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Part two of my interview about the game and the kickstarter project is available for your reading pleasure here. Also, I will be posting a second update to the Kickstarter project at some point today. So look for that. Now to the numbers.

Amount Raised – $6745.00
Number of Backers – 28
Average Pledge – $240.00
The page has been viewed 996 times
The project video has bee played 188 times with 27.66% of those plays completed
The game play video has been played 54 times with 70% of those plays completed
The first update has been viewed 95 times
The walk cycle video from the update has been played 24 times with 87.5% of those plays completed

It does not take a statistical wizard to see that these numbers are less than stellar. Only 2.8% of all page views have resulted in someone choosing to fund the project. This number has dropped slightly from 3% since we last looked at it on day 5 of the campaign. For this campaign to be successful we will still need 17,000+ page views if all other things remain constant. To further analyze the project and its probable outcomes I loaded the url into Kicktraq. Here is Kicktraq’s analysis of our project.

Based on the previous days pledge total Kicktraq predicts that the project will finish in the range of $7,626.00 to $8,860.00

The project overall is trending towards finishing around 43% funded at $13,940.00. This number as fluctuated from a high 0f $25,000.00 to a low of less than $5K.

With 16 days left to go Kicktraq estimates that we have to average $1560.00 per day for our project to be successful.

Quite honestly I am not sure how I am going to accomplish this. The project has never moved from the middle of the page in the video game category with its best slot being 62nd out of 150 total projects. It is not clear how the page ranking aspect of the site works. Today we are the 66th ranked project and 3 of the 5 projects that are directly listed above us are funded at less than $100.00. So lets take a moment to have a little more fun with numbers.

15 of the 65 projects ranked above us have been funded at less than 1% with the top ranked project in this category showing up as 39th most popular.

13 of the 65 projects ranked above us have been funded at less than 5% with the top ranked project in this category showing up as 3rd most popular.

15 of the 65 projects ranked above us have been funded at less than 10% with the top ranked project in this category showing up as 27th most popular.

8 of the 65 projects ranked above us have been funded at less than 20% with the top ranked project in this category showing up as 13th most popular.

Those numbers are off putting at best. 51 of the 65 projects which rank above us in popularity have percentage wise been less successful than we have so far. I am sure that here are other numbers that go into the popularity ranking and contribute to this disparity. Total dollars earned, number of supporters, and page views most likely factor into the ranking system. They are more than likely also factoring geographic location and project director experience.

The thing is that when you look closely at these projects what you will find is that 82% of them are cerated by gaming professionals. The first ten games on the list have already been funded in excess of 1.4 million dollars. The next ten have a total amount pledged of roughly $280,000.00, and the ten after that are funded at $68,000.00 total dollars. Those first twenty game projects were all created by gaming companies and it is not until you move down towards the 30th ranked project that you begin to find individual project developers. I am not suggesting that the system is rigged. Quite the contrary. It is in Kickstarter’s best interest to promote projects with the greatest chance of success. They are after all a business and I think that they honestly attempt to level the playing field by featuring projects in the staff picks section that they value beyond that projects ability to succeed.

Knowing all this I would inform other project creators that if you are not from a major metropolitan area, are not a creative business with a dedicated following and are not featured in the staff picks section you have a decreased chance of success. I highly doubt kickstarter’s founders imagined the site as it is today. Having read their creation myth I know they wanted to make a space where cool projects could get funded and in some ways they have accomplished this. It is just that in the process they have also cerated a space where businesses could rake in a substantial amount of capitol to make things they were probably going to anyway.

When it comes to making videos I am fast. I do this for a living and so I was not intimidated by the process and felt that it would be a relatively simple to create and launch a project. I was wrong. It took a tremendous amount of time and effort and to be honest it would not have been possible without the amazing and insightful input of my most trusted friends and colleagues. It turns out that creating a Kickstarter project is not just like starting a business it is starting a business. You are preparing a marketing campaign for a product launch. Treat your project as such and you will be fine. I am an artist and academic. My brain is wired to create things and comment upon them. Learning to market and launch the game via kickstarter did not come naturally and the project that I launched differed from the one that I envisioned when I began. It took me 6 weeks to gather all of the information I needed to create the project and another three to revise it based on the input of others.

