Regarding funding

[Aenra]

Greetings

As my number of posts should signify am new both to the game and the community, so my apologies in advance if what i advise has already been covered elsewhere. Only did a quick search in the forum.
( am i to understand this forum hosting is a temporary thing? first time i see a forum "owner" taking his pic while dressed in a suit and uploading it as his avatar. Serious business..but then again this is the Reddit gen..)

I wanted to suggest you switch to an open donation system, one maintained at your own home page.
I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but it is often the case with Kickstarters that within the measly four weeks window alloted (why really?) i am just not able to participate.
There is a fixed amount of money i allow me to burn in digital pleasures per month, which in itself entails some planning in advance. Usually hearing of a new project's KS within the same month it is about to expire pretty much excludes my participating a priori.
(in the off chance i need be more specific, the 'fixed amount per month' is not an arbitrary self-imposed concept, but more like a necessity in good planning, as credit card bills do arrive once a month. Don't know about you, but paying them interest rates for dues is just not my way of doing things )

I wish you all the luck in your current KS, i hope a miracle occurs and you gather what you need in the next nine days. If not however, do seriously consider this..
Best of wishes to you both

 

[Cramit]

Well I agree that having donations on the homepage can work, it can also annoy any potential backers, as I have witnessed with the Pantheon:Rise of the Fallen kickstarter. Two completely separate games, but the only one I can think of that had this issue.

I think this game really needs to have a successful kickstarter first before they go the donation route. However, I think more "umph" needs to be done on the side of the kickstarter as well. They really need to have more updates on the kickstarter, at least 1 per week. They need to setup some interviews with journalists/youtube personalities to get the game out there. They are already way ahead of most kickstarters with a free alpha that folks can play but they need to build on top of that. Some things I think would help:

Weekly updates to kickstarter

Updates of content patches - (Worthwhile to schedule some during kickstarter)
Updates of bug fixes - (Literally post patch notes to KS to show work is being done)
Community Events - (In-game community events with the devs. Something akin to the naked Halfling run in EQ or something like that)
Streamers - (Contact youtube streamers with some name recognition to do a episode or part of a episode on the game)
Dev Interviews - (Typed interviews as well as some video interviews where devs talk with a streamer as they play or play together)

If the devs can add things like this to the kickstarter page from the beginning to the end of the kickstarter I think they could easily hit their goal. A ton of work to be sure, but the pay off could be funding. A community/media manager wouldn't be a bad idea either, however that's more money too. Either way, the more help they can get and more content they get out in peoples faces, the easier to get and more money they will get.

 

[Aenra]

.........

1) they do not have a successful Kickstarter. They lack both the money to push it to that level (PR=budget), and the features required. This is not exactly your run of the mill MMO able to address itself to the multitudes. Happily for me, sadly for them am afraid..
2) who says you need a successful Kickstarter to ask for money? All you need is some degree of proven honesty, something tangible to show, and a good overall 'presense'. I dare say they have the above showcased already
3) why would you bring another MMO, shady as the specific one is, religiously obsessed as its main (but not really, more like amateur) dev is, bad as its developer's history is, into a Project Gorgon discussion? And who cares what -such- an MMO is doing anyway. You are begging for thread derailing
4) no one gets aggravated, they transfer reward tiers and pledges as they stand now to their own donation scheme in their own website. Existing funds get 'migrated' over, reward tiers remain unaltered, donations still open and going for everyone else, indefinitely
5) With an open system, i and many like myself, may continue to donate a small but steady amount monthly. Easier than a once-off
6) extra bonus that being private, they no longer have any legal obligations -or- a fee to pay upon success. Which they would have on KS, they do take a cut you know, this is not for free. There is a fixed percentage of your amounted funds that you must pay them come the end. So more to them
7) why would you ask for a two man team (my sincere apologies if i am mistaken in this, am under the impression it is a husband and wife thing) to waste time on even more "updates" and pseudo-communication attempts? Especially when they are already discussing about improving it on their own, but anyway..i know of this, and i have only been around for a day

They have the best communication a semi intelligent being can ask for. A ready to play build of their current alpha. A forum to discuss it, a dev blog for the rest. Just because you have been "trained" in expecting certain things in certain ways, doesn not mean it is the way it should be. Nor does it compliment you. I will take empirical over "announcements" any day of the week

 

[Illywing]

An open donation system is already planned. I don't know the details. They just can't put it up on the website yet because it's against Kickstarter rules. Citan said something about this on another thread I think, just don't feel like looking for it xD

 

[Cramit]

.........

