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Ask HN: Game Project on Kickstarter to Raise Money

1 points by plinan ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I quit my corporate job to start a game studio a couple months ago. I have been trying to bootstrap the company as much as possible without outside funding, while at the same time keeping an eye out for alternative funding sources. I discovered Kickstarter a few months back. After meeting with a few people who have successfully funded their projects on it and also people from Kickstarter, I decided to put my first game project on it. (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pepwuper/the-giant-of-the-river-thames-little-megans-giant). It's also on the Recommended page (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/by/recommended).

So far it hasn't really been very active, and I am not sure how it will pan out. Does anyone have any experience with kickstarter or this type of fund raising? I'd love to hear what you think about this model, and what you think about my project on Kickstarter.

Finally, if you like the game (playable demo on the project page), please support the project! You can make a pledge (and get awesome rewards!), or forward it on to people you think might be interested. Thanks! (Project page: http://kck.st/cNnvZS)

3 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 14.7 ms ] thread
burningion
Couple things:

  Great project, but it's obviously dev'd for the mobile platform. Downloading the Unity project thing makes for too much friction already. I'm on a PC, in Linux, and I'm not going to do that, to do what is essentially a favor for you. 

  I think a great potential here would be to include some sort of financial incentive to those people willing to invest up to $1,000 into the project.
Why not let them share profits?

Also, your gaming dev credits are awesome. Put those further up front. Make that much more bold. I see that people will get to work with you, explain more about how great an experience that would be. Either way, love what you're doing, more power to you for putting yourself out there. It's difficult, but worth it!

plinan
Thanks for the comment! Sharing profits is a good idea, but it's not allowed on Kickstarter as it cannot be used for investment purposes due to the fact that they use Amazon payment platform.

Good point about the dev credit. I wasn't sure if people would care much about it, but it sounds like some would and I'll move the rewards up (or lower the cost).

Thanks again!

plinan
After 4 weeks of fund raising, I wasn't able to raise the full funding target amount. I've written a blog post on some of the things I learned from having my project on Kickstarter.com for those of you who might be interested in using it in the future.

3 Quick Lessons from My Failed Project on Kickstarter http://www.plinan.com/3-quick-lessons-from-my-failed-project...