So you have a good game idea, and you want to make it happen. Good news: Gaming is experiencing an indie renaissance like never before as more people bring new, creative ideas to the table.
If you're trying to figure out how to fund your passion project, Kickstarter has likely crossed your mind.
Gaming on Kickstarter has already experienced some huge successes: Tim Schafer's first successful Double Fine Adventure opened the floodgates, and open console OUYA raised $8.6 million. The crowdfunding platform has attracted game makers of all stripes. Gaming was Kickstarter's biggest funded category in 2012, raising $83 million for successfully funded projects.
See also: Kickstarter Pledges Hit $913 Per Minute in 2013, With Few Breakout Hits
High-profile successful Kickstarters created a gold rush effect on the service, attracting thousands of new gaming projects over the last couple of years. But creating a Kickstarter page doesn't equate to planting a money tree, and creators have learned that making a project successful is ultimately a lot of work.
Mashable chatted with the people behind several successful Kickstarter campaigns, as well as the company itself, to get a sense of what makes a crowdfunded gaming project succeed, and what creators have to do before, during and after their campaigns to foster the best relationships with backers.

Kickstarter gives power to the people, allowing users to actually decide what gets made. Becoming an investor in a project creates a special kind of relationship between backers and creators.
"When we worked at WayForward and released a game, we'd never interact with fans unless they sent us a letter," says Nick Wozniak of Yacht Club Games. Wozniak, along with other WayForward staff, departed to start Yacht Club in March 2013. Their first game, Shovel Knight, launched on Kickstarter shortly after, raising $311,502. The game blew away its funding goal of $75,000 handily, due in part to ravenous fans.
"We have our favorite, unique fans, and we get to learn everyone's personalities," says Wozniak, who answered every Kickstarter message and comment personally. The company also takes backer feedback very seriously, and can redesign the game around it.
"We can sell more games overall because we are so connected with our audience," says Sean Velasco, founder of Yacht Club Games.

Image: iStockphoto, chuckchee
Knowing your audience allows games that cater to a specific niche to blossom and become successful. When Nicoll Hunt began work on his game, Fist of Awesome, his goal was to create the "best beat 'em up game ever". The side-scrolling genre had its heydey in the late '80s and early '90s, thanks to titles like Final Fight and Streets of Rage, but is now mostly the stuff of nostalgia. Hunt knew if he could unite fans of the beat 'em up genre, he could make a successful one-man operation.
"I knew Fist of Awesome would attract a certain type of audience: people like me. If I put it on Kickstarter, I can find those people and develop a community of people who want to play beat 'em up games. It would give me freedom in the way I could structure my work life," Hunt says.
Hunt's game is built with a minimalist, nuevo-retro style that might not appeal to everyone, but it was clear he found his community. Fist of Awesome raised more than double its £5,000 goal.
The community can end up essentially working for you, once they've backed a project. Chris O'Neill, co-creator of board game Kobolds Ate My Baby, says "alpha nerd" Kickstarter backers are likely to post on Twitter, Facebook or other outlets about projects they've backed, in hopes of helping them reach their goals. But O'Neill said getting those excited backers comes with a price.

"When someone is a backer on Kickstarter, the level of interaction they are looking for is different than when you go to a store and buy a product," O'Neill says. "They want a level of involvement that most tabletop producers don't expect. They want a badge that lets other people know they were there first, as well as exclusive products and access."
Kobolds Ate My Baby's creators launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a high-quality color reprint of the original game, but fan support ballooned it to something much bigger after raising $65,000. O'Neill says Kickstarter has completely changed the way fans interact with creators, while also cutting out the distribution middle-man. Before, fans could only interact at conventions or some online forums, but Kickstarter has facilitated a community of passionate backers.
"They are a lot more interested in you succeeding than them getting something. You aren't getting a huge discount for getting something, and you aren't getting it quickly," he says.
But getting investment means putting in a lot of work to get attention, and a successful campaign should have enough runway for planning and preparations. Add in the time creators must spend during the campaign responding to questions from fans and media alike.
"I have no idea how anyone does it with one person. Every day we go to bed at 2 or 3 a.m.," Wozniak says.
Bill Trammel, co-creator of the Settlers of Catan gaming board, which easily organizes the strategy game's strangely shaped game board, describes his "command center," a place he hardly left during his Kickstarter campaign. "We set up a projector in front of our couch that showed our Kickstarter page," Trammel says. "We'd work, go to sleep on the sofa, then go back to work."

