How to fail a Kickstarter and live happily ever after

Pietro Polsinelli @ppolsinelli

For Impact HUB Florence, October 23rd 2014.

See video and site: http://geniogame.com

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See dashboard https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/masondixon/genio-playing-the-renaissance/dashboard

Also other videos. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUMxaHDEKFfnLMJ5fSxNpKRA

Technicalities

Kickstarter is “all or nothing”. This makes people take a stance.

Many options in crowdfunding, but very few realistic options.

See the doc: the diagonal

Who owns it?

Bad position with your “friend”.

Preparing

A working prototype.

Game mechanics: but needed to cheat (problems started early).

Promo

http://licorize.com/applications/licorize/site/buzz-and-press.jsp

- and also I had Marco Matarazzo

- Templates, lists ...

- Launch day (with Francesco Pallanti)

- Tackle people that... do pay

Lessons learned.

Da Vinci games: pop & science on Leonardo. One year of posting.

Leonardo game escaping commonplaces. Also ambition of expressing the “fermento” of the age, and for it to be educational.

Tirari e Alzari: a book on cranes… yes, just on cranes.

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Launch (day)

Everything ready …. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NgOPdw6lzMMJsqvyM1T9rBCYhQEYhmbAAObRurkr7uM/edit#

48 hours on Repubblica home page: 1 pledge

Tried many ways:

http://www.pinterest.com/ppolsinelli/leonardo-da-vinci-games/

FB, Indiedb, Steam, Reddit, …

Did try… (beware: carefully timed scams)

Failure: why?

USA press bias against Kickstarter.

Culture financing is not grass root.

Not the geeks. Everybody wants geeks.

- Pick an educational theme- Moreover its on a corner of education that is of interest for a happy few- Exclude geeks by not having playable prototypes- Start without a follower community nor established record in the gaming community- Use a funding platform that is viewed with high suspicion by gaming journalists

Crowd – funded culture: not easy.

Take say bit.ly: failed to reach USA.

(SHOW VIDEO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo Single lesson: also from United Breaks Guitars. Evoke admiration is not

offering participation. Too clever, scary. 30

- Got it. The guy of guitars taught me why my Kickstarter failed: does it connect the reader and the author? It doesn't.

- The second point is the absence of major influencer acting.Got the reasons, I think.

Post mortem

Shipping is “the best thing that ever happened”. This is shipping. This is an exploratory field.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1319777239/gates-of-horizon-a-space-conquest-mmorpg

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-town-of-light

“Ah launching a crowd funding is a full time job”

The point is exactly the opposite.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1194145503/star-wars-farts-reinventing-star-wars-through-fart

to talk

Da Vinci farts?

Post Kickstarter: the opportunities of shipping

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- Consulting requests, working as game designer

- Indie respect -> projects running

- I am experienced

Happy?

My twitter stream is mostly dedicated to game design:

http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli

A blog on game design

http://designagame.eu