Michał Gembicki - Kickstarter for Indie Developers

foreign [Music] good afternoon to everyone I'm Mikhail gambitski I'm working in lesser evil and at the remote control Productions as well today I want to give you a little bit of an insight and hints on Kickstarter this is pretty wide topic so in the 45 minutes I guess we will not cover it all right but I want to focus on fundamentals so to start with a few words about my credibility so you know that at least a little bit I know what I'm saying uh now so I've been working for video games industry since 2006 uh I've been working

previously in CD project in club butter now I work for the cereville uh I've published roughly 18 even 20 games so far multi-platform in some of those cases I did also Kickstarter campaigns for them as as an important marketing bit of their road to Market and lately uh I also um around six crowdfunding campaigns all of them for video games uh actually five of them for video games and one for a board game so um I can say I got some reasonable amount of experience and reasonable amount of uh uh also uh like the in-field experience from running those campaigns that I would like to share with you today also I encourage if it let's try at least to be an interactive session maybe so if you feel you have questions on the go like feel free to ask them or rise the hand and I'll try to I'll try to pick up these people and

we can we can have a chats anytime so our first day assumption that I made after I did all these six kickstarters it's like so exhausting to run them really like you need to take care you need to take it under consideration that running a kick cycling campaign is almost like running a marathon but you need to be really quick right so keep on Pace from Sprint and um it is an an often a kind of a mistake I would say assumed by uh especially Indie developers that are kind of small organizations that they can carry out with Kickstarter campaign just like that like you know like in a couple of weeks or so do it left hand right side or just by you know spending couple of hours this is a bad assumption you know you you need to spend really a lot of time a lot of effort a lot of working hours and build a team of at least I would say a couple of people working on a Kickstarter campaign to ever think about

the success uh and don't feel don't think you can do it alone because probably there are some exceptions from that rule but uh but I encouraged to do it always in the team uh but the most important question at the beginning is usually what for right so um obvious thing it's right because you want to raise money so uh rice funds get some money that's what everyone is running this Kickstarter at least on the definition because lately it's rather for building Community uh that is more important and I think that is more achievable goal Rising funds yes but it has some implications that I will tell later but uh building Community uh that's the my opinion the best outcome of running Kickstarter after a successful campaign you will always get from a couple of hundreds to even couple of thousands of dedicated funds that are not just uh like promising they will buy

but it already bought your game or a product right so they are invaluable source for the future uh asking about the opinions uh being ambassadors bringing good words those guys are invested in you already right so having them on board yeah I think it's uh one of the most important things coming out of Kickstarter and thirdly uh it's to generate hype uh there is is very important though I need to say Kickstarter is not good for media so if you think media will be interested in the fact that you're running Kickstarter you're wrong media doesn't care about you running Kickstarter unfortunately unless you're of course like I don't know musk or someone like running next Tesla or whatever but uh for your indie games that's gonna be a wall that in penetrable wall of ignorance like silence and they don't care right but on the other hand it's very important to beat for your marketing team so for your communication teams because this is short periods of

30 days and I mean talking here about the core campaign where you can focus all the attention of everyone in the team and outside on your products so uh this is the moment where you can get a lot of bus from community uh influences are a good source of that buzz media only if you are doing very good which we will also say what is the definition of doing good later on um so what's the first step let's say you choosing one of the three goals uh from the list that I've showed earlier so now you have to have a clear goal right uh what are you running this campaign for uh if you're running it for money that we already said before uh or you're running it for fail deciding early on that is very important because you don't uh you need to manage your expectations if you're clearly aiming just for fame which of course I mean like Buzz Marketing of your products right not just your personal frame uh it

implicates a completely different approach to what is going to be achieved after the campaign if you do it for the budget and you are actually really need to generate the money that you will invest in your game that is also completely different campaigns so these two are kind of separate campaigns and you need to decide before you run not on the run because then it is too late already right um also deciding whether you are gathering the funds to fully fund your game and build the projects from the scratch or just getting funds to into in to increase its value is also an important decision that you need to make before you actually start the campaign why you would ask is like because if let's say in your funding goal you say you are gathering on money on this campaign because you want to fund your game then you provide a very long description of the game with all the stuff and then you ask for 15 000 Euro that's hard hard

