Rough draft for our Kickstarter reward tiers

Battlescape
41

The pledge levels look good, particularly if modified with some of the feedback that’s been given so far.

One reward you might want to think about is the naming of the badges. Displaying “bronze” or even “silver” badges could make people feel like lesser members of the community. It would be better to simply have one standard “supporter” badge and then elevate tiers from there with “gold” and “platinum” as superior rewards. It’s a subtle difference but one that avoids making backers feel bad for not being able to afford to back at higher levels.

It could also be fun to tie in the badges to minerals that are used in the game so… “iridium badge”, “tantalum badge”, “titanium badge” as alternative higher groupings.

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42

Sell @Hutchings
Timeline poster of the struggle
Pet “Asteroid” with googly eyes, signed by a random dev
Wandering wreckage in the game has your name on it. I.E. UEF-Kreydis
Small discount on any real money items from INovae.
Multiple HUD choices / colors

4 Likes
43

You should know that that isn’t The_Sane’s logic. It’s Kickstarters. Kickstarter isn’t a pre-order shop, and it has been actively trying to dissuade people from thinking of it in those terms. Kickstarter is a micro-investment market. The pledge rewards are the proposed returns on your investments. At $20, you are not buying the game. You’re providing (some percentage of) $20 of capital funding to I-Novae Studios to help fund the game’s development. If the project is successful, your investment will result in a return provided in kind.

The fact that investment returns do not scale in the way that you’d like is something that you need to consider, as an investor, when considering what level of capital funding you’re willing to provide, if any.

3 Likes
44

And you should know that I was expressing my concern about “paying” $65 for a bunch of skins. And that is what is preventing me from pledging above the $75-85 tier…

As for the “shop” features, it has been done many times before, it eliminates the need to have 50 tiers when only 10 can be made with the inclusion of the ability for people to buy the “extras” separately.

45

Yes reward tiers are there to persuade you to pledge higher, and here we are talking about what seems reasonable in that regard, but making skins available at $150 does not inherently make every subsequent tier $65 “more expensive” than it otherwise would be.

Exactly… but here’s the thing: you aren’t buying anything, You are throwing your money into a hole and hoping something comes back out of it. If the project fails and you chose a 4 pack you aren’t just out of pocket for 1 game, you are out of pocket for 4. Yes I know it’s your choice to do that and accept the risk, but I still feel that multipacks give people the wrong idea.

I don’t know what experiences other people have had when buying multipacks but whenever I have bought one with the hope of getting a friend into a game when I already know he isn’t interested in it the result has rarely been worth it. If the friend does seem interested then there is a reasonable chance they will buy it themselves.

If you aren’t willing to pay more without a reward you feel is suitable that is perfectly reasonable. How much might you be willing to pledge with the right incentives? And what would those incentives be? As I’ve stated myself, the amount that I am planning to donate actually leaves me right in the middle of a dead zone. Perhaps they will fill it, or perhaps they will be able to persuade me to go higher.

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46

Yes, I had the same reaction. Just make the badges more ornate for the higher pledge tiers.

Are the split tiers going to be set up such that, for example, there will be a limited $40 tier and an unlimited $50 tier available at the same time so that people can see how the pledge will change? I wouldn’t bother with the 23/25 split tier.

What I picked up on most as I read through the tiers was the lack of anything that builds a sense of intimacy with the project. This may just be the way the tiers are written, but the list comes across as a “give us this, we give you that” kind of experience. David Braben included dinner with his team at the highest tier. Yes, I know that’s impractical for you guys, but it’s the sort of intimacy that backers like to have. So the tiers need to be phrased such that backers have that growing sense of intimacy. In that spirit, getting more stuff at the highest tiers is not doing the job. I think that’s a fairly serious mistake. In particular, I find the billboard concept odd. It seems to invite corporate backing. Microsoft, GE, Coca Cola.

Play up the fact that people getting beta, alpha and developer access are ever-closer to the team in terms of feedback. Those developer access guys are going to be able to comment on the names of things, see features that might never make it to alpha, and have a chance to see the development process in detail through the builds. That’s the sort of intimacy that these guys want, and the short description needs to convey that sense; behind the scenes interaction with the great ones who are building this amazing product. If you guys had offices, invite some high level backers for a visit. That will only entice folks near those offices, but it’s a special treat. Much more so than personal skins and billboards, which are vanity items that folks with that much money really aren’t as interested in. They have all the vanity items they want. What they can’t buy is intimacy.

I think that you’re also overlooking a great opportunity to place easter eggs in your game content. Put in a limited $1000 tier to have something about the person incorporated into art assets. Carve their name or a favorite saying into a rock wall on a planet. Sneak their initials into the dirt map for a ship. Put a crude portrait into the veins of a tree leaf. Let them feel like their identity is literally being incorporated into the game.

One last thought is including a poster (or whatever size can be printed and sent out easily) of the genesis of one art asset from concept to finished model, signed by the team. Put such a reward at a high enough level that you’re not spending inordinate amounts of time printing, signing and mailing the darned things. At “executive producer” level, give them a full set of whichever art assets for which you’ve prepared posters. Having them signed by the team is critical, especially if you only say “Signed by the team”, but then actually put a hand-written sentiment on the posters when they get them.

Those posters could also be available as single images and screensavers at lower tiers - but without the signatures, and cropped a bit so that they aren’t the same as the printed and signed ones.

7 Likes
47

I have no experience about Kickstarter campaign dynamics so I can’t suggest anything useful about the tiers.

I would just like to say that I’m very excited to see the project at this stage already.

