Welcome back. I hope this past week was full of game design, playing games, or just spending time with those who are important to you.
Kickstarter creators spend a lot of time and energy building up a crowd and creating buzz for their campaign and then finding creative ways to keep that interest throughout the campaign. However, at times it can feel like once the campaign is funded and over that the backers are almost forgotten about as all of the efforts and focus from the creator shifts to the manufacturing process. I feel like this is a missed opportunity and one that more creators should take advantage of. For this week’s post, I want to look at 5 tips for keeping backer interest post campaign.
Find creative ways to share information
One of the harder aspects of keeping backer interest is being able to find the balance of too many updates and not enough. However, even once that balance is achieved, these updates are an excellent opportunity to increase backer interest by finding creative ways to share the information from the updates.
Roxley Games and Wierd Giraffe Games have gotten really good at using progress bars to communicate the needed information, but I recently was part of a really fun and creative art update. The creators of Infinities recently wanted to share new art for one of the leaders in their game. This particular leader had already caused a little trouble when she hacked the Kickstarter campaign updates. and she was back to her old tricks this time infiltrating the Vatal Entertainment Studio Discord server. As members of the server, we were given 10% of the final artwork, and then had to work together to reveal the remaining 90% as bits of the image were shared with random members, some even coming in the form of password protecting zip files. In the end, we managed to reveal the final image and all had some fun and shared some laughs while we were at it.
Find opportunities to play your game with your backers
Another golden opportunity to keep backer interest up is by taking as many opportunities as possible to play the game with your backers. Having a digital version of your game will be a huge help here, but running in person plays can be important as well. Streaming gameplay is another option.
Give backers opportunities to interact with you and each other
Part of what makes a Kickstarter campaign so exciting is having all of the backers getting together and working towards a common goal. Try and find different ways of continuing this interaction with live streams, Facebook groups, Discord servers, convention appearances, or an online forum.
It is important to note that all throughout your efforts you need to remember to be genuine. Remember that your backers are people and not just numbers and that it is because of their support that you are even making your game. Remember to find ways to appreciate them. I’d love to hear about your experiences with keeping backer interest post campaign, both as a backer and as a creator. Until next week, happy designing.