Tom Sparks and The Quakes of Ruin officially on Greenlight and Kickstarter needs your support!

edited in Projects
Hey gaming people!

It's been a long 5 months but we (Tasty Poison), have just released our game on Greenlight and Kickstarter complete with a playable demo.
You can find it here. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=234596159
And here. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1969025851/tom-sparks-and-the-quakes-of-ruin



Tell everyone... even the people you don't really talk to much...

Cheers!
Steve

Comments

  • Get a 403 Forbidden Error when I try to download the pc demo
  • @LexAquillia: Should be fixed now :)
  • @Fengol: Thanks!

    Seeing as we haven't posted this anywhere before, let's make this into a project thread. Mods, can you change the category?

    Anyway, we got some rad feedback from the February meetup but I know a lot of people haven't gotten the chance play it yet. Any more feedback would be much appreciated. That goes for the Kickstarter campaign too.

    For convenience, here are the download links:

    Windows
    Mac
    Linux
  • I gave this a play earlier today and it's looking really great and seems pretty damn solid in its level of polish! I didn't get to play too much, but I'd love to see which direction the gameplay takes, be it towards weapons, puzzles, a cool story, or just plain hack and slashery.

    The only major issue I can see is one that someone else brought up when you guys demoed it at the meetup: the longish animation times really feel like they lock you into a move. Any attempt to try and cancel an attack or move in a different direction doesn't feel responsive, and there were a few times where attacks sent me flying over an edge. I'm not really sure what the solution is, but I'm sure tons of people have run into similar problems with this kind of gameplay and have written about it.

    Another (much more subjective, and probably less important) issue is the character style. I dig Tom Sparks, 'specially with his Burt Reynolds moustache, but I feel like the character could be less kinda boyish/chibi, and more stout and hulking. I love the colourful, cartoony art style on the whole, but the character has a light, quick movement that doesn't really fit with badass diesel-punk mechanic :P
    Thanked by 1TheFuntastic
  • Squidcor said:
    @Fengol: Thanks!

    Seeing as we haven't posted this anywhere before, let's make this into a project thread. Mods, can you change the category?
    You could ask @Steve to do it, editing the first post would let you change its category :)

    And dayum it looks pretty, well done guys! Haven't had time to play, but will when I have the chance :)

    There's just a slight strangeness for me to see a character that's effectively Haggar of Final Fight, but presented in a chibi way that's trying very hard to make him look like a child. It just... Doesn't quite gel in my head, and feels kinda uncomfortable. I can see a Rachet and Clank-ness to it, and I can see some Bastion influences... But they all had quite youthful characters - and Bastion didn't look all happy clappy despite its chibi art direction, but... Yeah I dunno how to describe it, it just feels the two concepts aren't quite happily married just yet.

    Other than that yeah, looks to be great! :)
  • Manikin said:
    I'd love to see which direction the gameplay takes, be it towards weapons, puzzles, a cool story, or just plain hack and slashery.
    We're definitely angling towards crazy weaponry being they key element of the gameplay, ala Ratchet and Clank. We've got a whole bunch of fun ideas listed on the Kickstarter.

    As for the melee attacks, we're definitely thinking about tweaking those. Getting locked into a melee attack seems to be the number one cause of drownings in this game.
    Another (much more subjective, and probably less important) issue is the character style
    There's just a slight strangeness for me to see a character that's effectively Haggar of Final Fight, but presented in a chibi way that's trying very hard to make him look like a child.
    So I've got an interesting story about the character for you. When one of our artists (@filiporekhov - he does the more cartoony/chibi style) originally drew up the design, it became an office Joke to call him Tom due to his striking resemblance to Tom Selleck. Our publisher liked the name and design so much, that he decided to call the entire game Tom Sparks (despite our protests). So there you have it, the game is basically named after Tom Selleck and we're pretty much stuck with it :P
  • I vote that the mustache grows as you level up.

    Also, mustache-based IAP.
  • edited
    One remark I have is the controls are diagonal to map layout so I'm constantly holding W and D to go forward. Could either W make Tom go Up and Right or can W make it go in the direction he's facing?

    I love these kinds of 3D platformers and I'm a big fan or Jakk and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank.

    You need comedy cut-scenes (looks for $280,000 under the sofa)
  • I think the main point for me on the character is that he looks way to clean and shiny. I think even a simple treatment of grease could do wonders to make it gel with the image of burly dude with a wrench. Have you tried to fix stuff with spanners? It's a dirty affair.

