This is an ongoing blog to chronicle my experience with Kickstarter, from a sample "beginner" project to a real board game project (and possibly more)!
Right up until I left for Essen Spiel, I'd been working diligently to set up the Kickstarter campaign for Mutant Meeples. Compared to my last outing on Kickstarter (the successful Board 2 Pieces compendiums), this was almost double the work.
While I had the basics of the project page up and in place, there was a ton of work to do on the "story" section, in particular adding graphics. Kickstarter doesn't provide very good tools for typography, so each of my "comic style" headings needed to be a separate image file. Further, Kickstarter doesn't store images on its site, so they have to be placed on an FTP site and linked to within the story document (all this without access to the HTML, just some strange meta-editor that Kickstarter provides).
Then it was time to tweak the rewards. Kickstarter projects tend to include shipping costs, which means I had to estimate the shipping cost for each game and build it into the price of the rewards. This is of course no simple matter, but I was able to estimate the weight of the game with its shipping box (just under 4 pounds) and check the USPS site for pricing info. Of course, because it's kickstarter, I also needed to add 10% (due to the fees from both Kickstarter and Amazon).
For the price of the game itself, I had to figure out the per-unit cost on the minimum amount of games to be produced (500), add all the fees the printer doesn't add initially (things like dies for cutting cardboard, special other fees and shipping to the US from the manufacturer).
I ended up making only a few levels of rewards to make the process simpler for potential backers: The base game, the expansion (including the base game), and two levels of "premium" backing that include getting a street/avenue on the gameboard named after you. I had to throw out one of the rewards I wanted due to unknown and potentially high manufacturing costs: an electronic timer to replace the sand timer...it wasn't even the cost of the individual item, it was actually the minimums needed to produce it that was problematic. The rewards ended up as follows:
$45 for the Base game $60 for the Sidekick expansion + Base game $200 for the personalized Street + Base/Expansion $260 for the personalized Avenue + two copies of the Base/Expansion
While all of this required work, it paled relative to the video. Even if you have no intention of backing this game, you should definitely check out the video at http://kck.st/tdBQSV. It's pretty amazing; it all came together really well.
First, I wrote the script and recorded myself saying it, then listened to it and edited it down to about 5 minutes. Then I hired Eric Michael Summerer, the super nice guy who does The Dice Tower with Tom Vasel, to do the voice work in a fun, semi-campy Super Friends tone. While he was recording that, I went to work on the imagery for the video, which I had already specified in the script.
Once I received the final voice recording, I started work on the video by placing the voice in the video editor (Final Cut Pro X), and editing it by removing pauses and several phrases I deemed to be unnecessary. The time was down to 3:15, which is where it ended up...just the right amount of time to tell the story of the game.
Putting in all the graphics and video was a long, laborious process that took about 30 hours. I added the music midway through the process, which helped rejuvenate me and inspired me to add the fancier "text effects" (I used Motion X to create a custom text effect for the zooming text that appears throughout).
After the video was complete, it was time to head off to Essen, so I let the project bake while I was gone (it's easier to critically view something after you've been away from it for a while).
At Essen Spiel, I showed the game off to dozens (hundreds?) of people who came by the booth, and actually gathered dozens of emails of people who were interested enough in the game to be notified when the kickstarter campaign was to begin. While the primary focus of Essen Spiel was in my new games (TieBreaker, Ultimate Werewolf: Night Terrors and Ultimate Werewolf Artifacts), everyone at the booth spent a good amount of time demoing Mutant Meeples too.
Shortly after my return, however, I jumped back on the project, and started tweaking the text and rewards slightly. Tuesday afternoon I pulled the trigger, and now with only a few hours in the game is already at more than $1000 (the goal is set to a modest 10,000)!
www.board2pieces.com has the latest Board 2 Pieces comics and merchandise!
If you haven't played Ultimate Werewolf, you're missing out on the best version of werewolf ever!!!
Transitioning to a Boardgame Kickstarter Campaign (Mutant Meeples kickstarter project). http://kck.st/tdBQSV
With my previous successful Kickstater campaign winding down, in which I received more than 400% of the funding necessary to print annotated collections of my Board 2 Pieces comics, I’ve been working very hard behind the scenes to set up the next campaign. My plan has always been to use Kickstarter for games that are too big for Bezier Games to publish otherwise, and now that I’ve had a “practice run” with the Board 2 Pieces books, I’m ready to dive in.
The first project is a game called Mutant Meeples. I’m sure that people who have played RR will initially refer to Mutant Meeples as “Ricochet Robots with Super Powers” but that’s only because it’s a good way to get the concept across. It uses the Ricochet Robots pathfinding mechanic and it is definitely a puzzle game, but that’s where the similarities end.
Mutant Meeples is much more of a game than a puzzle, with players vying to be the first to form a team of six Mutant Meeples. In order to add a Mutant Meeple to their team, the player must be the first to reach the Scene of the Crime Target on the gameboard each round. Whichever one of their Mutant Meeples gets there is added to their super team, and can no longer be used in future rounds. This subtle mechanic makes Mutant Meeples incredibly compelling, as the better you do, the less options you have. But since all players are facing the same dilemma, it feels fair (and provides the side benefit of allowing players who might not be so good at puzzle games to not be locked out completely). The tension is ratcheted up a notch each round until one player finally gets six of his eight Mutant Meeples onto his super team.
