Game Discoverability Day: Crowdfunding Your Video Game in 2019

[Music] this is the digestive talk I hope you will stay with me if you fall asleep please don't snore if you can turn off your your sound on your mobile phone and other noisy devices that would be very much appreciated and we'll jump right into crowdfunding your video game in 2019 my name is Tomas Tomas speedo I'm French I've been in the industry for a while I'm a video game consultant I consult on a variety of topic rated usually - video game publishing I work a lot on a free-to-play PC and console game these sort of things but I also have a crowdfunding addiction I really like crowdfunding I'm back to this date 279 projects on Kickstarter and a few others on other platforms but also being in the game industry trying to make my

addiction something useful I also work with people with a quaternion campaign I started with looking at data because people were not looking at data for crowdfunding they were looking at the big projects so I've started to do like data mining on Kickstarter able to provide like a 10,000 feet view on the crowdfunding state for video games and by priming there I started to look at best practices people brought me on the project I've advised about 40 campaigns most of them video games and I've worked directly into five campaigns for them on Kickstarter one delay and I've been running workshops helping you know developers and creators to basically try to make that crowdfunding campaign as successful as possible this dog has four parts there's the first one is going to be the state of play house crowdfunding right now there's then apart on what kind of projects are right for crowdfunding and try to help you you know establish whether or not a crafting project is what a curving campaign is right for your project I'll talk about

choosing your platform should be relatively brief and then I'm talk about best practices and before we go into the the the state of play so I love numbers I try to spend not too much time on numbers to show like snapshots and give you a sense of where we are sorry and I'm not going to see much of your hands if you can try to raise your hands who has run a Kickstarter campaign before crackling campaign before who wants to do something on crowdfunding yeah that's why you're here good who's not sure it's coming here to get an answer whether or not they should do it okay few people excellent excellent who has never backed who's never backed the Kickstarter campaign or any crowdfunding or any sort good shame on you so numbers I said numbers yeah so this is a asked for a crawling Kickstarter everyday trying to see which products work this is all about video

games Kickstarter is very useful to understand the state of play for crowdfunding because this is the biggest crowd funding platform this is not the only one talk about a couple of those later but it's a it's a very much there's so many of the crowdfunding for video game that happens on Kickstarter that that it might as well be all of it here it gives you a sense of the numbers so last year there was about 15 million dollars that was going through product that was successfully funded on Kickstarter it's little bit less than the year before and they'll be less than the year before again it's a significant less than 2015 these these numbers are what they are there's a 15 million is 15 million it's a it's a good amount of money but it's not comparable to the vast of money like big publishers or the industry is putting into video games but this is still money that that you know comes with few strings attached comes with the community and tend to have lots of added value to them what's more interesting as well is to look at the

number of project that I get funded every year and if you look at you know back to 2011 before Double Fine adventure kind of like rocked the crowdfunding boat the this been about you know between 350 to 400 projects a year they got funded on Kickstarter and what's interesting is that that number has not dropped significantly we've seen our about like you know a project a day of video game projects today gets funded on Kickstarter what's also very in resting in the number of total projects that are submitted on the platform the number of regrets fail is actually going down quick i think gote 2014 there's a project called put it on salad that launched on Kickstarter and that's the reason there's a big spike in low-quality project that went there so that's this particular side-effect you seen at play here with the huge increase of project that don't get funded now we are back about new same ratio we were in 2013 before potatoes around so we are born probably more like the natural state that that crowdfunding should be for for that so you know a product today

you probably don't know most of them that means that you know there's a lot of project that are below the radar that actually get funded on Kickstarter every year and last line on Kickstarter purely this is about the the size of the project that got funded last year and the year before so the about like five or six last year that raised more than half a million dollars there was like 25 project arrays between 100,000 and 500,000 dollars and like hundred and seventy nine projects raised less less than ten thousand dollars again this is I think useful for anyone who kind of like and try to understand Oh Kickstarter you will do a million easy or you know or you can't do more than ten thousand dollars on Kickstarter this is these are the numbers this is the more projects every year video games that get funded and how much money they raised so depending on what your expectation this might be like they distressing it might be very good I don't know but this this is this is a tool for you to use to understand where you sits in terms of expectation on how much money you can raise I want you to talk very briefly about fig as a

