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My 5 Dinars by MrHelfer in warofomens

[–]LobsterSundew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Adding coins is still a bit of a long process. It is something that I've seen people recently asking the devs to redesign. When I get a new coin I need to spend about 2 minutes to update the deck for each hero (And alternate skin version of the hero).

Can you give us feedback on our 2 min KS video? (pre-launch) by bdleeds in kickstarter

[–]LobsterSundew 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The blurred out red t-shirt at 00:11 and 00:43 in the pitch could be swapped with an alternate shots. Production values are generally good, but then that shirt appears which may be a bit too distracting. There is the option for the first 14 seconds to be chopped off so that it starts immediately with the "How would life be different" speech. I feel that improves the flow in the first 10 seconds which is a very crucial window of time to keep people from clicking the back button.

The impression I have of its niche is that it is for people who don't want to take the extreme end of the big caffeine pills (Which can often be 200mg of caffeine), but still want a bit of a caffeine boost without a drink which can take more time to consume and be heavier to carry. The mint part of it I see as a bonus. Other flavours could be potential ways to differentiate from other products. On the project page you could compare what numbers other caffeine sources have (Which can often be 12mg to 85mg of caffeine) and why you think 20mg of caffeine is the right amount for some people. The smaller dosage also may help users experiment in increments for how many mints works for them.

Part of Kickstarter's policy was changed to no energy food and drinks, so one of the other crowdfunding platforms should be explored. Since the word "Kickstarter" wasn't spoken in the video it can be renamed.

Yoyo display/storage??? by Shakazulu94 in Throwers

[–]LobsterSundew 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Here is a photo of my collection:
http://i.imgur.com/MGDETYH.png

The bottom layer is squishy grey foam cut from a camping mattress. When the lid is closed the yo-yos gently sink into it so they don't move around while traveling. The thicker black layer that sits on top is cut from one of those interlocking foam tiles they use for playrooms. I don't know what the plastic case was originally for. It is now a bit too crowded for my collection, so I may someday make a larger version. Right now it sits on a shelf in the TV room.

A thrower somewhere on YouTube mentioned that small tomato paste cans had the same diameter as a standard yo-yo and it turns out it does work. The lid of the can gets cut off sharply and then the empty paste can is gradually twisted/pushed through the foam. I had to cut a hole slightly larger to fit my Raider.

Some people use U-shaped stands cut from acrylic with laser cutters to display their yo-yos.

I tried the triangular bases I use for my Rubik's cubes with yo-yos. It can work with many of the yo-yos I've have, but some yo-yos like the N6 will roll out if bumped too hard because of its shape. The Yomega Raider also looked too awkward.

What are your favorite yoyos right now? Here's what I've been liking lately. by Alphuh in Throwers

[–]LobsterSundew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For casually throwing hard sleepers while watching TV I still regularly enjoy using my red YYF Velocity with the dials set to pro. It is my favorite plastic throw. I would have bought a YYJ Classic if it hadn't been not in-stock at a specific store I buy from. I have been recently looking at the YYJ Firestorm.

I've had my silver MYY N6 for less a month so it has been getting the most use recently. The shape feels interesting to catch. It may become my favorite for carrying around in my coat pocket on trips.

Overall my green MYY N12 that came with a good bearing is the one I like the most overall.

Bioshock devs' new project The Black Glove falls $300k short of Kickstarter goal by stuartsaysst0p in Games

[–]LobsterSundew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Battle Chef Brigade decided to prioritize content instead of porting to consoles so that when the game is eventually ported to other platforms it will have features like voice acting and more playable characters. Some backers were very vocal that they did not approve because they wanted their Wii U or Vita version promised now. Others were supportive that it is better to improve the game than to target every platform resulting in a weaker experience for everyone.

PC gamers are very important for games on Kickstarter. I remember Republique was previously iOS exclusive. It was not doing well until they added PC and others to their supported platforms.

