Update: the developer revealed the campaign was funded in its last days by their own personal investors. I had a pinned message from them explaining it in detail which they seem to have now deleted. (As it likely violates Kickstarter terms of use).
The last 43 backers (comparing to your video snapshot) suddenly funded the campaign just above the goal. Looks like they wanted to skim the few actual backers by investing some of their own money (wich they get back). Very shady.
Viewers are just more sophisticated nowadays and understand what are the easy things to do and what are the hard things to do. As a Unity developer, the first thing I noticed about that ' boss' fight was that the boss had no AI and did not attack back and that the damage done by the player wasn't matching up or even being counted against the boss. It was not a fight, it was a boss character with an idle animation, and a player character with 2-3 animations. There was no fight.
Thank you for this analysis! My husband and I have started planning a campaign for a game we're working on and this helped me realize we are way too early in development to launch our campaign. A failed campaign would likely crush our spirits and kill the game, so I would much rather hold to keep building and developing before we decide to launch. I may not have come to that conclusion prior to watching this video.
"We don't want to bore you with the special skills" goes to show animations of the character running to the right or left...... Good video with good constructive feedback. People fail to understand the concept of constructive feedback. We often see people just shouting "This F"ing sucks" without explaining why, that is of no use to anyone cause the developers can't change it as they have no idea what part sucks. We also often see that (especially indy) developers are very sensitive to feedback when it's not all positive. It's a good thing to filter constructive and useless feedback. Ignore the "F this game" and focus on the feedback where people took their time to explain what isn't working for them and see if that's something you can fix or is just a personal thing for that person. Great video!
Some people who I went to Uni with (on a Games Tech course) did a KickStarter for their game, they raised 5k, paid 2k to a music producer for exclusivity on music, and as far as i can tell, bickered over the remaining 3k. It's been 6 years since, it seems their promos and promises were the best part.
Never start a introduction to your product with the people behind it. The cold truth is nobody cares about you until they do. Start with the action, with the premise, with the promise youre making your audience, it is LITERALLY the only think and best thing you can do, to promise them a good time. Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead. The writers undestood this. If you check their trailers, both of them start INMEDIATLY, MINUTE 0:00, with the introduction of the world, of the caracters, with witty dialoge and action.
I can imagine some misguided people starting this video up and thinking you're being too harsh but this is exactly what a lot of people need to hear, and it gets even better as the video goes on and we get to the RAFFLE part. Great work, man. And thank you, during the eternity waiting for the those intro logos to stop unfolding and bouncing around, you were quiet at first and I was like, "Aren't you going to call out these horrible logos?!" haha
The raffle ahs been canceled, although we get around 10% from that marketing strategy we decided not to continue the raffle because it was againts the rules of kickstarter, we already message everyone who joins, and they agree with it, we decided to give them in game perks, Im very disappointed that you can comment without knowing the story behind it, We accidentally press the launch button then wasted 5 days because we dont know it was already lived, and takes 2-3 weeks just to fill all the content in the campaign, then we try every possible outcome just like the raffle, but we late to see that it was againts the rules, we decided not to continue and message every backer who pledges and join, we give them in game perks, and added them as the character Npc inside the game as a collateral, WE change tactics by making improvements and adding game demo, and presented it in some publishers and investors, some decided to support the campaign so we dont get any negative impact for the game, But i discover this video some of our supporters tell that we are scammers, we make update almost every week in our discord and fb page, until now we are messaging each backer about it, and all of them still support us, I am a supporter and every videos John release im watching it later on, but because i am busy wasnt able to see this one, Hope JOHN , you gave us negative analysis for our game, maybe you should give the positive as well, You know a small team with this big game and now has this kind of content gave us much trouble than before, but anyway i am happy that you give us an example, yes almost everything he said was right, But there is something else also that is wrong, First you said we will not get the goals, But we already reached it , Second you told everyone that we need a basically good demo, to be honest it was but i have seen some games with good demo but they didnt get there goals, Third Most of Kickstarter campaign is based in marketing strategy we all know that, no matter how good the game is, if there are no marketing no one will see it, Fourth Accident happens, Right or Wrong, WE try our best to fixed it, giving us comment without knowing the story is being ignorant i think, But we will prove to everyone that the scammers your are talking about will release the game and maybe in future release a sequel of it
@@squeakybunny2776 honestly, no one is going to accidentaly launch the project they've been working for months, no one is going to make such a mistake that can ruin their dream game success, and plus, launching a campaing isnt one click away, theres plenty of confirmation clicks before fully lauching the kickstarter
John, you should do a series of UA-cam videos dedicated to "How TO run a Video Game Kickstarter". This seems to be a real unfulfilled space on UA-cam. There are no videos detailing the steps on how to make a good Kickstarter for a game. You could be the Kickstarter Video Game Guy on UA-cam.
@@nilsmuller-cleve6769 Where are the GDC talk that go into detail on the Game Play and "Game Aspects" of the Gaming Kickstarter? I see a lot videos of the mechanics of Kickstarter, but no focus on the Gaming Aspects.