to kind of like believe that you're gonna fund the game for 15 000 Euro right so uh that's why you need to decide if you go big the number needs to be big at the same time but also it will inflict you to ask for a bigger money you need to deliver proofs to believe for your community because seldomly anyone will believe that for 15K you can build a full okay later on um when you are preparing for a Kickstarter there isn't a lot of work to be done earlier I have three phases uh that's like always say towards the kickstarter so there's a pre-kickstarter campaign the core campaign and then the post Campaign which we'll see on the next slide in that first practice starter campaign the most important part is the research the input of the data you need to gather uh before you actually start your own don't do it just because you think their idea is great right check if there is something similar already on Kickstarter Kickstarter is fairly

transparent and it's very easy to look for the products if not uh similar to your genre or by category or simply by browsing the catalog there are other services there like kick track where you can also check the archived campaigns how they went what kind of updates they they prepared what video was used for the promotion of a specific game right I assume most of you will try to do a Kickstarter for a video game so like browsing this category there researching what worked what didn't work is an important part of a preparation for the actual launch of uh of the game also one of the most trickiest part of preparing yourself for the kickstarter campaign is a proper definition of the Pledge goals the funding goal the big one right the pledges and the awards these three variables are the the the combinations of them are the key to your success right the first thing we a little bit covert so asking gold the

funding goal needs to be uh adjusted to what you're asking for if you're asking for a full development of the game you need to ask for I don't know a hundred thousand Euro for example right or at least 50 or something right it needs to be parallel to the scope of the of the work there if you are asking just for 15K or 25k that means you are rather asking uh backers to help you finish the game right which is completely different um if you uh I'm creating the pledges also remember that the rules here are very similar to e-commerce actually the less the better right don't produce uh 12 pledges or 25 Pleasures because that is too complicated and then you divert the attention of the possible backers into too many free different pledges they will try to compare them and sooner or later they will have doubts whether this pledge is better or this pledge is worse right so you are distracting them from the decision they need to make so I would suggest four or five pledges is

just good enough right and uh and most important element of that is also take your time right um I often met with the situation where uh what a decision we're gonna run Kickstarter and actually starting the kickstarter is like a month time or something like a couple of weeks like hey yeah let's do it and then we do it because well we just think it's such a good idea to do it this doesn't work like that and at least not now there were some like old good romantic times in the past where you were able to run the campaign just like that right but uh they are long gone now it's a lot about strategy preparation and time invested into uh pre-marketing your campaign this phase the first one free campaign uh I would say the minimum is three months but it's really if you already already have a community you have backers that you can drive with you uh you're well known you have lots of

marketing and spent already lots of time on in on like making your brand aware and invisible I would say six to eight even is is okay right I've seen campaigns that were running as a pre-cut starter campaigns for years right and those were the most effective ones uh it's fairly easy because then in that tracking starter campaign you can already create your little business cards on the kickstarter which is kind of like a crack Kickstarter of your campaign and you can Channel all your activities on that pre-kick starter campaign page so you get followers uh later on those followers are convertible onto the backers when you launch and your ultimate goal uh that is also one thing that I need to mention is you need to get funded within the first 24 hours maybe 48 right so that is the moment where you need to have a 100 of your goal the original one uh funded of course well you can wait until the 30

days but if you don't in the first 48 Hours backers will find they will lose interest some of them will hesitate they need that proof of social uh that that the campaign is successful the money drives money so if they see that in the first hours you got 100 or 105 percent of your campaign funded they will generate you much more than a hundred percent uh funding that is why we always aim for the funding goal to be a little bit lower than what you expect let's say if you aim for a hundred thousand Euro right then the funding goal should be something like 50 60 000 let's say unless of course if you feel you could uh deliver that big amount in First 48 Hours of your original campaign then we go to the campaign and this is that what usually everyone thinks is just about Kickstarter so this is this 30 days where you press uh start button the campaign goes on and for 30 days you

