Learning from Double Fine's Kickstarter

Just to recap, the "Double Fine Adventure" was a Kickstarter project where Tim Schaffer (The original game designer of Day Of The Tentacle, Grim Fandango and Monkey Island) would make a new adventure game.

The goal was $400,000 but they raised an overwhelming $3,334,203.

As you can see here, the project received $404,147 on the last day, and an average of $110k for the 4 days before that:


Pledge amounts per day

Notice that the premium pledges (over $10k) accounted for only $110,000:
Kickstarter pledge breakdown

These were the premium rewards:

We should figure out what happened on the last few days to cause such a substantial increase.

I know this tends to happen on Kickstarter, but going from an average of $15k, to $110k, to $400k on the last day seems crazy.

Also, Uber, you might want to create some premium > $10k rewards for people who have ridiculous amounts of money and like your work.

They got crazy attention by the media, because they were one of the first Kickstarters to be really successful. It was just cool to pledge on them, so everyone did. Well, I didnt xD

I'm gonna go with (media attention * demand for product * reputation).

Hopefully there can be a lot more media coverage before this kickstarter is over...

Uber is falling in popularity due to... well... the failing of SMNC's execution.

Still, I think, if and ONLY IF PA has as much lovely personality and tender care as SMNC did, I can fill the void in my heart. That's just me.

They also had something that we Dutch would call

"the allow factor" (doesn't translate well: de gun factor)

basically, they made all kinds of awesome games, but never really made much profit from them (psychonauts)

those premium rewards are most times just "fur teh lulz" as clearly demonstrated by the double fine example.

the current 10K reward is pretty much the 50K reward of double fine (you get the custom unit at 1k)

you could up it with a week of holidays on the Bahamas or something XD...

also I think that Tim was actually relieved he didn't have to part with one of his boxes XD

I guess we are already going very well, if the dev's just release one or 2 new stretches upon reaching the next one, I think a significant rise at the end is also possible for PA (although maybe not 400K )

but we are only 8 days in and should reach the 900K mark in another 10 days or so, if not sooner. and another 12 or so days left for the stretch goals, where the end boost should kick in

Someone made a really nice point on the Kickstarter comments:

I think that a mini-trailer showcasing each stretch-goal (as they are revealed, or not-too-long after...) would be AWESOME.

And, maybe in that last week or four days or whatever, release a 'Redux Trailer' of some kind to tie everything in? Maybe asking too much, but... anyways, yeah, I'm with Colin: Trailer sold me, and more trailers will probably sell more people... and up donation amounts.

This would be easier if making videos wasn't actual pretty time consuming. you've got to make the models, make the skins, plan whats going to happen in the video, animate everything, add in special effects and not even mentioning exporting.

If it was something that oculd be done in a couple of hours instead then sure, but in the time frame i'm just not sure its feasable.

Yeah, I imagine they'd need to put at least one dedicated artist on this for the remaining 24 days for any chance of this happening.

Also, concept art would probably be good too.

I'm just hoping they can blow everyone out of the water again before the Kickstarter is up ... and not just with text

We have people working on stuff

Awesome

... and, for the record, you're cool.

(Sentiment probably echoed by everyone here, but... I'm new in these woods)

Agreed.. It's really cool when you get answer from the devs.. It is not common, but make a lot of difference.

Anyway, I can see PA reaching 2m easily if kickstart ends like in Double Fines

It's at 70 - 75% already, in a few days, maybe three or more I expect it to have it's goal reached.

Part of the big jump at the end of Kickstarter are from people just 'watching' until the last couple days. They watch for new pledge options or to see if they can gather more money to pledge.

I really hope PA rallies in the last couple days!

I keep trying to find more ways to tell more people about PA, I can only spare $100 though :cry:

Just interested and wondered if Polynomial might give us a very rough estimate on how many hours went in to the current video as it is a bit of a monster! Purely an interest thing though rly.

The live action part was filmed over 3 days and edited over a week.

The concept video has several man months in it. We had to work out a lot of things about the game to make the video though and that was a big chunk of work.

Excuse me, official employee of Uber Entertainment, I believe he asked ME! =P

Feel free to give us your thoughts on the matter.

LOL!

SORRY Neutrino, and Polynomial! I can't even get people's names right {hangs head in shame}

Thanks for the response though. It sounds like one of the things which took the most time was working out what you might be able to accomplish and not overselling through the vid - which is obviously sensible. It sounds unlikely, that given the timeline it took to make that part, you'd be making more concept vids to drum up more dosh though - certainly not long ones.

...and yet he says they have people working on "stuff"... hmmm

I LOVE stuff.