Quote:
Originally Posted by Exore
If we look at the pitch video it is impossible not to compare it to DFA since that project was so insanely successful, however I agree with you totally that it should be judge on it own merits.
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I don't think it's at all fair to suggest that the difference in success between DFA and Jane's kickstart has anything to do with the pitch video.
In my opinion the difference in success comes down to the following factors:
1.
Tim had around
50,000 twitter follows when he released his kickstarter!
Jane had only just set up her twitter and facebook accounts and did not have many followers
2.
Tim has made successful games in other more mainstream genres and as such has a wider name and fanbase.
3.
Tim has generally promoted himself as a 'name' in the gaming world and has built up stronger communication channels.
Just to provide a contrast, I think I'm right up there with one of Jane's biggest fans. I would buy anything she releases. I frequently google her name to see if she's up to anything new. I patiently and optimistically waited for 7 years for Gray Matter and ordered the collector's edition from Germany despite living in New Zealand so I wouldn't have to wait for the English release.
I am a big adventure game fan but I would say before this kickstarter I would only visit one of the adventure game sites maybe once a month to see if there was any big news I'd missed. The only reason I found out about the kickstart countdown was because my husband happened to be reading a SCUMMVM forum where there was a post.
The thing is, if Jane had kept any communication channel open I would have been right there listening for news as would many other fans, but those channels just weren't there until very recently. I would regularly check Jane's Gray Matter blog just in case some kind of update had been posted but it was so rarely updated.
I desperately wanted to have a means to follow what she was up to but it just wasn't there.
I'm not saying this to critisise Jane, she has every right to her privacy and to not keep up a public persona. I'm just saying that by not keeping up that public persona like Tim has, it meant she didn't have that readily available communication channel to publicise the news of her kickstarter. Tim hit 50,000 dedicated fans with 1 tweet. Jane surely has that many but didn't have a way to send a message to each one of them.
You can say that everyone should know about it now anyway because it's on all the news sites but I know that's not true. For example, my mum is also a big fan but she doesn't read the gaming news sites, or go to adventure game forums. I'm sure she wouldn't have heard about this if I hadn't passed on the news. I feel very confident there's plenty of other people out there who would love to be part of this but still don't know it's happening.
4.
People weren't just pledging to support a Tim Schafer game. They were pleding money to support a bigger message. That message might have been "Adventure games aren't dead!" or "Fans should be deciding what games are made, not publishers!" or many other messages that meant something to the person pledging. They may have just wanted to be part of the hype and the moment.
I think people feel like they've already made their point and got that message across now and they don't need to do it again for every other kickstarter that comes along. Tim's game benefitted from being the first (sorry Cognition, the first that hit the general public consciousness) and carrying everyone that wanted to be part of the moment in time along with it. It's just not realistic to expect the kickstarter projects that come after it to capture that same feeling in people of, "we're taking a stand, we're being part of something big and historical here".
I think Jane did make some marketing mistakes but she rectified them very early on. She's been listening to suggestions the implementing changes since this started. I personally am happy with the progress it's making right now and I couldn't be happier with Jane's continuous updates, changes to rewards, answering questions in the comments and all the little touches she's doing to keep the momentum going.