All of the Mutant Meeples have super speed, which they haven’t quite figured out how to control, so the only way they can stop is by running into a building, the edge of the city, or another Mutant Meeple. Each of the eight Mutant Meeples that come with the base game have a unique super power; learning how to use each of those superpowers is key to doing well at the game. For instance, Forrest Jump has the ability to jump over two spaces, and the Blue Beamer can teleport to one of four spots on the board. These superpowers “cost” one move each, and only can be used once per round.
The physical composition of Mutant Meeples is quite striking; it comes in a Ticket To Ride/Dominion-sized box, it contains a double-sided gameboard (with Meepville, a good beginner/starter map on one side, and Meeptropolis, a much more difficult map on the other), 8 custom painted Mutant Meeples, loads of cardboard tiles and player mats, and a 30 second timer. For Kickstarter backers, not only will they get a copy of the game, but they can also get the Kickstarter-exclusive Sidekick expansion, which contains tiles to modify the gameboard and two new Mutant Meeples with new super powers: Nacho Fast and Swapmeet. There’s also an electronic timer to replace the sand timer in the game, and for those who want to make a permanent mark on the game, they can have the streets and avenues in Meepville and Meeptropolis named after themselves.
The game is complete, though there are slight tweaks to the gameboard and rules taking place, so the Kickstarter campaign is really about funding the production of the game.
The campaign is ready to go except for the video (this seems to be the thing that will delay all campaigns). I’ve decided to get a professional voice actor to do the voiceover, because for this particular game it has a certain “feel” that I don’t think I personally could do justice to myself.
I’m planning on running the campaign through the month of November, starting sometime during the week after Essen (when I can finish the video). Until then I’ll be tweaking and polishing the project page.
There are only a few hours left to be a backer for the Board 2 Pieces book project! You can secure those books, along with other great enticements here: http://kck.st/oyK37m
The Final Surge With only 18 hours left, the Board 2 Pieces compendium project is looking pretty amazing. Not only is the project funded at 300% of the original goal, but all four of the $250 level rewards are taken, and both of the two $500 level rewards has been taken!
Here's a look at the sales trend from the Kickstarter "Dashboard" tab (this tab only appears for the owner of the project...it doesn't show up if you're browsing through the project or even if you're a backer).
Last chance for savings As a reminder, these books *will* be available for $25 each after the Kickstarter campaign is over...but you can get BOTH of them for that price now, AND get a signed B2P print of your choice as a bonus! Oversized prints and character hats are still available for higher level backers as well.
www.board2pieces.com has the latest Board 2 Pieces comics and merchandise!
If you haven't played Ultimate Werewolf, you're missing out on the best version of werewolf ever!!!
2 Days left! (Board 2 Pieces compendium kickstarter project). http://kck.st/oyK37m
There are only 2 days left to be a backer for the Board 2 Pieces book project! You can secure those books, along with other great enticements here: http://kck.st/oyK37m
Here's a look at the covers of the two books, which span four years of Board 2 Pieces comics:
And also a last minute plea for support from the characters themselves:
2 Days left...a look at backer trends With only a two days left, the Board 2 Pieces compendium project is looking very good. Not only is the project funded at 300% of the original goal, but all four of the $250 level rewards are taken, and one of the two $500 level rewards has been taken (which includes placement on the front cover of one of the books).
Here's a look at the sales trend from the Kickstarter "Dashboard" tab (this tab only appears for the owner of the project...it doesn't show up if you're browsing through the project or even if you're a backer).
With only a week left, the Board 2 Pieces compendium project is looking very good. Not only is the project funded at more than 200% of the original goal, but all four of the $250 level rewards are taken! There are still 2 "get your own character" rewards left (which include placement on the front cover of one of the books).
Here's a look at the sales trend from the Kickstarter "Dashboard" tab (this tab only appears for the owner of the project...it doesn't show up if you're browsing through the project or even if you're a backer).
Fairly steady growth is shown here, with a surge at the beginning. If history of other projects is an accurate indicator, there will be a slight surge at the end of the project as well. One thing the dashboard doesn't tell you at first glance is that a few backers (3 so far) have actually cancelled their backing of the project. It's unclear what the motivation for cancelling is, of course, but as a project creator it's certainly disheartening to see that happen. Just like when you get a new backer, you also get an email telling you when a backer has cancelled their funding.
In terms of how the backers have taken to the rewards, of the currently 58 backers, 42 of them are at the "Rocky's Rascals" level, which includes one copy of each book as well as a full color signed print. The next most popular level is the "Devin's Dudes" level (10 backers), which includes a much larger signed print.
48 of the backers are backing at least one other project, which means that 10 people created a kickstarter account specifically to back this project.
I've posted 5 updates to the project since its inception (it started back on August 23rd, so it's been one month). Those updates don't seem to correspond to any notable increases in backing (or any upgrades from existing backers). Here's the latest update, which includes a look at the now-final covers:
With only one week left in the project, there's a ton of work to be done for the books themselves: Finishing the 2nd book, getting surveys out to the backers once the project closes next week, and getting the final PDFs out to the printer. Once I get the books, there'll be the additional tasks of getting the signed prints created and sent out, as well as any of the other backer rewards.
As a reminder, there are still 7 days left to back this project, and even though it's funded, there's no reason not to jump on the B2P book bandwagon! http://kck.st/oyK37m
Next time on the Kickstarter Chronicles: What I'm doing to promote the project with only a few days left
www.board2pieces.com has the latest Board 2 Pieces comics and merchandise!
If you haven't played Ultimate Werewolf, you're missing out on the best version of werewolf ever!!!
The Video that worked (Board 2 Pieces compendium kickstarter project). http://kck.st/oyK37m
FUNDED!