run the kickstarter and you are actually Gathering pledges this campaign out of these 30 days the most important days are the six days so first three and last three uh anything between them is sort of like a cold plateau and nothing is happening over there uh it's flat right and that philosophy is also important because it means that for the first three days you will get a little bit more natural organic Boost from being on the main Kickstarter page maybe you will receive these projects we love award which feature which is also helping out a little bit you will get more attention because you are easier browsable on the page and then the same story will go for another last three days where you will get the notifications sent to people that are following your project and in the middle the 27 sort of days in between this is only up to you what will happen in these times and Kickstarter is not supporting you anyway in these 27 days so the only traffic you will get in

the middle of the campaign is the one you can generate and that is why the most element is like bring your own backers right so never start the campaign on the kickstarter before you gather your own group of people that can help you to fund the the game uh and then you can exploit them in a way through that 27 middle days of campaign when the campaign finishes it doesn't mean that the Gathering pledges finishes as well because then there is a post campaign activity it's less used for video games more used for uh board games but it's also an important uh part where you can upsell a lot if you use uh backer kits if you upgrade pledges give some uh upgrades to rewards you can still sell and keep on late pledging people that will still pay you actually the money and this will be your store right you will be able to

pre-sale your game up to its very launch or sometimes even after right when when it's another source of revenue for you like steam or any other platform um so that's more or less what we call it uh earlier in in the description of these phases uh what I outline here is like the key performance indicator let's say a kpi at that first phase of pre Kickstarter campaign is building the followers on your pre-kickstarter page um I'm sure most of you probably seen it it's a very simple kind of a business card with a little icon a very short description and then if you click notify me on the launch button you kind of subscribe for the moment where the kickstarter will inform you that the campaign started so everything in the first year three or six months that you have started needs to be channel on this page and you need everyone to subscribe

for that notification why well because this is the best source for conversion later on uh the more you get uh the better of course the importance is that on average because it's various from campaign to campaign but about 20 percent of those that follow up will convert as a backers in in the first uh 24 48 hours so that is the math you need to do right so now if you know this 20 you can calculate how many people following your pre-kickstarter campaign you need to have in order to get your goal funded in this first 48 hours right and this gives you also a answer to how long should I run my pre-kick starter campaign if let's say you have 2 000 followers on your uh prakickstarter campaign and on average they will pledge 20. dollars right you know how much you can expect uh when 20 of that group will

convert in First 48 hours right the rest May convert but it doesn't need to convert they will convert only if the campaign is successful in the first 48 hours and they will just do slow conversion uh in a time but the 20 should do it immediately um in that moment in the Practical example pre-kickstarter campaign uh what you need to do is like to start already doing the kickstarter campaign so let's assume you already need to have a steam page right uh before on that template you need to up keep on pushing the updates that you are actually gonna run this campaign you need to prepare a little video that will tease that you are going to tease the campaign right so it's like a little bit building from the little Bricks by bricks building attention that one day in in a time you may not even reveal that time uh you're gonna launch the campaign and all that goes down to like building these subscribers uh on your Kickstarter page

so at that moment you push the button they all get notified um then comes that moment of truth right so then you're ready you have your page set up let's say you build already the uh followers uh number in in a satisfactory amount now you need to start the campaign first of all you need to have couple of good assets in order to engage them in the com in the in the product and to present the product properly there's two video assets that are key here you can do more but the two is the minimum so one is the so-called talking head right uh it used to be more uh important in the past now because of the attention of people to Talking Heads are dropping it's less important but still it is necessary so this is more or less some sort of a personal message from a Creator to the backers it is important because it shows your engagement it also

