作者：Peter Cardwell-Gardner

创造一款已经存在的电子游戏并不是非常困难。而在你完成游戏制作后让人们注意到它却可能非常困难。我们都知道创造一款游戏就像是一场伴随着各种失误与失败的旅程。而在这系列文章中我们将着眼于我们为音乐益智游戏《Cadence》所进行的失败的众筹活动以及这次失败后的情感表现展开说明。

很长一段时间我们都非常抵触Kickstarter的理念。我们听过许多他们的发展历程，当然了这里也存在巨大的风险性。而不管我们选择如何为游戏筹集资金，我们最终都意识到自己的大多数努力都将用于创造我们的市场营销信息—-并最终将受益于我们的游戏。而自信也是方程式中的一个元素，就像如果我们真正相信自己的游戏的话为什么我还会取害怕进行Kickstarter活动呢？

我们都坚信只要选择了Kickstarter，我们便能够将其做好。我们进行了许多研究，并清楚这将花费至少2个月的全职时间。我们还知道Kickstarter的饱和度是真实的，即如果想要在这里获得成功我们就要呈现出最好的内容。我们甚至创造了工具去分析公众信息，如奖励层与融资目标，以此确保我们的假设是合理的。

所以我们便着手开始准备我们在2015年GDC大会上的活动。创造一个带有较高制作价值的优秀视频是我们最先考虑的内容，因为我们认为视频有可能成就你的活动也有可能彻底将其摧毁。为了实现这一目标我们邀请了一些来自Cool Your Jets的人才并且对最终作品非常满意。在好几个深夜，他们致力于创造视频，而我们则投入更多精力去创造宣传页面。在几乎耗尽所有体力后，我在登上前往GDC大会的飞机前几个小时终于将我们的信息发了出去。

cadence(from gamedev)

虽然充满焦虑，但是我们也未因此退缩—-我们清楚Kickstarter的低谷。所以这意味着我们将不可能进行一次童话般的众筹活动，但这也是我们准备好接受的结果，因为我们已经在好几个漫漫长夜中领悟过来了。除此之外，我同时会参加GDC和SXSW—-哪个活动更适合推广Kickstarter活动呢？

最终证明GDC和SXSW都带给我们很棒的体验，并有利于《Cadence》，但《Cadence》的Kickstarter活动却并非如此。我计划努力捕捉所有带有媒体标签的人并逼迫他们听取有关《Cadence》的介绍，因此我们的游戏获得了一些报道！也许这只是因为运气，但其实媒体并不是无处不在的。同时我们还把握了任何能够与其他开发者见面的机会并主动向他们介绍《Cadence》，我们也因此获得了这些人在社交网站上宣传我们游戏的机会。

这么做能够为游戏不断吸引一些好奇的眼睛，但这还远远不够。很快地我们便发现我们的众筹活动开始下滑，一些支持者开始思考我们哪里做错了。特别是我们还收到一些关于为什么不包含一个演示版本的批评。一开始我们决定忽略演示版本是因为我们看到许多因为拥有演示版本而影响了游戏销量的例子。而那时候的我们仍然想要尝试看看。奇怪的是我们发行的演示版本几乎未对我们的活动造成任何影响。如果我们在一开始便推出演示版本的话情况可能就不同了吧。

我们的众筹活动的许多方面都遭到了严厉的批评，其中便包括我们的奖励层面，视频以及让人困惑的信息。我也相信所有的这些批评都是有益的：当然了我们本来可以更好地解释游戏，即解释为什么它值得投资者去投钱，并拥有吸引人的奖励让投资者觉得自己的投资是有价值的。并且我们也可以添加一些信息让投资者觉得自己也是活动的一份子。

我并不会责怪那些专注于这些元素的人，因为当我们在搜索的时候也会专注于这些内容。所有这些共享属性的共同点在于它们都是会出现在任何Kickstarter页面的公开内容。从中我们便能够搞清楚处理所有的这些元素与获得Kickstarter活动的成功之间的关系。但现在我认为想要掩盖最重要的内容的想法是非常危险的：因为在这里到处都有人盯着你看。

