NextCastle Party gaming festival crowdfuning experience

    Good day, harazhiteli!

    NextCastle Party gaming festival will be held in autumn in St. Petersburg and the fundraising campaign on the crowdfunding platform Boomstarter is nearing completion. And while raising money for game development has long been commonplace, raising funds for such a festival is more likely an exception. Therefore, in this article I would like to talk about why we decided to use crowdfunding, what mistakes we made and what experience we got.

    I’ll say right away why I decided to write this article when the campaign itself was not yet over. For several reasons. Firstly, the campaign itself lasts 30 days and after its completion, as the experience of colleagues shows, the amount of work only increases, so most likely we simply will not have time for analysis. Secondly, perhaps to some of the readers the idea of ​​our festival will seem interesting and he will want to support it. Well, the third reason is the simplest - the experience in the heat of the heat is much more interesting.


    Disclaimer
    The experience and conclusions in this article are the personal experience of the author, based on the experience of organizing a fundraising campaign for the NextCastle Party gaming festival and information obtained from public sources. The conclusions described in this article do not claim absolute reliability.

    Conclusions are in italics. Perhaps they will be useful to someone, but to some they will seem commonplace.


    About the festival

    First, a little about the festival NextCastle Party. This is a non-profit gaming festival, which will be held for the second time in St. Petersburg on November 2, 2013. His main emphasis is on independent developers and retro games. For gamers there will be competitions, an active retro exhibition, board games and other entertainment programs. For developers will be organized game jam'y, game contests, seminars and other interesting things. Events implies the constant involvement of visitors, thereby combining the exhibition, conference and cyber sport into a single harmonious whole.
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    The uniqueness of the festival lies in the fact that it is non-profit. Those. all proceeds beyond the necessary go to prizes, to support independent developers and to the fund of the following festivals. In addition, we want to change the format of events filled with annoying advertising, which essentially only prevents players from getting to know the products, and independent developers - to convey their idea to gamers. That is why we decided to use the crowdfunding system.

    Preliminary preparation

    Before launching the campaign, we analyzed a huge amount of information and based on the experience of others and our vision we did the following preparatory work:

    Site and pages in social networks


    We updated the information on the site, put in order the general view, slightly updated the styles, started announcing competitions and increased activity in public. The main content in publics is now poured through the time2post service (pictures, entertainment part) and using a special plug-in from the blog of the main site (basic information on the festival).

    Be prepared for the fact that after the launch of the campaign, the number of visitors to your resources will increase. And some people will decide on help based on them.

    Date and place


    Trying to raise money for the festival is not yet known the exact time and place, it would be quite risky. In the Action Zone, in which the festival was held that year, we really liked it - there are great guys and atmosphere. But this year she no longer suited us in terms of the number of expected visitors. In addition, we, of course, very strongly rested on the financial threshold. Because of this, we even had to move the date from the end of September to the first of November. As it later turned out, this is even for the best.

    Work for crowdfunding platform


    This block includes recording of the video-appeal, preparation of texts and awards. We tried to make the text and video concise enough so that on the one hand it was clear what was at stake, on the other so as not to overload a person with information.
    According to our observations, project authors very often make awards banal and not particularly interesting. In our campaign, the player the participant receives a special rank, depending on the amount of money invested. From Citizen and Soldier to Prince and King. Part of the ranks is limited by quantity and, for example, there can be only one King. All this is equipped with interesting descriptions and prizes. Apparently, we managed to do something not very hackneyed.

    Awards are one of the most important steps for visitors to make decisions about helping your project. Come up with something not commonplace. It does not work out as prizes - draw a description. And in no case do not be greedy.


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    Many projects overstate the required amount, thereby repelling potential investments. The logic is simple - the higher this amount, the less is the visitor’s confidence that you will collect it. And that means the desire to take risks and help. And when you have already collected the base amount - you can specify the following goals and motivate people to help more. Well, and accordingly, collecting a smaller amount is easier and the dynamics of interest growth is better.
    By the way, this is exactly what most projects do, gaining hundreds of percent of the base amount on Kickstarter. In our project, we indicated 130 thousand, while adding in the description that this is not the whole budget, but the amount that will go to cover the rent and part of the awards.
    When working on Boomstarter, as an individual, 23% is deducted from this amount (taxes + commission). Remember to consider overhead when calculating the required amount.

    Indicate the minimum reasonable amount necessary for the implementation of the project.
    This may not be the entire project budget.


    Also, do not expect that collective financing is manna from heaven and you, having done a little work, will cover your expenses and get rich. Firstly, there will be a lot of work, and secondly, most of the money collected will go to work and to rewards.

    Crowdfunding is a good platform for advertising a project and pre-selling tickets or another final product.


