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开发者分析Kickstarter项目融资失误之处

发布时间:2011-08-31 21:44:21 Tags:,,

作者:Ted Brown

宏伟计划惨遭失败颇令人羞愧。更糟的是发展轨道回到分岔口,原本若选择不同路线将通往成功,但你的脚步却朝错误方向前进,甚至连看到路标也不停下!

我们正处于30天内在大众融资平台Kickstarter筹集1万美元活动的最后一周,目前我们项目获得的资金还不到25%。我就此分析了失败原因。

首先,也许你没听过此活动,在Kickstarter平台中,项目开发者将募集与项目资金所需的“投资“。募集时间为30-60天,若最终数额不足,所有资金将全部返还资助者。

Ninja Baseball Splatter Paint from gamasutra.com

Ninja Baseball Splatter Paint from gamasutra.com

其次,也许你没听过我们的项目,其名称是《Ninja Baseball》。这是款融入刀剑和明星的棒球游戏,呈现的是融入80年代霓虹灯场景和闹剧暴力的卡通世界。其核心元素来自《怒火橄榄球》和《棒球明星赛》。

最后,游戏使用的是Unity引擎。我是游戏设计师和程序员,而我的朋友Todd负责美工。他住在德克萨斯州的科珀斯克里斯蒂,而我在俄勒冈州的尤金。

youtube thumbnail from gamasutra.com

youtube thumbnail from gamasutra.com

项目起源

今年初我决定离开我的前东家,自己发展,但我有家庭需要照顾,还要还贷款。所以我得选择在最佳时机辞职,把损失降到最低,因为我们今后需靠积蓄为生。我还需要一个创意伙伴。Todd当时正在德克萨斯州投身某重要游戏项目。当他的项目撤销时,我觉得这是个契机。我们曾在Guildhall共事,彼此互相尊重。经过俄勒冈州旅行过程中的几次交谈和碰面后,我们达成共识,决定一起合作。

我本决定在6月中旬离开原公司。我的前公司主要负责外包项目,我当时没有参与任何项目。而且我和前公司执行团队核心成员的关系不好(虽然他们不是我的直接上司),我觉得自己早晚会被开除。我还有2-3个礼拜可以制作这款游戏,给8月份的Kickstarter活动制作宣传资料,8月是我们首个“宣传物料”——飞盘的问世日期, 我们将让一名好友在GenCon游戏展览会上通过Troma Entertainment的展位向人们发放这个飞盘。

logo from gamasutra.com

logo from gamasutra.com

发展曲折

令我倍感惊讶和懊恼的是,在我发出通知的前一天,一家大型社交发行公司要求我(游戏邦注:通过我的前公司)重新编写某款即将问世作品的创意文本。我和这个项目的执行小组关系很好,所以决定利用呆在公司的最后两星期完成这项任务。

这给我今后的发展铺平道路,但这是项漫长而艰苦的差事,令我感到筋疲力尽,再过1周就到了我们的名义“发行日”。

而此时,我们只有一个商标和游戏构思。我们加快脚步,两个来自教会的朋友(一个是新闻摄影师,另一个是喜剧演员)帮我创作和拍摄了一个“才艺展示”视频(如下图所示)。我希望用视频充当我播放更新内容和创造画面的主要渠道。目前,我们已多次以此呈现新内容,运作非常顺利。

YouTube video(from gamasutra)

YouTube video(from gamasutra)

但我们当时还没有得到Kickstarter项目。所有项目都需得到Kickstarter团队的批准,他们已很久没有联系我们。最后,在8月5日,我们得到消息说我们的Kickstarter项目已经通过,飞盘也已抵达印第安纳州。所以我立刻就在中午发布项目网站。那天晚上,妻子亲手制作了一个绒布忍者(游戏邦注:如下图所示,绒布忍者用于奖励投资达到特定数额的资助者)。

felted ninja small from gamasutra.com

felted ninja small from gamasutra.com

定格:失误地方

我稍后会谈这个方面。

为何选择Kickstarter?