@@commonwombat392 I've watched many talks around the general topic of indi-marketing and discoverability and because of that I can't recall a specific talk right now because they somewhat blurred together in my mind. From a quick search and skimming through the talk this one seems to be quite good: ua-cam.com/video/Ks1XGS2JS6s/v-deo.html Another one from the same guy which looks more like a general introduction: ua-cam.com/video/pKXpomUtiL8/v-deo.html
First time I've seen someone doing raffles to get pledges... I'm sure that is 100% illegal or at least against KS ToS. Generally the info in this video is good though. Don't show logos in trailers, get to gameplay quickly, etc. Though I don't agree on needing to be 70% done with a game and using KS purely as a pre-order system. I think as long as a game has a solid prototype or a demo available, and enough to actually show the developer is competent, then that is plenty enough for a KS campaign. One huge factor left out of the video is advertising/building a following beforehand. I think a lot of failed campaigns launch thinking KS will somehow just bring them traffic to their campaign... but the reality is only about 30% of pledges come from organic traffic from KS. The other 70% comes in from having to actually market and promote your campaign... whether through advertising spending, social media, word of mouth, etc. A lot of decent looking games fail to get funded because they rely entirely on KS to do that.
i think if you have a good chunk of your game made there is a larger chance that people will see the quality in your product, and he could be saying it because now days its a lot harder for Kickstarter to get trust. So of course you could pull it off but I think the longer you hold out (assuming you have enough money), the more likely you can make a Kickstarter that can actually get a good amount of money. So in a way you're right, but given that a lot of competent Kickstarter fail it can be a bit tricky to convince people that something you have is worth spending money on. I wouldn't use it as a strict rule but I think for some projects being more complete is more worth while. there's been some popular gaming kickstarer failures that are really interesting to read about, but they make people more skeptical. I also think if you had a very unique looking game, selling the idea might be easier. But 2d platformers are VERY common in the gaming space, so selling it very early would be a lot harder, since its HEAVILY reliant on a gameplay hook that sets it apart from everything else, or an artstyle that's very polished or unique. A lot of the more well-known kickstarter games I can think of were already fairly complete, but I can assume there's some other games that less far along but still succeeded, I just think its something you can't do 100% of the time and expect people to be interested.
@@GwyndolinOwO I might be an outlier in that case then, as my campaign succeeded and the game I'm making is still quite early in development. I think it's pretty important to at least have enough to show to give people a solid idea of what the final product will be... Even if the game is only 10% developed, if you have concept art, or mockups or just good breakdowns of what the rest of the game is going to be, then that definitely helps sell it to people. It doesn't hurt that my game is in a familiar genre so people already sort of expect certain content and features by default.
@@Konitama I wouldn't say you're an outline, there's just more risks if you have less to show. Like for example even big game developers will show off a game VERY early and sometimes people will just not know how to feel about it since they aren't too sure what the game is like quite yet. Maybe a % number isn't the best marker to set when to reveal a game or not but I'd still say its a smart idea to look at what you do have and then evaluate if its going to be understandable to someone that's never seen your thing before (assuming you want to grow your audience or don't have one yet). But yeah i mean, as far as marketing goes for stuff like this, its hard to really plan it out since it all varies based on things like genre, your previous works if there are any, if you have an audience already or not, if you have a good understanding on how to finish the game ect. So like i said I still wouldn't treat what he said as a hard rule to follow, but it IS a risk to put out mockups and ideas without proof you can finish something, since indie games get cancelled a LOT. Its still completely and fully possible to be funded still but i don't think its bad for indie devs to look back and understand that "hey, this might not be the right time for ME just yet". or even "now IS the right time". One thing to keep in mind, from a consumers perspective, is that consumers run into amazing ideas all the time. There are hundreds if not thousands of people around the world that want to make "their thing" but don't end up making "their thing" so that's at least something to consider, even if you wanna do things your way in the end. Do whatever you want, but make your decisions an informed one.
I really like that you go digging for the fake buyers and fake followers I always do this as well when it's this obviously a cash grab, another also good pointers is if the kickstarter campaign has like 2 comments, clearly this isn't organic. All your feedback on this are on point as always !
The tip about the logo is so true. I've judged entire videos based on the logo clearly created in Canva that they display first. And I sometimes leave before seeing the video based on that alone.
I was always under the impression that you had to build a following before a kickstarter, otherwise no matter how polished your presentation is nobody will ever see it.
@@GwyndolinOwOthe only way to blow up that way is by marketing yourself heavily (like on the level of begging to subreddit and twitter) to the community you want to kickstart to. All it takes is one niche micro internet celebrity to talk about your project for it to gain traction in a domino effect.
Went to check the kickstarter of this game and it actually got 43 backers in those 6 days and got funded I guess your video boosted the project at the end!
I found this very useful, usually we go to videos to show how to be successful on Kickstarter when the reverse of how not to be is very important so thank you for that, it was very insightful!
Great video! I'll say that running our Kickstarter was almost as much work as getting prepared for launch on Steam (game development not included). There's a lot that goes into it and it's easy to get caught up in other campaign's numbers and assume it's easy money. Typically 60% of your funding comes from your own audience if I remember correctly. So if you don't have enough followers to fund your entire campaign twice over if they all backed, then you probably need to keep building your audience first.
Hey John, thanks for the video. However, I feel like you missed an opportunity here. To me, it would have been much more interesting to take an in-depth look at a campaign that was good but not good enough, and at one that went really well. The apparently fake campaign you picked has so glaringly obvious issues (and, well, seems to be a scam anyway), I'm not sure it needs a serious in-depth analysis... :) Anyway, looking forward to your next video!
I'm pretty sure I saw some very early work of this game in several gamedev-groups on facebook and reddit (I remember the wip screenshots and timelapses of the character animation process), so imo it's likely that this is a legit project just by not so experienced developers.
I don't think it's a scam campaign in the traditional sense, just one that has not been well thought out. I personally think there are more lessons to be learnt in failure than success, as success has aspects of luck and chance that are hard to account for. With that said, I'll probably look at some successful campaigns, all the best and thanks for the comment!
@@LostRelicGames Sounds good! Though, there's (bad) luck involved in failure as well. I guess the art is to figure out the actual contributing factors in both scenarios.