Before I get to the video, I wanted to say “woo-hoo!” and even “yee-ha!” ‘cause the project funded in just two days! As I write this, the goal of $1200 has been reached and exceeded (by $31), and there are still 35 days left in the campaign!
There are still 4 of the 6 “big” backer rewards left, however, and there’s no reason not to jump on the B2P bandwagon...remember, that if you back the project you’re going to get your books much cheaper than they’ll be available elsewhere, as well as a signed print and lots of other goodies!
A Better Plan for a Video After the disaster that was The First Video That Shall Live in Infamy, I took several days off from project preparedness to reset my expectations.
I knew I could do better, but I since I had given myself an additional week before the kickoff of the project, there was no reason to rack my brain on it. I decided to hold off until the weekend, when “real” work wouldn’t be distracting me and I could focus.
I decided to enlist the help of my best friend, Steve (shown at right), who is a professional trainer (he specializes in training people to give better presentations), both for his advice on how to most effectively create a compelling video as well as how to properly structure the video for the best impact.
The brainstorming session we had probably was only an hour or so long (after all, we had games to play!), but it was absolutely huge in restructuring the video into something much more effective. In that session, we started by redefining the key points of the video:
1) Clearly explain this Kickstarter Project
2) Clearly explain who I, Ted Alspach, am
3) Clearly explain what Board 2 Pieces is
4) Clearly explain what the backer rewards are
5) Clearly show my enthusiasm for the project
Next, we started putting together a rough *visual* outline of the video. What were the critical elements to show the viewer? Steve suggested (strongly) that the creation of a strip, the actual process of watching it be created, would be really cool. I explained the process to him of how I create a strip, and he said "we should fake it then and actually make it interesting."
Quote:
Here's what I do when it's time to create a Board 2 Pieces comic.
1) Procrastinate.
2) Convince myself I have more time, and I'll think of something better if I wait.
3) Panic as the deadline draws near.
4) "Good" ideas and concepts usually come to me when driving, in the shower, or just after I wake up in the weird pseudo half-awake state. If one of these activities takes place near the B2P deadline, I'm golden.
5) Sit down at my Mac.
6) Open the last comic I did, and marvel at the witty repartee between the characters. Congratulate myself on being a master of the comic form.
7) Select the characters and text bubbles and delete all of them except a single text bubble.
8) Save the file as the new date.
9) If #4 above hasn't happened yet, go to BGG to get inspired.
10) Once I have the basic concept, come up with the 3 panel structure (in my head), and figure out what the last panel will be, and how I can make it funny. Or amusing. Or, if I'm desperate, not horribly awful and painful to read.
11) Write out the text for each panel in text blocks.
12) Add in the characters.
13) Adjust the characters and their expressions/positions.
14) Check for spelling errors.
15) Tweak the text boxes to even them out.
16) Congratulate myself on another outstanding comic.
17) Save the file.
18) Generate the PNG that will be posted to Opinionated Gamers.
19) Upload the PNG to Opinionated Gamers.
20) Discover at least one spelling error or graphical glitch.
21) Make the corrections to the file and then repeat #17-#19.
22) Congratulate myself again.
Sure, that seems absolutely fascinating, but in reality, it's not all that. So for the video, I decided I would take Steve's advice and cheat, and just create a quick version of the good parts of the process.
Steve said I should mention that I design games. I didn't think it was relevant, but he convinced me to add a single line in, and while doing so, I could do a cool "stacking" of the games. I kinda liked that.
I wanted to emphasize the crazy amount of comics, so we came up with the idea of plastering the screen with them. I originally envisioned putting hundreds on the screen in super rapid fire (one per frame) mode, but that was a lot of work...I ended up just using 20 of them, much slower.
We decided I needed to show the books at some point. Now, keep in mind that until this point I had no idea what I was going to do for the cover, so there was going to be some work involved there.
In addition, I needed to show the rewards. In the original video, I was holding a frame of a comic while I talked, and we thought it would be cool to have the frame zoom out from an onscreen comic to one I was holding. That ended up working out great and I think it's super cool.
And finally, there needed to be a few "talking head" sequences, where I'm talking directly to the camera. These would be better at the beginning and end of the video.
With the basic visual elements agreed upon., it was time to draft the outline of the video:
1. Introduce myself 2. About this project 3. About Board 2 Pieces 4. Rewards 5. Call to action (ask for funding)
That done, Steve left to go do something more interesting, and I spent the next several hours writing the actual text I would say during the video and tweaking it, and making additional notes on the visual components.
The next day it was time to start shooting. Here's the setup I've been using for videos in the game room:
It takes a good 15 minutes to get the game room setup for recording video, including turning off the A/C, removing clocks, and making sure the dog is somewhere where she won't explode into a crazed fit of barking because someone two miles away opened a Tootsie Pop.
I printed out the script I wrote and taped it to the camera. That way I can read the script and still "look" at the camera. Though when you get low on the page you sometimes have to readjust.
Then I recorded the sessions. Even for the text while I was going to be "off camera" in the middle, I still acted as if the video was going to be a long "talking head" session. At that point I was still unsure of my ability to use Final Cut Pro successfully to make the video I had envisioned, and this way I had a backup if the graphics didn't pan out.
About 30 minutes later, I was finished with the video recording. Then it was time to import the video and choose the right takes. I did 2-4 takes of each paragraph, and it was really easy to pick the right one each time. Putting the clips together in the timeline was pretty fast too, and allowed me to see that I had a video that was about 1 1/2 minutes long. I estimated that I could get rid of 10-15 seconds of "empty" air at the beginning and end of each segment, leaving me with a 1:15 video (it turned out being 1:14!).
