Hi,
I started a crowdfunding project on Ulule.com. My game"Fleets at Battle" is a family game wich is based on the idea of battleships. It is a dexterity game for 4 players.
I had a lot of play tests and mainly only good comments on the game. Never the less I can not fund this game. Now I want to work over my game but I have no clue what I must change. As the play test went good I don´t want to change the rules. It is more a make over of design. Should it be more comic like ? My presentation seems to be poor too, so what can I change there ?
Should I make the game more complex ? I like the fast and easy rules very much. It is a quick game I can even play with my youngest with 7 years. There are some ideas I coud make it more strategic but does this make it more interesting ?
Is the pricing ok ? I considered a price that would meet a shop price if I can get it to about 2000 to 4000 copies. As my production of only 1000 is much more expensive I need this price to not pay some thousand out of my pocket.
here the link :
http://www.ulule.com/flotten-versenken/
Please comment your thoughts to this as I am stuck on where I should go.
Comments
Maybe it's exposure?
If play testing went well and the rules work as you intended them to it may just be a matter of presentation (like you mentioned) and exposure.
A lot of these kick starter type projects and websites get the most bang for their buck when they are getting passed around the net. Posting the link on other forums, getting other people (with their own connections) to back you through their own advertising (via youtube, twitter, tumbler etc.), You might also get more exposure from more main stream web sites like the one I mentioned earlier, Kickstarter (which may be a U.S. thing but I'm not sure)
I am by no means an expert on any of this, but I hope you find some of it helpful.
Thank you
Thank you for your time. Crowdfunding in europe is hard.
What do you think of the type of the artwork ? Is this theme OK for a family game or should it be more comic like ?
Throwing your battleship and taking an enemy of the table is cool when it looks dangerous. The feeling is right in my opinion but it seems not good for others, it wasn´t in critics at any playtest.
I suspect that if the game
I suspect that if the game indeed received positive reviews during playtests, that it's not the game that is the problem. You should improve the marketing of the kickstarter so more people see it and more people respond.
"You don't have a funding problem, you have a crowd problem"
https://twitter.com/richardbliss/statuses/411594265157181440
Funding the Dream on Kickstarter is an excellent podcast for crowdfunding advice. The best thing they ever said to me was in that tweet.
What have you done to improve your online presence in prep for the game campaign?
To be honest I don't see how
To be honest I don't see how playtesting helps much in this. Seems to me like it has to be all about marketing. No one looking at that funding page will have played the game, so we can't know anything about how well it plays. We can look at the rules and guess, but as everyone here should know that is not a good indication how fun the game is. Games can look very good and then you try to play them and they turn out to be completely broken (or the other way around).
Not a marketing expert, but some things that I thought of:
- The battleships at the top of your page look quite serious, like if this could almost be some hardcore naval wargame, not a game to expose your children to.
- My guess is that almost all that shop around for obscure new boardgames to fund will be hardcore gamer geeks (like those that visit BGDF) so that is the type of person to convince, and that also puts some limit how many copies you are likely to sell. Perhaps if you can get one print-run out to the geeks and then hope that they spread the word you can do 1000 copies next run.
- Related to previous point, a dexterity game that is said to be like Battleships doesn't sound like the kind of game that audience would jump to. To be honest my first reaction was that it might do well competing with all the other colorful childrens game you see in some toy stores.
- Worst of all: The description starts out saying that it is something like Battleships, but then there is nothing as far as I can see that makes the game even remotely similar to that game other than the theme. That just makes it seem like you want a free ride on some old trademark.
- Even the theme of Battleships seems like something that would work one or two generations ago. There are barely any battleships remaining in the world today! They were the big thing before the Second World War you know. Even the theme of war in general (unfortunately) isn't that popular these days. Maybe making them elves and orcs or robots or something would (unfortunately) increase your chances?
EDIT: Oh, and the fact that I had not seen this thing earlier. Has it been all over bgg? On reddit? Tried to spread it through all the boardgame-related contacts and groups you know of on Facebook? I see many kickstarters every week through various social media, but this was not one of them. (Or are you starting out today and this was part of kicking of the marketing campaign?)
Thats what I need
Thank you pelle for your critics. That is what I am looking for.
You are right that I didn't go for the Kickstarter bgg threads or facebook. I wanted to stay in Europe and these groups are mainly for US an GB (as far as can see). The tools I used where flyers in Essen right to my target group (parents with boys) and I switched a facebook add. Both did not work out, I couldn't even generate traffic to my site.
After this experience I stopped advertising as my goal couldn't be reached.
You could be right that I should get more distance to Battleships. It was my standard phrase at game testing "do you know battleships, here s a great new game with the same goal....". It made explanation more easy.
Thankmyou very much
Martin
I am pretty sure that German
I am pretty sure that German boardgamers use BGG threads as well. So that would be a valid avenue. Not sure about Facebook. It's quite popular among young parents in the Netherlands. However, if the majority of Europe does not use Facebook, pelle's point still stands. You should use social media. If not Facebook, then another one.
Seems to me that gameplay
Seems to me that gameplay quality has little to do with successful funding. Crowdfunding is often "smoke and mirrors". But there's tons of advice about it online, discussion groups on Facebook about it (mainly Kickstarter). Asking people here is not going to get you very far.
grass roots approach
I don't have much experience with crowd funding, as the only game of mine to be sold that way was already produced by a Dutch company, and the American publisher used Kickstarter to fund it's North American version (New Amsterdam).
From what I know of friends who self-publish, however, this is the advice I'd give:
Send copies of the prototype to as many influential gaming groups (or other groups in your target audience, such as schools and community centres) and ask them for feedback. This serves 2 purposes:
1) you get unbiased feedback and can make a better judgement on whether your game is worth publishing
2) their comments and playtesting gives them a sense of "ownership" and investment in your game
3) if they like the game, some of them will give you that coveted "word of mouth" you need to make crowdfunding successful
I will try
Hi Jeff,
I want to get some professional review to get a better feeling for my game. It was played by about 20 different persons, some game designers and it was prnounced as "good". It´s a casual game so of course it´s not a complete "Wow" but I think of what I could see it should be good above average.
I want to contact a few groups who blog and ask them to review, I hope they have time over christmas and new year.
Then I want to see how to continue as there are some possibilities, retry in germany only with a smaller volume and more focus or to go for a Kickstarter if possible (as I have to find a partner to start it).
thank you all for the comments, it realy keeps me going and not loosing focus