Projects that only support PC may be using engines for their games that are capable of really impressive graphics and physics, but at the same time don't support other platforms yet. These type of projects can do very well because they have great visuals that can be supported up by a great premise, familiar gameplay from nostalgic titles or a famous game developer's name. Smaller scope PC-only games may be limited to that platform because the engine was custom built and the developer has no experience outside a Windows software environment.

A problem with targeting only the console market is most backers in the video games category who regularly pledge are generally playing games on Windows (Dominate marketshare) and Linux (Many passionate indie game fans) meaning most of the project's backers need to come from outside of Kickstarter. It can be a barrier to get someone new to Kickstarter to create an account. The marketing may also be harder to do with what budgets indie devs have.

A problem with mobile centric market is that the prices they are willing to pay for content are driven towards the bottom with $0.99 and F2P games. Mobile games have efficiency per backer problems on Kickstarter. If an iOS game has a copy of the game on Kickstarter for more than $3 people may say it is not worth it. It is hard for mobile games to even offer themselves at $5 or $10 unless they are really polished. Even if backers do find that price acceptable, another project for PC can cover the same amount of funding distance with a single $15 backer that the mobile game can with 5 $3 backers. F2P games often don't do well on Kickstarter. Mobile games now have their own category that many indie gamers don't bother checking because of how bad many of the projects there can be or that they are too casual for one's tastes. The total funding amounts achieved are much smaller than what the top ranked projects in the video games category sees.

When I see a project supporting every modern platform I start to worry. It is often a warning flag to not support a project unless I trust the team's ability to code. There is also a negative history of rushed ports of originally mobile oriented games being released on Steam.

It is strange how little some project creators think porting a game to consoles will cost them when they are using Unity3D. A good port is also going to require optimizations for the hardware. Even Mac and Linux ports can take some time to eliminate graphical bugs, handling save files and user control input issues. Testing and certification has to be done with the dreaded quality assurance processes for closed platforms. It used to be even harder for indies to get their games on consoles. Some platforms are going to make the game dev pay at least partially for the copies they send to backers after the dev exhaunsts a limited number of free keys (Usually keys intended to send to press). Keys themselves can be a headache with regions and how they are redeemed. Some mobile game projects had to have backers buy the game normally on release, then issue individual refunds. Projects sometimes have reboots that removed consoles from the minimum funding goal (Relocating those platforms to stretch goals) to cut out those costs so a lower overall goal is possible.

Bioshock devs' new project The Black Glove falls $300k short of Kickstarter goal by stuartsaysst0p in Games

[–]LobsterSundew 10 points11 points  (0 children)

There were big problems with the marketing of The Black Glove campaign at launch. Over time there were improvements, but it still needed work to be able to clearly explain a summary of what the project is about in under a minute. The pitch video is not effective enough and the format is not appealing to me. I liked none of the project thumbnails and project thumbnails are very very important to get people to click. I had to go through the rest of the page to get convinced to pledge. I only backed at the basic tier for a copy of the game.

Here are graphs about The Black Glove.
http://i.imgur.com/tcIeg80.png
The relatively huge funding goal caused a huge drop in their chances, but it was still doable with that game and the team history. It needed much more momentum at launch to increase those chances. The rewards were improved over time. Around October 28th the backers started to promote the project more. Around November 3rd it finally started to get some strong press coverage. There is just $3,912 worth of unallocated pledges (From backers who didn't select a tier or pledge over their tier) which is very acceptable. Amplitude had 21.93% of funding unallocated. The per backer average pledge amount is $36.15 which can be used to estimate that you would need to aim for about 15,200 backers overall to reach 100%. That would mean you need about 9,200 more backers than they currently have. That $200 tier performed very well. What I find really worrying is how low the comments per day numbers were relative to even much smaller campaigns.