    Also you guys know this already, but the animation blending and responsiveness is paramount to the feel of the game. I know it's a lot of effort (ie expense) but I don't think you guys have a choice. Machanim blending is pretty advanced though so check out all the blending options.
  • @Squidcor
    Tom Selleck! I knew there was a more mustachioed reference than Burt Reynolds!
    I'm glad I wasn't the only one plummeting into the water. I think the attack animation issue might unfortunately warrant sacrificing a bit of the animation awesomeness to let the player move, but it's a necessary evil I suppose. On the other hand, I'm sure there are plenty of other tricks to blend animation states and whatnot.
    I haven't played Ratchet and Clank :O, but we were talking about it at work yesterday. The crazy weapons thing sounds fun, and I look forward to seeing what you guys do with it :)
  • Fengol said:
    (looks for $280,000 under the sofa)
    I hope your sofa is considerably better stocked than mine :P
    I think even a simple treatment of grease could do wonders to make it gel with the image of burly dude with a wrench.
    That's actually a not a bad idea. The glamorous / shiny shots are pretty much limited to our press renders at the moment, but I wouldn't mind seeing a dirtier art piece. That said, I wouldn't want to make anything feel too gritty as we're trying to go for the lighthearted angle. If anything, our environments are already a little too dark and moody. And convincing artists to brighten things up can prove difficult, no names mentioned... *cough* @luke*cough*.
  • edited
    Hey guys, I wish you'd put the Kickstarter in preview mode and then had people take a look at it before it went live. Right now you're in a situation where your best earning days are behind you and you're still under the 25% boundary - ideally you'd want to be above that right now so that people would extrapolate to the last week of the campaign and "see" a similar upswing coming so they'd be okay to donate.

    So, stuff that I feel is lacking:

    1. There's no call to action. Your video isn't really asking the viewer to DO anything. The only time it has a goal is right at the end where it says "support us on Kickstarter/Greenlight". That's cool for a general trailer kinda thing that's posted to other sites and communities, but it's not up to the level of "PLEASE PLEDGE ALL YOUR SPARE MONIES SO WE CAN MAKE THIS GAME" that other Kickstarter videos are at. And you're competing with those videos, so tell people WHY you want money and what you're going to do with it. Right now you're actually fighting against looking TOO polished, but I'll explain that later.

    2. There are no people here... I know the "group of people talking into a camera" thing is overdone on KS, but it works for a reason (when done well). People want to relate to the plucky independent creators that are risking it all by making something. You have to give backers a story, you have to give press a story, otherwise what are they going to tell other potential backers when they talk about your game? How will they even talk about it? You could be that plucky studio on the bay covered in sharks down in South Africa that somehow is making this awesome-looking game and my how ambitious, wow look at all that effort they've put in and how much they love Ratchett and Clank OMG *I* love Ratchett and Clank too, hells yes here's money! Be approachable in the video, be people making a game that you obviously love making and *need* to finish otherwise you'll cry into your sandy pillows at night as you cuddle them sharks.

    3. There's no goal in the video. The game looks super polished. Maybe that's great for publishers, but backers need to see what you're going to do with their donations, they need to feel like they're making something actually happen instead of putting in money to keep the coffee coming. There needs to be some rough edges in the video, some stuff that's not done, some areas of the game that you WANT to finish, but can't because HUNGER! This goes with the being approachable thing, you have to make the game feel like it's not finished yet, but you COULD finish it and it'd be amazing with backer help. That's a tricky line to walk, but it's better to err on the side of "Hey, look at how cool our concepts are for the next section of the game while I tell you why the first part of it looks as good as it does, aren't our artists amazing? Look, this one is protecting her sandwich from the other starving members of the studio, isn't the survival instinct sweet?" - You've got a working demo, that's super powerful (and having one is a good thing) but the demo needs to have some rough edges too, like when you complete the demo area, you end up in an untextured space with test weapons in it that simply has a sign saying "Donate to the KS and this area will look badass!" or something.

    The rest of the KS is slick. You've got the graphics happening, you've got the backer rewards images, you've got the funny elements like that Gnome-firing weapon (put the concept art for that at the top of the KS page, for crying out loud) but the first impression is that this is a game by robots. Make it a game by people and maybe you can get an upswing in the campaign? Don't bury cool content that low on the page, few people are going to read all of that anyway... Put those enemy concepts in the video, show off the crazy weapon ideas.

    Also, the main character... Um. There's something strange going on there - WHY is he a chibi white dude with a mustache and leather-based clothing? If he's gay, awesome, signpost the hell out of that. If everyone is chibi in this world, cool, show some other people so that it's less weird that he looks this hyper-cephalic. At the moment he reads a bit like a kid because that's what kids are shaped like, except with gleaming, defined pecs and a mustache that's on the spray-on side of subtle. I'm not really sure how to make the character stand out in a nice way, maybe make the mustache bushier, give him other people to compare against, dirty his shiny bulges up a bit, or maybe let people build their own characters from simple pieces?