crowdfunding platform that's dedicated to video game I think it's interesting to see how much to perform in the past few years the first two years of fig they raised a signal amount of money north of 5 million both years last year was a lawyer for fig there is less less than half a million total across six project that got funded so fig is still a small platform in comparison to Kickstarter for what what video games are enough numbers let's talk about the serious stuff is your game good for crowdfunding and there's something you need to understand by crowdfunding is that it's all about love and it's such an important notion you need love to be successful in crowdfunding any people to love your project before I go more into that there's also a few projects that

even with all the love in the world you probably won't be able to crowd fund them so these are my red flags of any project that I immediately will say you're probably not going to make it so so I mean if he's one if you get the answer you want it induce like three signs and we want to leave I won't take it personally it's all good so games for kids people don't buy games for kids because the the time you get between getting the money in during the product the kid has grown change is taste so people don't back games for kids free to play games people don't back free to play games free to play is the anti-isis of crowdfunding you play the game first and then you decide if you spend money on it because you played when it was free trying to get people to spend money on a free-to-play game before it's even out is very very content with it the last category is mobile games this is a bit more complex I could go to mo dito spend at the

mobile games are very difficult to crowdfund the average pledged by backer is very low and on mobile makes it more difficult to raise and their money required the distribution is very complicated and just the psychology of people they tend to back things that they think is important and something that some small screen people feel like is less important it's more difficult to commit them to back mobile project so it's kind of like that the three categories of games that you prayed should not do on on crowdfunding and in case there's a desert is the last thing if there is no love in your game and by that it's not bad you can have a game that's very good but nobody loves nobody has a passion for it nobody's kind of like driven by that game is good I want it to happen if you don't have love you will fail if people actually have an emotional connection to your game that that they want to see exist for a

cratering coming to succeed so there's lots of different ways to look at your game is it love less but more important is like do you have people who know about your game and the people know about your game how they feel about it feel keen interested curious or really excited you want that last category and that's all kind of like the the green flags the things that you want to have an existing community that's incredibly attached to your property how many people in the room know about critical role okay good good good you should all check out critical role as a D&D show and they've done a Kickstarter campaign they have like a months left they've already raised seven point six million dollars they have 56,000 backers and the reward if you look at the details does not match in the rewards and people have backed the hell out of it the average pledge buyback is a hundred and thirty dollars and there's pledges at 225 thousand dollars and every pledge that's limited that's more than a thousand

dollar and they're all sold out they've all been they've been taken they have a lot of love people are passionate about it there's lots of tumblr about it as well which is good it's also easier if you if your project is kind of like a dries behind it like I want that to happen whether it's because it's so stupid it needs to happen or it's missing I want like a point and click in the old style of you know who day of the tentacle and magnet mention I want that game because nobody else is going to do it's kind of like a drive so if this is present you take another box like you're probably going to be in the in the right side of crowdfunding friendly campaign and then you need something that's communicable you need something that's easy to understand and people to share understand why there's a passion about it so yes you have an existing community people love your project but for them to

be able to recruit they need to be able to bring people to you I like super hot superhot is a category of game that not that should not work on Kickstarter it's a first-person shooter first-person shooters this tons of them why would I back a kekeke sorry about the first-person shooter when I can go to any store and buy you know the latest iteration of one of the big franchises but superhot as a unique art style and a unique concept of you know the time moves when you move and nobody's done that and that's so easy to explain I just explained in a sentence it's easy to demonstrate just a couple of gif and then suddenly you understand the action on top of that when when superhot launched there that Kickstarter they had their prototype from the game jam where the game was initially conceived and they just check that and just like if you don't get it just play it you're like oh my god I understand it immediately that makes it very strong for crowdfunding campaign it may be more easy to be viral made easy for people to recruit their friends to support you

because they love it and they want more people to support it so if you all into the categories or if you think you can get into this category's good I won't talk about the few projects from last year as well and then to explain a bit more what what is a good project for crowdfunding so the good life is a break I worked on and that raised a bit more than seven hundred thousand dollars and it has a unique art style and it's tried to do something you know even to the RPG genre there's no combat it's all about taking pictures and so being quest by you know spying on people maybe but at least you don't you don't shed blood and there's no history and then you turn into a cat at night like that's a bit bonkers it's a bit unique people also have an emotional relationship with the games made by sweary the the creator has a kind of like a unique style he has a fan base people care about that but for the company to be successful we had to show the game midway through the campaign we were at GDC a year ago and

things that slowed down which always happen on the Kickstarter campaign and we are like okay what can we do to basically give it a bit more life and it was very difficult to convince the studio to share the the demo day they had a little table demo with like three quests they were using for press demos and no it's very very bad it's ugly it's buggy we don't want to share with it with anyone and so after long discussions like if we want the company to succeed we need to share the game we need to give it to people into the hands and so we did it and then nobody complain about the quality every dislike it's exactly what I expected it's quirky it's funny I understand the gameplay about the taking the pictures and all that and people streamed it people share it and it was a second life into that campaign it really made it work and so that was very important component to actually some time you get let it out and share what it is you are building because otherwise people will not be able to to to follow you through through a company promises