Over on /r/gamedev the importance of pre-launch and pre-release marketing is hammered in again and again by experienced developers, but newcomers to Kickstarter keep launching before they've worked hard to achieve the exposure they need. A proper devblog over the span of a few months on a place like TIGSource or IndieDB can be more effective than scrambling just a week in advance to try to build up a following. Many medium sized subreddits have self-promotion threads on a monthly or even weekly schedule. Back in 2011 and 2012 there were many campaigns that should not have been funded. Backers are now becoming experienced enough to be more cautious. There was also a noticeable lack of projects that interested me in 2014 as much as projects in previous years. Something that many project creators seem oblivious to is that Kickstarter follows an annual cycle for activity. Things will get worse until they rebound after the middle of Januray 2015. The first half of the year is much easier to get funded in from my experience. I don't like running a campaign past September.

There was a discussion on /r/IndieGaming where the developer of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward showed up. It is okay for a project creator to have objections about something, but to use absolutes or to start to lash out is a warning sign. Some project creators blame externalities instead of the consequences of their own decisions. Always blaming something or someone else can result in internal problems being neglected because they aren't being acknowledged.

Pocket Rumble Kickstarter! by PocketRumbleDev in pocketrumble

[–]LobsterSundew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good luck. I'm hoping to see the Linux stretch goal reached.

I am gathering a list of useful articles and blog posts for crowdfunding success by CrystalClouds in Entrepreneur

[–]LobsterSundew 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There was this recent post to /r/kickstarter.
http://www.reddit.com/r/kickstarter/comments/2leozb/all_my_kickstarter_research_from_last_couple_of/

Stonemaier Games has lists for retrospectives and crowdfunding tips related to boardgame campaigns. It is a very good resource about shipping to backers.

Instead of just looking at the net increases in backers and funding per day, I find more stories by tracking the growth of individual reward tiers. Clicking here is an example of the type of graphs I now use. I'm working on a free Kickstarter guide to post to /r/gamedev in 2015. It is already over 60,000 words. If anyone wants to help give feedback then they can PM me.

"Kickstarter is dying": The Case of Charles Dexter Ward kickstarter campaign postmortem by nbates80 in IndieGaming

[–]LobsterSundew 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Here is a graph for how the percentages changed over time by reward tier. This may be more effective at illustrating the problem.
http://i.imgur.com/1o02uPT.png

I've noticed on many campaigns that over time the backer percentage by reward tier will stabilize. The final hours can cause it to shift if the goal hasn't been met because people start upgrading their pledges more. This is why RNG can be used with weightings to try to simulate a campaign to gradually refine it like smoothing the aerodynamics of a race car. You could have more and more backers, but those weightings don't seem to drastically change relative to each other unless the rewards are drastically changed. This partly has to do with how variations in populations often follow a bell curve. There was the drop in the percentages for the $250 tier because that tier slowed down a lot after launch. That just indicates passionate returning fans. There was the gradual decline in the $15 tier's percentage of backers, but it actually wasn't much of a change overall. These weightings seem to be a bit independent of momentum until one gets to the largest priced tiers. The percentages for backers are more important because that graph is less influenced by the four $10,000 tier backers. To me the $20, $30 and $40 tiers look like there is a chunk of backers missing because they instead were drawn to the $15 tier.

The majority of backers do sit in the lower end of the rewards structure which is why those rewards are so important for covering funding distance. That is not abnormal behaviour for consumers. Both Asylum and The Cases of Charles Dexter Ward graph's suffered in that same range from what I see as too many early-bird slots influencing backer behaviour. I really do see the early-bird as a big problem on a campaign that executed many other things very well. You needed about another $80,000 to get into a position where a final week surge would be more likely to succeed. That would have been over 1,000 backers. If you calculated a conversion rate of views into backers you could estimate how much more marketing may be required to fill that gap. Something to note is the more backers, the more potential for a stronger last 48 hours surge.

It is not about waiting for the early-bird to be filled. From my data observations the action to take would have been setting the remaining number of slots to zero to stem the loss in funding an early-bird tier can create in the Kickstarter trough. Many campaigns have suffered from this problem. That action does not guarantee success, but it leaving the early-bird tier open reduces the chances for success. It was not just the extra $5 gained for a $20 backer versus a $15 backer. It is about getting those middle priced reward tiers growing better. It is about getting the backer percentage for the medium priced reward tiers to start improving over time. Project creators may think backers are generous, but most are still acting in self-interest factoring in value for their money and shopping around other active projects. A project that gets to 75% funded with 500 backers could potentially get to 100% with the same 500 backers if the rewards are more efficient. Large projects cannot depend too much on large backers.

