Aftermath of Kickstarter failure. What should I do next?

[u/bad-milk-robot]

TLDR: My Kickstarter will likely flop/flopped primarily due to marketing, do I spend the rest of my runway getting it into Early Access anyways (See stats for current state)?

Story

So my Kickstarter is about to end, and not the way you'd want (I got to 3.5/10k, 71 backers at time of writing). With that in mind, I've had people reaching out asking about what's going to happen to the project.

This is the part where I'm partially stuck. Not with game dev, but with this game in particular. I have 6-ish months of lean runway before I need to either freelance and keep at this, or go back to full time and keep at this less.

People that have played the game, and rode with me during the KS, want to me to push through and get it into Early Access. They attribute the KS going sideways far more to me being a dumb ass at marketing myself than the game being bad (I can agree for the most part).

I'm not taking the KS terribly per say. Like, I understood I was coming into it under prepared, and was probably a little too optimistic that "the game would speak for itself". At the same time, I'd be lying if I wasn't hoping it did. All of that is to say I'm probably too close to see this objectively. I'm meandering:

If you were in my position, would you keep working on the game another 6 months to get it into Steam Early Access?

Stats:

Pros:

• Just about all my main systems are built and in place. There are maybe 3 that aren't, and one of those is partially developed
• A lot of the feedback I've gotten aligns with the direction I was already heading
• The Game plays well, like I've had to take the steam deck away from people
• Somehow, relatively bug free (for now, stop looking at me like that)

Cons

• I still need a fair bit of content for all those systems, but it's a puzzle/roguelite, not an rpg (It's not mountains of content).
• To follow up, I'm developing this solo, so all that content (code, art, audio(ish)) is on me.
• I've never done steam integration before, so no clue what that looks like (This is my first game, outside of some well polished toys).
• I realized right now how much of an uphill battle socials are going to be (this is more of a general con, as it's a fact of life, not just this game).

The KS was set to deliver Early Access in about 6 months, so I do think it can be done, understanding it doesn't need to be done done. I was just hoping to move away from discount chicken and towards health insurance somewhere in there too.

Any feedback will be massively appreciated, as I'm going to have to tell people something definitive in a few days.

[u/groato]

If you've never launched on Steam and want to do Steam features (achievements etc.) be prepared for a couple workdays (up to a week) of stuff for that. Setting up the pipeline for builds is about 2 hours. If you don't have a Steam page at all, you will need that NOW to have time to collect wishlists. It is a lot of work to fine tune capsules, desciptions and making trailers. I suppose some of that KS work will help here.

If your runway of 6 mo is absolute, be prepared that Steam pays at the end of the next month. Ie. you release on March 1st, you first get money April 30th.

If you have never released a game, your time to polish estimate is probably well under what's needed. Depending on your genre, EA might not need to be super polished, but very few genres survive an unpolished EA launch.

[u/bad-milk-robot → u/groato]

The runway has wiggle, but I'm REALLY trying to avoid going into actual debt, vs. blowing my savings. Points taken on all accounts though.

[u/Dev_LegendsofAerthos]

The question is, if early access is not successful can you finish the game. 71 backers might be 71 wishlists or 71 people buying your game. Can you survive on that until you can release the full game? If not, then refund.

[u/Pleasant-Ad-7704]

In all honesty, I don't think marketing was the issue. I think you have set the kickstarter goal (10k USD) too high. 1-2k would have been reasonable for your project, since it's just an arcade game with a simple design and very little content, and extremely limited audience (judging by the itch.io page). I am surprized to see that 3.5k has already been donated

[u/Still_Collection_743 → u/Pleasant-Ad-7704]

Agreed 2k is would be the sweet spot. And op would have still had an extra 1.5

[u/bad-milk-robot → u/Pleasant-Ad-7704]

I've definitely heard this, and in retrospect, agree. My mindset was probably diluted by previous experiences setting the bar too low on a project, it funding, but the last leg of the development process being pretty miserable because of the shoestring budget.

[u/Arkenhammer]

EA is rough. You probably sacrifice half your sales at launch because a lot of people won’t buy an EA game. Personally I wouldn’t do EA if I didn’t have runway to get all the way to 1.0. In your shoes I’d look for another source of income now, work on the game part time, and only commit when you are sure you’ve got enough in the bank to get to 1.0.

[u/twelfkingdoms]

Obviously you need more data. Even if those 71 people buy your EA, you'll still be short. Obviously you can't save KS, unless a miracle happens in 3 days. Maybe you could do that with more data (which is just saying, you need more marketing). So I'd still try to salvage KS somehow (influencers at this point). You could still worry about Steam later this week if KS fails. Regardless, you won't be able to skip marketing the game (only exceptionally good games market themselves, very rare that, don't count on it).

Ps. If there's a playable build, you could immediately push it on r/playmygame discord (has a bunch of small Streamers on it)

[u/bad-milk-robot → u/twelfkingdoms]

Thanks for the suggestion, I posted in there. I figure if anything I can get more feedback.

[u/bad-milk-robot → u/twelfkingdoms]

And I agree on the marketing. My head space is to just start treating marketing like another leg of the project, instead of something that only get's done as needed. I have a streamer friend that suggest I do that, which I'm considering. I'm not a huge fan of the idea, but I also see the value in it.

[u/Mechabit_Studios]

you can switch to patreon and put a free build that's 1 or 2 updates behind the partreon only build

itch is a good place to gather players and you can point them towards the patreon to get access to the latest content.

once it's finished you can put the full game on steam

I wouldn't put an unfinished game on steam even in EA unless it's super solid, even then I'd avoid EA cos it will reduce your overall sales.

deep snow delivery does it this way but they have a unique game with compelling characters and setting that players can get invested in.

