Interesting Kickstarter Catch-All

Interesting insight into what happens to the money pledged through Kickstarter

Our kickstarter earned $36,967 after asking for $20,000 so that was incredible.

To begin with, we didn't get all of that. We lost about $2,000 to no-shows, just people that pledged and the funds did not transfer.

That got us down to $35k, and kickstarter and Amazon Payments take their portions, which got us down to right around $32,000.

Now, right off the top you had $10,000 for prize fulfillment. That includes printing the posters, the shirts and shipping everything (thanks Australia). If we had to do it again, we would have probably had the price point a bit higher for the t-shirts and posters, as those turned to be a very large expense. We also would have included the cost of a 3rd party fulfillment house - we just aren't equipped or skilled in that area, and it was (still is) something that we struggle with.

After that, we had $22,000 remaining. From there:

Music - $6,000
Attorneys, startup fees, CPA - $4000
Poster art - $2000
iPads - $1000
PAX East - $3000

TOTAL: $16,000

Leaving us with around $6000, which is income, so that was taxed (piece of advice to other kickstarters - spend that money before the end of the year).

So were right around $4000 remaining and even that cursory math isn't working as there are other things that weren't big tickets but sapped the coffers. There's odds and ends etc, so that goes rather quickly as you can imagine.

14.5% going towards no shows, Amazon, and Kickstarter sounds pretty reasonable. How they spent the money is pretty reasonable too, that's not the cost of Kickstarter so much as the cost of running a business. I don't really see it's relevance there. If they didn't count that in to the 20k they were asking for that's silly.

10k in prize redemption is quite interesting though. I'm curious if that's including the actual product they were developing or not or if that's just for the physical extras.

SixteenBlue wrote:

14.5% going towards no shows, Amazon, and Kickstarter sounds pretty reasonable. How they spent the money is pretty reasonable too, that's not the cost of Kickstarter so much as the cost of running a business. I don't really see it's relevance there. If they didn't count that in to the 20k they were asking for that's silly.

10k in prize redemption is quite interesting though. I'm curious if that's including the actual product they were developing or not or if that's just for the physical extras.

Rewards are something to watch out for as well. We just didn't fully appreciate the cost of printing 200 posters, shirts, and more than anything shipping. Shipping is a) expensive b) a pain in the ass when you have tubes and c) time consuming. None of those things are productive. We don't resent having sent that stuff off - we think the posters and shirts are awesome and we are super proud of them and it seems like everyone loved them, so thats great. But they were a lot of work.

So true.

SixteenBlue wrote:

14.5% going towards no shows, Amazon, and Kickstarter sounds pretty reasonable. How they spent the money is pretty reasonable too, that's not the cost of Kickstarter so much as the cost of running a business. I don't really see it's relevance there. If they didn't count that in to the 20k they were asking for that's silly.

I thought it was interesting/relevant because they were quite open about what they did with the money they took in and where they had misestimated things. I didn't intended it to be a criticism of them or of Kickstarter; I just thought it was an interesting insight.

tanstaafl wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

14.5% going towards no shows, Amazon, and Kickstarter sounds pretty reasonable. How they spent the money is pretty reasonable too, that's not the cost of Kickstarter so much as the cost of running a business. I don't really see it's relevance there. If they didn't count that in to the 20k they were asking for that's silly.

I thought it was interesting/relevant because they were quite open about what they did with the money they took in and where they had misestimated things. I didn't intended it to be a criticism of them or of Kickstarter; I just thought it was an interesting insight.

I didn't mean relevance from your point of view but from the company's. I do always appreciate a breakdown of costs from companies.

SixteenBlue wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

14.5% going towards no shows, Amazon, and Kickstarter sounds pretty reasonable. How they spent the money is pretty reasonable too, that's not the cost of Kickstarter so much as the cost of running a business. I don't really see it's relevance there. If they didn't count that in to the 20k they were asking for that's silly.

I thought it was interesting/relevant because they were quite open about what they did with the money they took in and where they had misestimated things. I didn't intended it to be a criticism of them or of Kickstarter; I just thought it was an interesting insight.

I didn't mean relevance from your point of view but from the company's. I do always appreciate a breakdown of costs from companies.

I'd agree with both points there, Sixteen. I understand them listing the associated fees and hope they had taken that into consideration when pricing the project. It does seem that they did not accurately predict attorney fees.

Looks like Ogre is going to top 200k in the next day or so. SJ Games has run out of stretch goals and is going to need to start rolling out new ones

Match and Magic put up a video showing gameplay and whatnot.

interstate78 wrote:

I present to you NEKRO

darkForge wrote:

''Nekro is an overhead, randomly generated action game about summoning evil forces of darkness to do your bidding!
Hailing from the era of great classics such as Myth: The Fallen Lords, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Dungeon Keeper and more, we are creating a game rooted deep in PC gaming's history, but with all the flourishes you've come to expect from a modern experience.''

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/cz8RF.jpg)

Who are these guys you ask?

''DarkForge is a group of industry vets hailing from studios such as Blizzard, Sony, Microsoft and more. We have many years of experience creating quality games for both ourselves and large AAA studios. We have the knowledge, talent and drive to bring you this game and we will stop at nothing to make it happen. All we need is you!''

I'm surprised that this one isn't getting more love, and it makes me wonder what it is that makes or break a kickstarter. It has gameplay footage, convincing concept art and appeals to our sense of nostalgia (Myth! etc.). I thought it would reach its goal in a couple of days like the others.

django wrote:

I'm surprised that this one isn't getting more love, and it makes me wonder what it is that makes or break a kickstarter. It has gameplay footage, convincing concept art and appeals to our sense of nostalgia (Myth! etc.). I thought it would reach its goal in a couple of days like the others.

