Decisions, Decisions
The trailer went live and I thought to myself, I believe this game has a chance. Time to crowdfund.The question is which platform? Kickstarter, or IndieGoGo? I knew Kickstarter was the 'default' choice but I'd also contributed to successful gaming campaigns on IGG, like Ghost of a Tale and Darkwood. And I knew FRONTIERS had some global / casual appeal, which could make IGG a good option... hmm, decisions.
In one of those weird (not-so) coincidental moments, I got a phone call from IndieGoGo.
They'd seen the trailer and wanted to extend a helping hand. They made a pitch that involved IGG's Flexible Funding (which I opted not to use), and assured me that they'd help me one-on-one to tweak the campaign for success. That all sounded fine, but then they dropped this bomb - they would take a hands-on approach to helping my campaign get media exposure all over the world.
Exposure, you say? All over the world, you say?
Well, that sealed the deal for me. I'm a total outsider without any press contacts and very few supporters. A crowdfunding platform that provides some of that up front would give me a huge leg up even if the platform itself was less popular overall. FRONTIERS gets funded, IGG gets their cut - everybody wins. Right?
That's not to say I intended to sit on my rear while they did all the work for me - I've typed my fingers bloody sending out announcements and press releases. SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK. But I figured that a well-placed phone call or two on their part would help convince some of these contacts to actually read the materials I sent. (I don't envy editors who have to sift through emails from yet another first time developer announcing their campaign.)
IndieGoGo made good on their promise to help tweak my campaign at this stage. They were quick to respond to questions and made helpful suggestions. After agonizing over perks for a few days (too many? too few? too high? too low?) I launched! And things were going great!
"IndieGoGo BAD! Kickstarter GOOD!"
I immediately noticed something - people were wondering why I'd chosen IGG. They'd say things like Hey if this fails try Kickstarter! Not the kind of thing that inspires confidence.I call opinions expressed by anonymous posters - as opposed to folks I'm acquainted with - The Rabble. No offense if you're an anonymous poster, it's just a survival strategy to avoid losing my mind in a rushing current of ideas.
I've belonged to the rabble myself a few times. The rabble always wants something folks can't deliver. The rabble says I need higher resolution textures, the rabble says it loves steering wheel support, the rabble says it hates game over screens. They're not wrong or right, they're just too many to please. So when the rabble said IGG bad, Kickstarter good! I shrugged it off and said that the platform doesn't matter, what matters is the support you can bring to it.
All the same I contacted IGG with these concerns and asked if it was a common problem, and if so what their strategy was for dealing with it.
Not common at all, was their response. A vocal minority.
There were a few bumps along the way to the front page - IGG's comment and update system are unintuitive and resulted in a few gaffes, plus there was the (admittedly funny and ultimately harmless) instance of an IGG chat support guy deleting several of my perks in real time after I specifically told him not to. "Oh shoot," he said as we scrambled to recreate them (cue Benny Hill theme). But generally things were going well and I was having a good time. I figured that the 'vocal minority' would shrink.
The Rabble Mutates
It didn't shrink. It grew, and it mutated. They weren't anonymous any more, they were supporters; I had come to trust their opinions. Hmm. Time to consider this seriously, methinks.
I'm sensing a pattern...
Then I did some projections that chilled my blood. The campaign had flatlined. FRONTIERS has a group of core supporters that I knew I could count on in the early days - after that the campaign would live or die by the press. (Hence the allure of IGG's promise.) That core was tapped out, and press was still nowhere to be found.
I wrote to IGG again. I felt bad for dumping on them, but I needed to know if I was really on my own, or what:
Hey, [removed]
I've got some bad news - I'm actually considering abandoning the IGG campaign and relaunching on Kickstarter. It's not just the rabble shouting 'why aren't you on KS' any more - pros are telling me point blank to abandon the campaign immediately and relaunch on KS.
Also - now that I'm on the first page of IGG's games section, I got something like two contributors over the past 12 hours. If the site isn't capable of putting eyeballs on my project then I don't know what I'm doing here.
Just want to make it clear I don't feel entitled to exposure or success - I'm responsible for both, not IGG - and this issue obviously isn't personal. You're just my point of contact so you're the one who gets to hear it. (Lucky you, right?)
Any idea how to make this the story of "The industry outsider who ran a successful gaming campaign on IGG" and not "The guy who discovered that IGG isn't good for gaming campaigns and abandoned it for Kickstarter?" I'll do whatever needs to be done as long as you can meet me half way. I'm out of tricks and the campaign has flat-lined. I've got a referral contest planned but let's be real, it's going to take more than that.
- L
I didn't hear back from my point of contact for a few days (I later found out he was on the road/swamped with E3, which is understandable and for which he was genuinely apologetic) but someone else on the team let me know I was being featured in the weekly roundup, another merit-based promotion I'd been shooting for. Alright, maybe this would kick things off. Maybe this was the start of what they'd been promised! I decided to give it a bit and see what happened.
I've Made a Huge Mistake
So there we are, a week into the campaign. After a ton of hard work and lots of contributions and word-of-mouth publicity from core supporters the FRONTIERS campaign had bit and kicked and scratched its way to the front page of IGG's gaming section, and was featured in the weekly roundup. And then...*crickets chirping*
Pretty much nothing. A half dozen contributions over the course of 24 hours, many of which I courted myself.
Oh, boy, I thought. If this is what they meant by helping the campaign get exposure, I am so hosed.
