Andrew Greenberg

Developer Diary 12

Kickstarter recommends giving a campaign at least three business days to get approved. We submitted the Noble Armada:Lost Worlds Kickstarter yesterday (Presidents Day) and got immediate approval. Now the race is onto have everything else in place before Monday, Feb. 26, when we plan to launch the Kickstarter.

The only other crowdfunding campaign I ever ran was for SCAD professor Tony Tseng’s family after he passed away at a game jam. We raised about $10,000 in a little more than a week, but that was obviously a very different campaign than this one.

Now comes the work of putting together everything else – press kit, demo versions of the game, publicity schedule, livestreaming events, etc. There is always the regret that time spent on the Kickstarter detracts from time spent on developing the game. In this case, however, the things the Kickstarter would fund – more art and coding – are not the parts I would contribute. Ninety percent of the game is done, and I am hoping that the Kickstarter will fund our new Mission Editor so I can start designing those as well.

A side benefit of running a Kickstarter is that it forces developers to focus on the last thing they want to handle – marketing and PR. We don’t plan to launch the game until late Summer or early Fall, but waiting until then to promote it means it is already too late for many media outlets.

Of course, we probably should have been promoting the Kickstarter months ago! Ah well, any suggestions on how to make up for lost time?