@@musikalniyfanboichik It was rude to make an assumption without knowing story behind it, we are 100% sure it was not a scam, We are not ready for the campaign, we accidentally click the launch button, and after 5 days we only discover some backer already make pledges, sow e decided to continue, we dont have enough time, we fill all the content in the campaign and with just 2 days time span, we make a sample gameplay, but we can only show running, jumping, which is the basic controls of the game, we are happy to show you the current result of our game, but we choose not to, so everyone including John itself that he was wrong about it, Actually at the first place he already wrong because he thought we are not going to get our initial goals, but the result of our hard work gives more than the initial goals
As someone who's going to make a crowdfunding campaign, this is really helpful. I also thought ths campaign was...kinda hilarious? Lol (however this guy is really good at video editing and in making anime-style animations, not gonna lie) Anyways, I plan making a demo before the campaign, people say that's the best thing you can do.
Might be a simple question but apparently cannot be found on Google.. If I want to run/start a Kickstarter for a videogame I'm funding through Fiverr (where you can hire a team to make the game for you), which ''Porject Type'' would I have to select under ''Payments''; Individual, Business or Nonprofit?
This smacks of the sort of people who post a screenshot of bad art from their game on Reddit with a title like "The caves are dangerous at night!" and then sit back and expect people to go "Ooooh, sounds fascinating, and look at that MS Paint-looking screenshot, wow tell me more!", not realising the majority look and go "Newb developer posting low grade work like a million others, no thank you, next." In a flooded market you can't just be a nameless turd floating by.
I appreciate the work here and echo Common Wombat's sentiment. How to and how not to do Kickstarters and crowdfunding in general would be a very good subject to dive into. I know my crew would appreciate some outside perspective on that element of things.
Hey man, great video! Lots of good points in this. I'm thinking about launching a kickstarter in a few months and this is definitely a good example of how not to run things.
About Steam page, a dev friend said to me Steam now doesn't allow anymore to make a "coming soon" page without a playable build first. To which extent it should be "playable" of course is hard to guess.
Also... The "X% for art, Y% for music etc." pie chart for small teams is just impossible to guess, at least without knowing the final funding beforehand
I am new to your channel and I really like your content, def subbed. ^-^ Btw, I love how you were explaining us how to not run a game kickstarter, and you ended up finding a scammer unintentionally. XD
Why did I fail in my game kickstarter campaign? Because my country isn't even elegible to create one in kickstarter. I found out after a couple of months working on it. Sights...
7:58 mark: "Ideas and drafts and doodles mean nothing, they mean absolutely nothing" o.O I think they were fundraising to get to the gameplay part of their plan.
What the hell were six people doing for an entire year? Even one person working in their off-time could have made more than two minutes of animations. Ridiculous. I don't give a crap what the "creative director" claims. This was a scam. Pure and simple.
when i release I plan on having a pre game level as a full demo that will lead into the first level when the game actually releases, complete with a boss fight who's defeat will leD into the openings energy and story.. I expect this of games, they gotta capture my interest, if I expect this how could I expect less of others? mark my words here but IF I had a Kickstart campaign I would seek $1 minimum investments and offer a full playable level for that dollar, I'd seek it more for feedback pre release, im far far more likely to offer free demo with no Kickstarter.. the game would be free and have a tick timer to stop play after 30 mins that would not allow you to proceed without offering feedback ( this is the fee you'd pay ) good or bad, and a brief description of suggested improvements.. only ONE time this event would trigger, and the released level would take at least that long fo complete offering a fair trade. You get game trial, I get feedback to improve my eventual release It's literally a win win for everybody.. Never give cash to people without a product unless you are willing to burn that cash.
2 years later... I checked the project. They managed to get the funding on kickstarter in 2021 (30k USD) and the last update about the game was on jan 2022. That was a fraud.
I agree with you completely, however what if you can’t do the art so you need to higher a team for art or even music and SFX etc etc but you don’t have the money to pay them? Just give up your dream of developing games? For instance I personally am so bad at art even though I’ve been trying for years in pixel art, 2D art and 3D in Blender I’m just not artistic in that way. So should I just give up on games or realize I need real artists to help with my project? If that is the case I need money to pay them right? So what do I do if I need gameplay to make a good kickstarter but I can’t make it cause I can’t pay an artist for characters, environments, weapons etc?
You don't need Studio Ghibli level of art to attract people to your game. If you're terrible at drawing/modeling, then make something like Geometry Dash, Henry Stickmin, etc...games that have simple art direction but unique premises.
tips how not to run a game kickstarter 1. not enough gameplay 2. advertise your company not once but twice 3. Don't explain what your game is about. 4. to much animation 5. to much money goal
probably because people are desperate for content about Phillippines. it is understandable. (and because they have about 20-40% actual backer support, everything else is from "friends"...)
Hmm, I wonder if kick starter could maybe be a solution for a little funding problem I have. Part of my vision for my game involves a sort of multi-choice adventure story line, and I have in mind a sort of graphic novel story panes that pop up at particular moments. Maybe if I get to the point where the game is ready to publish, except that I have only place holder artwork for those comic panes, and I have some artists lined up whose work I know I like a lot, and I have estimates from them of what it would cost to create all the artwork for the comic panes.. then I could maybe create a kick starter campaign to get the money to pay them to do it. I already have a still-frame cinematic intro to the game, everyone I show it to really likes it, so, I could show that, and some other samples, and I could show a bunch of game play, and show a couple of the comic pane placeholders, and sample replacements for them from the artists I plan to hire, and what their estimates are to do all the rest of the panes. I bet that might work. That could be the answer to that problem of how to get that part of the artwork done. I guess the biggest risk is that problems would arise during beta testing that I might have trouble dealing with. For that matter I haven't even figured out how I'm even going to get beta testers. Well, problems for another day.
Somehow, the game got last minute funded, by some top tier backers. I have seen this phenomenon on some other campaigns too, anybody any thoughts on this?
I saw this happen with another campaign. They make up the difference themselves to keep whatever money they got. Anytime you see a $1000+ tier, assume it's a fail safe for a the campaign creators. Not even the most popular campaigns get this type of last minute whale action.
