The first four days of a Kickstarter

So with the launch this week, all things have been running full throttle. Running a Kickstarter is a huge amount of work! The campaign (check it out here : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1759783741/fringe-planet/) went live on Tuesday and since then I’ve been incredibly busy tweeting, doing press releases, talking about the game and staring intently at various analytics.

Within the first couple of hours of the campaign going live – Kickstarter sent me an email saying that they had picked Fringe Planet as “A project we love” which was awesome! It meant for several hours, Fringe Planet featured on the front page of Kickstarter. The traffic was a tad crazy, it must be admitted. However, after going live, I started getting a lot of feedback on the campaign itself. There were two big mistakes which I made with the campaign, which unfortunately meant I don’t think the campaign performed as well as it could have while on the front page.

1. The Logo

The first mistake was the logo. I’d used the standard Fringe Planet frozen looking one. But the only problem is, that tells you absolutely nothing about the game. Looking at the other games that were on Kickstarter, I noticed all of them had game artwork or in game shots. So I’ve now changed the logo to give you some hint about the game, without you even having to click on something. It’s already making a big difference in the analytics.

2. The trailer

So, I do have a flare for the dramatic. The Fringe Planet teaser trailer being one of those. Big epic sound track, glimpses of eldritch terrain, populated with peons, monsters and machines. But it tells you absolutely nothing about the game. Hence, me naming it a teaser trailer. If you know the lore, or the game, this trailer is fantastic. If you don’t, it’s 40 seconds of traveling in a straight line over some very generic voxel terrain. This was a big mistake on my part – 40 seconds of just atmosphere building isn’t what a backer is looking for. So the day after the campaign went live, I got busy working on a very different introduction, something that better represents the game – as well as my personality.

Conclusions

There is still a lot of work ahead of me. I need to get eyes on the Kickstarter page for the campaign to be a success. The first 24 hours were awesome, but gradually the support got slower. So I’m working on many different ideas to raise the profile of the Kickstarter so that it will get fully funded. I’ve been incredibly amazed at the outpouring of support for the game – thank you to everyone who shares/backs – it makes a huge difference! Seriously, if you can’t back the game – sharing it on your socials or with your community can make the all the difference, so don’t be shy!

Finally, a very small mistake I’ve made. I’ve had a lot of people look at the Kickstarter in the run up to it. Game developers, backers and more. So many people have read the text and given feedback about it. I pushed the campaign live, and within a few hours got a DM about a spelling mistake in this paragraph …

… turns out, in the first version that went live, I had misspelled “sexist” as “sexiest”. D’oh!

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I really hope you can learn from my mistakes! If you would like to check out the Kickstarter, you can find it here.