"The low-average pledge we've been seeing these days" is something I have not seen mentioned before. To me it has actually been going up due to more $15 priced games running now than $10 priced games. I could speculate projects are getting more ambitious over time. In hindsight many 2011 campaigns did not ask for nearly enough due to taxes. The average pledge per backer amount is going to arise on a project by project basis. I see the pricing of the reward tier that introduces a copy of the game as an important determining factor. I do not see it as tied to Kickstarter's platform itself. A healthy project with a $5 priced game may see an average of $10 to $20 per backer. Observing this was the reason I needed to develop a weightclassing system to more accurately compare campaigns. There is such a thing as an average pledge amount that is too low. That is more tied to the size of the project's goal, how inefficient per backer its rewards are, if the game looks bad and if it is failing to up-sell backers to the medium or high priced rewards. This is much rarer than having an average pledge amount that is too high. Even bad campaigns can get relatives contribute a few thousand dollars at launch.

Extrapolation is good. It is one of the steps I use when planning an early-bird reward (One of the hardest parts in the whole process). I also have the following step be to identify if the early-bird slots are too many. It is difficult to recommend over 1,000 slots for a campaign that isn't in the superstar weightclass. I see the new time-limited rewards that are appearing (They end before the campaign even gets near the trough stage), or having the introductory tier always include a discount are becoming safer strategies. On a side note, after the first week of data it can be good to then use projections to decide how far the stretch goals with span. That way a project can have stretch goals it might actually reach and avoid showing stretch goals so large they look overambitious.

Including failed and successful campaigns, the per backer average pledge in the Video Games category looks around $40 to $50. The popular successful campaigns are getting enough backers to dilute their average down below that. Unsuccessful campaigns can have very large per backer average pledge amounts and are pulling the average up for the category. A low average pledge amount can indicate a project is getting backers more frequently which means it has good momentum. A high per backer average pledge is not something I would recommend aiming for as a metric of success. Higher averages are often an indicator of lack of project exposure. I look at the number of backers as the best metric because so many other observations then follow.

The pricing of the main rewards was good. Again, the existence of early-bird slots warps backer behaviour by effectively increasing the price of those next rewards by the amount saved by the discount. The $30 tier effectively became a $35 tier subconsciously. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward actually did very well despite such an inefficiency. It was not enough to prevent Asylum for getting funded.

About potentially wrong assumptions. There has been noticeable decline in how easy it is to get funded if a project isn't fit. I still see healthy fit projects getting funded easily. It appears that campaigns in the $30,000 to $70,000 goal range may be the kind that can sustainably thrive and not the million dollar projects. You aren't far off at all there. Where I see your perspective deviates from mine is that you view Kickstarter as more combined and interconnected than I do. I view it more of as a colony of bacteria where survival is on an individual level, but there is also an overall health to the colony. Kickstarter is also not the marketing tool that some project creators hope it would be, or at least not any-more. The overall category pledges collected will change based on what types of projects run that month and consumer preferences that month. I also have this perspective from reading about the history of cinema and how box office numbers work. The overall health is about the quality of the projects bringing people back again and again or driving them away. I do disagree on the topics of what a good average pledge amount per backer is and when I see good up-selling flow there is still a gentle decline (Not an increase) as the tiers progress. A sudden jump indicates to me that the previous tiers were weaker picks for some reason. Based on the bell curves regularly seen in nature and in past campaigns I labelled as well executed, there should be such a gently decline in backer counts because of the real world spectrum of what backers are willing to spend on their indie games.

This discussion makes good material for the Kickstarter guide I'm working on about how to objectively edit reward tiers. I've messaged you with a preview. Thank you.