    Final point: Story. You're using the story as a large part of the "hook" of this video, except you're not setting that story in a frame of reference that makes it a thing I want to unravel. Yes, "quakes" are bad in general, but without an area that I'm trying to protect from these quakes, I don't really care much. Without other people to ground the main character, I dunno why he's down there, satisfyingly collecting scrap metal, maybe he's just a hobo (who laminated his chest) that hates bugs? The story of the world has to exist before the story of the game matters, give it reasons to matter :) And if you don't *have* a story yet and that's what you need money to help you produce, then say so in the video!

    Obviously I want this KS to succeed, so please don't give up on the campaign yet. Rather make it better at hooking donations... $50K is doable, it's just not the same as asking pubs for money.
  • @dis said better what I wanted to say about the main guy, thanks :) And very very good and valuable advice for anyone who might wanna do a kickstarter-esque thing!
  • Cool, thanks for the feedback D, and I agree with all your points (with the exception of the main character bit).

    Your point about the demo being too polished is particularly interesting. Polished is what Tasty Poison does though, in some ways ,it is the ethos of the studio. And historically, TPG has never been fond of releasing or showing anything unless it's already highly polished. Personally I think earlier feedback from the dev community and a more open dev process would be more beneficial.

    We did think a lot about playing the struggling indie studio card a lot more, but the truth is TPG is a struggling indie studio trying to be a AAA studio. @Steve would probably be better qualified to talk about this, but I think the aim was to go for the "we can do this well" angle rather than the "we're starving Africans" angle. That said, the KS campaign could do with a lot more of both.

    As for the game looking like it's made by a bunch of robots, that's definitely something that we've struggled with and talked a lot about. We would like to appeal on a human level a lot more, but we're not sure what is a good way to do it. The truth is the studio itself has almost no human presence, we don't really use Twitter, we shy away from cameras and our dev blog hasn't been updated in months. If you're an indie, you can't really afford to be like that, you've got to get yourself out there and interact, and be noticed. However, we're not trying to be an indie studio, we're trying to be a big "proper" studio. The quality of your product doesn't really get you exposure, your story and your idea does. We're learning that.

    And yet, lo and behold, here we are trying to do the most indie thing of all and get crowd-funded :P. If we had a real publisher (like Freelives ironically :P) then we could just continue to be comfortable doing what we do, which is produce games.

    Anyway, my attempted feedback response has turned into a bit of a rant, but your points are excellent (although many are have certainly been considered at length before). Hopefully we'll be able to make some improvements in-between hitting our other deadlines and protecting our sandwiches.
  • +1 supported. Good luck guys!
  • edited
    Squidcor said:
    We did think a lot about playing the struggling indie studio card a lot more, but the truth is TPG is a struggling indie studio trying to be a AAA studio. @Steve would probably be better qualified to talk about this, but I think the aim was to go for the "we can do this well" angle rather than the "we're starving Africans" angle. That said, the KS campaign could do with a lot more of both.
    I don't think it matters how TPG perceives itself as a studio. The part that I feel is far more important is that these changes to the KS campaign are a lot easier to make than the amount of effort already put into the game and you're under-serving the investment made by assuming things about KS as a studio. Especially when those assumptions could have been tested really easily!

    Please don't continue to assume that a desire to be AAA means TPG doesn't need to establish a reputation... You already have one, of course, and it's with the pubs and clients that TPG usually works with (and it's a good one, right? Right) but it doesn't help in this undertaking. Free Lives got their relationship with Devolver through establishing a reputation in the markets that Devolver targets. Marketing and awareness are things that nobody can afford to ignore - unless they're trying to market shitty products.

    Even "proper" studios try to build awareness and interest in their games, the lowest cost method of doing that is by building reputations among players and that's always the biggest weakness I've seen in the small-medium pub mobile market: None of the players of the games (and really, TPG's game quality and craftsmanship is top notch in this regard) you produce are actually your own. You don't have a relationship with them, they don't know who you are as a studio, you're fundamentally isolated from your players because they're the pub's players - if anything. And yes, I realise that this is often why people go with a pub in the first place, because they can "guarantee" a certain amount of interest from their player base. But the problem with that is when you switch tactics and are no longer dancing for that particular pub (for whatever reason that may be), you don't have a player base to amplify signals or to target with things like this KS.

