Star Wars as Unlockable Kickstarter Rewards [Guest Post: Kevin Allen Jr]


Kevin Allen Jr. just posted this on Google Plus, in response to this week's Kickstarter-centric posts. It's all so good I just wanted to share it with you all:

+Daniel Solis has been talking a lot about kickstarter on his blog lately, and he's had my wrapt attention. His most recent post (linked below), gave me a nifty idea.

See I skimmed the title of his blog post in my RSS reader and got an idea of what he was going to talk about but i was WAAAAAY off. (NOTE: What he actually talks about is useful and interesting to anyone who's thinking of launching a kickstarter. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about what i thought he was talking about.)

Examining the reward titles/levels Solis whipped up, I got the idea that depending on how far over goal your kickstarter goes you would "unlock" new parts of a games (or other transmedia project's) meta-fiction.

For example: Lets say you were making a game that essentially re-created the experience of the Star Wars saga.

- At 100% success the game play emulates A New Hope. The game is totally complete, and we don't need any more to have a satisfying experience. You play the game, blow up the deathstar, kiss your sister and a wookie gets the last word.

- At 200% success The Empire Strikes Back is brought into play, the game provides ways to incorporate that films darker tone, cloud city, lando, degobah, etc. But it leaves you with a bit of a cliffhanger/mysterious ending.

-Only if the project is funded 300% do benefactors unlock The Return of the Jedi parts of the game. This rounds out the experience, delivers on promises and threats put forward in the first two levels of the game. People will want to get here. You want people to want to get here.

There's a motivation for backers to put more money in after the initial goal has been reached, because now the project they've already invested in will be even richer. Also by adjusting the scope of work to the overflow of funding you will actively be showing people where their additional monies are going (pro tip: people like that).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
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...
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results tha...
Read more

One Thing to Avoid in Game Design

Image
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 ...
Read more