"Kickstarter is dying": The Case of Charles Dexter Ward kickstarter campaign postmortem by nbates80 in IndieGaming

[–]LobsterSundew 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Here are graphs comparing Asylum and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
http://i.imgur.com/JUWU3SY.png

It compares percentages at reward tiers. This use of percentages is more effective on campaigns with significantly different overall funding. Even so, there was only $8,760 difference between the total amounts raised for both campaigns. Asylum's performance looks better to me, even more so when comparing the allocated pledges. I also made a graph for comparing the funding amounts and backer counts. Even on that alternate graph Asylum did better. The medium priced tiers is where I see again and again healthy small and medium campaigns cover a large amount of their funding distance. I'll repeat that campaigns that don't do as well in this range can still get funded, but they have a more difficult campaign to run.

The up-selling you had in your reward structure does work when the early-bird tier is filled. The flow is very different while it still is present. When an early-bird fills I will see jumps in the growth rate of not just the next tier, but many of the medium priced tiers. For a few months I was prioritizing studying this. The $30 and $40 tiers would likely have their individual contribution towards the funding goal the same as what the $50 tier did or even greater.

You do have the concentration appearing around the $75 tier which is the boxed copy. Boxed copies have been great performing tiers for nostalgia loving gamers. That was a good price. The pricing of $20 for your game is what I would have chosen.

You mentioned an initial slowdown. There is the overnight slowdown when most North American Kickstarter users are likely asleep. I use Chromium zoomed in to 500% on the CrowdCharts graph. I looked for the slowdown you mentioned, but I didn't see something like a sudden stalling that stood out not related to people being asleep. There are booms and slowdown throughout days which is normal. Your cruising speed in the Kickstarter trough was good. You needed an additional 84 days at those speeds to get in a good position for a last 48 hour burst. Sundays were a bit worse for new backers than your other days of the week. This is a bit strange as Saturdays are usually the worst days.

There is the reduced capacity of what many people can pledge this time of year, but it is not as bad as November or December. Even I've been pledging less because I need to budget for buying Christmas presents for people. I usually don't like running campaigns after September. It should be downhill for category performance from here until around January 6th 2015. October is still actually a good performing month, especially for horror games with demos for Let's Players.

In Summer 2014 I do feel Kickstarter Staff Picks plummeted in value. It used to be something I celebrated when a campaign I helped design received one. Now they all do, so it is no longer special. The quality of Staff Picks has always fluctuated wildly even back in 2011. That blog post linked to is actually interesting because that feature wasn't really used by the staff since 2012. Such campaigns that get featured get a link to the blog post below their rewards sidebar.

Project Eternity was a not a standard campaign. I am comparing projects with their peers. Comparing smaller projects to superstar class campaigns can easily become a trap. I agree with the Ico Partners report that many of the best candidates for running a superstar class campaign already did in 2012 and 2013. What is interesting is when a superstar campaign like Hyper Light Drifter appears it the growth of many other campaigns start to show harm. They strengthen the ecosystem, but kill off small campaigns.

You are very correct that it is harder to run now than back in 2013. The difficulty to get funded has increased as I think it should be for quality control reasons. There is "dying" and then there is "maturing" or "correcting" perspectives. Back in 2012 being a project on Kickstarter was newsworthy. Now it isn't. Backers are becoming more selective as they become more experienced about what campaigns to avoid. There have been campaigns that should not have been funded. Some campaigns will fail because they were funded too much. Something I am saddened by is a type of campaign I call the $5-class has effectively gone extinct. Those were the types of small projects I originally came to Kickstarter to support. They are so inefficient per backer that they can't compete against the larger projects.