Almost every creator I interviewed stresses he spent at least a month creating his Kickstarter's landing page, which includes all possible information about a project.
O'Neill says a mistake he sees from lots of Kickstarter campaigns is that many don't spend time making their pages look appealing.
"If you don't have art assets for your game, you might not be ready for Kickstarter," he says. "It's best to go spend your own money on an artist."
Revisions can also be important, as well as gathering as much feedback as possible. Kickstarter creators can and should show people a preview of their project before it goes live for pledges.
"With Kickstarter pages ranking so highly in Google, it's important to put your best foot forward when people first see your product," says Melissa Fassetta and Maurice Freedman of Zaah, which created a 2013 campaign for a free-to-play game by popular YouTube star FPSRussia. "Even if the actual writing doesn't take months, it’s best to allow time and share your ideas with others: Is the project goal clear? Does it make sense? Is it interesting enough to share? You have to leave enough time to muse on it, make sure you’re really telling the story."
Hunt says he knew of campaigns hiring professional writers to help cleanly articulate all the information on their campaigns, though he didn't do this himself. "You can't just put a big load of text and expect people to throw you money."
And while Kickstarter allows you to edit the page after it goes live, some things can't be changed, such as the descriptions for reward tiers in the right-hand column. Trammel also advises investigating and setting international shipping rates for physical rewards before launch, as those also appear in the right-hand column.

Image: iStockphoto, chuckchee

The video dominates the top spot of a Kickstarter page, demanding potential backers click it before even diving into the deluge of information about the game. This means creators need to make something that really sells their product.
And thanks to embed codes, videos are the only part of the project that can exist out of context of the Kickstarter page. They should be able to independently market your product if embedded on another site or press release.
First, consider your video's length. O'Neill says most Kickstarter videos run under three minutes. "If you can't explain your game in that time, go back to the drawing board."
O'Neill and Trammel both filmed "traditional" Kickstarter videos, in which they addressed the audience. Trammel and his partner Nate Veldkamp shot their whole video on an iPhone and a webcam.
"We wanted to be transparent and authentic, show we're just two dudes trying to make something happen," Trammel says. "What was most helpful for conveying authenticity was tossing the script. We would practice, but then when we shot we tried to talk directly into the camera, just person to person."
Nicoll Hunt says he found the webcam approach "incredibly boring," so instead he described Fist of Awesome as a character inside the game.

Similarly, Velasco and Wozniak tried the talking head formula, then scrapped all their footage after days of filming for an approach that "made it seem like Shovel Knight was a game that was already done, it was a game that could stand on its own merits," Velasco says.


Putting up a Kickstarter campaign doesn't equal automatic success. With hundreds of new campaigns sprouting up, you'll need people to visit your page.
Before a project goes live, determine who you want to target with outreach. Game-focused news sites, blogs and gamers with big followings online are solid places to start. Also, explore communities where your particular game genre will be well-received, and start participating before you pitch your project.
"We sent personally targeted emails to more than 250 addresses, especially for people we knew liked classic games," Velasco says.
As Hunt became more stressed during the first few days of his campaign, his emails became more creative, and that actually led to more coverage.
"I had gone slightly mental, so I'd start with something like, 'Hello Sir, your hair looks magnificent.'"
Harnessing the power of popular YouTube channels and the Let's Play culture could also help a game on Kickstarter, provided there is enough of a demo for people to play. Yacht Club attributed some of Shovel Knight's runaway success with getting the game featured on popular Let's Play channel Two Best Friends Play.
With so many Kickstarter campaigns bombarding writers' inboxes, know when to gracefully accept when someone is too busy or isn't interested.
"When pitching to press for a gaming Kickstarter, don’t expect a huge response. Count the victories and go from there. For small developers that don't already have an audience, you’ll have to be your own best advocate," say Fassetta and Freedman.