我觉得任何独立构思,不论其媒介是什么,都离不开曝光度。若无人知晓,若无人讨论,项目就会消亡。若你打算靠创造新鲜事物谋生,你可以选择坚持梦想或冒险一搏,或者通过判断游戏概念可行性再制定运营策略。

既然我有家庭,我就不会拿梦想进行冒险。我给予Kickstarter项目设定的目标不仅是获得融资,还要测试构思可行性。主流群体在未经事先上网浏览评论或视频的情况下,仍然愿意投资一款感觉颇有趣味的游戏。若大家不断讨论项目,这就将为项目“带来更多信任度”。项目将迅速在社交网络中传播开来,其中某些人将掏钱进行投资。

目前,我们有200个“Likes” ,42份资助,以及高达20%的资助转换率。我们还成功突破既有社交范围,获得陌生人的资助。所以我觉得这个方案具有可行性。

但游戏呢?

重新返回:失误地方

在我们推出Kickstarter项目时,我们拥有:

* 杰出构思

* 可供测试的棋盘游戏版本

* 商标

* 有趣的“病毒式传播”视频

* 忍者玩家的最终构思

* 一名担心资金来源并且疲惫不堪的设计师/程序员

* 一名正寻找落脚之地的美工

* 嵌有我们商标的飞盘

* 网站

我们欠缺的方面:

* Unity经验

* Unity模型

* Blender经验

* Blender和Unity的连接管道

* 忍者角色模式

* 以Unity创建,拥有关键帧的忍者角色模型

* 棒球场所

出乎意料的是,我们在短短24天内就备齐除以下元素之外的所有内容:

*以Unity创建,拥有关键帧的忍者角色模型

这很令我们头痛。我以前接触的是3ds Max、Maya和XSI。学会Max后,我在1天内掌握了Maya和XSI。但Blender是至今我碰过最糟的建模程序包。我无法通过这个工具高效操作。它的用户界面和建模管道都非常糟糕。它能够操作,但效果不好。

没有游戏样品可展示

我做了个天真的假设:大家愿意在未看到游戏前,就会对游戏构思进行投资。若我不是如此疲惫,急于在GenCon展示飞盘,如此确信大家愿意进行投资,我或许就会抽出时间进行现实验证。我相信身边明智之人都持相同观点,但就像我所说,我过于疲惫,以致未进行调试。这是个失误。

这令我们很伤脑筋,因为我们确实创造了一款游戏。投掷活动,明星亮相,玩家争夺基地,医生投掷烟雾弹,救治受伤患者……这就是款完整游戏!但缺少忍者,没有宝剑。没有动画,只有行走、奔跑和无所事事画面。

cobra pitching small from gamasutra.com

cobra pitching small from gamasutra.com

这在游戏设计师看来颇具潜力,但普通用户却不这么认为。他们会理直气壮地问到:忍者在哪里?为什么没有进行完善?所以我没有向游戏新闻渠道(游戏邦注:这是资金的主要来源地)发送邮件。

我觉得每个潜在用户都可能变成用户。很多人投入大量广告资金只为了能够让用户瞄一眼你的产品。这是个时间紧迫的社会,他们在你的劳动成果中投入的是宝贵时间。内容是否深深吸引他们?令其流连忘返?

我觉得我们最初非常成功。但由于我尚未在一切就绪之前就启动项目,我担心我们很快就会失败。

期望过高

我们准备筹集的资金是1万美元,这才够我和Todd分配(游戏邦注:扣除手续费和奖品费用,大概剩下9000美元),维持2个月的开支。这是生活成本的合理估值,但对于处在此阶段的游戏来说,这个要求有些高。我们应该再等1个月,然后设定5000美元目标。记住:这是个孤注一掷的项目,我们不能中途调整活动计划。若我们设定的目标是5000美元,我们现在差不多就可以实现了。这就好像“双鸟在林不如一鸟在手”。

现今情况

现在存在两种情况:或实现活动目标,或最终失败。若成功,那就太棒了。若无法实现,该怎么样?有以下几种情形:

* 凭自己的力量完成游戏,然后自己发行

* 启动另一Kickstarter项目

* 寻找投资者

* 寻找发行商

所有这些情况都存在取舍关系。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Inside a Failing Kickstarter Campaign

by Ted Brown

(This is being written “in situ,” so if you want to have a hand in shaping the destiny of our project, please feel free to check it out here.  Of course we’d be happy to take your pledge, and if you’d share this link on your social networks, that would be awesome!)