    Look, I'm not saying that the entirety of TPG has to turn into Rami Ismail overnight. All I'm suggesting is that there's a bunch of resources here that can help make stuff like your KS more impactful and hopefully more successful if TPG makes the effort to avail itself of the community a little earlier in the cycle. Stuff keeps being announced when it's already past the point at which feedback can have meaningful impacts (like 5 days into a KS campaign) of course that feedback looks useless and annoying (in the worst case) from that starting point... And honestly, nobody gives a crap about something not being "indie" enough or whatever, none of that matters compared to seeing a KS not launch with the type of numbers it needs to sail through funding easily when the game it's for is easily worth that target. Please don't let TPG continue to isolate itself because it wants to be "proper" and the noisy people here are too "indie" - when there's business to be done, maybe there's more help here than TPG suspects.

    I mean, why doesn't TPG look at hiring someone to try and update the site regularly, to be more active on twitter, to push this KS as much as possible and tweak marketing copy so that it sticks better? That way the studio culture doesn't have to change, and it's more in line with how "proper" studios handle those sorts of tasks.

    So what's the plan with this KS campaign now?
    Thanked by 2Tuism raxter
  • Hey. Thought I'd chime in after being a ghost programmer for so long I've almost crossed over into the next world.

    Thanks so much for all the feedback guys. It's been super helpful. Something I wanted to clear up is that TPG has no ambitions to be a AAA studio. I've been there and have no desire to return to that way of doing things, and the discussion of being a "proper" studio seems moot to me. As long as you're a studio, you're a proper studio. We do have a certain ethos about how we make games and that does influence a lot of the ways we do things. I think of us as craftsmen and we take a lot of pride in our work and delivering quality, polished products. It's what has allowed us to compete on an international stage for the clients we've done work for and for our own in house games.

    That being said, it's far from perfect. As has been mentioned, our PR is very weak and our public presence is almost non-existent which is something that we're trying to rectify... slowly. When it comes down to choosing between fixing bugs and writing a dev blog, it's an easy choice for me (although I'm not sure that it should be so easy)... gotta fix those bugs, man! The problem is they both require time which is a very limited resource. And to answer @dislekcia's question about why we don't hire someone: we can't because of HUNGER! :P That requires money, which is another one of those limited resources. :(
    What have you guys found are the most effective (and efficient) ways of building a presence and awareness? We have a reputation in the spheres that we've done work in before, but publisher or no, it's almost irrelivant now because we're switching from mobile (and ouya) dev to pc.

    @dislekcia:
    Thanks for the feedback on the Kickstarter. A lot of good points. Doing the people in the video thing is a difficult thing to get right and if it's done wrong it's worse than it not being there at all. None of us here are TV personalities and the camera isn't exactly our friend ;), so any thoughts on the right/wrong way to do it? I'm guessing that the call to action would be taken care of if we had an interview-y thing in the video.
    I disagree with you about the "too polished" thing. The point of the demo was to give people a playground with a taste of the features and quality that the full game would contain. I think a weak demo is death for a Kickstarter, especially after seeing Festival of Magic's first demo and kickstarter. I was really excited to back that, but after playing the demo my wallet was well and truly put away.

    We didn't really want to go the route of "please back us because we're starving africans", but rather "check out this cool game, we have the skills to make it a full game, please back it on it's own merits". The former feels like a bit of cop out, but our approach isn't a particularly news worthy story. Do you guys have any thoughts on how we could make it news worthy in a different manner, or is the starving africans thing our only option?

    The main character I'm ok with. He's like a chibi Tom Selleck which is sort of what we were going for, but I agree that in isolation he does seem a bit weird. The old man character in Bastion didn't seem weird, but that was probably because he was in the context of the world and other characters. At this point we have no other characters and a fairly sparse story so it's hard to put him in context.

    For now I think the plan with the KS campaign is to consider what we can do to improve it and get it to as many press people as possible to try to drum up some exposure. We've had really good feedback on Greenlight and people seem to like the game it's just a matter of getting the traffic there and to Kickstarter... which is turning out to be much harder than we expected. :/
    Thanked by 1TheFuntastic
  • That being said, it's far from perfect. As has been mentioned, our PR is very weak and our public presence is almost non-existent which is something that we're trying to rectify... slowly. When it comes down to choosing between fixing bugs and writing a dev blog, it's an easy choice for me (although I'm not sure that it should be so easy)... gotta fix those bugs, man! The problem is they both require time which is a very limited resource. And to answer @dislekcia's question about why we don't hire someone: we can't because of HUNGER! :P That requires money, which is another one of those limited resources. :(
    What have you guys found are the most effective (and efficient) ways of building a presence and awareness? We have a reputation in the spheres that we've done work in before, but publisher or no, it's almost irrelivant now because we're switching from mobile (and ouya) dev to pc.
    Release early, release often, build player base as you build the game. This is tricky for some kinds of games, in which case you need to build something with a remarkable hook and then get that message out there as soon as you've got something that shows it off. You're never trying to market an entire game this way, you're trying to put a 1 sentence "OMG that's so cool" out there and let people tell others for you because they're so excited. Right now, Tom Sparks' best 1 sentence feature is "It's like Ratchett and Clank" - you need another system there to set people on fire, try addressing a frustration people had with R&C or signposting a really cool thing Sparks does that few other games do.