Your Kickstarter budget is a tricky number to figure out. Ask for too much and you run the risk of getting nothing, but don't ask for enough and you might not be able to complete your game. Take Neil Stephenson's virtual swordfighting game Clang as an example.
Velasco suggests creators think about the actual amount of time every process will take. Take that into account when setting your funding and delivery goals. "It's easy to be caught with your pants down and be on the hook for something."

Image: iStockphoto, polygraphus
Gaming backers are also getting savvier than ever, says Kickstarter Head of Community Cindy Au. They can detect something fishy about Kickstarter campaigns that aren't well structured. "This includes things like looking for projects that show samples of gameplay and design, exercising caution with projects that might have overly ambitious stretch goals or reward structures, and generally seeking thoughtfully constructed projects that are honest, authentic and communicative with their audiences," she says.
For some, this may be the time they realize they aren't ready for Kickstarter just yet, or that they should supplement Kickstarter funding with other money.
"You have to be quite realistic about being indie," says Hunt, who still worked part time. "It won't fund you totally, but it's going to kick you in the right direction."
Trammel recommends getting some accounting help, because funding money will count as income if you use it for living expenses.
O'Neill says it's important to factor in how much your time costs. "That's probably a thing we did most poorly," he says. "We got taxes, fees and the cost of production, but not our time."

Kickstarter rewards are a great way to get fans excited about a project to pledge even more money, but done wrong they can be a huge drain on valuable resources. For games that are delivered digitally, save physical rewards such as shirts, physical copies of the game or other creative swag for the more expensive reward tiers — you have to factor in production and delivery costs.
"I made my physical rewards ludicrously expensive. Don't charge like you were a shop; charge like you want to make money. You need to be quite harsh sometimes. If you do physical rewards, those take money away from your game, which is your product," Hunt says.
Depending on your pricing structure, your game is going to be the tier that gets the most backers. O'Neill recommends considering more inexpensive rewards for people who like your idea, but don't necessarily want the game.
And the high-level, exorbitant awards — like one-of-a-kind items — may be more trouble than they are worth, Trammel stresses, so think about what it will take from your time to produce those.


Image: iStockphoto, Chuckchee
Communicating with your backers doesn't stop until your rewards are out the door. It helps establish trust, as people often wait months to receive the rewards they paid for.
"Some people are a little more impatient. We got emails within an hour of the project ending asking when they'd receive their stuff," O'Neill says.
This also makes it easier when you have to deliver any bad news, for instance, if the project gets delayed.
"I send them an update every month to tell them [it] delayed another month," says Hunt. (His game did eventually make it out the door, in October 2013.)
According to O'Neill, the huge success of Kobolds Ate My Baby allowed them to do much more to the project, but also meant it would take longer to ship.
"We ended up doing a brand new edition of our game, instead of just reprinting," he says. "We got in front of the fact we were going to be behind."
He also recommends using a service such as BackerKit, which manages item fulfillment for Kickstarters, to help deal with the more than a thousand people who expect physical rewards. It can manage problems when backers move and change their addresses, or who want more or fewer updates from the Kickstarter campaign.
Hunt says it was easy to keep up backer goodwill with these updates. "I've not had a single person complain how late this is. Lots of supportive emails saying 'We want you to get it done.' They didn't Kickstart the game so much as they Kickstarted my development of it. If I do another project, I hope they're still involved."
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