So the character has 8 weapons... 8 WEAPONS ! And there's still not a single enemy, there's nothing to fight, how can you be making 8 weapons, with no enemy to fight, how do you know your game needs a bow, when there's no enemy to fight, how do you know the axe will be in any way different then all the other melee weapon, if you don't have enemies to fight ? Those people can't focus, how come they though "ok now that we have 6 weapons, what the game really needs, is not something to use those weapon against, it's actually 2 other weapons", but good thing they had the lore figured out....
these are great videos. I'm glad I don't need Kickstarter to get my games done.(Joys of Living with my parents lol) but I'm always in a horrible habit changing ideas and over thinking and not going straight to point.
The compagnies logos were out of place in the video but most of all the still image that shows before actually play the trailer is a freaking square lost in a white screen XD Who wants to see this right of the bat ?!
To think that Cyberpunk 2077, a game with huge marketing and multimillionaire ad campaign, screwed all the expectations. Seems nobody will trust any ad campaign today. That's the reason I've been investing in a good demo for a long time (well, it's pretty much an MVP).
I know right? I was surprised this got $9k without a more robust prototype. Maybe he did great social media marketing or something. -- EDIT: Nevermind, the raffle scam + them having nearly $6,000 of their $7,500 budget from whale backers.
@@BrandonCourt Don't let this project fool you. It was rigged from the start. A company was going to fund the project before it ended. They just wanted to trick people into a raffle that may not be real.
3:14 you're focusing on mundane things. The music playing on their video is a variation of dark souls 1 starting bonfire area music. This is a red flag cuz they're trying to raise the value of their product by relating it to another; hence it has no real value. A dedicated developer would have paid for original music. The most important thing to look out for is whether they dedicate more time to presentation than to the actual product; if they spend more time on presentation it's probably a scam.
hey man i love your passion and thats why i follow your channel. that said i think it would be beneficial for you to start a regular vid series where you just bash on terribly run kickstarter campaigns in game development. could be fun and id probably watch :)
The Kickstarter was actually successful! But they got 28000 usd by 144 backers meaning 194 usd/backer in average which is extremely unusual. The 1088 usd level got 15 backers and the 628 usd got 12 backers. Does this seem legit to you? 🤓
Likely got a few "friends" to make up for the missing amount to just reach the goal. This way they get all the invested money back, plus the money from actual backers.
Update: the developer revealed the campaign was funded in its last days by their own personal investors. I had a pinned message from them explaining it in detail which they seem to have now deleted. (As it likely violates Kickstarter terms of use).
The last 43 backers (comparing to your video snapshot) suddenly funded the campaign just above the goal. Looks like they wanted to skim the few actual backers by investing some of their own money (wich they get back). Very shady.
their twitter is now deleted and discord server is long abandoned
scam confirmed
@@fantomas1770 I was ready to say that looks too scammy...
@@fantomas1770 You are joking, right?
@@tornadosprings2037 check for yourself
Makes sprite move left and right.
Time to make a kickstarter!
LMAO!
So true 😅
Makes sprite move left and right
Invest a lot in animation for the trailer
Time for a kickstarter
@@fulvio3211 well a lot of kickstarters start off with just ideas lol
@@fulvio3211 Omori first trailer be like:
Viewers are just more sophisticated nowadays and understand what are the easy things to do and what are the hard things to do. As a Unity developer, the first thing I noticed about that ' boss' fight was that the boss had no AI and did not attack back and that the damage done by the player wasn't matching up or even being counted against the boss. It was not a fight, it was a boss character with an idle animation, and a player character with 2-3 animations. There was no fight.
Thank you for this analysis! My husband and I have started planning a campaign for a game we're working on and this helped me realize we are way too early in development to launch our campaign. A failed campaign would likely crush our spirits and kill the game, so I would much rather hold to keep building and developing before we decide to launch. I may not have come to that conclusion prior to watching this video.
this guy is a great animator and illustrator, he should focus on doing that while he learns more about game development...
he ended up getting funded later on after changing some stuff to the kickstarter (29k/28k goal)
"We don't want to bore you with the special skills" goes to show animations of the character running to the right or left......
Good video with good constructive feedback. People fail to understand the concept of constructive feedback. We often see people just shouting "This F"ing sucks" without explaining why, that is of no use to anyone cause the developers can't change it as they have no idea what part sucks. We also often see that (especially indy) developers are very sensitive to feedback when it's not all positive. It's a good thing to filter constructive and useless feedback. Ignore the "F this game" and focus on the feedback where people took their time to explain what isn't working for them and see if that's something you can fix or is just a personal thing for that person.
Great video!
i plan on having a full playable demo before even having a kickstarter
that should be the norm
@@merlebirb I love how you responded to yourself
@@nemesis8508 i meant it as an extension to my original comment
@@merlebirb Why didn't you just edit your comment?
This is my goal as well!
Some people who I went to Uni with (on a Games Tech course) did a KickStarter for their game, they raised 5k, paid 2k to a music producer for exclusivity on music, and as far as i can tell, bickered over the remaining 3k. It's been 6 years since, it seems their promos and promises were the best part.
Awful! This makes me mad and sad for the people that gave funds.
Never start a introduction to your product with the people behind it. The cold truth is nobody cares about you until they do.
Start with the action, with the premise, with the promise youre making your audience, it is LITERALLY the only think and best thing you can do, to promise them a good time.
Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead. The writers undestood this. If you check their trailers, both of them start INMEDIATLY, MINUTE 0:00, with the introduction of the world, of the caracters, with witty dialoge and action.
Great references, appreciate that!
I can imagine some misguided people starting this video up and thinking you're being too harsh but this is exactly what a lot of people need to hear, and it gets even better as the video goes on and we get to the RAFFLE part.