Few things are so humbling as grand plans laid low.  It’s even worse when the tracks are followed back to the fork in the road, where a different path might have meant success, and the footprints going the wrong way — not even stopping at the sign! — are clearly your own.

We are in the final week of a 30 day campaign for $10,000 on Kickstarter, and we are just a bit less than 25% there.  I have some theories as to what went wrong, and I’m hoping for feedback from the Gamasutra community on what to do next.

First, if you haven’t heard of it, Kickstarter allows project creators to solicit “pledges” towards a campaign goal of a set dollar amount.  The project has between 30 and 60 days to raise this money, or all of the pledges are returned.  This “all or nothing” approach has been discussed at length elsewhere, so I won’t go into its merits today, but I am a firm believer in it.

Second, because you probably haven’t heard of it, the game is called Ninja Baseball.  It’s a baseball game with swords and stars instead of bats and balls, in a cartoon world of 80’s neon and slapstick violence.  Its core ingredients come from Blood Bowl and Baseball Stars.  Heck, why not see all the ingredients as we cook up a batch?

Finally, the game is being created in Unity.  I am the designer and programmer, while my friend Todd (a fellow Guildhall alum from the first cohort) is the artist.  He is in Corpus Christi, Texas, and I am in Eugene, Oregon.

ORIGINS OF THE PROJECT

I made the decision to leave my previous employer earlier this year, and go indie, but I also have a family and a mortgage.  I had to exit at just the right time to keep our costs low, because we would be living off savings.  I also needed a creative partner.  Todd was working on a serious games project in Texas.  When it was canceled, I took it as a sign. We had worked together at the Guildhall, and had a mutual respect for each other.  After a few conversations and a face-to-face meeting during a trip to Oregon, we shook hands and made plans to work together.

I would quit in the middle of June.  My previous employer lives off of contractual work, and I wasn’t on any of their contracts.  Combine that with a decidedly sour relationship with key members of their executive team (though not my direct superiors), I expected to be summarily dismissed.  This would give us two to three weeks to work on the game and build up promotional material for a Kickstarter campaign in August, launching day and date with our first “schwag:” a branded frisbee being given out by a friend at the Troma Entertainment booth at GenCon.

THE PLOT STARTS TWISTING

Much to my surprise and chagrin, the day before I gave notice, a major social publisher requested that I — through my employer — re-write all of the creative text for an upcoming game release.  Having a friendly relationship with that project’s executive team, I decided to do that work during my final two weeks at the studio.

It reinforced a bridge I might cross at a later date, but it was a long, hard slog that left me exhausted, with only a week until our nominal “launch.”

At that point, we only had a logo and a game concept. Working quickly, two friends from church — a news videographer and an actor/improv comedian — helped me author and film the “Cooking Show” video you saw earlier.  I knew I wanted to use videos as my main method of broadcasting updates and creative vision.  By now, we have quite a few , and that’s gone very well.

But we didn’t have a Kickstarter campaign at that point!  Each project has to be approved by their team, and they hadn’t reached us for days.  Finally, on Friday, August 5th, we got word that the Kickstarter project was approved, the frisbees had reached Indiana, and in a mad rush, I launched the project website by noon.  That night, my wife made one of the felted ninjas we were using as a reward for certain pledge tiers.  It was Real.

FREEZE-FRAME: THAT’S WHERE THINGS WENT WRONG

Just keep that in mind.  I’ll talk about that later on.

WHY KICKSTARTER?

It’s my belief that any independent vision, regardless of its medium, lives or dies by discovery. If nobody knows about it, if nobody talks about it, then it will die.  When you are trying to make a living off creating novel things, you can choose to follow your heart and roll the dice (the way of the artist), or use your head and make efficient, business decisions about the viability of the concept (the craftsman’s journey).