最终只有1万个人点击了我们的视频—-即吸引了526位投资人，而这只达到我们的集资目标的37%。如果点击人数接近3万的话我们便更有理由相信自己能够获得投资。显然我们并不是如何改变这一方程式的专家，但是我们也必须承认自己因为忽视了一个非常明显的领域而遭遇了失败，这一领域便是youtuber。

因为Let’s Play是一个中型的独立友好“投手”，所以将注意力放在其它地方简直就是我们一大昂贵的失误。当然了，我们很难去猜测youtuber会选择哪个宣传对象，但至少我们能够处理一些基本情况，如在开始活动前先留出两周宣传时间。这也是让我有在家操纵键盘并发送邮件比飞去几万英里外参加会议好多了的想法的情况之一。

在GDC上的多次讨论中，我听过其他开发者提到第二次Kickstarter总是能够创造更好的成绩，我想我应该知道原因。在销售任何一款游戏时，深深被游戏所吸引的用户可能是你所拥有的最有价值的资产。而获得这些用户需要你投入辛苦的努力。当你在进行Kickstarter活动时，从零开始是非常困难的事。我想这也能够解释为什么第二次Kickstarter能够获得更好的成绩。

回首过去我们很容易认为这样的活动就像灾难一般，但考虑到我们所获得的正面反应，我们仍然会认为这是一款有价值的游戏。当然了，金钱的警钟一直响着，所以我们只能在活动的最后几天匆匆赶制出宣传页面并尝试着去吸引投资者们的注意。在预定页面呈现一些有趣的内容总是会让人眼前一亮。我们从未拥有较高的期待，但对于这几天的辛苦工作，我们还是认为自己至少值得拥有两个月的资金支持。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

When Your Best Isn’t Good Enough: A Tale of Failure (Part I)

By Peter Cardwell-Gardner

Creating a video game where once there was nothing can be incredibly difficult. And it doesn’t end there – getting people to care about your game once it’s made can be even harder. It’s no surprise that making games is a journey with many missteps and failures along the way. In this two-part series we’ll be looking at circumstances of our unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign for the music puzzle game Cadence (part I – skip if you aren’t interested in crowdfunding) and the emotional aftermath of this failure (part II – relevant to anyone working as a creative professional).

For a long time we were dead set against the idea of Kickstarter. We’d heard tales of how much energy and effort they take, and of course there is a huge risk factor. Regardless of how we chose to fund the game, we were ultimately convinced by the realisation that most of the effort would be spent on crafting our marketing message – something which could only ever benefit the game. Self confidence was also part of the equation, for why should we be scared of running a Kickstarter if we truly believed in the game?

We were however adamant that if we were going to do a Kickstarter, by Jove, we were going to do it right. We did our research, and then did our research some more. We knew that it would be a full time job for at least two months. We knew that Kickstarter saturation was real and that we’d have to bring our very best in order to succeed. We even went so far as to build a scraper tool to analyse public info, like reward tiers and funding goals, to make sure our own assumptions were on point.

And so we set about preparing our campaign in time for GDC 2015. Creating a great video with high production values was a top priority, as we believed that a slam dunk video had the potential to make or break the campaign. To this end we enlisted the awesome cats from Cool Your Jets and were thrilled with the final product. Many late nights were sacrificed as they honed the video and we put huge amounts of energy into crafting our page. And so it was, almost collapsing with exhaustion, we flicked the switch and send out our message out only hours before I boarded a plane headed for GDC.

Attached Image: Kickstarter Header.jpg

Initially things seemed to be following the script perfectly. Our followers and local community rallied behind us and my phone started going ballistic with notifications. It was awesome to see the outpour of enthusiasm and the show of faith from friends and family was beyond overwhelming! We hit our initial targets with ease and it seems like we were on track for a great campaign. However, 48 hours after I’d landed in San Francisco it was clear that we’d already reached everyone who cared and our campaign hit a brick wall.