Great work, man.
And thank you, during the eternity waiting for the those intro logos to stop unfolding and bouncing around, you were quiet at first and I was like, "Aren't you going to call out these horrible logos?!" haha
The raffle ahs been canceled, although we get around 10% from that marketing strategy we decided not to continue the raffle because it was againts the rules of kickstarter, we already message everyone who joins, and they agree with it, we decided to give them in game perks, Im very disappointed that you can comment without knowing the story behind it, We accidentally press the launch button then wasted 5 days because we dont know it was already lived, and takes 2-3 weeks just to fill all the content in the campaign, then we try every possible outcome just like the raffle, but we late to see that it was againts the rules, we decided not to continue and message every backer who pledges and join, we give them in game perks, and added them as the character Npc inside the game as a collateral, WE change tactics by making improvements and adding game demo, and presented it in some publishers and investors, some decided to support the campaign so we dont get any negative impact for the game, But i discover this video some of our supporters tell that we are scammers, we make update almost every week in our discord and fb page, until now we are messaging each backer about it, and all of them still support us,
I am a supporter and every videos John release im watching it later on, but because i am busy wasnt able to see this one, Hope JOHN , you gave us negative analysis for our game, maybe you should give the positive as well, You know a small team with this big game and now has this kind of content gave us much trouble than before, but anyway i am happy that you give us an example, yes almost everything he said was right, But there is something else also that is wrong, First you said we will not get the goals, But we already reached it , Second you told everyone that we need a basically good demo, to be honest it was but i have seen some games with good demo but they didnt get there goals, Third Most of Kickstarter campaign is based in marketing strategy we all know that, no matter how good the game is, if there are no marketing no one will see it, Fourth Accident happens, Right or Wrong, WE try our best to fixed it, giving us comment without knowing the story is being ignorant i think,
But we will prove to everyone that the scammers your are talking about will release the game and maybe in future release a sequel of it
@@bossbrain00 "accidently hit the launch button" lmao what a bs excuse...
@@squeakybunny2776 honestly, no one is going to accidentaly launch the project they've been working for months, no one is going to make such a mistake that can ruin their dream game success, and plus, launching a campaing isnt one click away, theres plenty of confirmation clicks before fully lauching the kickstarter
@@bossbrain00 lets go! Good luck guys! You can do it!
Harsh? This guy is a gentleman. If he would 100% speak his mind, oh boy, people would cry.
When you want to make an anime but you get confused and accidentally launch a game dev kickstarter.
John, you should do a series of UA-cam videos dedicated to "How TO run a Video Game Kickstarter". This seems to be a real unfulfilled space on UA-cam. There are no videos detailing the steps on how to make a good Kickstarter for a game. You could be the Kickstarter Video Game Guy on UA-cam.
If you are looking for content like this, there are quite a lot really good and detailed GDC talks available here on youtube.
@@nilsmuller-cleve6769 Where are the GDC talk that go into detail on the Game Play and "Game Aspects" of the Gaming Kickstarter? I see a lot videos of the mechanics of Kickstarter, but no focus on the Gaming Aspects.
@@commonwombat392
I've watched many talks around the general topic of indi-marketing and discoverability and because of that I can't recall a specific talk right now because they somewhat blurred together in my mind.
From a quick search and skimming through the talk this one seems to be quite good:
ua-cam.com/video/Ks1XGS2JS6s/v-deo.html
Another one from the same guy which looks more like a general introduction:
ua-cam.com/video/pKXpomUtiL8/v-deo.html
Maybe check out Thomas Brush
be honest?
First time I've seen someone doing raffles to get pledges... I'm sure that is 100% illegal or at least against KS ToS.
Generally the info in this video is good though. Don't show logos in trailers, get to gameplay quickly, etc. Though I don't agree on needing to be 70% done with a game and using KS purely as a pre-order system. I think as long as a game has a solid prototype or a demo available, and enough to actually show the developer is competent, then that is plenty enough for a KS campaign.
One huge factor left out of the video is advertising/building a following beforehand. I think a lot of failed campaigns launch thinking KS will somehow just bring them traffic to their campaign... but the reality is only about 30% of pledges come from organic traffic from KS. The other 70% comes in from having to actually market and promote your campaign... whether through advertising spending, social media, word of mouth, etc. A lot of decent looking games fail to get funded because they rely entirely on KS to do that.
I can’t agree more. Listen to this guy 👆🏻😅
i think if you have a good chunk of your game made there is a larger chance that people will see the quality in your product, and he could be saying it because now days its a lot harder for Kickstarter to get trust. So of course you could pull it off but I think the longer you hold out (assuming you have enough money), the more likely you can make a Kickstarter that can actually get a good amount of money. So in a way you're right, but given that a lot of competent Kickstarter fail it can be a bit tricky to convince people that something you have is worth spending money on. I wouldn't use it as a strict rule but I think for some projects being more complete is more worth while. there's been some popular gaming kickstarer failures that are really interesting to read about, but they make people more skeptical.
I also think if you had a very unique looking game, selling the idea might be easier. But 2d platformers are VERY common in the gaming space, so selling it very early would be a lot harder, since its HEAVILY reliant on a gameplay hook that sets it apart from everything else, or an artstyle that's very polished or unique. A lot of the more well-known kickstarter games I can think of were already fairly complete, but I can assume there's some other games that less far along but still succeeded, I just think its something you can't do 100% of the time and expect people to be interested.
@@GwyndolinOwO I might be an outlier in that case then, as my campaign succeeded and the game I'm making is still quite early in development. I think it's pretty important to at least have enough to show to give people a solid idea of what the final product will be... Even if the game is only 10% developed, if you have concept art, or mockups or just good breakdowns of what the rest of the game is going to be, then that definitely helps sell it to people. It doesn't hurt that my game is in a familiar genre so people already sort of expect certain content and features by default.