I might land somewhere in the 250-500 range. Depending on how the rewards end up and how my own business is doing when the Kickstarter is due :smile:

1 Like
48

Even as an avid Linux user (it’s my main platform for everything although I retain a junk Windows install for games) I have to say that targeting Linux is not a good idea for a starting studio. As much as we Linux fans would disagree, I believe that the market for Linux is still too small to make a noticeable gain in profits.

I’ll be playing I:BS on whatever it needs to run. :smiley:

I don’t really. I think it would actually be fun to see a billboard of something I know in a game, even more so if I knew that that meant they had contributed to the game.

2 Likes
49

I’m not saying it needs to have linux support at launch, as most don’t. I’m just saying I’ll throw money into the kickstarter and if there isn’t linux support I might not play it; which is why I asked about the stretch goal. How much I pledge kinda depends on the set of stretch goals in addition to the reward tiers.

50

If, hypothetically, it only made business sense for us to release the game for Linux if we could charge 1.5x to 2x more for the game to make up for the difference in market size would you and other Linux users like you be willing to pay that?

For the $10k reward tier we figured the only people interested would be high net worth individuals and corporations. Since we may not have an actual office if we don’t raise enough money it’s difficult for us to offer dinner with the team because we’re spread around the world. To that end the idea behind the floating ads is that:

  1. It adds plausible ambiance to the game world. It’s likely a space station or a base would have advertisements around it because… that’s how the world works and the future is unlikely to work any different. Even military bases are surrounded by bars, strip clubs, car dealerships, etc and their associated advertisements.
  2. It allows companies who are possibly interested in our tech to place a bet on us without too much overhead.
  3. There could be some real fun tongue-in-cheek ads such as putting up a picture of your pet iguana with a catchy tag-line for selling iguana insurance in case your iguana gets exposed to radiation and turns into a city stomping monster. This would obviously be a lot more visible than having some hidden statue with your name on it sitting on a mountain on a moon.
5 Likes
51

A quick idea would be to name a visible star after pledgers. People in the game could then press a key to enable the “pointy mouse” and start selecting the stars in the skybox like Flavien did on one of the old videos, and see the names. I think it would be unique and fun.

And if “dinner with the staff” is hard because the team is spread and plane tickets are expensive, you could always offer skype calls with one or more members of the staff.

Or maybe offer access to a Q/A video where a pledge tier would allow you to choose one question. So, “first 20 in this tier can ask a question to be answered in video X”. Or if that is not enough, instead of a question it could be a request for something to be done on a video, like “play hide an seek in an asteroid belt” or whatever.

1 Like
52

Another small reference, for anyone that have played SC2 (terran campaign, “Wings of Liberty”):
Bubba’s gas station
Not making it as a embedded video because would take too much space (pun intended :smiley: ).

Also, some other SC2 adds for the fun:
L880ETC (music album)

Gold ol’ iPistol

53

This is the only meaningful bit. I argue that there should be no tier that makes it attractive to corporations. Instead, hit up the corporations to see who might be interested in providing sponsorship money. No doubt that’s the sort of money that backed a number of other companies - contingent on their Kickstarter being a success.

That, and your other ideas, are nice and imaginative - and in line with something a bit more personal than “stuff”.

54

Depending on the game and its base price, yes.

Assuming IBS is good, then I’d be willing to pay the same amount (or slightly more) as a current AAA title if it guaranteed Linux support.

Also, regarding the whole advertising thing. I think if real-world companies wanted to advertise in Battlescape, I’d be all for it. But only if those adverts were sufficiently “in-universe” (so, no real-world car dealerships for instance)

EDIT: That being said, I’d still rather it be a stretch goal that everyone benefits from if it suceeds. Selling differently priced copies for different systems sucks when it’s the same game.

2 Likes
55

I have to echo the thing about badges someone mentioned. Honestly giving people a “bronze badge” is probably worse than having no badge at all. Instead, just have a non bronze silver gold badge setup that more directly references the contribution. Say, name your 20$ tier “Enlisted Pilot” or somehting to take a page from star citizen’s campaign, then have the highest badge be “ace pilot” or something.

56

Well used to do that as a fundraiser at the planetarium. I think it would work fine here, too, depending on whether star names were transferred to the MMO or not (world building is a funny thing).

I’d also offer up the ability to name NPCs. Presumably there will be captains and generals (or admirals) involved in these battles and their back stories. They’ll need names. You may as well get some cash for them.

57

At this stage we would not sign up for much, if anything to be carried over to an MMO. We would not know the timeframe between a successful Battlescape project and the start of development of an MMO and would not want to pigeonhole ourselves in anyway. Though there are a lot of stars etc.

58

I’d put developer access at $150usd, alpha at $45, beta at $30, and change $5 tier to $2 then modify a few limited backer offers like: First 500 backers for beta access pay 15$, first 3000 backers for alpha access at 25$, first 300 backers for dev access, $85. Then once the limit have been reached it goes back to normal price.

I’m definitely going to be within the first 300 for dev access if it’s $85usd. It should be under a hundred at least. It’ll probably reach it’s limit within a few hours. :grin:

59

I opose lowering the controbution for most of the current tiers.

Let me name things. It’s cool and something you really could give away to backers. And don’t just add naming things to one tier. More then one.
And when there are too nany in that group, just do a poll. It would still have been backer named, but by a larger group. You coud still advertise it as “name something”.

60

I feel that “A dinner meeting with Keith and Flavien” would still be an appropriate reward. If the kickstarter is successful then you two will have to meet up again during the next year.

I agree with JB’s comments that the rewards would benefit from more of a feeling with intimacy. Will you have exclusive forums for alpha, beta and developer access levels? If so, you should probably make that clear as well.

1 Like