5 Good Things About Your Failed Kickstarter!

You failed your Kickstarter, are afraid of it or simply want to learn something? I can tell you about our example, Publish or Perish, and why it was not a totally negative experience!

I figured out that there are plenty of examples of blog posts on the internet explaining the WHY? but not many the FOR WHAT? This list shows just few things of the valuable assets you can get from our Kickstarter, even if you didn't manage to achieve your goal.

1 - Feedback

First one and most obvious. At this point you already know why your game didn't succeed. Most of the times it will be related to your product or game. You may think that poor coverage ruined your campaign. Maybe you didn't put enough effort in marketing your game. But the truth is that if you would improve it based on the feedback people gave you along the way it would probably promote itself!

You should do a survey to collect feedback from your backers!

2 - Followers

Every product has it's fans (you should be the first one by the way :) ). Sometimes this fan group is too small or doesn't appeal the general public. In any case those people that backed your project are your first fans! They liked you and your project! They maybe even told their friends and family about you! Keep them close ;)

You should collect the emails of your backers!

3 - Contacts

If you did your public relations homework you should have contacted many bloggers and reviewers. Keep contact with them! Specially the ones that wrote about you! Make sure your relation makes sense for them, otherwise they will not care. Write comments on their posts, share they content... in general show them some love :)

You should keep alive your relations with influencers!

4 - A nice story


At this point, I am sure you have learn the reason number 1 why people doesn't want to talk about you. It's not your game, it's not your video, it's not your webpage. It's your story. People want to read good stories, not be advertised. Bloggers know this and that's why you should prepare a nice story for them (this is the hardest step :) )

You should create a good story around your failed Kickstarter!

5 - Know How

Setup up a Kickstarter and production chain for your game is not an easy task! There are many things you may have learnt without realizing! Setting up banners, facebook ads, fantastic webpages or groups where to share your content, production and distribution numbers even legal and tax details. In general you are now closer to know the real cost of designing a crowdfunded digital product!

You should write down your gained knowledge so you don't forget and hopefully help others!

And remember!

Failure is just a chance to make it better next time! :D

Would you like to share your story? I'm listening! :)

More science on Kickstarter!

After the cancellation of our first campaign, we have taken to following all the awesome kickstarter projects to do with science. There truly are mnay. Games, modeling kits, labs, it's all there.

We would like to share our two favourites with you!

Derek of the Veritasium Youtube channel has just launched an educational product on Kickstarter!
Snatoms: the Magnetic Molecular Modeling Kit is like a ball and stick chemistry kit except the atoms are magnetic so they just snap together.
 Snatoms are an improvement over ball and stick kits for three reasons:
1. They make forming and breaking apart molecules quicker and easier
2. They make more accurate representations of molecules, no need for sticks
 3. Snatoms allow you to feel the attraction between atoms.
 Derek came up with the idea for Snatoms years ago when he was teaching science. "A lot of people seem to think that bonds store energy. But this is the exact opposite of how bonds work! When bonds form they release energy, so the molecule they form has less energy than the separate atoms. With Snatoms you can hear the energy released as sound when a bond forms and you can feel the work you need to do to break a bond. I think this conceptual understanding is essential in chemistry and nuclear physics." says Derek.

Another great science project that has come to Kickstarter is Valence: Science Ninjas. The game is a fast-paced, fun card game that uses simple math, colors, and cartoon ninjas to teach kids (8+) chemistry!  Players use more than 25 different molecules to interact with each other and win the game!

The creators behind the game are artist Nathan Schreiber and chemical engineers Amanda Simson, PhD, and Naomi Klinghoffer, PhD.
As an engineer and #1 New York Times bestselling cartoonist, Nathan has made cartoons for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, FEMA, and the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Amanda is an assistant professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of New Haven and Dr. Naomi Klinghoffer who has been a teaching fellow for the NY Academy of Science and the Columbia Center for Technology, Innovation, and Community Engagement.
You can certainly tell that the scientific accuracy will be strong with this one.

Check out the stetch goals in both projects! They are truly awesome!

Seeing projects like these get funded makes us really happy! Clashing fun and science makes sense!

Why You NEED Reviews in Your Kickstarter Game!

Our Kickstarter campaign is slowly coming to an end. It has been an intense couple of weeks, campaigning is harder than anyone can imagine.  We have made it a point to gather as much information as possible from our backers or those who have simply seen our campaign.

The response has pointed us to the areas we were good at and and to the areas we could improve. In the following post, I will focus on one of the aspects that came up in way over half the responses we got.

If you put yourself in the shoes of a board game backer, you discover that you're looking at a couple of things in order to decide whether you want to back the game or not. One of the most important things are the reviews. 

Reviews do a couple of things for your game. First and foremost, they give you credibility. If your game has been reviewed it means it works. One of the biggest setbacks for Kickstarter campaigns is that people don't know if you can pull off creating the game after the campaign has finished. People don't like backing games that haven't actually been made yet. A review can show your future backers what stage of designing you are actually in. 

Secondly reviews give the prospective backers a feel of what the game is like. Watching someone play is never as good as trying it out yourself, but it's second best. You can make your mind up if you like the game or not, backing becomes less of a guessing game.

Thirdly, reviewers have an audience. They help you get coverage. If you get the opportunity to work with someone influential, and they like your game, that can boost your campaign to another level.

In our campaign we had a few quotes about the game from people. Someone commented that they looked fabricated (which they weren't, honest!). I guess having it on video in a third party platform is more convincing. We got a lot of requests for reviews because people didn't understand the rules. We had instructions, but a audio-visual guide is so much easier to digest. 

All in all, we highly recommend getting your game reviewed. Before the campaign and during the campaign is best. that way you can let your first backers understand the game fully, and then gather an additional audience through different bloggers.

We'll know what to do next time!

Any questions? Any ideas? Please comment below :)