In a postmortem post on IndieDB, Scraps developer Bill Borman provided some insight into what he experienced while establishing, and eventually succeeding at getting his gamefunded through Kickstarter. The interesting thing to note, as Borman points out in the post himself: he was just a relatively unknown games creator, handling everything himself.
“Yes, there was a lot of work involved and yes, there was still a fair amount of luck involved as well,” Borman beings the postmortem by saying. “I made an attempt to build up a community for Scraps right from the start. People often ask whether giving so much away so early creates a risk of the idea being stolen. The risk of obscurity is much worse.”
Borman outlined a number of things that he accomplished before launching the Kickstarter campaign, which he feels contributed to the campaign’s success. He worked to improve his social media presence by creating a Twitter account and revising his pre-existing Facebook page. He also started development threads on sites like TIGSource and the Unity forums, while also maintaining a presence on IndieDB and Reddit. Borman also cross-posted updates to Scrap’s page on Steam Greenlight Concepts.
In a postmortem post on IndieDB, Scraps developer Bill Borman provided some insight into what he experienced while establishing, and eventually succeeding at getting his gamefunded through Kickstarter. The interesting thing to note, as Borman points out in the post himself: he was just a relatively unknown games creator, handling everything himself.
“Yes, there was a lot of work involved and yes, there was still a fair amount of luck involved as well,” Borman beings the postmortem by saying. “I made an attempt to build up a community for Scraps right from the start. People often ask whether giving so much away so early creates a risk of the idea being stolen. The risk of obscurity is much worse.”
Borman outlined a number of things that he accomplished before launching the Kickstarter campaign, which he feels contributed to the campaign’s success. He worked to improve his social media presence by creating a Twitter account and revising his pre-existing Facebook page. He also started development threads on sites like TIGSource and the Unity forums, while also maintaining a presence on IndieDB and Reddit. Borman also cross-posted updates to Scrap’s page on Steam Greenlight Concepts.
Perhaps the most important thing Borman did was launch the Kickstarter campaign with a playable demo of Scraps, to allow potential backers to get a feel for what they would be spending their money on. A full year of development time, leading up to the Kickstarter, gave Borman enough to provide an adequate demonstration of his plans for the game.
“It’s hard to say exactly how much traffic was the result of Twitter, Facebook, forums etc. It’s definitely worth doing…Reddit can be really good for getting seen, but it’s also a fickle creature. A significant part of my support came from a few successful Reddit posts.”
For an incredibly in-depth look at what went on behind the scenes for Scrap’s Kickstarter campaign, do check out Borman’s whole post, on Scrap’s IndieDB page.
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