1) they do not have a successful Kickstarter. They lack both the money to push it to that level (PR=budget), and the features required. This is not exactly your run of the mill MMO able to address itself to the multitudes. Happily for me, sadly for them am afraid..
2) who says you need a successful Kickstarter to ask for money? All you need is some degree of proven honesty, something tangible to show, and a good overall 'presense'. I dare say they have the above showcased already
3) why would you bring another MMO, shady as the specific one is, religiously obsessed as its main (but not really, more like amateur) dev is, bad as its developer's history is, into a Project Gorgon discussion? And who cares what -such- an MMO is doing anyway. You are begging for thread derailing
4) no one gets aggravated, they transfer reward tiers and pledges as they stand now to their own donation scheme in their own website. Existing funds get 'migrated' over, reward tiers remain unaltered, donations still open and going for everyone else, indefinitely
5) With an open system, i and many like myself, may continue to donate a small but steady amount monthly. Easier than a once-off
6) extra bonus that being private, they no longer have any legal obligations -or- a fee to pay upon success. Which they would have on KS, they do take a cut you know, this is not for free. There is a fixed percentage of your amounted funds that you must pay them come the end. So more to them
7) why would you ask for a two man team (my sincere apologies if i am mistaken in this, am under the impression it is a husband and wife thing) to waste time on even more "updates" and pseudo-communication attempts? Especially when they are already discussing about improving it on their own, but anyway..i know of this, and i have only been around for a day

They have the best communication a semi intelligent being can ask for. A ready to play build of their current alpha. A forum to discuss it, a dev blog for the rest. Just because you have been "trained" in expecting certain things in certain ways, doesn not mean it is the way it should be. Nor does it compliment you. I will take empirical over "announcements" any day of the week

Well it seems your either taking my comments the wrong way or are angry about something. Allow me to clarify for you:

1.) They don't have a successful kickstarter. They don't have a huge budget if any. The point is that it's not a "run of the mill MMO", you need to push your game out so others can see it to attract more folks, whether kickstarter fails or succeeds. You don't want to automatically limit your audience, you want to offer it to anyone so people who may not even know that they would like this game get a chance to try it and fall in love. PR=budget to a point, I'm sure you send a personal e-mail to some game reviewers and they would at least take a look at what your offering. A personal e-mail suggesting they try your game and offering to clarify any information about it can go along way, especially with the amount of people that review games, even just youtubers.

2.) No one says you "Need" a successful kickstarter to ask for money, but it sure as hell helps. Maybe I should have phrased my response as "If you do another kickstarter" but overall that's what I was getting at since this one is almost over. However, I already said and agreed with the fact that they have a lot more to show than other kickstarters or indie projects out right now. They do have a great "showcase" already, I am attempting to help improve it and give ideas to do so, not sure how you could take offense to that.

3.) I mentioned Pantheon:ROTF as an EXAMPLE of a game that got reamed on many forums for having the donations on their website after a failed kickstarter. There are many reasons for it but the "asking for donations after a failed kickstarter" was one of the reasons.
This game has a lot more going for it IMHO, however in business you wanna consider everything to make an informed decision.

4.) You obviously know every gamer even though I have no idea of who you are, so I'll defer to your judgement. /facepalm

5.) True, but kickstarter provides for more traffic. As it stands now, if it wasn't for a fan of this game posting on another site, many people would never have known about this game and that would be a crime. Not to mention, not everyone likes to pay a fee per month. It is, luckily, a different situation for this game since they have a working Alpha that people can play, so a user would feel they are actually getting something for their money.

6.) True, however this would have been taken into consideration when making the decision of whether to do a kickstarter or not and for how much. They obviously already thought it was a worthwhile risk, twice in fact.

7.) O I know, it's hard to think to ask a two-man team to waste time on a couple minute updates to the community they are asking for money from or copy-pasting some patch notes they already written into a web form. Not to mention, with the amount of the work they have already done and the great game they already have, they could even ask for some volunteers from their community. I'm sure there are some very knowledgeable people on the game, here who would be more than willing to take time out of their days to send some e-mails or setup a couple events and help out the devs to get some more traffic through their game so they can potentially get more backers/money so they can improve this game more as well as get a larger budget.



The only thing I have been "trained" to expect is for a project to do the best they can. In a indie MMO trying to get to the finish line, I define doing the best they can as making as many people aware about their game as possible , so they can in turn make more money and finish their game and start making a profit. I'm suggesting ways to do that without limiting who sees the game, just cause it doesn't appeal to the mainstream, doesn't mean you shouldn't test the waters just to see if you catch anything. Just as a side note, when the "Announcements" are "empirical", it's a win win, especially when talking to your paying customer base . I hope this helped clarify my points for you.

 

[Aenra]

An open donation system is already planned. I don't know the details. They just can't put it up on the website yet because it's against Kickstarter rules. Citan said something about this on another thread I think, just don't feel like looking for it xD

Thank you very much for the information Illy, glad to know