shows the person behind the campaign and that's what Becca is like right they like to feel there is this is not Anonymous corporation that is super rich and is asking for the money right remember about this uh concept that this is crowdfunding campaign so the assumption is that you are not having money and you are asking for the money people so if you are showing yourself as a publisher or as a super extra Rich organization they're gonna ask like so why can't you find yourself right so uh this talking head video needs to be showcasing and underlining what is your uh philosophy about this product what is the game about why are you running this Kickstarter and why do you actually need the help of the backers the second one is much easier because it's just a video game trailer right and you also need to have it uh because of course everyone is buying the games only when they see them in the action right not having a video game trailer is of absolutely no go right nobody will uh read the text or

just watch the static screenshots you need to have something compelling it can be exactly the same trailer as you want to launch for your game so it doesn't have any philosophy towards it but it needs to be there you need to be able to rotate them so when you start campaign I guess better is to start with the talking head at the beginning and the video somewhere in in the middle of your Kickstarter page after a couple of hours later you can exchange them right because when the campaign is running the the main video on top should be the eye-catching thing right and we assume that the first 48 hours are people interested later on there coming just people that are that heard this campaign about and they want to see the game not the talking head anymore right um with video games also I would not recommend going without any playable code right so you need to have at least um the best thing of course is to have a demo uh because now nobody really trusts the games that you can't really play

that is why if parallel to that you are running a campaign for your game and you are closing to a steam for example demo Festival it's always worth combining the two events together right so either to start a Kickstarter campaign in the very same moment you launch it for the steam demo Festival so you don't need to do the job twice right or to start the kickstarter earlier and then attend the steam demo Festival not the other way around because if the demo is already available it kind of loses this exclusivity flavor right so it's not gonna be a asset especially made for the kickstarter and will be much less effective and uh some other hints like you should at the beginning you have your main goal you have pledges don't show the stretch goals the stretch goals are these targets you have the goals that you have when you're gonna get funded showing them at the beginning

is a huge mistake because first of all you already assume you're gonna get it so some people might be offended by it the second is like they might see that they are not interested and that will again cause them to hesitate uh and also because you are losing a very important tool when the campaign is going to be slowly running to an end right when the campaign is funded already and you need to upsell so you need to generate more Revenue than you just planned in the beginning the stretch goes out for that right so they need to be revealed one by one and only when the campaign is funded not earlier so keep it keep them Secrets until that very moment where you get the message it is funded uh you never you can never be silent that is another thing the moment you start Kickstarter campaign that means ideally for video games almost every day you should produce an update on the on the kickstarter the minimum is 20 updates in the 30 days so like almost

every day but I would I would I would assume like every day even a short message is better than nothing right also don't just post like uh oh we got five percent oh we got six percent now now we got seven now right because that's boring that nobody I mean you can post about Fast Five percent or ten right but don't do it every time like the content you run in the updates is the content about the product that is for the people that okay they pledged that's one one type of people that will read it but it's also for all those people that didn't pledge but are following the complaint so the more updates you produce the higher the conversion is from people that are in the back end just watching the campaign and still hesitating and that's gonna be much higher number than the backers right so if you monitor carefully these two numbers you will soon see that you got let's say 10 20 backers but 200 300 people following the campaign the more updates you produce the faster you get the goal

funded these two 200 observing people will be converting into uh into into backers at the end um there's lots of other tools for engaging communities over there uh not just updates of course updates need to be eye-catching they need to have some sort of a video best if you could show something extra from the game that is not already available in the demo uh one thing that works is also ask me anything session you can do it on Reddit for example Reddit is also good for spreading some news about that but be careful because they bond usually for that stuff right so um need to be very uh gorilla style kind of activity so anything on the way that can help to get some sort of a buzz about what you're doing is the things you need to be constantly doing the moment you stop publishing updates that's a clear message to everyone that the campaign is going to be failed right and that will that can also cause people

