I think the most exciting idea on this video is when I reached out to the Mojave Muleskinners for permission to use their image gallery.
Getting access to hundreds of images that are not available to other designers meant that I could illustrate the entire book in the same style.
Something else that I touched on was crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding
Devil’s Staircase was crowdfunded on IndieGogo. You can see its promotional video below. It is only 2 minutes long. When setting up a crowdfunding campaign it is recommended that you make a video so I did.
I found crowdfunding immensely stressful. I had seen other creators run campaigns and they fell into two camps. The first had a big social media following and could call upon thousands of people to spread the word.
The second group didn’t have that existing following, and I am in that group.
Where the first group could ask people to spread the word, and get an immediate response the second group, doing the same thing was like a tiny echo in a huge cave. You barely registered the echo.
Some of the advice I got was that a short campaign was less stressful than a long one. I chose a 7 day campaign. The idea was that if the campaign didn’t fund in the first few days, it was unlikely to.
A short campaign also meant that you could shout about your game on every channel you had access to and you could get away with for a week, try that for a month and people will soon get annoyed with you.
Watching you campaign crawl towards a target that it may not reach for an entire month sounded like agony.
I chose a 7 day campaign and it funded during that first week. I needed $200 to cover my expenses and ended up getting about $550. How much I would have got in a month I will never know. At least my account says Campaigns 1 Successful 1.
It was a low risk first attempt and I think I learned a lot in the process.
Playtesting
In the next video I will talk about playtesting, and the two different approaches I have used.
Save yourself some grief!
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