2. Promoting it is a full time job.

There is a reason that so many successful projects are run by companies. They have the resources to monitor and promote a Kickstarter campaign. In the eleven days our Kickstarter project has been active I have spent on average six hours each day working on updates, promoting it with emails and messages over twitter, participating in interviews about the game, and monitoring it’s progress. I am still not able to to do all I should do to promote it.

3. It is more than likely you do not know enough people and that your social media presence is too small.

I am not an interent celebrity. I have roughly 150 followers on twitter and no facebook account. What I do have is 20+ students who have participated in the project all with relatively large social media presences (in 2012 the average facebook user had 130 friends. These students average is roughly four times that). They have been actively promoting the project on facebook and through other social media outlets and yet when I run the numbers so far I find that 60% of the projects supporters have been personal friends of mine. They have contributed 94% of the total funds pledged to the project. This is most likely an average number and one that bodes well for launching modest projects in the $3K to $5k range. If you are looking to fund something larger then I would suggest you make some more friends.

4. Kickstarter is a socially acceptable way to ask your friends for money. For now.

So far in our campaign I have known or met almost everyone who has supported our project. Some were happy to contribute and did so willingly and without hesitation. For others it took some prodding. This being the first project I have created there is a novelty to my asking friends to support it. The vast majority of them have no interest in the game and will most likely never play it. They are supporting it because they like me.

I have already spoken to more than one friend though who has begun to show signs of what I will coin as,

“Kickstarter Fatigue” – a feeling of weariness resulting from multiple solicitations to help support a friend or acquaintance achieve their crowd funding goals.

These are generally people with a much larger social media footprint. They are already beseeched with multiple requests for support each week and it has begun to wear on them. I believe there is a time in the not so distant future that we will view requests for support with the same disdain we currently reserve for pop-stars and hipsters. The key to this of course is to create a project that will capture the attention of supporters outside your circle of friends and appeal to the masses. You see this happening on Kickstarter everyday and it is one of the reasons the site and concept are so popular.

5. You will fail more likely than not. There is no shame in this.

Over 60% of projects on Kickstarter fail. The fact is that you could do everything right and not have your project fully funded. You know what would happen then? Nothing. If your project fails, so what. You will have spent time and effort on a project you believe in and in the process you may improve your conception of what it is you are trying to do. Finally, you will have taken a risk and extended your creative vision out into the world. There is virtue in this. We live in a cynical and fractious culture and it is a brave thing to try birth something new into it. There are people who would just as soon see you fail as succeed. Ignore them. Take the risk and create something. Put it out there on Kickstarter and see what happens. You will fail more likely than not, but there is no shame in this. At least that is what I tell myself.

Emmy winning writer, director, producer, the former voice of my beloved Seattle Mariners Ken Levine has written a couple of posts on Hollywood Kickstarter projects that is of note. You can find the posts here. He has made a lot of excellent points in his piece on the influence of fame, position and the way it disadvantages other competing projects.

It turns out that my favorite teenage witch Melissa Joan Hart will follow you on twitter for a full year for the low, low price of $300 and for just $200 more she will record the outgoing greeting on your voicemail. She is offering to do all of this via Kickstarter just to make a movie.

Alright, I am up for a little competition. I will follow you on twitter for 2 full years. Hell, I might even interact with you and I am willing to do all of this for free. It would be nice if you helped promote my Kickstarter project with a retweet or something, but I am not going to judge you if you don’t. You know what else I am willing to do? I will call you on your Birthday and hang up after you answer. Wouldn’t that be nice. You could pretend it was a long lost love who just needed to hear your voice one last time. Yes, I know it would be wonderful. This one is going to cost you though. For this you will have to follow me on twitter. Just click the twitter button at the bottom of the page and I will make your heart soar and your dreams come true. Take that Sabrina the not so teenage anymore witch (don’t take this personally MJH I actually sort of dig you)!