to withdraw the pledges that is also a very important message so even if you are already 100 funded remember they can withdraw also if they see that you are not active there right um that is why it's worth trying and then at the very end after you you you finish this 30 days uh as mentioned earlier you can do several activities on the on your Kickstarter Campaign which is still alive because you can still post updates there still Community is there so this a couple of hundreds or thousands of people there are following this kickstarters page sometimes they don't even follow your steam page like follow only this Kickstarter page this is also worth mentioning that usually on the kickstarter demography of the community is that it's mostly from the US and a little bit from Western Europe right uh but it's U.S and they treat that all this all sort of informations about the game the product they funded should be on the kickstarter page so don't fall to that strategy that campaign is finished and now we can only update it on the steam because you will

get lots of angry people uh like sort of posting different comments that they are not updated on the regular basis right um and to talk about a little bit about metrics as well so as I said earlier so the first uh let's say top of the funnel is like you build the mass reach right you try to reach through newsletters you try to reach through Steam you try to reach for all your databases you build the best traffic then out of that 10 to 15 percent will convert onto people following your uh your pre-kickstarter uh page out of that again 20 maybe 15 to 20 percent will finally convert to backers so you see that the funnel is definitely very thin right so the the more you get at the very beginning the the better because later on it's just gonna be limiting with everyone I seldom is seeing the situation opposites right so let's say you started the campaign and suddenly people are swarming to it right now it's always like limiting with

a with a Time uh another thing like I said at the beginning it is difficult and uh time consuming to run the kickstarter also remember it is very expensive uh this is one of the most expensive ways of getting money right so um assume that let's say 1525 I said here but I've seen much more will be the actual cost of this campaign that's everything from buying media buying advertisements uh also another 10 on top of that will be taken by the platforms by the payment operator as well right so this campaign is not gonna be for free right so if you asked for I don't know 20 000 Euro right and it's exactly the amount you need you will never get it right so you need to always plan on top of that 30 50 to be

on the secure side if actually you are running this campaign just for getting the money not for getting bus or uh community attention and uh and and of course uh the more you invest the higher chances you get uh for the actual bigger goal that you're gonna get at the end so if you are aiming for a campaign of a couple of hundreds of thousand Euro dollars right that means that you need to first before you start secure this 25 of this amount on your account to be able to get this money right uh without it it will not happen right so you won't just like run campaign get one million euro just from posting on your own Facebook right um so that's definitely worth remembering plan your work in the team it's very important again because this is a full-time job usually out of this six Kickstarter I was running I was working with two free

people on top of them and it took us I would say at least half of of our daily uh of our day job time right so if you're a developer you're running a campaign you're you are developing the game you would need like you know a day to be 24 hours right which is so I mean much longer because you won't be able to do all the free things together so try to secure some sort of a team that can be doing it at least for that 30 days right black Kickstarter campaign is something different this can be done by all the team right on by occasion in a way but the 30 days you need to have these two people three people working full-time on it providing the providing the content uh updating the kickstarter page working and it's because because simply it's a hell of a work it can be streamlined if you pre-pre prepare earlier of course right so if you pre-record or pre-write the posts um preparing like these 20 updates

earlier and adjusting them to the paste of the campaign that will uh streamline the process but of course you need to be also reactive so you could not not always you can prepare things that are uh you can foresee things or will happen and you need to be also very reactive don't work alone try to get some help uh usually I worked with at least with IPR agencies for the territories I believed beliefs that will be a little more responsive because of my product uh when I was analyzing the wish list for the game I could tell that this is a specific territory where I already have some sort of a community so this will be responsive running a dedicated campaign for that territory was helping to stimulate the backers from it so uh so basing just about an organic reach simply is not enough having more power more ammo to shoot is always good um so to summarize because I think we are

slowly coming to an end uh so to exceed the funding goal you would need to have the stretch goals right uh uh the very fast funding goal is easy to get it uh exceeded you need to prepare an extensive amount of stretch goals the stretch goals needs to be achievable so also like if like the main campaign goal is I don't know 10 let's say right a thousand Euro or dollars your first stretch gold cannot be 20 000 right because it's like the everyone who will see it will already know that it's unachievable they need to be close to each other uh especially the first three of them right so let's say 15 20 25 right this this is doable for the community they can mobilize they can call each other and try to achieve these goals if the first goal is too far away simply you will not uh go over your 100 percent uh funding continuously update the page uh as I said earlier being silent means that you failed and you are not ready