    Pre Work Errors


    The biggest mistake, in our opinion, is that with a good text and awards, an insufficiently high-quality video. At the time of recording the video, we were in Kiev and it turned out, to put it mildly, not of very good quality. In particular, we had to record the sound separately, which led to a not very good impression of it as a whole.
    According to Boomstarter, the presence of a video in the project increases his chances of success by approximately 20%. The appeal is what most will see before reading the description you have been writing for so long, and a close inspection of the awards. Yes, to be cunning, many will not even get to this. Later, we came to the conclusion that an insufficiently high-quality video will not only not increase your chances, but also reduce it. Especially when it comes to people who learned about your project a few minutes ago. And, of course, the video should carry the correct message.

    A video-appeal is the main face of your project, according to which potential assistants will meet him. Give him special attention.
    Try to keep within two minutes - few will look longer.

    In addition, at the time of the start of the campaign, we had an agreement on publications with only three media. Newspaper Newspaper , gaming portal RiotPixels and online newspaper fontanka.ru . The first publication appeared in the publication of August 21, the second ones supported our action right away, and Fontanka eventually refused to publish information on fundraising and suggested making the announcement closer to the festival.

    Try to enlist the support of as many media as possible even before the fundraising campaign begins. This will save you time and nerves during its passage.


    Campaign start


    After carrying out preliminary work, we received approval from the site, corrected the comments and prepared for launch. On July 31st at 20:05 we pressed the treasured button and our festival appeared in the “New projects” section. Evening time was chosen in order to get into prime time visiting boomstarter and not be displaced by other projects. Wednesday with the emphasis on the fact that the largest number of people will be able to see us two days before the weekend.

    Carefully select the time to launch the campaign, taking into account the target audience.

    Along with the launch on Boomstarter, we wrote the corresponding news on the website and in public. Then they began to write letters to friends with a description of the project. We wrote to friends without a break for the first 4 days. The letter we sent on the first day was very cumbersome, describing all the features of the festival and therefore many immediately mistook it for spam. In the following days, we reduced this message as much as possible, leaving only the most important thing - a cool festival, we need money and reposts, and the number of answers, likes and reposts of the main news in relation to the number of written messages has increased.

    Feel free to write to your friends - these are the first people who will support you and your project even if it hasn’t scored anything yet. Write a personal appeal to everyone, but be concise - otherwise your message will look like spam!


    Further activity

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    As you can see from this table, most of the visits have a boom starter, then comes the public, and then the site goes a little behind. Let's analyze what the ups and downs in these charts are related to.

    The second day (31st) in analytics - the campaign starts in the evening and in the first days we most actively write to friends about it. From the evening of the first day of launch until the middle of the second, the project is in new ones, and then falls into record holders. By the ratio between the boom starter and the public / site, you can approximately determine how many visitors came directly from the site, and which we ourselves attracted. On Saturday and Sunday, we did not publish any news and did not invite friends, so activity from 3rd to 5th fell sharply.

    Private messages have a big effect at the beginning of the campaign!

    The next surge in visitors (6th and 7th) was caused first by publication on RiotPixels, and then by putting us on the project of the day. By the way, these days the traffic to our site is significantly higher than the traffic of the public.

    By the 8th, we already had about 30% and we relaxed a little. In addition, at this time we helped organize another interesting festival, Chaos Constructions , which was held in St. Petersburg on August 10-11. For these reasons, weekly activity has fallen dramatically, visits to our pages have also decreased. And, as a result, fees drastically decreased these days

    Never, under any pretext, let your pages float freely during a fundraising campaign.



    It is interesting that from the 2nd to the 3rd of August our site was unavailable for almost a day. The reason for this was a massive attack by bots on Wordpress sites. Article on Habré .
    We quickly threw the dns record to a stub, hung a movie about fundraising on it, and wrote to the public that technical work was underway. Apparently, most of the visitors did not even notice this. Now, if the public VKontakte fell ... I hope Durov does not allow this.

    The site in such an event is informative in nature and if it affects the collection of money, it is not much.


    Current situation


    At the time of writing, we scored a little more than 40%. The main difficulty that we encountered at this stage is the lack of understanding of the media why they should write fundraising for the festival. Journalists, unfortunately, do not see the point in the article two and a half months before the festival. For example, several print media promised to publish the announcement, but shortly before the date of the festival. At the same time, the bulk of new interested users comes just after such publications.

    Media publications are the main tool to attract the attention of a new audience to your project. Do your best to attract the attention of journalists to you.

    Just a little spoiled the picture is that we relaxed in the middle of the campaign. This can be clearly seen in the graph above.
    According to statistics compiled by the Kickstarter portal, the main activity and depositing money occurs at the beginning and at the end of the company. The first surge was caused by help from friends and fans of the project, and the second by the injection of money from those who were waiting until the end of the project, and by advertising from those who had already invested and wanted the project to take place. Personal communication with users confirms these statistics - many people are waiting until the last. For this reason, despite the significant slowdown in assistance to our project, we believe that we will manage to collect the base amount.

    And the last piece of advice I wanted to leave in this post:

    First of all, be honest with your audience. It is appreciated!



    Ps I will be glad to hear the opinions and comments of readers.

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