There have been a few articles along the way, but I strongly doubt IGG was directly involved with any of them. A Kotaku article that ran during the campaign was a follow up to one that ran before IGG ever contacted me. Other articles coming out this week were due to the press contacting me, or me contacting them. Polygon reached out before the campaign as well. An indiestatic article released this week could have come about thanks to IGG, but I've got to imagine they would tell me if they'd actually landed something, just to shut me up if nothing else.
I'm not saying IGG didn't try - I believe they did. But not trying and not succeeding both have the same outcome for the campaign.
So, what now?
SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING.
After crunching some numbers and confirming that yes, reaching the 80k goal at IndieGoGo is a virtual impossibility, I decided to shut it down and relaunch at Kickstarter as soon as possible. E3 is right around the corner, which makes the timing of this decision awkward, but I figure about a week will give me enough time to make it through their approval process. If all goes well it'll launch just as the E3 dust begins to settle. And if the people who supported the campaign the first time around are kind enough to revisit it, there's a chance we can pick up where we left off within a few days.Will moving to Kickstarter ensure success?
I will also be revamping the campaign a bit before the relaunch, especially the perks. People have already made a lot of suggestions for improving them.
Ultimately this whole debacle was my own fault for leaping at IGG's pitch to begin with. I was desperate for help and in that desperation eager to believe they could work a miracle. (Feel free to call me a naive in the comments.) Oh well, lesson learned. In the end, this will just be another speed bump.
TL;DR: IndieGoGo enticed me with promises of exposure for the campaign, and I believed them - but the platform doesn't have a substantive gaming audience, plain and simple.
Oh, and to everyone I shrugged off for saying IGG bad, Kickstarter good?
You right, me wrong. :P
I'll close this with a big THANK YOU to everyone who has supported the campaign so far. I will do everything in my power to make this transition as painless as possible. And if you're not up for contributing all over again no worries, I'll understand. Stay tuned for more info.
For what it's worth, from a non-backer perspective (because I'm poor): I saw your awesome screenshots at reddit and yours was the first link to a IGG campaign I ever clicked, and I couldn't believe it wasn't a success (at least moderately). So I headed to IGG home page to see what kind of campaigns gets funded and there was stuff like a wooden wallet (no disrespect intended). It just seemed to me that it was not a place for gamers. Just my first impression.
ReplyDeleteOh, no worries, at least two custom wallets per week get funded on KS too... By now, I kinda now the major categories of stuff that gets pitched (and mostly funded) again and again and again. Like all kinds of wallets, one-piece multi-tools (as long as they include a bottle opener), fancy LED flashlights, various 3D printers, endless varieties of Arduino shields and/or new Arduino wannabees... ok, I'll stop. But, crucially, some rather expensive games managed to get funded there, and that's indeed because of the much larger traffic in general, and much larger gamer traffic in particular.
ReplyDeleteWell, here's an even smaller minority to consider (just me here, so it's not exactly very vocal): people who use Paypal, by choice or by necessity. KS doesn't handle it, IGG does. It's funny, but I can't really figure out how a campaign by an unknown developer gets popular. The dev might notify the gaming press, use social media, blah blah blah, that will reach the same number of people regardless of whether you're using KS, IGG, Desura alpa-funding or whatever other solution for the same problem. But what you're saying here is that despite the same numbers, there are people who will ignore platforms other than KS? Or is it that KS has the 9th level Mass Media Notify spell? Dunno. From an outsider's point of view, 1) IGG makes it easier for people to pledge 2) developer gets more money (IGG takes less money than KS, IIRC). It _is_ clunky, though, and the way it's handled, it never seems anything is happening, as the updates are a separate tab, so it doesn't generate quite the same excitement (omg! feature 1! omg omg! feature 2! and so on), but then again, once you've sold me on the initial idea, I'd damn well check the updates regardless of where on the site they're placed. Aaaaaaaaarggggghhhhh.
ReplyDeleteIndiegogo is a second rate platform. Even if you're a creator working outside of Kickstarter's markets, I recommend you set up a shell company and bank account in the US.
ReplyDeleteKickstarter has all the network effects, there's so much cross promotion between projects, and payment has less friction.
Kickstarter is also quite simply better designed, you can see at the top who's behind the project. It's clear when each project began. This is just simple stuff that Indiegogo have just failed to address, it just looks like incompetence.
I feel kind of bad for the IGG folks at this point. This post wasn't supposed to be about putting the screws to their platform, it was more about making sure my backers understood my decision to cut & run and didn't interpret it as impulsive or flaky.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I gave my mistakes enough weight in the initial write-up. The campaign I ran was OK but far from flawless - in fact if I hadn't reworked the KS campaign using the feedback I got from IGG backers I'm not sure the new campaign would have taken off like it has. In that sense the original campaign was really valuable.
Having used both I'm prepared to say Kickstarter is generally superior. But it's not like IGG is Comcast or anything. They may not be the 'best of the best' but they do a tough thing generally well. (Ugh, that sounds so condescending...)
I'd probably feel less guilty about saying they're inferior if they hadn't been so pleasant to deal with.
For what its worth, from a non-sponsor view (on the grounds that I'm unfortunate): I saw your stunning screenshots at reddit and yours was the first connection to an Igg fight I ever clicked, and I wouldn't be able to accept it wasn't a triumph anyhow decently). So I headed to Igg home page to see what sort of fights gets supported and there was stuff like a wooden wallet (no lack of respect expected). It recently appeared to me that it was not a spot for gamers. Just my early introduction.
ReplyDeleteIndiegogo is a menial stage. Regardless of the possibility that you're a maker working outside of Kickstarter's markets, I prescribe you set up a shell association and financial balance in the Us.
ReplyDelete