    The biggest difference is in messaging: I get the feeling that you're used to putting out messages that say "We can do all these things that other games do" and indeed, do them well. But that's not exciting to players, they expect that as a bare minimum. You're not trying to convince pubs or funders anymore, you're trying to convince players and for that you need to ignore the idea of laundry-listing features that make you the same as other games and find the ones that make you stand the hell out and be awesome... Of course, you have to actually put those messages out there as well ;) This can be made easier if you have a plan though.
    @dislekcia:
    Thanks for the feedback on the Kickstarter. A lot of good points. Doing the people in the video thing is a difficult thing to get right and if it's done wrong it's worse than it not being there at all. None of us here are TV personalities and the camera isn't exactly our friend ;), so any thoughts on the right/wrong way to do it? I'm guessing that the call to action would be taken care of if we had an interview-y thing in the video.
    People in video doesn't equate to solving the call to action thing and yes, if everybody is shy as hell it could be awkward, but KS campaigns with recognisable people and dreams in them do better. Right now the trailer isn't telling anyone where you WANT to go with the game or why you're working on this thing, or what you need the money for. Those are huge red flags for any person that's seen a KS or two before... You might be trying to let your work speak for you, but that needs to happen in the background - be quietly competent and loudly enthusiastic, people will notice the skill and it'll be amplified by the visible vision you're putting out there.

    You can always write a script or two and then mess about with a camera. The best thing to do is have fun with it, because that will come through (and go so much further towards humanising the studio) sarcasm wins. Seriously.
    I disagree with you about the "too polished" thing. The point of the demo was to give people a playground with a taste of the features and quality that the full game would contain. I think a weak demo is death for a Kickstarter, especially after seeing Festival of Magic's first demo and kickstarter. I was really excited to back that, but after playing the demo my wallet was well and truly put away.
    The problem with "too polished" is that the demo isn't selling me on where it can expand. I can't see what you want to do with the game as a full product - rough edges in a demo give me things that I can extrapolate. Plus there's also the angle of showing that you're good, but leaving space for people to imagine you being even better. It's a tough line to walk, but right now you're too far over on the polished/smooth side. Add in some temp areas, let players who obviously enjoy the demo get to an area with no textures, tease the story with some temp art, etc.

    And please tell me you have metrics on the demo. How far are people getting? Where do they stop playing? What weapons do they like the most? What secrets are they not finding?
    We didn't really want to go the route of "please back us because we're starving africans", but rather "check out this cool game, we have the skills to make it a full game, please back it on it's own merits". The former feels like a bit of cop out, but our approach isn't a particularly news worthy story. Do you guys have any thoughts on how we could make it news worthy in a different manner, or is the starving africans thing our only option?
    You don't have to be starving africans, that seems like an image that worked too well... What you do have to do is visibly be people with a story. Be true. Right now, the truth isn't even visible in your campaign at all... It's not a bad thing to be a skilled studio down on the tip of Africa that's been doing cool things in the mobile/ouya space and wants to move over to PC because they have this cool game idea that will work best there. It's not a bad thing to show your previous games as footage in your KS video (instead of just text that presumably people have to google if they remember it) because then those are actually working FOR you. It's not a bad thing to show how many people are working away in close proximity and how much they all want to make an amazing game for backers and wouldn't you please help?

    What I do know is that for me saying I'm from South Africa is a great opening point in almost any game press discussion. People are like "Oh, there's stuff going on there?" and when I say "Yeah, lots" they're hooked. Use that. Be okay with using the perceptions of others to both interest and educate them instead of letting your own prejudices towards specific representations torpedo messages before they even have a chance of getting out. Because right now, you're hardly sending any messages and you've got an unending supply of torpedos.
    The main character I'm ok with. He's like a chibi Tom Selleck which is sort of what we were going for, but I agree that in isolation he does seem a bit weird. The old man character in Bastion didn't seem weird, but that was probably because he was in the context of the world and other characters. At this point we have no other characters and a fairly sparse story so it's hard to put him in context.
    There's a reason the main character in Bastion is a kid. THE Kid. He reads like one from the start, so their artstyle choice is working for them right from the get go. Then The Kid's appearance is made more connected to the world with the introduction of other characters only after he's already not strange. Put a mustache on The Kid and things'll get weird.