Now that I have a family, I don’t get to roll the dice on dreams.  (the dice only get pulled out for Magic, D&D, and Ninja Baseball board game prototypes!)  My goal with the Kickstarter project was not only to get funding for the project, but also to test the viability of the concept.  Mainstream folks are willing to put down a few dollars for a game that sounds fun, without spending an hour searching the internet for reviews, videos, etc.  And if people continue to talk about it, then “trust will build on trust.”  It will spread through social networks, and a percentage of those people will put down money.

Right now, we have 200 “Likes” and 42 pledges, a conversion ratio of 20%!  We also successfully breached the outer ring of my social circle, getting pledges from strangers and folks outside the country. So I consider the idea viable.

But what about the game?  Ahh.  Ah, yes.

NOW BACK TO: THAT’S WHERE THINGS WENT WRONG

At the time of our Kickstarter launch, we had:

* A game idea

* A board game version for testing

* A logo

* A funny “viral” video

* Final concept for the Ninja player

* One very tired designer/programmer, worried about finances

* One artist trying to figure out where he was going to live

* Frisbees with our logo

* A website

Some stuff we were missing:

* Experience in Unity

* A prototype in Unity

* Experience with Blender

* A pipeline from Blender to Unity

* A ninja character model

* A ninja character model in Unity, rigged, with keyframes

* A baseball field asset

Hard to believe, but in 24 days, we’ve achieved everything but the following:

* A ninja character model in Unity, rigged, with keyframes

And this is killing us.  I’ve worked with 3ds Max, Maya, and XSI.  After learning Max, I was able to pick up Maya and XSI in a day or so.  But Blender is, by far, the worst modeling package I have ever encountered.  I still can’t work efficiently in it.  Its user interface and modeling pipeline are abysmal. Does it work?  Yes.  Does it work well?  No.  What would we give for a proper package?  I don’t know; do you need a kidney?  I’ve got two.  Fingers?  I have ten!  (but only eight that haven’t been broken)

NO GAME TO SHOW

I made a jaw-dropping assumption: that people would put money down for a game idea, without seeing the game.  Had I not been so tired, so eager to have our “schwag” handed out at GenCon, and so convinced that people needed a way to give us money by that point, I might have taken time out for a reality check.  I’m pretty sure smart people around me mentioned the same, but like I said, I was too tired to adapt — again.  Mistake.

It’s killing us, because we actually have a game!  Here, look!

The pitch is thrown, the star is hit, the players battle for the base, the medic throws a smokebomb and appears beside the injured… it’s a full game!  But there are no ninjas.  No swords.  No animations but a walk, run, and idle.

This is something that a game designer can see the potential of, but not an average consumer.  They would, rightfully, ask: where are the ninjas?  Why isn’t it polished?  Which is why I haven’t sent e-mails to game news outlets, where I think the majority of my funding would come from.

I believe — strongly — that you have one chance with every potential customer.  A majority of your advertising resources are spent just to get their eyeballs on your product once.  It’s a time-challenged world, and they are spending precious seconds on the result of your labors.  Does it immediately grab them?  And then does it not let go?

I feel we succeeded on the first front.  But because I made the decision to push the button before the pipeline was ready, I fear we’ve perished on the second.

MINOR ASIDE: ASKING TOO MUCH

We asked for $10,000 so Todd and I could split the net (about $9000 after commissions and pledge reward fees) and have enough to pay bills for two months.  That was a reasonable estimate on cost of living, but it was asking too much for a game in this state.  We should have waited another month, then asked for $5000.  Remember: it’s all or nothing, and we can’t adjust mid-campaign.  If we’d set it for $5000, we’d almost be there.  Something about “bird in the hand, two in the bush” comes to mind…

NOW WHAT?

There are two exit scenarios: we make our campaign goal, or we don’t.  If we do, excellent.  (Did I mention you should share the link? )  If we don’t, what next?  Some of the scenarios include:

* Finishing the game on our own dime and self-publishing it

* Starting another Kickstarter campaign

* Seeking investors

* Seeking a publisher

All of them have trade-offs.  If you’ve read this far, thank you, and I’m wondering if you have any comments on the matter.  You’ll know what the final decision will be, because I’ll write about it here!(Source:gamasutra


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