Now the hard (but kinda fun) part. For the first segment, I wanted the characters to be on the table with me. Since I already had a "title" image for the Kickstart page with characters on it, the idea was for them to seamlessly end up on the table. In order to do that I had to redo the image so that the characters fit into the 2:1 aspect ratio of the video (this is why there's all that empty green space at the bottom of the image). The characters were too big in the image, so I panned out of both the image and the video simultaneously in order for them to fit. Of course, to do that I had to make a few versions of that image for the video that didn't include the background and title. Here's the sequence:
The next part was stacking games. I mounted my camera on my tripod and placed it low, near the height of the table. Then I placed each of my games, one at a time, in front of the camera and took a picture. Afterwards I went into Photoshop and masked away the background for each of them. Then, in Illustrator, I brought in all the images and stacked them. Using Illustrator's "Build" option in the Layers palette, I created an animated build of the games, and exported them as separate images. Then I imported them into Final Cut. Whew. That was a lot of work for what ends up being 3 seconds in the video.
After that came the comic "splatter". This was a little easier since I already had the comics, but I still had to place them, one at a time, in Illustrator and move and rotate each of them (as well as give them a drop shadow so they looked more 3D). Another build sequence and import, and I was ready for the books.
I created the book covers pretty quickly; I don't know what the final covers will look like, and I didn't want to spend the time on them now to figure it out, so I just put together something quickly. They actually look pretty good for placeholders!
After animating the books into place, I put in some sample pages, and used the (normally cheesy) page turn transition to move between them. It looks really cool *because* they're pages.
Then I did a pan to the "build" comic I had been talking about earlier. That comic was really just five different images of the same comic with different Illustrator layers turned on, with different transitions. The end result is okay, though I would have liked something a little more dynamic.
The uber-cool transition from the built comic out to the "frame" was very satisfying. Using the same technique from the beginning of the video, it appears as if I was holding the comic the whole time:
I have a quick cut to me in the cap, and then I overlaid that with characters popping in one at a time. Same technique in Illustrator as the other two "builds".
I found some fun music on a creative commons music site and plopped it in place. I kept the volume of it pretty low, but it serves as background only...I didn't want it to overpower the talking points.
Hours and hours later, I finished. Here's the final product!
As a reminder, there are still 35 days left to back this project, and even though it's funded, there's no reason not to jump on the B2P book bandwagon! http://kck.st/oyK37m
Next time on the Kickstarter Chronicles: An Analysis of early backer trends
www.board2pieces.com has the latest Board 2 Pieces comics and merchandise!
If you haven't played Ultimate Werewolf, you're missing out on the best version of werewolf ever!!!
The Project is LIVE! http://kck.st/oyK37m 38 days left! (Board 2 Pieces compendium kickstarter project).
Please note that everything posted here is a work in progress, and may change while the project is underway.
LAUNCH!
I've just pressed the Launch button on the Board 2 Pieces Compendium project, so the project is now live! While developing and refining the project there's always been a green "Launch Project" button right next to the green "Save and Preview" button. Since I made dozens of changes to the page, there was often the possibility of accidentally clicking that button. I assumed there was a confirmation dialog, but of course I didn't know, and so a bit of stress was injected into the process. Each time I was ready to save my changes, a little voice in the back of my mind told me to be very very careful so I didn't prematurely launch, which would be embarrassing (is there ever any association with "premature" that doesn't involve embarrassment?).
Now that I've pushed the button, I can say that yes, there is a confirmation screen. That screen lists the rewards you've set, along with a scary yellow sidebar filled with things that are clearly important (or else why would they be on a yellow background)? And there's a handy little "or return to project edit" link there as well, so if I *had* accidentally pushed the Launch Project button, I could get back. I'm usually not a fan of confirmation dialogs, as they slow things down, but in this case it was quite necessary, and well implemented.
You have to check the "Confirm you have read these Important Reminders and our Guidelines" checkbox before you can check the Launch Project Now button, so accidentally launching the project is highly unlikely. Unless you're on drunk-clicking on your computer, but then you probably have a lot of other potential issues to be worried about....
And now it is live...
After clicking the Launch Project Now dialog, the "launched" version of the page appears, which looks exactly like the page in preview mode, with a few noticeable differences (though I'm kicking myself now for not getting a screen capture of the preview screen right before I launched): First, and most important, the "this project has not been launched" notification is gone, replaced with a blurb about when the project will close down and a new Back this project button.
The first thing I noticed to my dismay (well, "dismay" is probably a strong term, but I'm not pleased) is that the date and time is shown in EDT. I had settled on ending the project at 11:47pm on Saturday, October 1st a while back. But that of course was PDT (since I'm in California). The page lists the date and time in EDT (Kickstarter is run out of NYC). So it says "...by Sunday, Oct 2, 2:47am EDT." Which is a little strange. I guess it's good for West Coast folks since we have all of Saturday evening, but it looks odd on the page. And my reasoning for ending it at 11:47pm was to "get in front" of the line for other projects that are ending the same day but closer to midnight...that's out the window now too. Lesson learned for the future.
The green "Back this Project" states that there's a $1 minimum pledge. The $1 pledge level gets the backer acknowledgements in each of the books. I'm curious to see if many peeps will do this...it doesn't seem like a popular option on pretty much any other project, but maybe there's something about the $1 minimum that makes people more likely to pledge. It would be great to see some stats on this from Kickstarter, but there's not a whole lot out there (though they have supplied some interesting data that I used to help me decide some of the attributes of the project, such as length, funding amount, etc.).