I'm not a campaign I want to talk about is IRA novice our novice did 1.3 million dollars last year as one of the big campaigns from last year and it's a niche game it's a real-time strategy we're talking about you know the the drive of people to support the campaign there's not that many realtime strategy games around at the moment so actually doing not yes is immediately going to attract the attention of RTS fans and then they also choose to partner with a polish concept artist that's very popular did the art direction for a size a board game there was also very popular unique style unique visuals unique universe it kind of like increases they multiply that attraction that you have for the project not only it's a RTS and I want in your honor yes to that for a long time it on top of that it's kind of like in its own universe it that's it unlike well that's very attractive good that works top of that don't ignore that they did 1.3 million it's their fourth

Kickstarter campaign they understood really well all the environment they understood we well they're their base but it's also mean that you can do repeat Kickstarter's and not be and be successful you don't have to choose to do one and then never do it again it's a tool they can repeat and and get better at um no is a campaign from last year as well they did almost hundred thousand euros um no success is very much the success of the single developer behind it it's a solo they have and he is a former animator and he's very good at animation he did a lot of prep work on the campaign where he shed his gift on of the game on Twitter showing people you know all the things you can do into the game and and the admission was really sleek so the gif were really sleek and people really really intrigued but there's also a story people know that the developer is alone so like literally alone making that game with you know a couple of

freelancers for music or a few extra things and he told the story he didn't say like I'm a studio making a game he says I'm a person alone trying to make that game and I try to make it good and any money I get I can make more time I can you know get some help from third parties and to get me to get better and story is important because you create an emotional connection love the lava nom know is as much as love for the project and the the kind of like support like the crush you have on that developer that kind of trying to tackle making a game on its own and we all know how hard it is so I want to talk about little intermission on timing 2012 Kickstarter explodes everybody does like a Kickstarter campaign and they all work very well but we're in 2019 and all the time for the past seven years people's

expectation Kickstarter campaign have changed the excitement you have of oh we can you know like you know bypass the publishers and you know give power to the devs and make them very creative it's also like okay well maybe we want to see more of your game do you understand what you are backing and so we've seen like when a game is ready for crowdfunding campain cannot like move towards closer and closer to production and of production and to the 19 we are very much like you need to be able to show verticals I have the game you need to show the art direction you need to show something that looks like the final game you can fake it but do more the closer you are to what use your real vision the further away you are new production the easier it will be also means that Kickstarter it's not really good for the start of a project anymore but it's still you know a Nixon tool to leverage an existing fan base get more funding into a project we also means that the biggest competitor

for kickstarter on crowdfunding is not the other platforms it's early access and we're talking about you know what kind of type of project are good for crowdfunding and what happens is that if you have a game that by the time you have a vertical slice and maybe you have a short gameplay loop because it's a very mechanic driven game maybe you are ready for all the access and a lot of people rather than go to a crowdfunding go to early access and like why would I you know spend so much time into building like a no rewards and presenting the campaign and recruit people to back my game and have that 30 days of anxiety when I'm trying to render the Kickstarter let's do let's launch on Steam on the access and that's fine I'm think that's if you have a project that's of that kind maybe go to early access it also means that this sudden project are not good for the access other one that also goes back to Kickstarter anything that you can spoil will more likely go to a crowdfunding campaign like you have a story and you

don't want to do any access because then you spoil the story well maybe you present that story the concept of it on you know Kickstarter and that's where you you know raise the money you need to finish the project good where do we launch our crowdfunding campaign is going to be quick because that's not that minicamp that's not my platforms but I review quickly what I recommend to people in terms of platform where to launch that we start the crafting campaign so if you care about if you think that the idea of asking money from from people for something that doesn't exist yet and I'm not getting any money back figures for you because you know revenue share they get something back from from from their investment some of them some just do like you know pre-order the game that's the one reason to go and fig I think if you have a huge audience in France you should go too early you laughing you're laughing but that some people made 1.4 million dollars on

