anxious, so asking questions, finding out how You want to do this, seems like a very good decision to me! ;)

2. Know that I'm not in the target audience... It's only lately, that the game seems to show a it's personality, and I think it could still do with a bit more "uniqueness" and atmosphere. I would recommend putting aside a finite (and relatively short) amount of time, in which you would only work on these. I feel like some small touches could make a difference.

3. Having said that, I do believe your Kickstarter has a good chance of success, even in it's current state ;)

[Bram Stolk]

The trailer needs to improve.
Kickstarters are often sold on wow factor.

At the very least, fix the black text: it looks horrible.
Change it to white, and make it more readably by adding a thing black outline to ensure contrast with background video.

[Tatham]

If the trailer was intended to be the actual Kickstarter trailer, then I have to recommend going the route of getting the campaign done properly. I love watching the project progress, but I feel like there needs to be more of a pitch involved.

[sev (@cheryltz)]

It sounds like you've identified the two extremes -- go now as-is, or put in months and $thousands to make the kind of thing a big studio would put out. Is there a middle ground that feels more comfortable?

As a gamer who's backed a few video games & somebody who's written code but not made games, I'd be interested in seeing more polish in the kickstarter pitch video than I saw in the trailer. (what's the relationship between the trailer & the ks pitch video?) For me, the difference between a teaser & a kickstarter video is that the latter is a pitch -- it's probably got a voiceover to tell me why this is interesting and some concept art to tell me where the thing is going, at the very least. If you separate the "make a cool trailer" project from the "make a kickstarter pitch video" project, are you still looking at the same stark dichotomy of do-it-as-is vs. months-and-thousands-of-dollars?