How a carefully prepared Kickstarter on an educational game failed and how, and how this as a shipping effort was a positive experience anyway.

1. How to fail a
Kickstarter and
live happily ever
after
Pietro Polsinelli @ppolsinelli
For Impact HUB Florence,
October 23rd 2014.

2. See video and site: http://geniogame.com
2

3. See dashboard https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/masondixon/genio-playing-the-renaissance/dashboard

4. Also other videos.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUMxaHDEKFfnLMJ5fSxNpKRA

5. Technicalities

6. Kickstarter is “all or nothing”. This
makes people take a stance.
Many options in crowdfunding, but very few realistic options.

8. See the doc: the diagonal

9. Who owns it?
Bad position with your “friend”.

10. Preparing

11. A working prototype.
Game mechanics: but needed to cheat (problems started early).

12. Promo

13. http://licorize.com/applications/licorize/site/buzz-and-press.jsp - and
also I had Marco Matarazzo

14. - Templates, lists ...
- Launch day (with Francesco Pallanti)
- Tackle people that... do pay
Lessons learned.

15. Da Vinci games: pop & science on Leonardo. One year of posting.

17. Leonardo game escaping commonplaces. Also ambition of
expressing the “fermento” of the age, and for it to be educational.

18. Tirari e Alzari: a book on cranes… yes,
just on cranes.

20. 20

21. Launch (day)

22. Everything ready ….
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NgOPdw6lzMMJsqvyM1T9rBCYhQEYhmbAAObRurkr7uM/edit#

23. 48 hours on Repubblica home page: 1 pledge

24. Tried many ways:
http://www.pinterest.com/ppolsinelli/leonardo-da-vinci-
games/
FB, Indiedb, Steam, Reddit, …
Did try… (beware: carefully timed scams)

25. Failure: why?

26. USA press bias against Kickstarter.

27. Culture financing is not grass root.
Not the geeks. Everybody wants geeks.

28. - Pick an educational theme
- Moreover its on a corner of education that is of
interest for a happy few
- Exclude geeks by not having playable prototypes
- Start without a follower community nor
established record in the gaming community
- Use a funding platform that is viewed with high
suspicion by gaming journalists
Crowd – funded culture: not easy.

29. Take say bit.ly: failed to reach USA.

30. (SHOW VIDEO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
Single lesson: also from United Breaks Guitars. Evoke admiration is not offering
participation.
Too clever, scary. 30

31. - Got it. The guy of guitars taught me
why my Kickstarter failed: does it
connect the reader and the author? It
doesn't.
- The second point is the absence of
major influencer acting.
Got the reasons, I think.

32. Post mortem

33. Shipping is “the best thing that ever happened”. This is
shipping. This is an exploratory field.

34. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1319777239/gates-of-horizon-a-space-conquest-mmorpg

35. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-town-of-light

36. “Ah launching a crowd funding is a
full time job”
The point is exactly the opposite.

37. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1194145503/star-wars-farts-reinventing-star-wars-through-fart to talk
Da Vinci farts?

38. Post Kickstarter: the
opportunities of shipping
38

39. - Consulting requests, working as
game designer
- Indie respect -> projects running
- I am experienced
Happy?

40. My twitter stream is mostly
dedicated to game design:
http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli
A blog on game design
http://designagame.eu