One other change to the project page is the Comments tab, where people can leave comments/questions.
If I view the page while signed into Kickstarter, it's only a little different, with the only new thing being the Dashboard tab. Clicking this reveals a list of all the rewards and how many backers there are of each of these. Also, at the bottom of this list is a note that says "Don't pledge to yourself" and explains that doing so will kill the project, because Amazon doesn't allow you to pay yourself. I'm assuming if I click on my own Back this Project buttons that Amazon will tell me "no" before it lets me go through with it, but that's not something I want to test. It's interesting that when logged in I still see the buttons like everyone else, though...they aren't disabled (again, not visually...I'm not going to test this out). In the paragraph that tells of the dire consequences of self-pledging, there's a line that says "If you try to create new accounts (either Kickstarter or Amazon) to accomplish this, Amazon will still detect it." So I'm thinking that entrepreneurial individuals have tried this in the past. Of course, I'm not sure why Amazon is being so hard-headed about this; after all, they still get their cut, and Kickstarter gets their cut of your pledge, regardless of who it comes from. But I suppose it goes to the integrity of the projects and their backers. From my point of view, I would be a little embarrassed to have my own name listed as a backer to my own project (you can see a list of backers of each project on Kickstarter).
Following up and then waiting I have a few more posts to make and emails to send to make friends and family aware of the project and that it's live, and after that, it's waiting to see what sort of interest is in the project.
Part of any good Kickstarter project is marketing, and making people aware of the upcoming (and ongoing project). For Board 2 Pieces the comic strip, this wasn’t something I’ve *ever* actively done. Board 2 Pieces is one of those activities I’ve done for the last several years because I enjoyed it, and I hoped others would enjoy it as well. Much more time and effort has surrounded the marketing of card games that featured the Board 2 Pieces characters: Start Player and this year’s TieBreaker, and also the iOS version of Start Player.
In fact, it could be said that the games themselves, particularly Start Player, has done more for Board 2 Pieces awareness than anything I’ve done myself.
Now, that said, Board 2 Pieces has appeared, ever since it started, in Boardgame News ( www.boardgamenews.com, which has since been acquired by the mighty BGG, with all editorial including my comics stripped out), and Opinionated Gamers (http://www.opinionatedgamers.com) after that, twice a week, pretty much every week, for the past 5 1/2 years. So there’s undoubtedly some publicity from that.
And a long time ago I set up a store on Cafe Press (http://www.cafepress.com/board2pieces) and Zazzle to sell t-shirts with B2P stuff on them. I set the prices to $1 above the cost of the shirts, and over the years they’ve paid for the merchant account there and little else.
But outside of that, I hadn’t done much. Earlier this year, while working on TieBreaker, I started uploading comic strips to BGG in their respective areas, both to promote that B2P was on Opinionated Gamers and to help out TieBreaker’s upcoming debut.
Last week, I finally set up a Facebook page for Board 2 Pieces ([url] http://www.facebook.com/board2pieces [/url]), which now has a small (but good for one week) following of 125 people or so. This is the first product/service page I ever created on Facebook and I was happy to see the metrics there (which showed me a lot more people are looking at my comic than you can tell with “likes”, which is all I had to go on before).
And of course I started writing this blog to document the experience of setting up this Kickstarter project (this self-referralness could cause a rift in the space-time continuum, so I won’t go into any more detail there).
Does anyone have any other ideas for (free) promotion of a project like the Board 2 Pieces Compendium? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this...
Final Preparations The last entry was all about my failed attempts at doing a Kickstarter Video. I’ll be doing another blog on the “good” version soon, but suffice to say for now that I got it all worked out, and I’m extremely pleased with the end result that’ll be on the project page. With that last piece done, it’s now all about finalizing the rewards and other page copy, and determining the launch date (I already have October 1 set as my end date).
For the rewards, I stripped out the PDF reward level, and all related PDF rewards. I didn’t think that would be a popular level anyway, and since the point of this project is the physical book, a PDF seemed a little strange. Now I have the following reward levels, which I’ve done up as a graphic in Illustrator for the page itself (the “regular” list of rewards is still there, and there’s no way to link these to the rewards, but I just reviewed the Kammock Kickstarter project (very cool, but I don’t think I would have a use for it), and they did a great infographic about their rewards which was much clearer than the standard rewards list. But mine is better.
Removing the PDFs meant I had to remove references to it from the regular page copy (an easy item to forget). Then I decided to toss a snarky paragraph; I was being snarky with the reader. Being snarky is fine in the comic, but when directed at a potential pledge target, it seemed a little off.
All that was left at this time was the release date. I had given myself a goal of Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, and theoretically there’s nothing stopping me from pressing the “launch now” button right now, but while I’m generally impatient I also know that it’s good to have a “bake time” to let the project in its final form sit for a day or two, and to do a final review of everything right before it launches (otherwise I end up doing that review after it launches, which is usually just a day or two too late). I decided on Wednesday, August 24, which was nice because it’s not a comics day (B2P is every Tuesday/Thursday). And I decided I would launch it first thing in the morning. I’m up early before work on the West Coast, so it will be launched sometime between 7 and 8 am EST, tomorrow (Wednesday).
Please note that everything posted here is a work in progress, and may change while the project develops and even once it’s underway.
Another evening, another burst of Kickstarter preparation activity. Prepare yourself, though, for this time there wasn’t such a happy ending.