Yeah I'm baffled as well. I thought it had all the elements of a good Kickstarter campaign like Banner Saga but it just isnt picking up Steam

I think it may be one too many at the same time. I cant imagine anything else

So YouTube gaming video guy TotalBiscuit is trying a new series where he highlights game Kickstarters that both look cool and seem to be well managed and have a chance of being good. Pretty cool. Starlight: Inception really grabbed my attention.

Oh man, that's fantastic for those Kickstarters.

Holy crap, Pebble is at $4.5 million right now. There's still 30 days left. I hope they shut the Kickstarter down and start on production because they could get way, way over their head here.

looks god (Starlight Inception)

The Pebble video won't play more than 5 seconds for me, though every other Kickstarter video seems to work. I have no idea what I would do with a Pebble, but that much support makes me think I need to find out.

Also, Kickstarter is awesome. I know Joss Whedon recently poo-pooed reviving Firefly with Kickstarter, but I can't help feeling that if this had been around back then, things would have gone very differently. On the other hand, the cult has grown over time, and many of us didn't see the show when it aired.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

The Pebble video won't play more than 5 seconds for me, though every other Kickstarter video seems to work. I have no idea what I would do with a Pebble, but that much support makes me think I need to find out.

Also, Kickstarter is awesome. I know Joss Whedon recently poo-pooed reviving Firefly with Kickstarter, but I can't help feeling that if this had been around back then, things would have gone very differently. On the other hand, the cult has grown over time, and many of us didn't see the show when it aired.

I think Whedon's bigger issue is that the bulk of his cast is tied up in long term commitments to other projects now.

Hence "back then".

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Hence "back then". :)

Fair point

Though I don't think there would have been as much interest, "back then", right after Serenity bombed financially

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

So YouTube gaming video guy TotalBiscuit is trying a new series where he highlights game Kickstarters that both look cool and seem to be well managed and have a chance of being good. Pretty cool. Starlight: Inception really grabbed my attention.

The more I think about this, the more I realize TB might not bring in as much money as I'd like to think. Why? Because I think most people will be buying the game and little else. Perhaps his highlighting these games will filter out to people who are willing to give more money, but from watching the numbers climb (and they definitely are) the higher end pledges aren't being funded.

While I don't see exposure being a bad thing, it may not be as successful as I originally thought as really it's those higher tiers that need some funding to get these games completely funded.

Hmm not really. A project like Starlight Inception only needs 10,000 backers at 15$ to get done

10,000 people isn't THAT many

I can't tell if you meant to put a sarcasm tag on that post or not.

Tanglebones wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

Hence "back then". :)

Fair point

Though I don't think there would have been as much interest, "back then", right after Serenity bombed financially

Well, I don't think Browncoats care about that. We don't need box office receipts to tell us Firefly is good, we know it is.

I think the risk in backing a game dev campaign is spending X dollars and getting nothing in return, so I'm pretty sure the risk is exactly what I think

I promise I only hit submit once. It was like Britney Spears, but I did not hit it baby just one more time.

Project's I'm currently watching:
Main Street MMO: Real Cities in Realtime 3D -Think Playstation Home fused with Google Street View.
IMAGE(http://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/78360/photo-full.jpg?1330622622)
The Dead Linger - A first-person zombie survival sandbox in which you can venture into a vast, undead world, surviving and exploring in whatever way suits you best.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/8LdQV.jpg)
Grey: The Lost Technology - It's going to be an action adventure zelda-styled RPG on the Xbox 360 and PC
IMAGE(http://www.teamaurora.net/images/grey/grey_kickstarter.png)
Echoes of Eternia - A classically influenced, yet modernly designed, RPG video game. It embodies the essence of old school gaming.
IMAGE(http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/9306/eterniabetascreen2.jpg)
And the aforementioned Pebble, all of which I'm waiting until closer to their individual end dates to make sure I can afford the appropriately sized donation.

garion333 wrote:

Holy crap, Pebble is at $4.5 million right now. There's still 30 days left. I hope they shut the Kickstarter down and start on production because they could get way, way over their head here.

I think these look neat enough, but I really don't get why they are amazing. Weird.

The Banner Saga is about to finish up. It looks interesting and got good funding.

That article MeatMan linked has one especially salient point:

Of those projects that do manage to ship, some will be good games and some will be awful, with most winding up somewhere in the middle. This is the reality of game development in the real world, and projects funded by Kickstarter are no different. The unfortunate truth is that many backers of game projects are buying the ability to wait 18 months to play a mediocre game.

Keep that in mind when pledging. This is part of why I only bid $10 on Banner Saga. If I lose $10, eh, no big deal. If I'd backed at a higher level, I'd be increasing my risk substantially without really increasing my reward. If I get one crummy game for $10, and three crummy games for $50, well, $50 is not the smartest choice I could make.

Crockpot wrote:
interstate78 wrote:

République looks really promising but a lot of people will have a problem paying over 10$ for an iOS game

Of course some big games like Infinity Blade recouped their investment but if you told me you plan on making a game that costs over 500k for a platform whose games usually sell for 99 cents, I'd call you crazy.

The budget is actually a million. Other investors said they will meet them half way if the Kickstarter is successful.

This game is something that I just need to wait for and see what people say about it. I'm not optimistic when developers try to make a game that is more "engaged" experience on the iOS. I can only see myself play this on the iPad. Hopefully they will pull it off.

i hope people jump on this one. they are no where near enough pledges with three weeks to go.
Do kickstarters pickup at the end, or are they dead if they don't hit right away?