    Red, the main character from Transistor, is tall and lanky and the art is all built around supporting that so that we know she's an adult right from the start. I'd strongly suggest you do something to make Tom normalised before putting players in control of him. Show a group photo of Tom and a loving family of orphans or something, show how the kids are even more chibi than he is.

    Also, Bastion took exactly 10 seconds to introduce its unique hook. The narration came in as soon as the game started and made sure to drive home that it was responsive narration as soon as you did ANYTHING. It didn't use to be like that in the build that was at the IGF in 2011, you could do things that didn't get the narrator talking, so they noticed that and added tons more triggers. After that initial catch, they could lighten up a lot on the events because they'd already hooked you. (Bastion also introduced the falling-grids graphical style and their method of storytelling right away too, but the narrator is the thing that people talk about most)
    For now I think the plan with the KS campaign is to consider what we can do to improve it and get it to as many press people as possible to try to drum up some exposure. We've had really good feedback on Greenlight and people seem to like the game it's just a matter of getting the traffic there and to Kickstarter... which is turning out to be much harder than we expected. :/
    Yup. KS needs a month beforehand to drive press interest and polish it so that it catches people, then you work fulltime on only the KS for the month it's running. Then you get back to work on the game when it's done.
  • dislekcia said:
    Yup. KS needs a month beforehand to drive press interest and polish it so that it catches people, then you work fulltime on only the KS for the month it's running. Then you get back to work on the game when it's done.
    That sounds pretty true - I'd love to hear how the Stasis KS was run - they had a few people running it too, as far as I remember.

    I wanted to ask though - what exactly entails "running the KS"? Emailing people, emailing people, emailing people? Replying things? Do you have more specific activities that can be attributed to it?
  • Guess I need to come out of the wood works now and pitch in with my comments. A short one...

    The facts are that Tom started off as a "paid for" mobile dev which at a month in, switched gears to being a made for Steam / PC / Mac / Linux game. We had a total of 5 -6 months for the mobile project and it became very evident that this was not enough time to go to desktop. Shortly after that Sony started snooping around... then the budget was too much for the people investing and with 2 months out of the 5 left to go I mentioned Kickstarter as the only way to save the project. (and keep us working)

    All this info from the @squidcor and Gavin was not revealed but now you can see how this affected the project. Another set back was going live just after GDC and now PAX, which is horrible for news releases . Real bad timing on our part but we have already sunk all our budget into Tom.

    So everything that has been mentioned here is very valuable info and very much appreciated. Thanks @dislekcia.. as always great advice, just 5 months too late. ;)

    Greenlight is going well and that is almost more important to us because of the interest that Sony and just now Microsoft is showing in the project. If it wasn't for our attention to detail I am not so sure that we would be chatting about going straight to console? And as Gavin mentioned this is sort of TPG's calling card.(Our polish.)
    If we don't get kickstarted it is not the end of the project and we could always do a better kickstarter again with all this great advice and bring a more humanistic quality to it. Or maybe our next game?
    If nothing we sure have learned a lot about crowdfunding as well as PC development which we were pretty rusty at.
    Myself I am working really hard at connecting and reconnecting with the industry and pushing the SA story.

    Hope this sets some aspects of the dialogue straight?

    Cheers!
  • edited
    That sounds pretty true - I'd love to hear how the Stasis KS was run - they had a few people running it too, as far as I remember.

    I wanted to ask though - what exactly entails "running the KS"? Emailing people, emailing people, emailing people? Replying things? Do you have more specific activities that can be attributed to it?
    I did a post mortem here: http://www.stasisgame.com/kickstarter-postmortem/

    But in general we had 3 people working on the Kickstarter. It was roughly a 4 month process from deciding we were doing a kickstarter to the launch date, with the last month being a lot of 'stuff running up to it'.

    Im quite active on a few forums, so we contacted the people who posted news/did interviews/could create new threads (Im looking at you NeoGaf) and set up a sort of D-Date of news. RPG Codex, for example, did an interview about a month before the campaign, but we asked them to hold it until the release date so that it could funnel people to the KS page.
    There were a few interviews and articles written up that released within the first week of the Kickstarter, with some of these prepared BEFORE the release.

    Basically it was my brother (Nic), sister in law (Kristal), and myself. We also all work together in the same office, and were running our 'actual' company at the same time. Luckily Nic was able to funnel most of my work back into the studio, so for the most part I was full time on the campaign.

    Kristal handled all of the contacts. All emails went through to her, where she did follow up mails and reminded me when I needed to do something! These contacts were all added to a press list, which she started building up in the 4 months up to release. The new list was updated with more personal info on the people, what articles they wrote, who to contact, etc - so every time we sent out a press release the list included those new people who had written about Stasis.
    Kristal also managed (and still manages) the Facebook page - something I WISH we had started sooner because I think we lost out on a huge amount of 'before release' PR stuff without the Facebook page.

