I’m in heavy favor of limited release skins / paintjobs for rewards as opposed to individual ships.
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Me too. Custom cosmetics are something I’d happily pay for. None of the ship styles seem to favour green hues, and I’d love to have a green hued skin, green thruster fire and contrails, and/or green blaster fire.
I’m sorry. What I was thinking and typing were not the same. I edited it.
Try this: When I donate to the game, if people give more money and get something beyond looks I would consider that stealing.
Like the top hat monocle and beard we have done up for the Hellion, right Andre? 
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Jan is such a visionary.
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Again, Mr. Jafo demands this. His eccentric billionaire space plane demands formalwear!
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Continuing the discussion about physical rewards from Date of the kickstarter?
It’s been highlighted that the manufacturing and delivery costs of physical rewards can be quite significant and that many potential backers are not actually fussed about having them, so perhaps one option is to make them optional:
Instead of a pledge tier including a t-shirt or other physical item, a tier could unlock or give you a discount on that item in an I-Novae store which you could then buy if you wanted to.
This would mean I-Novae don’t waste a load of their funds sending t-shirts to people who don’t really care about them anyway.
Some items in the store could only be available to backers, or only to backers above a certain tier.
Bad idea? People that are interested in physical items, what do you think?
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I think that’s a good idea if other people support it.
Thats a great idea. It needs to be enough transparent though to be “de-facto” a physical item. I can’t really tell if this would lower the incentive for people who want physicals to get the tier. I sure hope not.
A more sophisticated system would be to have something like a link to the store send to you after the Kickstarter. When the link is clicked it brings you to the shops shopping basket already filled with the goods included in the tier and the code allready entered.
Maybe Kickstarter even has that implemented. Or I’m sure T-Shirt Vendors like Jinx or ThinkGeek would be more then willing to cooperate on their web based platform.
Well I would like some physical items and this wouldn’t bother me. I was introduced to the idea of “discount” though trough a sentence and not a word or two in the tier tree of Kickstarter … I can’t really tell.
Anyway there should be a way for people to opt out on physicals without adding a ton of complicated tiers. Selling codes in the tiers wouldn’t violate the obligation of delivering the goods while still allowing for the, previously named, opting out.
Several projects have a website where if you use the same email address as your Kickstarter account then it can get your pledge level. As far as I can see Kickstarter doesn’t have a public API but there must be some way to get that data out.
Once you have that integration then discounts/unlocks can be applied automatically.
But yes, I agree that it needs to be clear that you’re not getting the item included and it needs to be easy to buy if you want to.
It should be clear that you get the item … IF you want to. That’s a little different.
I imagine a screen with all the physical items and checkboxes. Default they will be not crossed. You are promted to visit the website and select what you want. Though there could be other solutions.
Last time I “finalized” after a Kickstarter ended they had quite some sophisticated systems there … can’t remeber what Kickstarter used them and what exactly you could do.
Planetary Anahilation made me buy another 4 copies just because they asked me after the Kickstarter.
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Perhaps convert the T-shirt tier to a “gift shop voucher”-tier, good for either a T-shirt (which costs INovae money), an additional free copy of the game (effectively zero up-front cost), or two beta-only keys to let your friends join you (effectively no cost at all)?
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A panel, a picture with a compilation of items you can select from per voucher on the Kickstarter page would be enough to show your options. Higher tiers could include several vouchers.
Is there maybe a Kickstarter that did that allready so we can see how that turned out?
Why complicate things with vouchers, some KS projects simply state add $45 for T-Shirt, add $25 for colored dice or whatever. Point being that the actual tiers don’t need to include any specifics on the items that some customers might not even want and any tier is allowed to purchase the extras.
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So how do those Kickstarters track that “additional” money? How can they tell this person has pledged 40 more dollars to their pledge tier?
I’m just saying that the incentive shouldn’t move out of sight.
KS tracks the tier and the total amount of money, the game developer is responsible for the allocation of the “extra” money. Most companies have their own system that is responsible for those extras, it can be anything from a community manager emailing the customers to a web-store.
Because simple human psychology. We want this Kickstarter to bring in a lot of money, right?
If you state “add $45 for T-shirt,” that will be perceived as “oh, so now I have to buy a T-shirt on top of the pledge;” if you state “free gift voucher included which can be exchanged for a T-shirt amongst other things,” it is instead perceived as “ooh! Free T-shirt!”
It’s a marketing trick. Pure and simple.
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As opposed to somebody like me saying “Oh look, I’m paying for a T-shirt, but I don’t want one.”
Which is where the non-specific vouchers come in. You’d now be saying “Oh look, I get a free copy to give away or two extra spots in the beta.” Even if you don’t want a free copy of the game, it doesn’t matter if you were willing to pay for the tier regardless - it doesn’t lose you anything, and the cost to INovae is a bit of bandwidth.
Before anyone goes “oh noes, lost sale!” please just… don’t. EA or Blizzard might be able to make that argument provided a quarter-billion-dollar PR budget, but I:B is going to rely on word of mouth, which is greatly accelerated by throwing around a few free copies. At least I assume that’s why Valve seems to do it.
I know that the voucher is worth a T-shirt at the least, and I would much rather take that “imaginary” voucher tier and pledge the full price of the T-shirt towards the next tier. Also if I’m a shirt short on pajamas or my wife is I could easily pledge for the tier I want and buy two T-shirts at the price that I know is set, as an extra.
Point being is that I want to know what I’m paying for and I want to be paying the full price towards the game and not some vouchers that I have absolutely no need or want for.