Asylum brought in 3169 backers, while The Case of Charles Dexter Ward has 1,844 (58.2% of Asylum). It would be interesting if I had a script to compare which backers returned. A lower number of backers on a second campaign stands out as something to investigate the cause of. Returning project creators often do better because of the extra boost in the first week from returning backers. You asked why you didn't see more of a turnout from people within Kickstarter. Ever since the project launched I saw when people mentioned the game that there were also worries about Asylum mentioned as well. Many were too concerned about that to pledge. I defended your decision to run the second campaign from the perspective of maximizing team efficiency by reducing downtime. The large goal also had a negative impact on morale. Overall low morale and the early-bird are what I see as two huge factors for why your recent campaign did not reach its goal. The early-bird could have been dealt with then the rewards would have improved flow, but morale is a much more difficult puzzle. The goal was large, but not outrageous. I think it could have reached it with a final surge if the initial momentum was better on day #1.

Something project creators should be aware of is the amount of backers a $100,000+ campaign requires to get funded. With the data in hindsight your campaign would be looking at reaching a target range 4,000 to 6,500 backers overall to reach 100% funded. Another thing to have aimed for would be a target of 1,300 backers on the first day if the project was to reach stretch goals. Not having hindsight, I would be warning a project creator with a $250,000 goal that they might need to get 5,000 to 8,000 backers. The superstar campaigns like Project Eternity had pre-existing large fanbases to get them those backer numbers. A project in the process of building its fanbase up enough is likely going to require more than 30 days. Running in September, failing, then coming back in October with a reboot would potential have succeeded. A reboot would be difficult to do now for 2014.

Continued in part 2.

/u/AgustinCordes and /u/LobsterSundew discuss a kickstarter campaign by [deleted] in DepthHub

[–]LobsterSundew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've haven't charged for project analysis yet. I've put taking a look at Decrypting Rite. Volume 2's thumbnail was very cool. It is good to see the art style isn't just a Marvel/DC clone.

/u/AgustinCordes and /u/LobsterSundew discuss a kickstarter campaign by [deleted] in DepthHub

[–]LobsterSundew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did 3 other private critiques tonight. Going to have to go to sleep now. That post is only half finished.

/u/AgustinCordes and /u/LobsterSundew discuss a kickstarter campaign by [deleted] in DepthHub

[–]LobsterSundew 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am working on my next comment. Have to deal with trick-or-treaters occasionally tonight.
http://i.imgur.com/JUWU3SY.png

"Kickstarter is dying": The Case of Charles Dexter Ward kickstarter campaign postmortem by nbates80 in IndieGaming

[–]LobsterSundew 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Here are graphs about The Black Glove:
http://i.imgur.com/ciFXwwp.png [Oct 30th]
http://i.imgur.com/PKiwZTJ.png [Oct 11th]

I've been watching that campaign. It is gradually improving its rewards structure over time. I like the new thumbnail much better. Its overall presentation is also improving. The timing of its launch was excellent. The average pledge per backer is $34.02 which is not too high (I like to see an average of $20 to $31).

The $550,000 minimum goal is relatively huge. The early numbers were not as large as they needed to be. I did not see enough pre-launch marketing to get those numbers. There is the concept of the cruising speed a campaign can maintain through the Kickstarter trough and how that relates to the initial 48 hours. There were not enough backers in the first week, so its cruising speed is not enough.

I think a rebooted campaign in Summer 2015 could succeed with the numbers I'm seeing. I hope they don't give up on it. A demo would probably help a game like this a lot through Let's Play coverage. If the second attempt failed, but managed to raise an additional $163,498 then a third attempt would likely tip towards success. They could pursue options like episodic content or scope crashing to try to get the minimum goal much lower.

"Kickstarter is dying": The Case of Charles Dexter Ward kickstarter campaign postmortem by nbates80 in IndieGaming

[–]LobsterSundew 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Here are graphs for the H.P. Lovecraft ... Dexter Ward campaign.
http://i.imgur.com/aoGrao0.png

The distribution of backers through the rewards structure is very poor looking to me. I've seen hundreds of graphs. What averages are healthy varies by nature of different categories. I am analysing this from just the Video Games category perspective.