    I wrote all of the interview answers and managed the actual Kickstarter page. When the campaign really starts going you get about 50 direct messages a day from people, as well as a pretty active comment section. Keeping your Kickstarter comment section active is EXTREMELY important. People are more likely to back a game when they feel they can be part of a community, and that community is directly shown in the Kickstarter comments.

    Nic managed the website, demo downloads (during the campaign we had around 50 000 downloads of the demo, not including the stuff that was being torrented), and the Steam Greenlight page. Again, you want to keep that very active. When someone posts, answer them as quickly as possible.

    We all also watched each others 'corners'. So if someone mentioned Stasis, I would let Kristal know. If there was a question on Greenlight Kristal would let Nic know. If the comments section became too quiet I would get an email saying 'post something now!'.

    Essentially most of the 'running a kickstarter' is down to communication. LOTS of it. We were constantly emailing people about Lets Plays, sending messages on Twitter, sending messages on YouTube, sending messages on Facebook, interviews, and writing the actual Kickstarter updates (which is surprisingly difficult..because you have to be interesting, but aren't really working on anything interesting at the time because you are managing the campaign).

    We were also updating the Kickstarter main page constantly, moving things around to make sure that what people were interested in was getting top billing. Kristal and Nic were also making sure that we were setting ourselves up for success AFTER the campaign by continuing to build the press list - something that I have no doubt will become our life blood in the future!

    Something I can definitely tell you guys to do is to be as active as you can on social media. It is STUPIDLY powerful. There is a reason Facebook is a multi billion dollar enterprise, and Twitter is the powerhouse of communication it is seen as. THEY WORK, and they work WELL!

    It feels 'full time' because its very difficult to concentrate on something when you are getting messages that you must reply to every 5 - 10 minutes. We were still also trying to do actual work at the same time, piling on even more pressure.....but man oh man it was FUN!
  • Do you think you can share the green light statistics ? I am on the hunt for more greenlight statistics. :)
  • @Chris_Bischoff: Thanks for sharing! You guys sure put a lot of effort into your Kickstarter and the results certainly speak for themselves.

    @dislekcia: TPG doesn't perceive itself as a AAA studio, nor does it aspire to be one at all. It's more that it runs like one. With clients, publishers, deadlines, wives, kids, nine-to-fives and all the rest. Making games is treated more like a job (the best one!), whereas I feel many indie devs treat it more as a lifestyle.

    We've got milestones, deadlines and obligations to meet for our publisher so things like releasing an unpolished demo are simply out the question. But that's okay, we still think having all that polish is for the better.

    As an indie studio, you live and die by your marketing, you have to get out there and be that indie marketing guy because that's what pays the bills. We've got other parties that pay the bills, and we're constantly trying to keep them happy. As such, we've become good at that. We deliver on time, and we deliver quality, but often at the expense of creative control. We can't afford to have someone spend a month full time on the Kickstarter and we certainly can't afford a gargantuan effort like Stasis. Gavin and I have already moved on to the next deadline because everyone would really like to get paid this month.
    dislekcia said:
    Release early, release often
    This is something I'd personally love to do and I'll continue trying to twist arms in this direction. If @Gavin_Hayler can create an MGSA account anything is possible :P Next I'll have him attending the meetups!

    Truth is that we lack the skills and budget to do decent marketing. And that is an area we really need to improve on if we ever want to be successful with our in-house games. Till we level up in that regard, what would suit our current skill set the best would be a real publisher that actually does a proper job of funding and marketing projects.
  • edited
    Steve said:
    The facts are that Tom started off as a "paid for" mobile dev which at a month in, switched gears to being a made for Steam / PC / Mac / Linux game. We had a total of 5 -6 months for the mobile project and it became very evident that this was not enough time to go to desktop. Shortly after that Sony started snooping around... then the budget was too much for the people investing and with 2 months out of the 5 left to go I mentioned Kickstarter as the only way to save the project. (and keep us working)
    Yesssss! You're back :)