and um and and well and simply importantly it's like uh never lose hope right because I when I was running those campaigns especially in the middle of it you can see that it's really like vetting flat right so you get two five pledges right and nothing is happening and you're doing a lot of work you're pushing but the pledges are not coming don't worry also look at the back end and see what the what the number of followers is if the number of the followers is growing that is also good that means that they wait for the last three days to convert if it's like growing and it's an a decent amount and you can again calculate that 20 percent of that followers that are waiting for the last three days will fund you that's good enough but if you see they are not following and there's no more of them coming that means um sometimes maybe it's better to make a decision and stop the campaign uh confess that you are able to finish it and restart from the beginning all the process rather than continuously try to

die until the last 30 days right uh and that's about it uh on my sites and I wonder if any one of you would have any questions maybe your own experience with Kickstarter yep you have the microphone there on the in the beginning on the video so first question uh yeah for a small Studio this juice like let's say recently created and has uh it's starting to develop uh they for their first game uh yeah would you recommend to or or is it possible to Outsource this kind of uh work to prepare for a campaign is it I mean is it possible or is it a good idea well yes they are dedicated companies

the so-called Kickstarter agencies right that can do they can run the campaign for you right but first they're not going to do it for free so again if you're a starting uh Studio I was assuming that rather you probably would like to uh get money more for yourself and then not pay everyone right so on the middleman because then the middleman will devour even more than 30 percent of the funding goal right so yes in a way it makes sense if you aim really high you can find the companies that can do it either like consult you on preparing the landing page for a little fee which is good because that's always an experience you get from someone you can hire a an agency that is only specializing in driving traffic that's another agency type right and that's even easier because that's the CPC campaign that you need simply fund with the budget uh but I wouldn't fully go into giving someone like the task like go and do it for me but because that will also cause you lots of work nobody

will do it for you because it's your game right you you will describe it best you will create the assets right so I would say having them as a consultant yes but having them as a full-time doer of the campaign I would not recommend that okay sure um yeah in what stage of the development should you consider uh starting this pre-campaign uh that's what I've said with the demo so you need to have at that stage where you are able to show something publicly right so to show sort of a uh either a demo or a prototype if it's good enough right it needs to be good enough to be playable by by unskilled Gamers right so it needs to be stable at least right it doesn't need to be full game it could be anything between vertical slice and demo or sort of right but it needs to be easy to execute right uh because then you

know most most of the backers are not Gamers like super Gamers right so they need to have something stable uh playable yet appealing enough right for example if you have only tutorial part of your game or at the beginning I wouldn't show it now right because you know it's boring right so so you need to show something from the middle of the game let's say right so this implicates when you would start so also another another perspective on that is I would start when you already have a little bit of a wish list or followers right not when you so you need to have at least a steam page running the coming soon page at least couple of hundred followers anything right sort of your own social media like Discord and the playable this is the moment where you can start thinking about it right uh so let's say I don't know better moment okay okay perfect thank you yep yes please

okay okay so what you said yes before it's about campaign because I thought the question was about pre when we can start prayer campaign period oh the pre-kickstarter campaign oh yes started a campaign you can actually start uh when you have a steam page uh you don't need to have playable of course right because you don't need to I mean you need to have a steam page and you need to follow and I assume that for this team page you would need to have some sort of a trailer and a couple of screenshots and the game description that's good enough to start right uh it simply will take you slowly right for the actual start of the campaign where you already have the pledges right you need to have a playable to to to to to allow people that will like land on your Landing to have something to play on right so yeah that that that was uh so yes thanks for clearing it up okay and another question I don't want to be a pessimistic but what if we failed to

