When my wife was pregnant with our first child, Sloane, I had the crazy idea to use a crowdfunding site called Kickstarter to help launch our first board game. Sloane just turned one as we wrapped up our successful Kickstarter campaign for Gamestormers in 2022.
Fast forward to now, and my wife is pregnant with our second child. Of course, I got the game design bug, and I’m currently planning to launch our next Kickstarter this month for Doomscroll! Funny story – I had planned to do another April Kickstarter campaign, but our little one on the way has a due date of April 16th – there’s NO way I was going to try running a Kickstarter campaign with a new baby in the house, heh.
I learned a TON from the first Kickstarter, and I thought I would share what we are going to try for our next campaign. We would LOVE to hear what you think and what you would like to see!
1. Align More Face-to-Face Events with Kickstarter Campaign
I was absolutely blown away by our overall response to our first Gamestormers Kickstarter. However, one big component was missing – face-to-face events to encourage folks to back our project. One of the most powerful aspects of sales is getting to know WHO you are buying from, and that in-person connection cannot be taken for granted.
This year, we are actually going to LAUNCH our campaign at a conference – the Illinois Digital Educators Alliance Conference in Schaumburg. Being around folks the first day gives us that electricity of being on the ground floor of a neat project, and we can bring attention to the project by displaying our campaign fundraising graphs for all attendees to see. Anytime they back right there, they get to see it on the big screen – how neat is that?
In addition to IDEACon, we will be at the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association Conference in early March. That will give us some mid-campaign excitement to help during those slow points in the campaign.
2. Offer Unique Stretch Goals That Fit Our Theme
If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, some product areas offer what are called “stretch goals,” or extra add-ons to the product if certain fundraising amounts are raised. We had some great stretch goals for Gamestormers, but I found two issues with them on reflection: they were too spread apart for our first-time audience, and they were fairly commonplace.
For our Doomscroll Kickstarter campaign, we’re having a bit more fun with the stretch goals. For instance, we’ll have some great new cards, upgraded quality, and other standard stretch goals, but we’re also mixing in some really clever digital perks that align with our theme. For instance, we’re working with creative agency Oniro to make augmented reality versions of our Visual Post Cards. These cards, when scanned by a phone camera, will come alive as animated videos! We want to give the sense that the card truly lives in a digital feed, and a video popping out of the physical space delivers that feeling!
3. Embrace the Visual Nature of Our Doomscroll Game
One lesson we learned from our last campaign is that people come for the story, but they stay for the fantastic visuals! We are blessed to have OwlGhost Studios back for Doomscroll, and they are growing the incredible artwork from Gamestormers for our upcoming release. With that in mind, our entire Kickstarter page will be visual forward, using scrolling graphics, GIFs, engaging videos, and more to tell our story.
In addition, our stretch goals and exclusive Doomscroll Mini-Expansion available prior to the campaign will give our fans and backers more and more unique pieces of art. After all, games are not just fun – they’re beautiful too!
Our Doomscroll Kickstarter campaign will be here soon – we would be incredibly grateful for your support. Thanks!