Advice on Kickstarter and marketing

[Jack_Hines]

Hi All,

I have been following Ricks course on Finish It and have gotten to the part where he suggests asking others for advice. I thought that this was a great idea and I have something that I had put onto my “putting it off” list that I think I need to address.

I have been making a game for a year and a half now (whilst full time working) after completing the unreal c++ and blender courses and think that I am making really good progress with the programming and art. I was previously a programmer by trade so I had a great start there also.

I have nearly finished templating my game which will be an arena based wave survival game with customisable weapons armour and items. The templating is really good and it works with good stability and its a really good base to work from. I have a few templated weapons and art items which look ok but not incredible but overall I am really proud of what I have achieved and believe that I could sell the game after it is 80% or more completed.

I have secured a good cashflow for the next 6-9 months which will allow me to work on the game 4 full days per week and I hope that this will be enough to get it to the kickstarter stage. Furthermore I have made a contact who is happy to help with the art for a small amount of money. However I don’t think that I will be able to finish everything to a good standard for a demo. I think that with a good kickstarter campaign I could get enough money to finish the game to a really nice standard in a further 6 months on top of what I have financed at the moment.

So my question is this:

What areas should I focus on or complete before going for my kickstarter in 6-9 months and how should I go about building up enough interest to get a head start in achieving my kickstarter goal?

I know everyone is really busy so if you guys could give me some quick advice or point me somewhere else I would appreciate it!

Thanks

Jack

[Rick_Davidson]

Kickstarters can indeed be an amazing boost for your project. They do require a lot of pre-work to ensure enough people know about it and are interested in backing. You need to be vocal about your project in as many groups / forums / sites as you can (in an interesting non-spammy way) so that people have the opportunity to learn about it before the Kickstarter. I don’t have a good resource to point you to, however I suggest you learn as much as you can about how to build a KS audience.

As for what to have completed when you launch your KSer, people are looking for 2 main things.

1. Am I excited for this project?
2. Do I feel confident that they will finish it?

If you make something that looks great in videos (doesn’t necessarily have to be playable in all of its glory yet) and looks likely it will be finished then it will meet people’s core questions.

Hope this helps!

[Jack_Hines]

Thanks very much Rick!