[Goals] Thinking About Kickstarter
Working on contracts while trying to build my own IP is hard! It's been very challenging having three different groups of people getting impatient with me. I've been staying up late more often than I would like to.
Anyway, in about two weeks a lot of my busyness will go away and so I'd like to work on the Swords RPG Maker project more and maybe get a little crowdfunding boost so I can do it without the allure of other projects.
Now, full disclosure, I make New Zealand's minimum wage on Patreon already. It took a long time to get here but I'm very grateful for it. So the Kickstarter, if one happens, will keep that in mind and mostly be about closing that gap between minimum wage and what a New Zealand gamedev in my experience bracket would normally be earning; then the legal fees required to get a company all set up that licenses the Swords brand; and then beyond that, there are a bunch of local gamedevs looking for work. There are at least 4 people I'd love to hire if I had the runway to do it, who I think would all love to be involved. Based on the success of crowdfunding, I could also look at a government grant or publishing with someone like Outer Sloth to beef things up further.
Anyway, this is all cart before the horse type stuff. I have to make the demo of the game slap first! It's important to prove I can solodev this project if I need to - that's why I'm starting in RPG Maker by myself because it's easy and familiar.
So the point of this post is...
What cool stuff would you want as rewards in a Kickstarter?
$50 to design a sword?
$500 to design an alt outfit for a playable character?
$5000 to be an NPC with recorded lines of dialogue?
No idea is too silly, I'd love to hear them. If nothing else, it will motivate me to get all these other contracts done.
And just to squash any fears - the webcomic will be back April 1st and will continue as normal. I'm just taking a break.
7,647/8000 total Patreon members away from that promised demo, by the way.
Thanks!
Comments (9)
Gameplay and UI Engineer with 7+ years industry experience here! If you ever want volunteer playtesting or feedback I'd be more than happy to help 😊
How about an option to become a monster and get killed repeatedly in the game?
5k to get themselves as an NPC, an extra 2k to add their mom as well.
Hey man, I'm a game designer / creator / CTO of some small indie game companies and also back lots of Kickstarter projects. I've been building games for ~12 years. Here are some that I've helped design and done a lot of heavy lifting for: https://www.doughby.io/ https://www.dox-puzzle.io/ For video games on Kickstarter, what's cool to me as a player and a backer are: - Beta builds (early access) - Behind the scenes content (your process) - Live streams of making things - Bespoke / custom rewards (for $$$), like custom designed character skins, characters, specific scenes, designing a level, etc If you need any assistance navigating platforms like Steam, itch.io, want any input on process techniques / best practices, or want to chat, feel free to DM me, my perspective and time are free :)
Character and/or sword plush, pin, playmat, etc.. A limited physical release of the game Signed stuff A piece of parchment with the crowdfunding details phrased as a quest, marked complete, signed, rolled up and sealed with a wax seal. The temptation to break the seal and read it would be terrible but it would be a really cool piece of memorabilia. If you do the design a character/sword thing, make sure it's a collaborative process with you involved and requiring your approval. I don't know if anything like this is possible but having a tier that doesn't have a price but instead goes automatically to the top n supporters would be an interesting way to ensure you don't undervalue your top tier I just woke up so that's all I got.
A cool reward would be a Kickstarter tournament bonus challenge. Bonus side quest with the backers as enemies. Lower tier simply get their chosen name as random enemy, little higher can choose their design from exisiting options and higher tier can range from custom enemy, weapon drops till full on custom boss fights and unique drops.
Whenever I see rewards for things like this, the higher tier stuff gets a tad silly. The tier over voiced character should be "get a small quest or fight associated with your character"
I like the rewards but maybe you should increase the price start at 100 instead of 50
These are just examples, I'll do a $50,000 one if someone has an inspired idea for one