@@Konitama I wouldn't say you're an outline, there's just more risks if you have less to show. Like for example even big game developers will show off a game VERY early and sometimes people will just not know how to feel about it since they aren't too sure what the game is like quite yet.
Maybe a % number isn't the best marker to set when to reveal a game or not but I'd still say its a smart idea to look at what you do have and then evaluate if its going to be understandable to someone that's never seen your thing before (assuming you want to grow your audience or don't have one yet).
But yeah i mean, as far as marketing goes for stuff like this, its hard to really plan it out since it all varies based on things like genre, your previous works if there are any, if you have an audience already or not, if you have a good understanding on how to finish the game ect. So like i said I still wouldn't treat what he said as a hard rule to follow, but it IS a risk to put out mockups and ideas without proof you can finish something, since indie games get cancelled a LOT. Its still completely and fully possible to be funded still but i don't think its bad for indie devs to look back and understand that "hey, this might not be the right time for ME just yet". or even "now IS the right time".
One thing to keep in mind, from a consumers perspective, is that consumers run into amazing ideas all the time. There are hundreds if not thousands of people around the world that want to make "their thing" but don't end up making "their thing" so that's at least something to consider, even if you wanna do things your way in the end.
Do whatever you want, but make your decisions an informed one.
I really like that you go digging for the fake buyers and fake followers I always do this as well when it's this obviously a cash grab, another also good pointers is if the kickstarter campaign has like 2 comments, clearly this isn't organic. All your feedback on this are on point as always !
You weren't harsh at all. If anything, you weren't harsh enough
The tip about the logo is so true.
I've judged entire videos based on the logo clearly created in Canva that they display first.
And I sometimes leave before seeing the video based on that alone.
I was always under the impression that you had to build a following before a kickstarter, otherwise no matter how polished your presentation is nobody will ever see it.
pretty much yeah. some kickstarters really blow up like that weird potatoe salad thing, but they are extremely rare and far between
@@GwyndolinOwOthe only way to blow up that way is by marketing yourself heavily (like on the level of begging to subreddit and twitter) to the community you want to kickstart to. All it takes is one niche micro internet celebrity to talk about your project for it to gain traction in a domino effect.
To this day these guys are still looking to add new members to their developer team. Another project that will never be finished.
Really Well illustrated example. Self-Criticism is your main engine when you try to compete in any market. Hope to see more of these análysis.
You should do more Game analysis on kickstarter.
I'd love to see more of your point of view on more projects. A series would do really nice.
Went to check the kickstarter of this game and it actually got 43 backers in those 6 days and got funded
I guess your video boosted the project at the end!
I found this very useful, usually we go to videos to show how to be successful on Kickstarter when the reverse of how not to be is very important so thank you for that, it was very insightful!
Great video! I'll say that running our Kickstarter was almost as much work as getting prepared for launch on Steam (game development not included). There's a lot that goes into it and it's easy to get caught up in other campaign's numbers and assume it's easy money. Typically 60% of your funding comes from your own audience if I remember correctly. So if you don't have enough followers to fund your entire campaign twice over if they all backed, then you probably need to keep building your audience first.
Three years later… I found this interesting. Thanks for showing me around Kickstarter worst case (and best case) scenarios!
Hey John, thanks for the video. However, I feel like you missed an opportunity here. To me, it would have been much more interesting to take an in-depth look at a campaign that was good but not good enough, and at one that went really well. The apparently fake campaign you picked has so glaringly obvious issues (and, well, seems to be a scam anyway), I'm not sure it needs a serious in-depth analysis... :)
Anyway, looking forward to your next video!
I'm pretty sure I saw some very early work of this game in several gamedev-groups on facebook and reddit (I remember the wip screenshots and timelapses of the character animation process), so imo it's likely that this is a legit project just by not so experienced developers.
I don't think it's a scam campaign in the traditional sense, just one that has not been well thought out. I personally think there are more lessons to be learnt in failure than success, as success has aspects of luck and chance that are hard to account for. With that said, I'll probably look at some successful campaigns, all the best and thanks for the comment!
@@nilsmuller-cleve6769 Fair enough, "scam" is a strong word - let's say they're... using questionable marketing tactics. :)
@@LostRelicGames Sounds good! Though, there's (bad) luck involved in failure as well. I guess the art is to figure out the actual contributing factors in both scenarios.
@Scouts Honor Not all scammers are Indian and the game is developed in the Philippines. The way you say that sounds kind of racist.
Thought this was about dreamworld first lol
I mean, that one did get founded, even though the gameplay looks like garbage. So they probably did something right lol
Same XD
welp the mistake they had is that they are fucking scammers
@@musikalniyfanboichik It was rude to make an assumption without knowing story behind it, we are 100% sure it was not a scam, We are not ready for the campaign, we accidentally click the launch button, and after 5 days we only discover some backer already make pledges, sow e decided to continue, we dont have enough time, we fill all the content in the campaign and with just 2 days time span, we make a sample gameplay, but we can only show running, jumping, which is the basic controls of the game, we are happy to show you the current result of our game, but we choose not to, so everyone including John itself that he was wrong about it, Actually at the first place he already wrong because he thought we are not going to get our initial goals, but the result of our hard work gives more than the initial goals
@@bossbrain00 i'm talking about dreamworld, not your game.
This is so helpful, I would love more content like this.