Also of note today are the stats from the Rhythm Planet Kickstarter Project.
Amount Raised – $1070.00 up $135.00 since yesterday
Number of Backers – 17
Average pledge – $62.94
The page has been viewed 520 times
Project video has been played 110 times with 27.27% of the plays completed
Game play video has been played 34 times with 70.5% of the plays completed
Our first update video has been played 15 times with 93% of the plays completed

We are currently 3% of the way to our funding goal and curiously that is the same percentage as the views to backers ratio. If we were maintain this ratio as the norm of views to backers we need 17,334 total page views which would net us 520 total backers and a fully funded project of $32,728.80. Awesome. I guess I need to start pushing those page views. Alright, I have work to do. Check back here later for more Kickstarter fun facts and if you have not already please support the project and help us get the word out.

Amount Raised – $935.00
Number of Backers – 14
Average pledge – $66.79
The page has been viewed 435 times
Project video has been played 90 times with 25.56% of the plays completed
Game play video has been played 27 times 67% of the plays completed

The project got off to a quick start with 60% of our total funds being pledged within the first 4 hours.
Here is the break down of pledges by day.

Day One – $560.00 total number of backers 8
Day Two – $585.00 total number of backers 9
Day Three – $805.00 total number of backers 12
Day Four – $835.00 total number of backers 13
Day five – $935.00 total number of backers 14

The first day was great I cannot tell how good it felt to see the project get off to a quick start. Throughout the projects preparation I maintained contact with a number people whose input I have always highly valued. They helped shape the project and gave honest and thoughtful feedback. In creating the project video I had chosen to focus on the fact that this was a game developed by students. To me this was the most important aspect of the project. Through the process of sharing drafts of the project page with others one of the criticisms I received was that I was too focussed on the student aspect and not enough on the elements that make the game unique and interesting.

Questions I received included, “How is the game played?”, “Why would I want to be involved?”, and “How did you develop the look and feel of the game?” These were important questions to answer for potential backers, but I was not sure how to go about it. I had a project video that I had worked on for a long time. It said everything I felt it needed to say and at four minutes and thirty seconds was already in danger of being to long. What I chose to do was add a second video that explained game play and tried to address as many of the development issues in the project description as I could. If I have any regrets at this stage it is that I did not scrap the project video and create a new one which adressed game play and development issues in a more succinct way. The project in it’s current state is a bit long. If I had to do it over again I would create something more compact and easier to digest in a short period of time.

The process so far has been one of highs and lows. It meant a great deal to me that so many of the people I know decided to support the game in a substantial way. That has been the one real positive from the experience so far. I am limited in that I have not built a huge social media presence and this may be the extent of what I can accomplish without one. We are far from giving up though. People are still viewing the project and although support at the current pace will not successfully fund the project it is still early and nothing is impossible. To quote the great Muhammad Ali,

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

We will continue to work the problem until it is time to put our pencils down and live with the results of our endeavors. If you have not viewed our project the link to it is here. I will continue to write about this for as long as it is active. I find the process interesting. I hope you do as well.

You can fly man. You just have to believe.

Over the course of the last year I have come to the realization that we may never finish the game. Each group of students worked hard and improved the game in immeasurable ways, but in each instance by the time I got them up to speed and they had developed the tools they would need to be successful as professional game designers the semester would end and they would move on to other course work.

Today the we launched a Kickstarter project to fund the games completion. The link to the project is here. The plan as clearly stated in the project description is to hire several of these students to finish developing the game. I want people to be able to play this game. I want the students to be able to use it in their portfolios and have it open doors to future game development opportunities.

I will be doing quite a bit of writing about the project here in the upcoming month. The Kickstarter process is one of the most fascinatingly democratic processes active on the web today and I have learned quite a lot about it in the act of creating this project. I am sure there is more still to learn. Check back I will keep you updated.

Musician James Rhodes instructs us to “Find what you love and let it kill you.” Because death by obsession is a little less deathy.

Finally, that Spiderman doll is awesome.

Neil Gaiman’s keynote address from this years digital minds conference was of note. In it he outlined not just a way forward for the publishing industry, but solid actionable philosophy for living your life as an artist in the digital age.

Sunday’s programing on Network Awesome was an earth day celebration of all things Bigfoot. All I can say is that it is about time that two of my favorite things have combined like chocolate and peanut butter to create a fantastic Bigfoot Awesome sandwich.

Finally, a Batman and Robin gif. I know they are being chased by zombies, but I always pretend that they are being chased by an angry mob of Sasquatch.

Run, Boy Wonder, Run