that platform for a video game and you've never heard of it since some platform is really good for your very ultra local campaign move campaign most of you are not concerned by that if kick-start is not available in your country indiegogo is not a bad platform and to go to it's more accessible than Kickstarter that's limited to certain countries but if you can Kickstarter and it's not about Kickstarter is never going to do anything for you in terms of making you successful I'm not talking the individual behind Kickstarter like Luke and Anja from the game team they will love you they will help you as much as they can but the platform itself the nature of it there's no discoverability this is the discoverability track there's no discovery in crowdfunding the people you bring you bring by yourself they can help maybe put you in the newsletter project we laugh maybe you get some some some some organic traffic but 90% of the back is there are your backers you bring to the platform in that sense you could bring them to any platform but the

stress of Kidada is there's less friction people know the name the number of people who tell me Thomas we want to do a Kickstarter campaign on IndieGoGo because in the head Kickstarter campaign means crowdfunding campaign it becomes like you know it's like googling something on being there's less friction people already have accounts people have already credit cards it's just easier people understand the code so that makes that's what makes keys are the best platform for crowdfunding if you can get more support excellent but don't be naive in thinking that I launched it on Kickstarter and then magic happens people find my game and we get funded that never happens I'm very optimistic and nice right killer of dreams best practices so that's the last bit this is where I give you advice on what makes your your practical advice to make your company successful so it's not about likes it's about love anything you can

do to induce love on your specific project do it so that kind of like of a spectrum on one end you have like IO novice super hardcore military RTS on the other end of my picture my boyfriend dungeon-like quickie dating sim mixing jablow dungeon-crawling wacky things you don't do the same thing to induce love into two different audiences boyfriend dungeon you show like oh here's a body pillow here's like the new weapon and you know here's the personality of the people you going to date and is the wacky thing we want to do on Eire novice end of the spectrum you say oh we're going to do multiplayer and this is the kind of units we want to have and this is the different factions we haven't go more into like a nerdy geeky stuff and two-parameter fantasy armies and all I kind of stuff but that's the kind of stuff you need to push to your audience like what is it going to tell them that make them love your product and it's not like a USP thing is going to be like image is going to be like low or it's going to be like little details like

that you can put into that make them care more about your project it could be also you could be your team hey we are 5 10 20 here's the people behind maybe that makes them know few more because it's more human the momentum is incredibly important incredibly important if you don't have good momentum at the beginning of your campaign it's so hard to recover you need 20% in the first 48 hours so if you think you're going to be covering like oh I'll get you on like no announcement throughout the whole months of the campaign and we're going to talk about you know different elements we put into the game all the time don't use as many ammunition as you can at the very beginning maybe keep a couple because it's always good to have a few things up to your sleeve but don't use any of the big bullets don't keep them for you just just use everything so that you have the best start possible because a good start will make the campaign overall more successful there's a corollary to that

you know 20% in 48 hours it's like half halfway through you have 50% of your funding sounds like stupid but because the the pace of a campaign is like a lot of money beginning and then very slow and then not many of the end it's not that actually clear but but we've seen that campaigns that do like 50% midway through we're successful in most of the cases so if you have a like a bit of a slow start but you managed to get to like 50 be set up for a through you on the you're on a good way you are on track to be successful doesn't mean yet you need to stop in to keep pushing and keep talking about it you need to ask your fans you keep you know asking and magnet of friends about supporting you but it's important that you you know that that you are on track and it will it should work game needs gameplay and demos talk about that a lot this is very important don't you can't get funded without showing your project like John Romero tried it didn't succeed so you can you think do you think you are more successful in terms of having

fans in John Romero good luck next one super important I will just leave it there for like two seconds this is this is my one number one pet peeve on campaigns and number one mistake people make when when they do crowdfunding campaigns do not announce your stretch goals it serves no purposes it changed the three polls like view about the campaign about the campaign if you are like just for ten thousand in the schedule twenty thousand the 20% psychological effect doesn't happen at ten happens at twenty so it's very important you gain nothing and lots of people do it because what they do is research all the campaigns and say oh look at that stretch gold let's do stretch goals well and then they announce it from the beginning virtually the campaign you've seen is finished maybe they didn't announce the stretch goal at the beginning didn't announce them as they were happening much better do not announce your stretch goals if you have a friends doing a quixotic campaign the one thing you tell them they do not announce your stretch goals you know launch at the beginning of the month finish at the beginning of the month people have payroll that's