Video preparation and research With my project page incubating and mostly complete except for the video, I decided to turn my attention to that video. I’d read that projects with videos are much more likely to succeed, and a good video is the difference between a contributor and a fence-sitter (boo to those fence sitters!). No pressure, but my video needs to kick ass.
I’ve been gearing up my video production skills, having just finished a short fun little ad for Ultimate Werewolf:
While that wasn’t great, it was passable, and I decided I had some mad video skillz (using Final Cut Pro) to do a reasonably good video for this project. I reviewed a bunch of the videos on the Kickstarter site; most were talking heads telling the viewer earnestly how much they needed their support. I thought, gee, I could do that. Some were really really long (the Flash Point: Fire Rescue one seemed to go on and on and on, but they raised $50,000...including a pledge by yours truly), and others seemed compelling only for the purpose that they seemed unscripted (like the great Pen Type-A video, supported), while others, like the one for Carnival, were obviously scripted but compelling and well done (another one which I supported...good stuff!). And there are a few which were done quick just to get a video up and in place, with little enthusiasm shown for the project. Those tend not to get funded much.
The outline I started an outline: I need to communicate the following: What is Board 2 Pieces? (A comic strip about board games told from the point of view of the pieces themselves) What is Kickstarter? (lots of people come to Kickstarter from other sites and have never contributed before, so I need a tiny bit of explanation there) What is this project? (Two full color volumes covering 4 years and 400 comic strips, with tons of additional commentary and factoids) What are the rewards? (Copies of the books, signed prints of a comic of your choice, awesome Board 2 Pieces character hats, and at the very high end, a character named after you in the comic strip!)
And I need to do it in about two minutes. Even two minutes seems long, but I think that realistically I’ll need to spend that much time. Really short videos on Kickstarter (less than a minute) can be a little off-putting, I’ve found.
The concept
As I was toying with what to do, I thought to myself...wouldn’t it be cool to have the comic’s characters talk about the project? The problem is, while I’ve done work in After Effects, it’s a TON of work to do animations. A two minute fully-animated video would take me weeks to do, even with my mad uber skillz.
Then I thought, what if I just had them sitting around, talking to me, but without animating them? I could totally do the superimposing of the characters onto a desk or table, and I could have a conversation with them about the project.
THIS WAS A GREAT IDEA!
I set to work on fleshing out the concept. Since the first few years focused primarily on Leo and Rocky, I decided that they would be the meeples I would be talking with. I took a version of Leo from a recent comic strip and added him to a Final Cut Pro project where I had done my Ultimate Werewolf ad: Hey, it looked okay (see the image on the left)!
The biggest issue as I watched the video (and did another test where I moved Leo around) was that Leo didn’t necessarily look like he was ON the table. I had incorporated a drop shadow into the Leo character, but it wasn’t showing up on the dark table top. I’d have to fix that (with a bigger shadow or a lighter table top).
The Script Convinced that “I had the technology,” I moved on to writing the script....a conversation about the project between Me, Leo and Rocky (and the viewer at home).
Since I was going to do the voices myself, I put together a script with the voices highlighted in different colors. That way I could have a single document with everything in the right order, but still go through and record each voice independently.
I wrote the script too fast, and while I covered most of the points, it just wasn’t that good. I knew that, even then, but I told myself that the script would be fine, that the coolness of me talking to meeples would more than make up for the content. I know, I know, that’s a terrible thing, but I wanted to keep moving along, so I convinced myself to do a read through using the character voices.
In my head, the voices sounded really different. When I said them out loud, however, they all sounded pretty much like me. I tried to make Leo sound like the dude who does the Little Big Planet instructions (Kind of a John Cleese thing), and Rocky sounded like...well, I don’t know what he sounded like, but it was a silly voice I’ve used in the past (with my kids I do things like that all the time). Even though I wasn’t happy with the voices, I kept plugging away. Now I’m doing two things that aren’t really that great, and still trying to convince myself that it’ll all work out.
My first read through was about 2:45, longer than I wanted, but I figured I could tighten it up in editing, so after making some really small changes to the script, I decided again, “good enough.” That’s three subpar elements, if you’re keeping track at home.
Another issue I noticed during the read through of the script was that Leo's "voice" (not the way he sounds, but they way he talks, what he says, etc.) wasn't right. I tended to use an exasperated, slightly snarky version of myself as Leo in Board 2 Pieces; he's the straight man to the wacky goings-on around him in the strip, but in this video *I* was the straight man, so Leo ended up being not just snarky, but kind of unpleasant. I really didn't like that, but I was committed to the script at this point. That's four issues now.
Lights, Camera, I decided to use our game room again for the production; there’s nothing like a background of hundreds of games. Before I started getting ready, I turned down the air conditioning to about 68 degrees...the lights can make the area really hot. Right before recording I planned to turn it off to reduce the background “hum” from the nearby vents.
I set up my lights (I have two “real” umbrella studio white lights, and two silver dome utility lights) to show off a reflection in my eyes. The trick to this is to put one or two really bright lights near the camera...you can see the result on the zoomed in the image to the left.
I set up my snazzy Canon Vixia HFM14 with the shotgun mic and positioned it correctly. Then I covered the dark table with our red “felt” cover we use for games, and got out two meeples for the table. I placed them in spots where I could use them to direct my responses (eventually I would replace the physical meeples with digital versions from the comic strip). I had a blue one and a yellow one, so that worked really well.
Finally, I had printed out the script on Tabloid-sized (11x17) paper and taped it up under the camera. I could read the text without squinting. No one likes a squinter. I was ready to go!
Action!
The first thing I did was record all of my lines at the “zoomed out” position (see below), where I did all of them about 3-4 times.