What not to do with real world examples
Endless search for recruiting friends sounds incredibly wholesome
As someone who's going to make a crowdfunding campaign, this is really helpful. I also thought ths campaign was...kinda hilarious? Lol (however this guy is really good at video editing and in making anime-style animations, not gonna lie)
Anyways, I plan making a demo before the campaign, people say that's the best thing you can do.
yep bro always make a demo for your game , and the start doing Kickstarter campaign, i wish you luck👍
Very good video exactly what is needed. I agree with everything you said
Again a cool video. Thanks mate
Awesome, this info directly to my notebook
good points it will really help the developers and alike whoever is watching this
Running and jumping actually is far beyond my imagination!
Might be a simple question but apparently cannot be found on Google..
If I want to run/start a Kickstarter for a videogame I'm funding through Fiverr (where you can hire a team to make the game for you), which ''Porject Type'' would I have to select under ''Payments''; Individual, Business or Nonprofit?
I'm not going to bore you with my actually interesting comment.
great tips bro! one day hopefully you'll play my game :D
Good video. I'm going to start a campaign really soon and this helps a lot. I will have a place combat demo for it also.
Very nice deep analysis!
For reference, the developer is from the Philippines. P1000 is equal to ~$20.
This smacks of the sort of people who post a screenshot of bad art from their game on Reddit with a title like "The caves are dangerous at night!" and then sit back and expect people to go "Ooooh, sounds fascinating, and look at that MS Paint-looking screenshot, wow tell me more!", not realising the majority look and go "Newb developer posting low grade work like a million others, no thank you, next." In a flooded market you can't just be a nameless turd floating by.
A very good video! Thank you!
Miss these kind of video John :)
I appreciate the work here and echo Common Wombat's sentiment. How to and how not to do Kickstarters and crowdfunding in general would be a very good subject to dive into. I know my crew would appreciate some outside perspective on that element of things.
I watched this video 4 times before launching my Kickstarter for Mercenaries of Gridaris - happy to say I was successful :,-)
More of these videos please, this and the indie launch analysis. I will BINGE Watch it.
Pro tip: Your favourite games, shows and movies are likely the ones you dont have high expectations for.
I did find this interesting. For my second game I'd love to gauge interest with a kickstarter campaign.
😂😂😂😂 Awesome 👏👏 I guess what your response is going to be and you didn't disappoint. Make more videos 👍👍
5:09 we don't want to bore you with a whole video of me the developer just talking at the screen
Good stuff mate. Cheers
Elementalis! I backed that game, it looks awesome!!
I was hoping you talk more on the successful one.
Hey man, great video! Lots of good points in this. I'm thinking about launching a kickstarter in a few months and this is definitely a good example of how not to run things.
I agree with everything said, I think that some game dev are dazzled with some kickstart campaings and they missed the hole purpose of it.
About Steam page, a dev friend said to me Steam now doesn't allow anymore to make a "coming soon" page without a playable build first. To which extent it should be "playable" of course is hard to guess.
Also... The "X% for art, Y% for music etc." pie chart for small teams is just impossible to guess, at least without knowing the final funding beforehand
great news
I am new to your channel and I really like your content, def subbed. ^-^
Btw, I love how you were explaining us how to not run a game kickstarter, and you ended up finding a scammer unintentionally. XD
IM SHOCKED they got up to over 9K with that
Nice video I learned a lot :3
Thank you very much for this video. It's a great reality check~.
Why did I fail in my game kickstarter campaign? Because my country isn't even elegible to create one in kickstarter. I found out after a couple of months working on it. Sights...
My man forgot the most important of a trailer, the gameplay 💀
yeah, like bruh you're making a game and all you're showing us is lore, art, animations, and other non-gameplay showcase stuff?
7:58 mark: "Ideas and drafts and doodles mean nothing, they mean absolutely nothing" o.O
I think they were fundraising to get to the gameplay part of their plan.
artists did a pretty good job!
What the hell were six people doing for an entire year? Even one person working in their off-time could have made more than two minutes of animations. Ridiculous. I don't give a crap what the "creative director" claims. This was a scam. Pure and simple.
Later on I’ll take this approach, like Fnf did! Good video!
when i release I plan on having a pre game level as a full demo that will lead into the first level when the game actually releases, complete with a boss fight who's defeat will leD into the openings energy and story.. I expect this of games, they gotta capture my interest, if I expect this how could I expect less of others?
mark my words here but IF I had a Kickstart campaign I would seek $1 minimum investments and offer a full playable level for that dollar, I'd seek it more for feedback pre release, im far far more likely to offer free demo with no Kickstarter.. the game would be free and have a tick timer to stop play after 30 mins that would not allow you to proceed without offering feedback ( this is the fee you'd pay ) good or bad, and a brief description of suggested improvements.. only ONE time this event would trigger, and the released level would take at least that long fo complete offering a fair trade. You get game trial, I get feedback to improve my eventual release
It's literally a win win for everybody..
Never give cash to people without a product unless you are willing to burn that cash.
First time I've been watching this scenario 😳
Harsh but true, never mind watched till the end and your not Harsh enough.
The transitions and title effects lol
Can i put a Game in kickstarter doing all the Characters with Game assets on marketplace?
2 years later... I checked the project. They managed to get the funding on kickstarter in 2021 (30k USD) and the last update about the game was on jan 2022. That was a fraud.
I agree with you completely, however what if you can’t do the art so you need to higher a team for art or even music and SFX etc etc but you don’t have the money to pay them? Just give up your dream of developing games? For instance I personally am so bad at art even though I’ve been trying for years in pixel art, 2D art and 3D in Blender I’m just not artistic in that way. So should I just give up on games or realize I need real artists to help with my project? If that is the case I need money to pay them right? So what do I do if I need gameplay to make a good kickstarter but I can’t make it cause I can’t pay an artist for characters, environments, weapons etc?