Whilst alarmed, we weren’t deterred – we knew about the infamous Kickstarter trough. So it meant we weren’t going to have a fairytale campaign, but that was something we were ready to accept as we settled in for the long slog. And besides, I was about to attend both GDC and SXSW – what better place to promote a flagging Kickstarter?

As it turns out GDC and SXSW were both amazing experiences that benefited Cadence immeasurably, but a miserable result for the Cadence Kickstarter itself. My press strategy of hunting down anyone with a press tag and cornering them until they’d heard about Cadence resulted only in coverage we probably could have secured anyway (thanks RPS)! Perhaps it was merely luck, but the press simply wasn’t anywhere that I was. Still, I jumped at every possible chance to recruit allies and many developers and personal heroes soon learned about Cadence and in many cases tweeted about the game.

This kept a steady trickle of new eyes coming, but still it was never more than a trickle. As it became clear the campaign was flagging, some of our supporters started to speculate as to what we were doing wrong. In particular we received some “heated” criticism for not including a demo. Originally we decided to omit a demo because we’ve seen examples of this having a negative effect on sales. But we weren’t zealots and were willing to experiment. Curiously, our demo release made almost zero difference to the trajectory of our campaign. Perhaps it would have been different if it was there from start, but I have my doubts.

Attached Image: Kickstarter final total.JPG

Many aspects of our campaign got picked apart and analysed, from our reward tiers to the video to feedback that our message was confusing and muddled. I believe that all of these criticisms have merit: certainly we could have done a better job of explaining the game, to explain why it’s worth a backer’s money, to have compelling rewards that let backers feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. To craft a message that allows backers to feel like they are part of a movement, and something bigger than themselves.

I don’t blame people for focusing on these factors, indeed they are the very same things we focused on whilst in research mode. The common denominator all these attributes share is that they happen to be the forward facing elements publicly visible on any Kickstarter page. From this it’s easy to assume there is a correlation between getting each of these elements right and Kickstarter success. But now I believe this is a dangerous way of thinking that glosses over the most important fact: it’s all about eyeballs.

Attached Image: Kickstarter Video View Stats.JPG

At the end of the day only 10 000 odd people ever clicked play on our video – resulting in 526 backers and 37% percent of our funding goal. I imagine that if that number was closer to 30 000 there is every reason to believe that we would have been funded. Clearly, we’re not experts on how we could have changed this equation, but we must admit we dropped the ball by not focusing on one obvious area: youtubers.

Considering that a single Let’s Play by a medium-sized indie-friendly caster could have delivered those views, focusing our efforts elsewhere was a very costly mistake. Of course youtubers can be quite enigmatic in what they choose to cover, but at the very least we messed up some simple basics like giving two week lead-in time before the start of the campaign. This is one of those instances where I felt like it would’ve been much better for me to be at home, jockeying a keyboard and sending emails, rather than navigating two conferences 10 000 miles away.

In many of my discussions at GDC, I heard other developers mention that Kickstarters often work better the second time round, and I think I can see why. Having a captive audience is perhaps the most valuable asset you can have when selling any kind of game. Building this audience however requires painstaking effort, much like a stalagmite growing one drop at a time. Starting from scratch when you launch a Kickstarter campaign is a very tall order. I think this goes a long way to explain why Kickstarters with nostalgia appeal do so well.

Looking back it would be easy to say the campaign was a disaster, but given the number of positive reactions we still believe the game deserves to be made. Of course, the money alarm bells were ringing frantically, so we spent the final days of the campaign throwing together our own tongue-in-cheek “Noodlestarter” page to try and capture Kickstarter momentum. It was refreshing to poke a bit of fun at what is essentially a pre-order page. We never had high expectations, but for a couple of days work, the month or two of funding it secured was well worth it.（source：gamedev）