GROWL was 21 days I believe, and it was a good length for my lack of preparedness, but ideally I would already be prepared and could handle a much shorter window. Your 10-14 day campaign is the best idea. (I know you encourage people to do so anyway in your book, but it is tough when the climate can be so hostile on social media.) It is tough for people like me who don’t blog.
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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on his blog each year, please consider championing this content! If you have anything you’d like me to cover in Thursday’s article about the elements of a modern Stonemaier Games Kickstarter project, please let me know so I can think about it. I could actually see it working for my civilization game. It’s exciting to be in the throes of a Kickstarter campaign, the sense of ownership instilled in the backers as a result is unparalleled, and Kickstarter’s “follow” feature significantly expands our reach. I need to be able to put myself in those shoes again.Īnd honestly, in the brainstorming I’ve done so far, I’ve gotten excited about the hypothetical idea of returning to Kickstarter. So on Thursday I’m going to write a post about what it would look like if I returned to Kickstarter as a creator (I intended to do it today as part of this article, but it’s almost dinnertime, and this is already long enough). I’m too far on the outside looking in (despite all of my articles about crowdfunding and entrepreneurship). Even if I don’t ever return to Kickstarter as a creator, I need to at least know the value Kickstarter could add to Stonemaier Games. I think it’s a problem that I can’t even imagine the possibility of using Kickstarter in the future. I’m way too dismissive of the idea. For those creators who always use Kickstarter, you may look at my world through an equally distorted lens. I’m trying to illustrate how it’s difficult for me to even comprehend why I would use Kickstarter instead of my current method, despite my experience and success as a creator. The post office also mishandles several packages, and the cookies arrive in crumbs.
Myworld kickstarter the game creators update#
Eventually you ship the cookies to your friends, though several of them moved and didn’t update their address (they still want their cookies, though). Many of your friends are really excited about the cookies, but a few claim publicly that they’re overhyped. You spend the next 6 months telling your friends exactly what the ingredients look like, how your fancy new oven works, and that the baking process is taking longer than you expected. Based on their preferences, you end up with 4 different versions of the cookie, including add-ons like sprinkles and frosting. Many of them have their own ideas about what the cookies should be. Instead, you confirm with each of your friends that they do indeed want the cookies. When they’re ready a few hours later, you invite your friends over to eat them. You even know which friends like chocolate-chip cookies and which don’t. You’ve already bought the best ingredients. You’ve made them many times before, and you have a great, well-tested recipe. Let’s say you want to make some chocolate chip cookies for your friends. This is a bit hard to explain, so I’ll try to use an oversimplified analogy: So for quite some time now, whenever I think about crowdfunding, I really struggle to think of a reason why I would use Kickstarter instead of my current method. I quit Kickstarter as a creator and focused on other ways of building community, improving the product, generating buzz, gauging demand, finding funds, and shipping the product worldwide. I actually didn’t realize how well this method would work until I immersed myself in it. I’m constantly experimenting, learning from my mistakes, and trying to evolve Stonemaier as a publisher, but I’m pleased with what we’ve done post-Kickstarter. It’s important for me to note up front that this method has worked quite well: Compared to my 7 tabletop Kickstarter projects, which raised a total of $3.2 million over, our non-Kickstarter revenue since mid-2016 (after delivering Scythe) totals around $14 million.
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For a few of them, we’ve also accepted direct pre-orders ranging from 0-60 days before we received the product at our warehouse.
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For each of them, we’ve simply made a bunch of copies, sold them to distributors, and shared them with our community and beyond. Since then, Stonemaier Games has published 3 new games, 6 new expansions, and a bunch of reprints. I didn’t know at the time that it would be my final campaign that was a decision we made the following summer, and then I formally addressed it on this blog a few months later. 3 years ago, I was in the middle of my final Kickstarter project (Scythe).