Depends on the size? On par with Do? One, maybe two a year. Smaller stuff I'd go with at most 6/year (2 month cycle), but probably 4/year (3 month cycle) as more reasonable - a year or two ago I'd have said you could support more, but there's a lot more kickstarters out there in use and thus noise out there.
Depends a bit: do you think that most of your backers will be the same as before, or will you be able to attract new ones? With mostly the same backers, their money becomes an issue, I don't think there is many people willing to fund more than 3, maybe 4 projects a year. If you think you can attract new backers with each project, post the next one before the current one is finished and see how much you can fit in a year. It's true that the market is crowded now, but the pool of backers is also much larger than it was before - the ratio money_given:projects is still pretty good on Kickstarter, the real short resource is attention. By going for a new project early, you can use the attention generated by the one you're currently working on to create buzz for the new one.
So a compromise would be something like releasing three games a year, but each one is a different genre and theme that doesn't repeat for at least a year.
I'm curious about how much money people are willing to spend on Kickstarter stuff. It makes intuitive sense that starting more projects will stretch the wallet of your core fans thin, but on the other hand, it looks like there's a significant number of folks who are funding 10+ projects simultaneously.
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has...
UPDATE: The submission period has closed and here are the entries. If you're an entrant, continue sending pics or vids of people playing your game. The first step to a game lasting a thousand years is for people to play it today. UPDATE 2: And here's the winner! To support games designed for longevity – that can be learned, played and shared for hundreds of years – we offer this challenge to any game designers, artists and imaginative people who also share this desire. Challenge Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a "new classic," like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years. Prize $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012. Entry Deadline Entries must be submitted before midnight July August 31st, 2011. ( Update ) Entry Guidelines Enter by posting a comment below with a link ...
When game designer Paul Peterson was interviewed for the upcoming Titans Series of games from Calliope Games, there was one segment at 1:55 that really caught my attention (emphasis mine): "A couple years ago I was teaching people how to play Guillotine and I hadn't played in a while. The first thing I did was say, 'The first thing you gonna do when you open your game is you look through this deck and you take this card.' I pulled out the Callous Guards card and threw it over my shoulder. Everybody laughed. I said, ' That's the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life.'" Oof. Those are strong words. What's the big deal? For context, the game Guillotine is all about collecting the heads of French nobles during the revolution. There is only one guillotine, with a line of nobles waiting for their grim fate. On your turn, you play action cards to change the order of the line, then take the Noble card from the front of the ...
Depends on the size? On par with Do? One, maybe two a year. Smaller stuff I'd go with at most 6/year (2 month cycle), but probably 4/year (3 month cycle) as more reasonable - a year or two ago I'd have said you could support more, but there's a lot more kickstarters out there in use and thus noise out there.
ReplyDeleteYour so right about the crowded market these days. Just reading Purple Pawn's weekly roundup is daunting. :P
ReplyDeleteDepends a bit: do you think that most of your backers will be the same as before, or will you be able to attract new ones?
ReplyDeleteWith mostly the same backers, their money becomes an issue, I don't think there is many people willing to fund more than 3, maybe 4 projects a year.
If you think you can attract new backers with each project, post the next one before the current one is finished and see how much you can fit in a year. It's true that the market is crowded now, but the pool of backers is also much larger than it was before - the ratio money_given:projects is still pretty good on Kickstarter, the real short resource is attention. By going for a new project early, you can use the attention generated by the one you're currently working on to create buzz for the new one.
So a compromise would be something like releasing three games a year, but each one is a different genre and theme that doesn't repeat for at least a year.
ReplyDeleteI think it depends on the project, but I'd say at least three - six months between them. Two - three solid projects a year seems reasonable.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about how much money people are willing to spend on Kickstarter stuff. It makes intuitive sense that starting more projects will stretch the wallet of your core fans thin, but on the other hand, it looks like there's a significant number of folks who are funding 10+ projects simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteDo you think the delayed payment is contributing to that?
ReplyDeleteYeah, that sounds good. That way you maximize the number of different people backing the project instead of always depending on the same ones.
ReplyDelete