Happy with that, I got up to change the camera to the zoomed in “face” position. Then I realized I had never turned off the A/C. The background hum suddenly became a roar. I knew it would be picked up on the audio I had just recorded. Arghhhh.
I turned off the A/C, then suddenly I heard the clock in the game room ticking. Because it was so quiet and I was suddenly aware of sounds, it sounded like someone hammering every second. I pulled it off the wall and took it away. Returning, I could hear another clock ticking from an adjacent room. I took that away too. There was still a hum. It was the refrigerator in the kitchen. Fortunately we have a heavy solid wood/glass sliding door I could close. That seemed to do it. There was silence. I re-recorded the zoomed out takes again, but I was still a little irritated about having to do it again, and I know they weren’t the best takes. For compromise #5, I figured it was good enough...
I then ran through the exact same lines in “zoomed in” mode. I did a few “reaction” shots where I’m “listening” to Leo and Rocky, remembered that I should have done a few in zoomed out mode (where they would have been more useful), and decided no, I didn’t really need those (that would be #6).
Then I ran through the lines as Leo, and then the ones as Rocky, with the camera zoomed in and pointed at their respective meeples. Finally finished after about 45 minutes of recording, I headed up to the office with the video camera in hand.
Post-production work I imported all of the video clips from the camera, and then slowly went through each of them to find the right “take” that I would use, popping them into the timeline as I went. In at least three cases, I didn’t like any of the takes, but used them anyway (compromises 7, 8 and 9).
I played the hastily assembled video and timed it: 3:10. Argh. After another listen-through, I got rid of a few sections that just weren’t working for me, and that got it down to about 2:45. Then I settled in to tighten up the clips, basically getting rid of all “silence” at the beginning and end of each clip. Once that was done, I was at 2:14. I decided that was again, good enough (have you noticed a pattern here?) for compromise #10, even though I really wanted it to be no more than 2 minutes.
Then it was time to “fix” the voices. The voices I did for Leo and Rocky still sounded an awful lot like me, so I used the pitch controls to tweak them. I didn’t want the meeples to sound like chipmunks, but they had to be distinctly different from my voice. That done, I gave the first few chunks a listen. I really didn’t like the way the voices sounded, but I thought, that’s just me, I’m sure it’ll be fine for the rest of the world (yes, that was #11).
Next, it was time to add the superimposed Leo and Rocky in place of the spots. Leo looked okay there, but something was wrong...when I had zoomed in on Leo on the table to do his lines, I didn’t take myself completely out of the frame. You could see my arm on the table. And my arm moved when “Leo” talked. Would anyone notice that? No (#12), probably not.
Feedback At that point I was ready to get some feedback, so I brought my wife in. I warned her that this was rough, and there were a lot of things I didn’t like about it, but it might be good enough. The fact that I was making excuses at this stage for the video suddenly made me realize that this just wasn’t working. I even told her that before I screened the rough cut, and she confirmed after watching it that it just wasn’t that good (very nicely, of course).
I decided to sleep on it and take a look at the video again the next morning before work. I had been working on it for several hours at that point, and my judgement was probably not the best.
The next morning, when I viewed it again, I realized that I had been right...my judgement the night before was totally off...the video was horrible. It was cheesey, but not cheesey enough to be funny, just cheesey. It was then I realized that all my compromises had led me there, and while the concept wasn’t necessarily flawed, my execution had been.
I still have about a week to do the video, so I’m going to wait a few days and try a new approach...maybe with a few less compromises this time! I’d really like to nail this video.
Next time on the Kickstarter Chronicles: Setting up a Board 2 Pieces Facebook page years and years later than I should have...
Preparation Day 2 (Board 2 Pieces compendium kickstarter project).
Please note that everything posted here is a work in progress, and may change while the project develops and even once it’s underway.
Last night after work, being very excited about the prospect of getting my new Kickstarter project off the ground, I filled out the project page provided by Kickstarter. And it took a LONG time.
It’s very nicely done system (though there’s a lot of scrolling once you have content on the page with no way to link down to various areas) which walks you through each of the necessary steps in order to get your project underway.
The first thing I did was get my Amazon account upgraded to a business account (this is a requirement so that you can receive money via Amazon). That was actually very straightforward, and using my online access to my bank, I was able to have it verified in just a few minutes. My Bezier Games online store uses Yahoo Small Business, and while it’s totally functional, looking into an Amazon-based store will now be easier than before since I’m all set up with the business accounts. Amazon sure is sneaky.
Then I started to put in placeholders for things like Total amount to fund (after screwing around with this a bit, I ended up with $1200, but I still haven’t finalized that amount). The catch here is I really want this to fund, but at the same time I realize that even if it doesn’t fund completely, I’m going to go ahead with printing these, but fewer of them and the individual cost of each will be higher. So I need enough to push me into at least the 2nd tier of printing them. At that point the project will be a success. If the project is funded at the 100% level, I pretty much break even on the sold books (I might even take a slight loss depending on how they pan out). I’m okay with that model for this project, but for my boardgame project I’ll have to aim a little higher.
I also entered the Funding Duration. Initially I kept it at the default 30 days, but after reading a bunch of things about how it’s better to start and finish at the end of a month, I changed it to end September 30th at midnight. Then after some thought, I changed it to the following day (a Saturday), October 1st at 11:48pm. There’s a method to this (I think). Most things end at the end of a day, either midnight or 11:59. When you go to the “ending soon” page, it lists them in order from the next one to end to the last one to end. I’d rather be at the top of that list most of Saturday than 3rd, 4th, or even later, so I went with a time that was earlier than I expected most other ones to end. I was thinking that before I finalize the end time, I was going to check to see others that are ending then, and try to end a minute before the earliest in a “clump” so I get a prime position on that page. That plan was squelched when I realized that the Ending Soon page lists a whole lot of projects, but only those ending within the next week. Anything more than 6 days out wasn’t on that list.