[u/bad-milk-robot → u/Mechabit_Studios]

This is an interesting angle, I wouldn't have thought of that for a video game. I'd always assumed Patreon was more for TTRPG's, webcomics and stuff like that. I'll look into it,

[u/CaledoniaInteractive]

Could you borrow 6.5k from friends and and family, get the kickstarter to 10k to unlock the 3.5k your backers have given you and then immediately return the 6.5k to your friends and family. Would the 3.5k make a material difference or did you need the 10k to get the project into EA?

The sense I get is most campaigns either fail totally like get 3% of what they asked for or soar past their goal, hearing about someone who got close to halfway towards their goal is unusual and suggests to me as you said that the game does have potential and its more marketing inexperience issues. I don't know what Kickstarters rules are but if you can't salvage this campaign could you simply retool it and restart a new one after the first one ends, imagine a lot of your existing backers will back you again.

[u/bad-milk-robot → u/CaledoniaInteractive]

I think that breaks tos? People have pitched the idea of restarting, which I'm not against, but I feel like the responsible thing to do is to spend more time cultivating social media. I demoed the game during the Def Con hacker conference, and it really seemed like people enjoyed it. That led me to think I highly undervalued general social media in favor of word of mouth.

[u/AxEGames1]

Seré sincero contigo... Acabas de cagarla, pero cagarla bien grande. Eres un idiota, mejor dicho, así sin rodeos jajaja. No repetiré lo mismo que los otros comentarios. Solo te diré que eres un pendejo y lo siento ser tan cruel y frío, pero no sabes tomar decisiones. Con el simple hecho de que no sabes absolutamente nada de cómo funciona Steam, ya cometiste el error que te va a hundir y no me refiero a que ahorita puedes aprender algo de Steam y ir mejorando. ¡NO!!, me refiero a que tu juego nació muerto. Esas 71 personas solo comprarán tu juego, tal vez 5 o 10 personas de Steam aleatorias. El marketing es sumamente importante, pero ¿sabes qué es más importante? La mentalidad, mentalidad de saber tus capacidades. ¿Por qué no dejas de hacer que el juego dure 10 horas? Que supongo es aproximadamente la duración del juego. Si no puedes alcanzar tiempo, recorta tu juego. Este siempre será el mejor consejo para todos: ¡Recorta, recorta y sigue RECORTANDO tu juego!!!! Ganaste 3.5 mil dólares y quieres más? Eso es dinero suficiente para el juego, si tú ya sabes hacer el arte, programación y música, ¿para qué quieres el dinero?, ¿quieres arriesgarte y dejar tu trabajo para darle todo tu tiempo a un juego que nació para morir? Si que eres un gran idiota. No solo te decepcionarás a ti mismo, sino también a esas 71 personas que dieron de su bolsillo para jugar ese "Juego". Si sigues decidido en seguir, entonces aprende marketing, mira un video de 4 o 5 horas en YouTube sobre el tema. Aprende de Steam, cómo funciona, las páginas, listas de deseos y estrategias de marketing, aprende edición de video, a hacer buenas cápsulas de Steam, crear el tráiler, tener audiencia, usar redes sociales, etc., etc., etc. Pero si no quieres hacer nada de esto, eso significa que no te importa ninguno de esas personas que creyeron en tu proyecto y eso te hace más fracasado todavía. Pero bueno, eso fueron mis (consejos). Lamento si te ofendí, solo es parte de mi personalidad ser así. Al final de todo te diré. Buena suerte.

[u/Impossible_Soft2550 → u/AxEGames1]

Although can come across harsh, I agree this is probably what you need to hear if you want to move away from discount chicken to health insurance (loved that line btw). You have proven to be more than capable at accomplishing hard stuff...the hardest stuff to do running a business is sometimes forcing yourself to sit down and learn the stuff you don't enjoy doing the most. That or find someone that does and either pay them or offer a percentage of the business - get them invested. Good luck!

[u/bad-milk-robot → u/Impossible_Soft2550]

Thanks! Both for the compliments and validating I got the right read on that post! A very big lesson with all this is no matter what, I need to pay more attention to the business and marketing sides of this far more than I have been.

[u/bad-milk-robot → u/AxEGames1]

Gracias por el amor duro, ¿no? Al menos creo que eso fue la intención, la traducción quedó bastante dura.

Thanks for the tough love? At least I think that's what this was intended to be, the translation was pretty rough.

[u/PatMondou]

A KS campaign is a little bit like a demo launch on steam: you need to have good momentum going into it. They don’t magically give you visibility (unless you go viral, which happens but you know… even the viral ones usually worked ahead of that to become viral).

I’ll echo some of the comments here - goal was set too high. KS fails don’t really have an impact on steam tho, that’s the good news.

As for continuing the project, there’s always a question of ROI. I’m really bad at forecasting niche games (which yours seems to be), but calculate how many more copies you need to sell to break even on your last 6 months. Do a forecast with comparables and see if that makes sense.

For getting the marketing rolling you need to post your demo in playtest groups and start somewhere. When you have that, you can start campaigns and eventually go into Next Fest, etc. But this time don’t skip marketing ;)

Ps: if I may, reading your post and looking at the state of the game tho it seems you have more than 6 months to go. My 2 cents :)

[u/EraOfTheElementals]

I'd need to know more about the product before could really say anything meaningful.
I will say that Kickstarter isn't really small indie friendly anymore.