At the end of 2020 I met a ton of really cool ttrpg folks through us all having our games in a bundle that we worked together to promote. https://itch.io/b/705/ind-of-the-year-2020 Frost Bite was the only video game in the bundle so it was interesting to see other styles of game development.
While chatting with the group I found out some really great tips and interesting things about running a Kickstarter. I’ve asked their permission to share some of our conversations about it and I think you will find it really interesting.
So what’s the deal with Brazil and Kickstarter? What other options are there for crowdfunding?
May Barros no catarse @MayFPBarros
“I don’t know why Kickstarter won’t accept campaings from Brazilian creators, that would be a question for them. But Brazil is not an option when setting up a campaing with them
We have a ton of Brazilian options, like Catarse, Benfeitoria, Vakinha, Kickante, Abacashi and a few others I don’t remember right now. But those don’t help us reach an international audience as easily, even though people try. I’ve seen a few projects on Catarse put a description in english as well as portuguese.
For international options, I know a couple creators who put their campaigns in IndieGoGo, and that was the only foreigner alternative to Kickstarter I knew of until our chat in with the Ind of the Year crowd.”
Interesting I didn’t realize there were so many Brazilian specific crowd funding sites. So when you did your art book which one did you use? How’d it go?
“I used Catarse, the big one here. It was successful, thanks to the help of friends and family.”
Do you think it is something you would want to do again?
“Oh, absolutely. I just don’t have the right project for it yet, though I have ideas ^^”
Hey so what would be your advice for running a first kickstarter?
Sir Aurora Sanguine – Arcana Familia @kae_serpent
“When you create your KS project, once it is approved, you can launch it when you want. So better thing in my opinion is creating it and then starting promoting the game and the KS pre-campaign page so to have followers of the page before it starts and keeps the goal low. Put the minimum you can. Most people pledge only when they see that the project is funded. This depends on how much it costs producing whatever you will sell.”
– “Ok so. some general thoughts.
Totally recommend getting a Kickstarter advisor. You don’t know how much you don’t know until you have someone to help!
If you add Postage into your Kickstarter it adds to your pledge total so YOU HAVE TO ACCOUNT FOR POSTAGE IN YOUR FUND CALCULATIONS. I cannot stress this enough. it’s a really easy mistake to make and can destroy you.
Add contingency. At least 10% on top of all other costs. AT LEAST. Kickstarter takes 10% of what you earn. make sure you factor this in.
If you can, calculate your costs on a per-person basis and use that to make your stretch goals backer number based rather than value based. There’s a couple of reasons. For one, the finances are easier to parse out if you do them per person. Also I think folks feel like they can have more of an impact to help reach goals if it’s like ’10 more people to stretch goal’ rather than ‘£200 more’
A lot of folks see Kickstarter as a pre-order store rather than investment in projects. This is shit and wrong, but unfortunately all the big boardgame and video game companies crowd funding their stuff has lead to this perception. Use this info how you will.
Don’t undersell yourself. Typically speaking, people will pay whatever you ask for (within reason). However, make sure you don’t ask Kickstarter backers to pay more than the release rrp. They get very pissy about that.
Also all the ‘hey pay us money and we’ll back your project and give you to all our superbackers’ are scams. ignore them. Facebook adverts are your friends. Reddit adverts are useless.
Make sure that the first thing on your Kickstarter page is a hook, followed quickly by what the project actually is. Might be a personal taste. But i’ve seen a lot of Kickstarter pages that start with some ramble about who’s making it, or the history of the project. Fine to have that in there. But I do not care until I at least know what I might be backing.
People will drop out part way through. Some will be legitimate reasons, feel free to message folks to ask why and offer help or to put a copy aside for them later etc. Being nice to folks who wanted is not a bad thing. However, a lot of folks who drop out appear to be grifters. I think there’s a culture of folks backing projects early, and then either seeing if they explode and get lots of free extra stretch goal stuff, or use it to get in contact about ‘superbacker offers’ I’m also fairly sure that some people do it to keep their number of ‘backed projects’ high without actually paying for half of them. When folks drop out, it stings, it always does. But usually it’s not your fault.
Make updates in advance where possible. a ‘we did it’ update, a ‘half way through the campaign’ update and an ‘end of successful campaign’ updates are ones you can write before launching.
Finally, I’ll mention about the economics of it a it. There’s some weird things about KS campaigns. Broadly there’s 3 common outcomes. 1. Kickstarter doesn’t fund (boo) 2. Kickstarter just pips over goal near the end. 3. Kickstarter funds in the first few days and then does really well. Statistically speaking if you fund early you make WAY more money than if you fund on like.. day 5.Having an earlybird special or a limited availability tier can help this, as can having family and friends lined up in advance, and at least a month of sharing the Kickstarter follow page on social media before launch.”
I hope you have learned as much as I have and wish you good luck if you are considering starting a Kickstarter.
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