Creating a Kickstarter campaign is a little like charging into battle in a tactical role-playing game. You'll spend lots of time constructing a plan of attack and considering the best strategy, and once it begins, you have to deal with obstacles to victory, be they enemy maneuvers or disinterest from potential backers. When you fail in a tactical RPG, it's typically clear why, and you can learn from your mistakes and revise your strategies for a second attempt. It's not always so obvious why a Kickstarter campaign doesn't pan out as desired, though, and many creators take defeat as a sign that their idea lacked merit, or that another route to funding is preferable.
When Craig Stern, the singular force behind Chicago video game developer Sinister Design, unsuccessfully tried to fund his Mac game Telepath Tactics at the tail end of 2012, he saw the result not as a closed door, but as an opportunity — a chance to refocus both the campaign and the game itself to better execute his battle plan. And now that the second Kickstarter has doubled its original goal and generated much more backer enthusiasm with a few days still left to go, he spoke with Mac|Life to discuss how initial crowdfunding failure doesn't have to be ultimately fruitless.
If at first you don't succeed, revise your goals and pay attention to your audience.
Stern began creating games under the Sinister Design banner in 2006, focusing his energies on role-playing games of different stripes released in both standalone premium and free browser-based varieties. Telepath Tactics — which is also coming to PC and Linux — is set in the same world as an earlier multi-part affair, Telepath RPG, and features a steampunk-meets-fantasy aesthetic that sheds common tropes of the latter, like magic, goblins, and dragons.
Work started on the game engine back in 2009, with additional dabbling in the two years that followed, but Stern didn't ramp up his focus on Telepath Tactics until Telepath RPG: Servants of God released early last year. It's the kind of strategy-RPG approach that requires extensive work, he explains, because he likes his games to use "emergent complexity to create tactical dilemmas rather than leaning on randomized results." He adds, "My primary goal with Telepath Tactics is to create a highly deterministic strategy RPG with as many elegant, straightforward systems playing off of each other as I possibly can."
One common knock against his earlier games was about their presentation. With limited resources, Stern opted to throw his focus behind the game design and fundamentals, but the end result didn't make the greatest first impression with some players. "I was tired of putting out solid, well-designed games that people would summarily dismiss on the basis of their appearance," he notes. "It's no fun slaving over an RPG for years, only to release it and have random people on the Internet reduce it to, 'It looks like a browser game.'"
After putting several months of dedicated work into the game last year, Stern launched a Kickstarter campaign to hire artists to bring his vision to life, and give the game what he calls "a level of graphical polish that matches the amount of thought I put into every other aspect of my games' design." With a goal of $25,500, he began the campaign in late November, supporting it with consistent updates that detailed the game's storyline and character classes, as well as providing a free demo for backers. But when the drive ended just days before 2013 rolled around, he'd only raised $18,615 from 840 backers, and the all-or-nothing approach of Kickstarter meant he ended up with the latter.
Surprisingly, Stern remained upbeat. He was encouraged by the interest generated via the original attempt, saw opportunities to improve upon his approach, and immediately promised that he'd have a second go-round ready come March. The crowdfunding attempt had connected him with hundreds of willing backers, not to mention some who weren't quite convinced — and between those two camps, he started to see ways in which he could improve both the game and his messaging.
Initially, Telepath Tactics was billed primarily as a multiplayer experience, with support for up to six players and teams, which is something of an anomaly in a single-player-centric genre. But interested parties made it clear that they still wanted that kind of solo narrative mode, so Stern refocused his efforts there during the downtime before the next Kickstarter. And support for mods — which he initially concedes was an afterthought — ended up being a huge point of interest for backers, alongside map and dialogue editor options. "When you have people excitedly talking about how this could be RPG Maker for strategy RPGs — their words, not mine — you know you've stumbled onto something special," he notes. "I didn't want to let that opportunity slip away."
In addition to tweaking the game and assembling an early demo to show the progress, Stern also massaged the Kickstarter's goals and funding approach. Rather than shoot for one big funding goal, he lowered the base amount to $15,000 and offered some less-essential game features as stretch goals. Essentially, if the total funding reached certain dollar amounts, additional features would unlock for everyone — like additional character classes with animated sprites should funding hit $22,000. And he allowed backers of the initial campaign to vote on their most desired stretch goals to ensure that the existing base both had a voice and were enticed to put their money where their mouths were.
When the second Kickstarter campaign launched in March, as promised, it quickly shot past $10,000 in funding in the first day alone; it took 23 days for the original effort to raise as much money. After three days, the project was funded at its $15,000 goal, and Stern has been pushing the stretch goals and enhancements since, which have helped it maintain some momentum in the long run. As of this writing, some 1266 backers have pledged $31,805 with five days left in the campaign.
Beyond his own efforts to improve the Kickstarter approach and the game itself, Stern credits one significant benefit to running a repeat campaign: the ability to still send updates to earlier would-be backers, which keeps them engaged and up-to-date on fresh developments. While the successful stretch goals will expand the scope of the game — which is due out in April 2014 — and require more time to execute, he says it will make for a better game experience overall. And backers are clearly interested; one singlehandedly pledged $3,000 towards the development. "When I saw the amount," Stern admits, "I bolted upright in my seat and yelled."
Some of his advice for Kickstarter creators considering a second attempt after an unsuccessful campaign is very universal, such as seeking feedback, soaking in any criticism, and keeping your pitch video concise. Other bits are more focused on the gaming realm, like highlighting gameplay footage first in the video and waiting to launch until you have a playable demo of some sort. But for studious creators, it'll be the two campaign pages — with their respective updates, comments, and results — that'll deliver the best guidance towards picking up the pieces of an unsuccessful crowdfunding attempt and making a second try seem worthwhile.