deliver what are some there are some legal consequences of that no no legal consequences no that that's the good part I would say or amazing part of Kickstarter that uh oh unless what what doesn't mean what you fail if you fail to finish the the I mean if you fail to get the pledges and uh no I mean to fail to deliver the game deliver a product something happened uh pandemia or whatever War yes yes you don't well technically you don't need to deliver there's no implications for that because this is crowdfunding campaign so it's a it's not a store right of course I don't encourage it because that's the worst what you can do right you get the money and you don't deliver the game that's a that's a well that that's the tough way to go right but technically speaking this is a part of a risk of uh of of uh of being a backer right you back something that is not finished and that that is only a soft promise that you deliver that you will deliver it that's why not the time so you can deliver it later than you say and there is no

implications from that okay thank you is there time for one more uh yes even two yeah okay hi um so uh in your experience is there uh like a few particular genres of games that the kickstarter Community likes in terms of what they favor you mentioned board games I've heard him in a few places that for for instance uh action RPGs are not that favorable there's not that many people who back arpgs on uh on Kickstarter so like maybe it's not a good decision like just can you yeah share your experience uh usually that that's that depends right the answer is that but what I can say from my experience is that one of the key elements for uh being a successful uh Kickstarter campaign is having a appealing visual graph Graphics meaning right so the better looking the game is that being people are buying their revised right uh for example all these

uh uh anime style uh or Manga style games that are semi or not super successful on on Steam right they tend to gather a lot of money on on Kickstarter because this is a very specific Community there any kind of games that have a rich lore also right so you know if you have a simple arcade game that's not no no not good one right but if you have a game with a characters with a world where you can show the factions where you can talk about the different uh Heroes right show them this is appealing because that also gives you any kind content to ride for that 30 days right I mean you know if you have like a game where you just I don't know like a platformer what 20 or 30 updates you can do about it right pretty not much so so a Content Rich games uh good looking ones also the originally looking ones that's another goal so if you have like uh like one of your key features of

your game is like unique visuals that's a good uh that's a good feature to show uh on on a Kickstarter um also I would avoid any controversial things meaning that this is a specific community so if you go too much into I don't know a violent game right or or a difficult game talking about super difficult stuff then it's also not not the best to found but if you have a game that is for example socially engaged somehow right or it touches the topics that are less commercial then on the other hand this community uh which I mean the kickstarter backers they are more keen to support such gay is does the games that are not super uh destined to be super commercially successful can get reasonable amount of money on Kickstarter thanks hello hi there thank you for your presentation that was very good I have a

question about making funnel uh I mean what percentage I should put in a promoting Steam and what percentage I would put in promoting Kickstarter impact campaign and campaign that's a very good question because that's all say one of the controversies that you should say I don't know like a CEO of the Indie Studio consider because usually you have a limited funds right well we all have but also but Indies especially right so unfortunately it's like through all the period of the kickstarter campaign you should concentrate on pushing all the money to the kickstarter or either the kickstarter page or finally to the backers that means you are not spending it on Steam at the same time right which in a way you are losing because of course you can then try to convert the traffic from Kickstarter to steam Page by saying which this does that but that's one more step right so usually

we'll be losing some sort of uh of a traffic so this is the decision to be made when you will run the kickstarter and that's why I encouraged to run it after you already set up some sort of a funnel for your game which is an organic one right so you start with steam page you start with promoting going full on the on the Indie on the on the steam page and then you you launch your Kickstarter campaign when you have the fundaments fundaments right because through all that period of at least for that 30 days you should concentrate 100 of your uh spendings on Advertising just on Kickstarter right you can calculate a little bit like how much you can invest by what is the average pledge and this is another problem for Indie stats let's say the Indie Games usually cost what twenty dollars right fifteen to twenty dollars so your Pledge on average will be twenty dollars uh that means that if you get a hundred people that's what two thousand right you can invest I mean two thousand that's all the overall amount

