Screenshot of when we finally hit our last stretch goal! :D
It’s wild to think that it’s already been over 2 months since we successfully funded Captain’s Gambit: Kings of Infinite Space on Kickstarter. When we launched our campaign, we thought we would be lucky if we hit our $15,000 funding goal. But the fact that we managed to not only achieve our goal, but to raise $25,000 AND unlock all our stretch goals, is incredible. Thank you to everyone that helped us bring our first game to life!
We learned a lot from our campaign, and we think it would be interesting to share some of our insights with you. These insights aren’t meant to be an exhaustive list of lessons we learned, but rather highlights on some of our main takeaways.
Researching other campaigns helped us A LOT
Leading up to our launch, we spent a ton of time researching Kickstarter best-practices. I spent countless hours reading through blogs like Stonemaier Games and James Mathe, listening to podcasts like Funding the Dream, and studying campaigns like Everdell, Chicken Heist, and Root. I even kept notes while researching and wrote well over 100 pages!
We owe so much to this feathery little campaign.
Even with all this background research, there were still things we didn’t know. But having this strong backbone of knowledge made sure that we knew the major dos and don’ts of running a Kickstarter before launching, and it allowed us to avoid most of the major pitfalls.
We were way busier during the campaign than we expected
I think we all understood that running a Kickstarter was going to take a lot of work, but I don’t think we realized quite how busy we were going to be during the campaign itself. There are so many things you need to keep updated throughout your campaign, such as the project image, campaign updates, progress graphics, FAQs, emails, and advertisements. On top of that, you need to be ready to respond to any and all questions and comments in a timely manner. All this work meant we sometimes had to scramble to get things ready to post on time.
To keep us from being overwhelmed during our next campaign, we’re going to prepare more posts and graphics before launch. For example, we can make all our alternate stretch goal graphics ahead of time instead of making them as we hit our goals. We can also draft some of our milestone campaign updates and social media posts so they’ll be ready as soon as we hit them. We will still likely be very busy next time, but at least we’ll be better prepared.
Print & Plays and Digital Prototypes are great for getting feedback and engagement
You can still play this now by signing up for our mailing list!
I think by far one of the best decisions we made was releasing a free Print & Play of Captain’s Gambit before the campaign. Originally, some of our team members were nervous that this would deter people from backing our campaign because they could just get it for free. But it turns out the best way to get people excited to back your game is to give them a way to play it. In fact, quite a few backers reached out to us to tell us that they decided to back us specifically because they played the Print & Play and loved it.
During the campaign, we also released a digital version of Captain’s Gambit on Tabletop Simulator. This was also very useful for helping people try out the game. On top of that, after the campaign this version has been essential for running playtests. Not only have these playtests been helpful for ironing out the content we unlocked during the campaign, but it’s been a fun way to interact directly with our community. While we aren’t certain right now what form it’ll take, we can safely say our next game will have a free playable version of some kind before launch as well.
Each social media platform has a unique community
Who would you have voted for as the best captain in the game?
No one on our team had much experience with social media marketing before the campaign started. We’d all used things like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram before, but it took us a lot of trial and error to figure out what kinds of posts do well on each platform. Originally, we thought we could just copy/paste the same stuff on all accounts, but we quickly learned each community is different and responds well to different kinds (and frequencies) of posts. For example, Twitter was great for short, frequent, easy-to-share posts. Instagram was great for running interactive polls and tournaments. And Facebook was good for organizing a launch event to help direct the initial surge of Day 1 backers.
Next time as we are ramping up for our next campaign, I think we’re going to spend more time coming up with fun ways to interact with our communities on each of these platforms. We might also be able to find fun ways to use our Discord too!
The Kickstarter community is extremely supportive
Before, during, and after the campaign we’ve been amazed by how friendly and supportive the Kickstarter and boardgame communities have been. Coming in as first-time creators, we were worried it might be aggressively competitive. But it turns out everyone just wants to see others succeed. Many creators were very open to chatting about the platform and sharing their advice and feedback with us. Tons of our backers went above and beyond to share our campaign and spread the word. And after the campaign was over, our backers on our playtesting Discord have been active and eager to help us finalize the game.
It’s incredible how kind and welcoming everyone has been to us. We hope that we can be equally friendly to anyone else who wants to come into this community. If you’re a new creator, or just a curious gaming enthusiast, feel free to reach out to us anytime and we’d be happy to chat.