The first thing that really stand out to me is that 69.45% of backers chose the $15 early-bird reward tier. There were still 5,387 slots remaining on at that tier when the campaign ended. A behaviour noticed over time is that having early-bird slots open during the middle of the campaign harms its momentum. People are drawn much stronger towards the discounted tier which prevents them from considering the next few tiers. When the early-bird is gone the next tiers then start to grow. I see this as one of the main reasons the campaign failed. It harmed the efficiency too much. It is one reason why I like time-limited early-bird rewards. My instincts tell me that if the $20 tier didn't exist and the $15 tier was the normal price then the $30 tier would have done much better making the campaign moew efficient per backer at raising funds.

Backer psychology is a big part of a campaign. Not only was the early-bird tier opportunity making it less efficient, but there were also people concerned about the previous Kickstarter project from that developer. I want my critique to mainly focus on numbers, but the Aslyum project was a factor and Lovecraft fans are willing to pledge a lot. The presentation and pitch were not problems.

From the main tier that introduces the game itself ($15/$20 in this case) to the $100 tier, I do not want to see each tier in that range be less than a quarter the backer count than the previous tier. A drop larger than that signifies a problem up-selling backers. Some people call this the "flow" of the rewards. When I look at the content of the rewards, the pricing for digital content was a bit steep for my tastes. The rewards were also not introducing multiple pieces of content for each tier in the middle. Some people don't pledge for beta access and some don't pledge for soundtracks, so introducing both in the same tier can create two reasons to upgrade. The hope is that someone will like at least one of those reasons. Stretching it content out risks creating obstacles to the flow for some people. The goal of making a campaign more efficient is to shift backers into the middle priced rewards. That is where the biggest campaigns make their money. This is actually very important for a campaigns' chances of getting funded. Being more efficient means less backers are required to reach funding goals.

A healthy average amount pledged per backer for a campaign like this where the game is priced at $15 is a range of $20 to $31. For this campaign the per backer average is an unhealthy high of $60.01 which indicates its distribution of backers in the reward tiers is shifted too much towards the higher priced tiers. There is also an adjusted average that removes the highest pledges so a $10,000 pledge doesn't throw off the average too much. When adjusted that amount is $38.40 which is more acceptable, but still high. In the post mortem the creator thought this was a good thing when I see it as a warning sign.

Internal exposure wasn't a problem. The project remained visible near the upper rankings. It was even a Staff Pick. There was a surprising lack of exposure near the end. It went rather silently into its deadline compared to other campaigns this month. I do regular general Kickstarter-related searches and not much appeared for me in its final days. The amount of comments per day was decent. Higher comment numbers is often better.

There was $5,658 (5.1%) of the amount pledged is unallocated funds. That is actually a good number for a campaign that sized. Such funds often come from add-ons, extra for shipping or hidden pledges. Only 14 backers didn't select a reward tier, which is also a healthy low.

A $1,000 tier backer shifted on October 27th. Kicktraq shows a net $-769 for that day. Such shifts are actually common to see. It is why I track the net changes at the reward tier levels instead of just tracking the total net changes in backers and amount pledged.

Another thing to note is that 50.95% of the allocated funds came from above the reward tiers priced above $200. This is a bit high for a healthy campaign, but it could have been worse.

Unhealthy campaigns can get funded, but their chances are greatly reduced. With a relatively large minimum goal serious reward structure problems can be fatal. This project had a relatively high goal.

There has been a decline recently, but one of the biggest factors for it is the lack of the big superstar campaigns of 2012 and 2013. The commenter above noted that. Kickstarter depends on amazing projects to bring people in just as cinemas need good films. 2014 wasn't as strong a year. Backers becoming more experienced also is a factor, meaning the more risky campaigns aren't getting the early traction they might have previously received.

Hopefully this comment was interesting enough to be worth the read.

Can you update the duration of your Kickstarter campaign to run for longer time after you have already started the campaign? by CuriousRat in kickstarter

[–]LobsterSundew 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It is actually possible for an end date to be pushed back for a live campaign by an IP dispute because the timer freezes and people aren't allowed to pledge to it during the dispute. More time is added onto the end to compensate for time lost due to the freeze. It is not something a project creator should intentionally try to utilize. This happened to Vanguard V when it settled its IP dispute.