they will pay right so in the pledges so uh trying to uplift the sales is very important on Kickstarter building the pledges that they will play pay something more than just the game and here you have another challenge so if you wanna build uh pledges uh to be more interesting you would need to add extra content to them and then you would need to add them digitally because you don't want to go into the physical products right and ship the one art book to Colombia for example right uh for 100 euro so this is a bit of a like the month but what I would say during the kickstarter campaign fully go into the kickstarter in the practice starter you can uh you know adjust it up to your expectations right what do you want about the content imagine we have like half an a year six month Steam and there is trialer there are some screenshots from the game but we need a playable version and I heard some things that are not

right in my head about playable version would would be best to have playable version before Kickstarter or after foreign right so before before Kickstarter you can prepare a video or trailer specially crafted for Kickstarter for teasing that you're gonna go for a Kickstarter and it could be uh finished with call to action like uh visit my package Starter by campaign and follow it I'll let you know when it starts right but then when you start the kickstarter campaign you should already have your demo available at preferably at the very beginning so the first day or you can be a bit in the middle right somewhere as well but also bear in mind that there is a risk that then if you will not have it at the beginning but at the middle some people will play it and they will withdraw with the pledges right so that's why it's better to get already those that seen the the

crowdfighting campaign they play it and they like it right imagine situation that we are not calling you vertical slice or demo but Early Access and you would like to earn some money on Steam and we don't want to show them demo first but you would like have demo as pre uh Early Access and make money on that but having it before like on started it will be some Collision in it so what would you recommend oh that was complicated guys by the way but um well you know it's like um this is just an advice right you can start the campaign without the demo and you can run the kick sample without the demo like the last campaign I did was with when there was no demo for the game so there was no playable and we managed right we got like 25 000 Euro right for the game that is now being released in Early Access after the after the kickstarter is finalized and then what

we promised is that all the people that uh backed us or got some pledges would get some sort of an exclusive access earlier this works well but for but that is a risky way right so maybe maybe we'll give them some gameplay would be okay yeah yeah or at least that at least some raw gameplay uncut so they can see the game because it's like especially with the more complex con uh more complex games right the last one I was making was simply but it's a game about the drones right so like you fly the Drone so the concept is very easy to understand from a short footage but if you are building I don't know like an action RPG game right so you need to uh prepare you know it's it's hard to understand just from the rich in description on a couple of screenshots while the mechanics so yes preparing more uh gameplay focused trailer uh is a good is a good alternative if you can't deliver the the build uh playable build area right thank you and the last question uh what if uh we don't achieve the pointed amount of money that we

would like to gather or then there's this couple of checkpoints so first one is that 72 hours so if in the first three days you don't get at least 30 percent that means you're not gonna find it's rather than gonna be failed right are we losing those money when the campaign is finished or yes I mean if you don't get 100 it's like all or nothing right so so if in the first three days you don't get at least 30 percent that means it's not gonna work out or it's gonna be super struggle right and you recommend to finish the campaign then and then you should make a decision whether you want to continue or cancel I would advise counseling rather than finishing and going into this torture of waiting 27 days to announce that you failed right so it's better to cancel confess that it didn't went well and remember also running the kickstarter campaign couple of times for the same game is not that bad right of course if you're not like I don't know Activision or something and that's gonna

impact your PR then yes but but if you're an indie it's fine like you didn't manage the first time you say every to every backers like I thank you it didn't it failed but I thank you again you can store them because the next time you will launch the campaign all the guys that backed your failed campaign can get a notice that you're restarting it so you can restart when you're more ready or have new assets and stuff like that right but this first three days I would make a checkpoint see if I got minimum 30 gives me hope ideally if you get 100 in the first three days that gives you not a hope but uh a promise of a success even right uh if you have 30 then there's a lot of work you need to do with the 25 five days later and you need to you need to be at least 70 80 percent before the last three days to make to have any kind of confidence you're gonna finish if I fail or I finish the campaign do the backers get refund

uh if you finish the campaign they are not charged okay so it's they just kind of like make a reserve the money and they campaign weights if it's finished the funding goal is achieved then they are charged up until that moment they there's no risk for them thank you very much there you go uh thank you very much and thank you for all the questions let's give me how the round of applause [Applause]