Kickstarter Is a Full-Time Job

Running a Kickstarter campaign is easy, right? All you have to do is make a quick video, toss in a few bullet points, make up some pricing tiers, and wait for the money train to reach the station. Not exactly. Executing a successful campaign is a full-time responsibility that demands constant input from the author(s). If you have ever considered launching one of your own, or are just curious about the process, consider these insights from five teams who have weathered the Kickstarter storm. On deck for the discussion are:

Clairvoire, developer on the oceanic adventure game Sealark
Eric Shumaker, developer on the post-cyberpocalyptic action RPG Barkley 2
Jamin Smith, developer on the third-person, space combat game Strike Suit Zero
Jordan Hemenway and Kyle Holdwick, developers on the parkour-inspired racer Distance
Jordan and Justin Coombs, developers on the tactical, deep-space strategy game Star Command

Strike Suit Zero harkens back to the 1999 space rail-shooter, Omega Boost.

Before launching your Kickstarter campaigns, what were your expectations regarding the amount of effort involved?

Coombs: For our first campaign, none. Kickstarter was still kind of gaining its traction. It was still primarily for things like indie films and albums. Justin was living in New York and ran into Michael Tseng, the creator of Turf Geography Club for mobile. He had just run his Kickstarter and made over $15,000, which sounded amazing at the time.

That little counter on the top right of the [Kickstarter] page is the first thing you check when you wake up, and the last thing you check before going to bed.We said, "Hey, let's give this a shot," and we were inspired by a lot of his ideas for rewards. But we did not fully appreciate what fulfilling each of those entailed. So, in other words, we really underestimated the commitment that comes with it.

Hemenway: We had an interesting perspective going in because we live in the Seattle area, which is the king of Kickstarter for games. There are just so many teams out there, such as Shadowrun Returns and Planetary Annihilation, so we had all these guys around here who had done [campaigns] before, and they were willing to give us feedback and ideas before we went in. We talked with a lot of people who said it was going to be a full-time job, but I don't think we were 100 percent prepared for what we would be doing.

Smith: We'd actually been told (warned?) by others in the industry the amount of work that was involved, so we went into the campaign under no illusions of how hard it would be. It's not just the workload, though; it consumes your life for its duration. That little counter on the top right of the page is the first thing you check when you wake up, and the last thing you check before going to bed. Once the campaign is finished and the timer is stuck on zero, there's a strange sense of emptiness. But yes, it is hard work.

What are some examples of typical day-to-day activities involved in running a campaign?

Shumaker: I spent a lot of time every day answering emails in the Kickstarter and personal Tales of Games inbox. A lot of emails accumulated at night while I slept, so I generally spent a few hours in the morning (or whenever I woke up) catching up on them. I spent the rest of the day monitoring the Kickstarter, responding to emails, making posts on Twitter, talking to people about the game, and, if we got the time, working on it a little. Don't expect to work on your game too much though, because Kickstarter really does take most of your time.

Hemenway: One thing that was kind of a mistake for us was constantly looking at our stats on Kicktraq, [a site that continually monitors the progress of Kickstarter campaigns]. That is an easy way to drive your morale down. I think a lot of people do it just because it's interesting; I mean, we're all programmers, so we're interested in data anyway, and of course all of the backers are sending us these pages constantly, reminding us where we stand and asking if we're going to make it. I think it was a big waste of time checking it every day. [Kicktraq] is a cool website, I'll admit, but just for our sake we probably shouldn't have checked it as much.

What steps did you take to help ensure your campaign remained in the public's eye?

Smith: It's all about updates, and making sure you still have relevant and interesting content to share 15, 20, 25 days into the campaign. To lean on an old cliche: it's a marathon, not a sprint. Just over halfway through our campaign, for example, we were able to announce an Oculus Rift version of our game, which really put the spotlight back on us.

Clairvoire: Honestly? Diddly-squat! I just kept updating the Kickstarter as it went along, and occasionally posted on Tumblr about it, but those aren't anything out of the ordinary. One of my friends kept me abreast of when it got featured places, which was amazing to watch happen. I didn't go out of my way to ask for coverage though; it just feels rude, I guess. Luckily, my friends didn't ask me. They just went and did it. And other people picked it up, and it kind of snowballed I suppose.

Distance is the spiritual successor to Nitronic Rush, a free arcade racer for PC.

What do you wish you had done differently?

Holdwick: One of the things we weren't prepared for was the updates, especially in the beginning. It would have been nice if we had prepared a lot of them a week earlier, just so that we could get them out sooner. Once we had the Kickstarter page finished, we launched it and said, "Okay, now what do we need to do?" I'd say we could have done better. We really could have been a little more prepared with the updates.

Another thing I wish we had done was had a dedicated team of people helping us right from the get-go with comments and content. Even if it is just close friends and family, having people who are willing to help can go a really long way. For us, we found some help when people starting coming to us and asking if we needed any assistance, but that was towards the end. If we had prepared that group earlier, it would have been very helpful and ultimately could have changed the amount of money we raised. I would definitely recommend having a group of people to help you out.

Clairvoire: One of the backer rewards (a limited-run physical copy of the game and soundtrack) was kind of a problem after the fact. I'm just one guy, so I have to prepare all those myself by hand, which can become pretty daunting when the number starts climbing into the hundreds. I went to the USPS office to ask them about shipping that many, and they said they'd kick me out if I showed up with that many packages. I didn't factor in shipping, but I was able to cap the reward off, so it didn't cause too many problems since I caught it early.