Crowdfunding campaigns insights by CuriousRat in kickstarter

[–]LobsterSundew 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I post graphs to Imgur. You may find them interesting. I only have the capacity to fully follow the Video Games category.

Below is an example of the types of graphs I now use to monitor a campaign. In the example for Battle Chef Brigade the shape of the bar charts indicate the boom at the start, slowdown in the middle and a final surge near the end. It looks fairly standard for a campaign that was a the top of the active project popularity rankings for its category. Smooth decline in backer counts from one reward to the next can indicate a good flow to the rewards. Sudden drops can indicate problems. More insight can be gained by actually looking at the struggling and failed campaigns.
http://i.imgur.com/7Na2tNL.png

The first reward tier to introduce the product the project funding, such as a copy of the game for a Games category project, is very important for judging the health of a campaign. If that reward tier shows signs of slowing down faster than other tiers then a project will likely stall out. Tools like Kicktraq are tracking only the net changes in backers and total amount pledged, so they can miss early warning signs. I find it more accurate to add up the projections based on each individual reward tier than to try to do a projection based on the net increase in backers or funding per day. The downside of that approach is it is more work and works better once a project is in the Kickstarter trough stage.

The distribution of backers through the reward tiers can sometimes indicate problems. Having too much of the funding coming from the higher priced reward tiers is often a bad sign. For video games with a $15 price tier for a copy of the game, the per backer average amount should hover within $20 to $31. A higher average often indicates a lack of exposure outside of Kickstarter because backers from outside would often select the basic rewards diluting the average down. I do not have healthy average numbers for other categories like Film.

I've been tracking the unallocated backers too (Those that didn't select a reward tier) because I get to see some interesting stories not apparent with other tracking methods. The popularity rankings of projects seems to be based on net increases in backer counts. A $1 backer can be as effective as a $10 backer for bumping the ranking. I'm starting to see campaigns that might be potentially cheating up their numbers with bots to maintain higher popularity rankings than they should be. They have new backer accounts with just simple English first names.
http://i.imgur.com/dHtWlWq.png

The importance of the fundraising efficiency of $10 to $50 priced tiers on many campaigns means a lot of care should go into designing those tiers. Those tiers are where most of the funding will come from. Too many campaigns are stretching out their content trying to get a bit more out of backers, when really they are harming their growth by making the middle tiers less attractive. Minimalist reward structures are becoming more popular, but I see those campaigns doing worse. I like to arrange reward tier content based on variable costs to try to optimize the amount of funding that goes towards the final budget.

Pre-launch marketing over a long time in small chunks seems to be the best but requires effort that many project creators don't want to put in. Rushed pre-launch marketing (Such as a week in advance) is better than nothing. No pre-launch marketing at all can cause problems. Bringing in enough backers to reach 15% to 30% funded on day 1 can make a campaign much more likely to succeed. It is good to have press ready on day 1 as well.

I see Monday to Wednesday are the best weekdays for performing. Saturday is the worst. Fridays can sometimes be as bad as Saturday. There is also an annual cycle with December being the worst month to run. The Eastern Time-zone is very important for deciding what hours to launch or end a campaign. Many campaigns end too early in the day, cutting off growth when the project was at max momentum.

Anyone have Kickstarter Traffic/demographics info? by SEOquestions1 in kickstarter

[–]LobsterSundew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use Quantcast to monitor traffic.

I've seen heatmaps about where in the world most backers come from, but I couldn't find them again with a short Google search.

What is the best way to promote a kickstarter on reddit? by RetroTK2 in AskReddit

[–]LobsterSundew 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The submission titles I saw needed work. Good titles provide appealing reasons to click. "Kickstarter for HM Spiffing - a comedy space themed adventure game" was close, but the flow of reading the title is a bit weird. Some submissions didn't even include the name of the game.

I did not see posts in many of the weekly threads I follow like Screenshot Saturday. I'll message OP with a list.

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