You don't need Studio Ghibli level of art to attract people to your game. If you're terrible at drawing/modeling, then make something like Geometry Dash, Henry Stickmin, etc...games that have simple art direction but unique premises.
tips how not to run a game kickstarter
1. not enough gameplay
2. advertise your company not once but twice
3. Don't explain what your game is about.
4. to much animation
5. to much money goal
We should still use some concept art even with a gameplay demo though right? Not just 1 or 2 videos on the entire campaign page?
what do you think about itch io games?
1:03 -> They achieved the goal:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/agimatworldbeyond/agimat-and-the-world-beyond-2d-platformer-adventure-game
How????
I need answers 😅
probably because people are desperate for content about Phillippines. it is understandable. (and because they have about 20-40% actual backer support, everything else is from "friends"...)
@@musikalniyfanboichik huh. I like your profile pic 👍
@@bossbrain00 is this Fr? Tf is this
Hmm, I wonder if kick starter could maybe be a solution for a little funding problem I have.
Part of my vision for my game involves a sort of multi-choice adventure story line, and I have in mind a sort of graphic novel story panes that pop up at particular moments. Maybe if I get to the point where the game is ready to publish, except that I have only place holder artwork for those comic panes, and I have some artists lined up whose work I know I like a lot, and I have estimates from them of what it would cost to create all the artwork for the comic panes.. then I could maybe create a kick starter campaign to get the money to pay them to do it.
I already have a still-frame cinematic intro to the game, everyone I show it to really likes it, so, I could show that, and some other samples, and I could show a bunch of game play, and show a couple of the comic pane placeholders, and sample replacements for them from the artists I plan to hire, and what their estimates are to do all the rest of the panes.
I bet that might work. That could be the answer to that problem of how to get that part of the artwork done.
I guess the biggest risk is that problems would arise during beta testing that I might have trouble dealing with. For that matter I haven't even figured out how I'm even going to get beta testers.
Well, problems for another day.
I have a question (I'm just curious): How is it licenses if I wanna make game completely for free?
If you're making a gameplay-type game, show the gameplay. If you're making a story heavy game, show the narrative. Just show the meat.
Somehow, the game got last minute funded, by some top tier backers. I have seen this phenomenon on some other campaigns too, anybody any thoughts on this?
I saw this happen with another campaign. They make up the difference themselves to keep whatever money they got. Anytime you see a $1000+ tier, assume it's a fail safe for a the campaign creators. Not even the most popular campaigns get this type of last minute whale action.
Insane! Wtf?!?
You need to analysis the Paprium HD Kickstarter xD
Says on their page now they were "hacked" and the money was stolen... Fishy~
now that raffle promo is pure marketing lol
I believe as an indie you should only talk about what you already have done.
Nice
Thanks, I need to study a lot of failures if I ever want to make it...
Anyone else gonna mention that in the "boss fight" the boss didn't DO ANYTHING??? That's already red flags for me.
So the character has 8 weapons... 8 WEAPONS ! And there's still not a single enemy, there's nothing to fight, how can you be making 8 weapons, with no enemy to fight, how do you know your game needs a bow, when there's no enemy to fight, how do you know the axe will be in any way different then all the other melee weapon, if you don't have enemies to fight ? Those people can't focus, how come they though "ok now that we have 6 weapons, what the game really needs, is not something to use those weapon against, it's actually 2 other weapons", but good thing they had the lore figured out....
these are great videos. I'm glad I don't need Kickstarter to get my games done.(Joys of Living with my parents lol) but I'm always in a horrible habit changing ideas and over thinking and not going straight to point.
Those raffle backers would probably issue chargebacks if it got funded, that way they can get the iPhone and keep their money!
The compagnies logos were out of place in the video but most of all the still image that shows before actually play the trailer is a freaking square lost in a white screen XD
Who wants to see this right of the bat ?!
To think that Cyberpunk 2077, a game with huge marketing and multimillionaire ad campaign, screwed all the expectations. Seems nobody will trust any ad campaign today. That's the reason I've been investing in a good demo for a long time (well, it's pretty much an MVP).
What camera do you use? Great tips on Kickstarter thank you
Sony 6400
They reached 9k... Thinking I might do a Kickstarter now.
I know right? I was surprised this got $9k without a more robust prototype. Maybe he did great social media marketing or something. -- EDIT: Nevermind, the raffle scam + them having nearly $6,000 of their $7,500 budget from whale backers.
@@GamesPlusShow Interesting about the 6k from whale backers. That alone is sus.
@@BrandonCourt Don't let this project fool you. It was rigged from the start. A company was going to fund the project before it ended. They just wanted to trick people into a raffle that may not be real.
3:14 you're focusing on mundane things. The music playing on their video is a variation of dark souls 1 starting bonfire area music. This is a red flag cuz they're trying to raise the value of their product by relating it to another; hence it has no real value. A dedicated developer would have paid for original music.
The most important thing to look out for is whether they dedicate more time to presentation than to the actual product; if they spend more time on presentation it's probably a scam.
Wow, is this even legal??
It's actually a scam, so it might be not really legal
They're pinoy, so I don't think western laws apply to them(not a lawyer, no idea really, just a guess)
@@cynth4941
what about the pinoy part? I'm sensing something? (just a guess)
@@yakuzahousehusband1635 don’t take it personal.
@@ThePancakeJedi which I didnt
hey man i love your passion and thats why i follow your channel. that said i think it would be beneficial for you to start a regular vid series where you just bash on terribly run kickstarter campaigns in game development. could be fun and id probably watch :)
The Kickstarter was actually successful! But they got 28000 usd by 144 backers meaning 194 usd/backer in average which is extremely unusual. The 1088 usd level got 15 backers and the 628 usd got 12 backers. Does this seem legit to you? 🤓
Likely got a few "friends" to make up for the missing amount to just reach the goal. This way they get all the invested money back, plus the money from actual backers.
@@vast634 Yeah it's actually a pretty money grab
Main lesson here is that Kickstarter is not meant for kickstarting your project.