Which then brings me to one of the big issues with Kickstarter from a supporter (and ultimately, from a creator) point of view: Narrowing a search down to find projects is really difficult. The majority of projects on Kickstarter are films and music. I have a very very minimal interest in films, and pretty much no interest in music (in terms of supporting new indie bands). I think it’s great that there’s a venue for both via Kickstarter, but it’s unlikely that I’ll be supporting either. I was starting to list the categories I don’t care much about, but then I figured that was a huge list. I’m really only interested in a few: Games (specifically the Board & Card Games subcategory), comics, technology and the nonfiction section of Writing and Publishing. I might occasionally look at a few other categories, but those are the ones I care about. Kickstarter has no way of showing me what’s new/ending in those specific categories; choosing a category lets you view three “chunks:” New & Noteworthy (what are those criteria? Glory to Rome was #3 on the front page of this list for boardgames even though it’s been posted for 17 days), which is really “recommended” by the Kickstarter staff for some reason, and not new, and contains a whole bunch of successful projects that have funding closed. “Popular this week” is the only way to see the majority of those projects, which I believe lists them all in some odd sort that I have yet to discern. Viewing the subcategory of Board & Card games is a nice small subset and since that’s my ultimate destination for my next project, I’ll be keeping tabs on that regularly.
What I’d really like is some sort of checkbox system and sort matrix. Then again, I’m probably spoiled with BGG. Aldie and the gang have done some wondrous stuff on this site, and have raised the bar for other “database” sites. Back to my project.
For the projects that have video (and most of them do), the way it appears on their Kickstarter page is that there’s a static image/graphic on the “front” of the video, and a “play video” button superimposed upon it. This image is also used as the thumbnail view for the project when it’s listed out on the site. In some cases, this superimposed button can look really odd, as it covers up part of the larger image, like the one to the right.
So to ensure I didn’t have this issue, I created my own Play Video button to match what the site generates, and placed it on a locked layer in Illustrator while I created the title image. I purposely not only left the space where the button is blank, but also arranged the elements so that the button would appear balanced in between those elements (in this case, the “Board 2 Pieces” logo and the top of Joey the Chit). The image to the left is what I ended up with (the button shown is mine, since I don’t have a video uploaded yet).
I then decided I would dive in and start writing up the rewards. There’s where there’s seemingly a slight flaw in the system; If you’ve visited Kickstarter, you’ll see that the rewards on the right side of the page are always listed from smallest (top) to largest (bottom). When entering the rewards, there’s no way to reorder them in the editing view. For instance, after I was done with my rewards, I wanted to redo it and add in a new tier at $10 that describes shipping. So I created a new reward and copied/pasted everything down. It took a good 10 minutes to do. As I was writing this, I did an experiment...I added a new reward with a dollar value that put it in the middle of my rewards, clicked save and preview, and it magically appeared in the right place. Not only that, but when I went back to edit mode to remove it, it had moved to the right place there as well! Had there only been a note to tell me that before I had the manual sorting (and this was the second time that I had done that...initially I forgot a tier and moved 3 of them that way). Well, I know now...and that’s actually a very smart auto-sorting design they have (I just wish I had known about it before)!
I spent several hours in the rewards section, tweaking and re-tweaking the items. There’s no bulleting function to let you easily show the rewards (this was perhaps done on purpose, but it seems inefficient and requires the potential contributor to spend a lot of time reading and rereading rewards to find the right one for them). You can’t even use returns (or coded returns like you can in HTML or here on the ’geek). I decided to go with the approach of putting the “new” item for that level first, then brief(er) descriptions following it. So for instance, at the lowest tier, contributors get acknowledgements in the books. At that tier, since that’s all they get, I make it sound nice by adding some additional text. At the next tier (PDFs of each book), I shorten that to simply “Acknowledgements.” (though that’s a pretty big word). And so on until the top few levels have a few lines describing the special items available, a quick laundry list of everything else (typically, but not always, what’s in the previous tier), and then a line or two of “flavor” text.
After entering all of my rewards, I decided to put in “titles” for each of the rewards. Again, the Kickstarter system doesn’t provide the means for this, but the projects that do it use a similar format: all caps at the beginning (first line) of the reward. Keeping with my theme, I used character names for the rewards, like “Holly’s Heroes” and “Leo’s Lemmings.”
Finally, I dove in and wrote up the description. I was pretty happy with what I wrote, and previewed the page. Two things I didn’t like. First, the rewards scrolled down way past the end of the text. Second, I didn’t have any images. I went to work on that right away and added Thursday’s Board 2 Pieces comic:
As well as a screenshot of a layout of a few pages (with superimposed shading to make it look more like a book):
I also added a large zoomed-in version of a sidebar:
I was planning on taking a picture of the caps that are part of the higher level rewards, but I thought that might be distracting. Instead I went with a mockup of the 33” print:
After some more previewing and tweaking, I stopped for the night. The only major thing left to do is the video.
Next time on the Kickstarter Chronicles: I write the outline for the video, film it and put together a rough cut.
www.board2pieces.com has the latest Board 2 Pieces comics and merchandise!
If you haven't played Ultimate Werewolf, you're missing out on the best version of werewolf ever!!!
