A storm giant comes to life
Our next location module, coming soon to a Kickstarter near you
This is a post off the cuff on a fine holiday morning, just to bring you some news before the fireworks start tonight. Since returning from Reno early this week, I have been working on getting the crowdfunding campaigns for Places by the Way #14: Lair of the Storm Giant and Found by the Way #14: Path to the Storm Giant’s Lair. I finished the Kickstarter campaign and submitted it late last night. Much to my surprise, it was approved without vetting, so it can go live at any moment.
I’m going to hold off and keep it in public preview for a little while, though. Not only because it is a big holiday weekend in which people will have other things to do than keep their eyes peeled for a Kickstarter launch, but also because I am determined to try a not-so-little experiment this time and run a parallel campaign on Backerkit. As I have said before, I am convinced that Backerkit and Gamefound are both leeching market share from Kickstarter, and while this shrinkage may only dent Kickstarter’s backer pool, it disproportionately hurts smaller creators like Ramen Sandwich Press because we just aren’t getting the same level of attention as we did, say, five years ago.
I know that we are not supposed to try to leverage more than one crowdfunding platform at the same time, but there does not appear to be anything in the ToS of either Kickstarter or Backerkit that forbids it. They just try to discourage you from using the competition: “Well… it’s not a good idea to split your bets, so you’re better off sticking with us exclusively…. Yeah, please don’t encourage our competitors….”
Yeah, well, the thing about that is this: I haven’t met with much success sticking exclusively with Kickstarter over the last couple of years. So it’s time to try something different. Will splitting my bets between Kickstarter and Backerkit’s smaller audience yield better results? I don’t know. All I know is that a bit of wisdom that an old golfing partner gave me many years ago keeps popping back into my mind, to the effect that if you keep running behind the lead dog, your view will never change (there’s more to that story, so perhaps I’ll tell it another time).
My original plan for this past week was that I should get the Kickstarter campaign into shape, then submit it; and while I was waiting for approval to launch, I would master Backerkit’s campaign form and complete it. I don’t yet know if Backerkit screens projects, but given that I’ve been feeling neglected and unappreciated by Kickstarter lately, I just assumed that they would take the maximum amount of time (perhaps even longer) to clear me to launch and that, perhaps, I would receive clearance from both at about the same time. Instead, I received entirely unexpected grace and respect from Kickstarter — instant permission to launch. But I’m going to stick to my plan and try to go live on Kickstarter and Backerkit at the same time. In the meantime, I’m to work on the Backerkit listing and try to gin up some pre-launch publicity. Enjoy the Kickstarter preview, help me spread the word, and stay alert because I’ll be posting more news about Lair of the Storm Giant very soon!