More Kickstarter Advice - Have Friends And Be Lucky

Rereading yesterday's post I hate the sound of it. I come off as one of those "Look at how my hard work paid off" types and that's not how I feel. How I really feel is lucky that I'm able to raise any money at all being at home with my family, doing what I love.

Hell, I was lucky that Dogan Koslu convinced Ali Atabek to hire me at Mindcraft when I was out of college, getting me into the game industry in the first place; I was lucky that Peter Akemann and Dogan brought me on as the second employee at Treyarch; I was lucky to be in the right place and the right time to be a lead on the Spider-Man games - if that hadn't happened I never would have come up with the 3D swinging mechanic, and even if I had it would have probably sunk into obscurity; I was lucky to be on a team of great guys who made the mechanic so much better than my original idea; and now I'm lucky that people remember the thing, and I'm lucky that high profile games journalists have written about Energy Hook!

I really don't want to be the guy who eats fortune's cookie.

More luck: I'm lucky to have made friends with Jakub Koziol, creator of Little Alchemy, who not only recorded most of the game footage but also came up with the idea of having a launch party on twitch.tv and became the game's first (and so far only) Executive Producer - his initial contribution gave the whole campaign a huge boost, making it look awesome right out of the gate. 

Not to mention I'm lucky that H1bbe, one of the early prealpha players, was able to record footage for the Kickstarter, and that he had contacts in the Ludum Dare scene, so when he spread news about the game there it spread. Maybe it was because of that that NerdCubed saw it, and then I was lucky that NerdCubed tweeted about it!

So ... my real advice is to make awesome friends ... which is kind of down to luck, huh?

Comments

[Adam Parrott]

For what it's worth, Jamie, I did not view yesterday's "Kickstarter Fu" post in a negative light, but perhaps that is partly due to the fact that I have come to know you through reading your blog posts over the past several months. Not only have you worked hard to produce a quality product, but you seem to possess a genuine attitude of gratitude about the journey.

How could you not succeed? :-)

[Happionlabs]

Thanks Adam!