good it's easier to make the decision to support something you love and it's a bit like an emotional decision when you are not like struggling to to to fit yourself so it's always a bit better I recommend to launch between Monday from Thursday because you want the first fight 48 hours to be during the weekdays and you want to end between Tuesday through Friday because you won't last 48 hours to be doing weekdays it's good to do 30 to 35 days campaign I think less than 30 you miss one of the spare all cycle you doesn't give the time for a campaign to kind of like spread longer it's very taxing 30 days is very long when you are managing the campaign I understand that but I think it's also important is that you know the time to go to get people to talk about your project and share it and care about it and and and let the the work happen and sometime midway through like nothing happen this is very frustrating but you have a number of people who actually follow your campaign and push the button on Kickstarter and get an email and that's 48 hours that

tell them that the comment is about to end like oh my I need to back it now and the support you at the very end so actually all that time when nothing happens the stuff in the background you can you can keep an eye on that actually help you for your campaign overall nowadays like 2019 I think this code is a very good tool before the campaign because that you know you can recruit your your your future backers your fans you can engage with them and then when the day comes you can like you know align them on disk on say now is the day I guess it's good during the campaign - you know coordinate like discussion for them - how intuitive to recruit more backers you know where can we talk about the project and have them you know a little army kind of like talking about you that's good after the campaign as well to reward them develop to like you know roll into this code that makes them look unique and also you know inform them about you know the progress of the game in these sort of things I recommend to you you know stream doing campaigns just like sometimes just you talking about the project doing AMA showing the game may be showing some developments like a

you know I'm going to do animation actually my trig and not sure works so it's good stuff to show that you actually real people working on the real game it's good to Kickstarter at their own kicks that's a live tool huge stream it's horrible but it's useful so I say try it and see how it goes for you I recommend you learn the ecosystem how can people to actually be back as themselves so anyone tried to be to launch a Kickstarter campaign would never back to Kickstarter it's a little bit kind of intuitive I think you should try to try that out yourself understand what it is to be in the shoes of a backer and understand how it feels I've met people who actually don't like crowdfunding after they realize that that being back here was a horrible thing for them and that make them like realize they didn't want to do that and they were not right in terms of they couldn't have done a good campaign because they would have the wrong tone or anything like that so that's important you also need to imprint and you understand like the the lingo the digital number of tools they exist that that graph I have here is from bigger cake bigger cake don't come it's a very

good websites that have lots of stats on on past campaigns it's a good tool to understand oh I like that campaign I think they did a very good job try to understand you know how much money they raised in the beginning and and and what was the pacing of it this is critical role cuz I like whatever it's good to spend money do advertising and you know Facebook Google Ads maybe don't spend too much money Keeks are gives you tools to actually track referral links and see if the money you spend actually giving money to your campaign ask for help there's no such thing as competition on Kickstarter like all the other Kickstarter campaigns aren't the same situation as you people who back one campaign are more likely to back to campaigns now I'm not going to say oh the other thing is better I'm going to take my money out of yours and put it over there there's a lot of a good bill people who are into crowdfunding on the concept of grant money tend to be very benevolent and very open to look at all the things and and support all the creators so don't is there to ask for

help those two these two updates are from two product that support each other Lou knock and chain that goes and just like to say I'll scratch your back you scratch mine and then this is the last slide I want to talk about failing if you fail a Kickstarter campaign it's not the worst thing that could happen to you you could have failed launching your game there's a lot of lessons to learn from sitting there and you should embrace failure first of Liars is a product of a friend of mine it's beautiful it's a concept artist yes forty thousand followers on Twitter and then you get funded and we are talking say is it is it balanced like no no you have a very bad start of your company don't cancel it try to understand why you didn't get funded comes up he didn't show enough of the gameplay game is beautiful but the game is not ready to be shown in terms of game play and so they're like lots of fans

being disappointed and they were disappointed they also created like bonds to that community they felt together and and now the game is still in development they are looking at you know maybe doing Kickstarter again maybe doing other ways to get funded but the project is pretty better now because they felt a Kickstarter then if they had not done the Kickstarter and that's my closing words I think I have no question no time for questions I'm so sorry but you can see me afterwards [Applause]