    Also yeah, I can see how that sort of a start would make managing the project's costs super annoying. What happens if the KS doesn't hit?
    Steve said:
    So everything that has been mentioned here is very valuable info and very much appreciated. Thanks @dislekcia.. as always great advice, just 5 months too late. ;)
    Let's aim for 2 months too late next time? I'm sure I can be faster ;)
    Steve said:
    Greenlight is going well and that is almost more important to us because of the interest that Sony and just now Microsoft is showing in the project. If it wasn't for our attention to detail I am not so sure that we would be chatting about going straight to console? And as Gavin mentioned this is sort of TPG's calling card.(Our polish.)
    Oh I know, that's why I was saying that you guys are good at the polish stuff, but it's not helping your thinking in certain areas. I'm sure as hell not suggesting you suddenly get worse at finishing games! More like: "Okay, in this situation a focus on polish sends messages that you need to counteract this or that way because you're talking to a different audience."
    Squidcor said:
    @dislekcia: TPG doesn't perceive itself as a AAA studio, nor does it aspire to be one at all. It's more that it runs like one. With clients, publishers, deadlines, wives, kids, nine-to-fives and all the rest. Making games is treated more like a job (the best one!), whereas I feel many indie devs treat it more as a lifestyle.

    We've got milestones, deadlines and obligations to meet for our publisher so things like releasing an unpolished demo are simply out the question. But that's okay, we still think having all that polish is for the better.
    I feel like everyone is assuming that it's either Free Lives' crazy hours or boringtown mcWearASuitToWork, with nothing inbetween. Management styles are management styles and they can scope to whatever goals a company has.
    Squidcor said:
    As an indie studio, you live and die by your marketing, you have to get out there and be that indie marketing guy because that's what pays the bills. We've got other parties that pay the bills, and we're constantly trying to keep them happy. As such, we've become good at that. We deliver on time, and we deliver quality, but often at the expense of creative control. We can't afford to have someone spend a month full time on the Kickstarter and we certainly can't afford a gargantuan effort like Stasis. Gavin and I have already moved on to the next deadline because everyone would really like to get paid this month.
    Stasis may have seemed a gargantuan effort, but it's pretty much the standard of how KS campaigns are run. I see a lot of preview campaigns and hear a ton of feedback on those as they get better before release, STASIS is just Chris and co doing it right the first time because they're super smart about this stuff and did a ton of research. If you think about the KS as earning you R500K+, I'm sure it's worth a month of someone's dedicated time.

    The big issue is actually that those deadlines that make you feel that you can't dedicate time to KS something are the same deadlines that are never going to go away. It's incredibly hard to get out of the work for hire cycle and often takes a bunch of risk that few companies are ready to take easily (and the irony being that true scaling returns that earn you time and budget to take risks with only come from outside the work for hire sphere in the first place). That's why I keep talking about easy ways to do "marketing" that don't cost a ton of either money or time. I feel like it's going to take a concerted, long-term strategy to move towards TPG producing its own IP. Maybe the first step on that plan is getting better at simple communication and social media, even on otherwise "rote" projects?
    Squidcor said:
    This is something I'd personally love to do and I'll continue trying to twist arms in this direction. If @Gavin_Hayler can create an MGSA account anything is possible :P Next I'll have him attending the meetups!
    Need any help twisting? ;)
    Squidcor said:
    Truth is that we lack the skills and budget to do decent marketing. And that is an area we really need to improve on if we ever want to be successful with our in-house games. Till we level up in that regard, what would suit our current skill set the best would be a real publisher that actually does a proper job of funding and marketing projects.
    Everyone kinda wants a publisher that's going to make all that stuff easier. I don't think any of them ever actually deliver on that concept though... Even working with great indie-friendly awareness builders like Devolver doesn't mean everything marketing is easy-mode. If anything, they make it worse because now your marketing material has to be built from top-notch components and polished in ways that you would have totally ignored before because it wasn't going out to as large a market or as many press establishments. You do the same amount of marketing work in the end, but you don't "waste" time sending out the press emails yourself, so that time goes into resources and trailers and promotions - and reaches more people as a result.
  • I think everybody has covered the finer points, and I'm very glad to see TPG engaging in the discussion.

    Concerning "that one sentence" people get excited about - I think it super important to know what that is. Regardless of which platform you're on (Sony/Microsoft/PC/Mobile) or what marketing strategies you pursue (Self/Publisher/Kickstarter/Steam) knowing that sentence will make a huge difference to selling your game and copies shifted. Not only that but it will help focus your development efforts and make sure what you're building is on point, regardless of dev style or levels of polish. I mean Pocket RPG was great in that the sentence was built into the name itself!

    So as @dislekcia mentioned, to a punter right now it reads something along the lines of "Poor man's Rachett & Clank" - which ya know, is kinda shoulder-shrug meh. With just a small tweak that could read "The best of platform games distilled, unadulterated - no flash and all game. Crash bandicoot and Rachett & Clank for adults that know how to play video games" OH MY GOD, TAKE ALL MY MONEY!!!!.

    You get the idea.
    Thanked by 1raxter
  • Busy rendering my First Impressions video of Tom Sparks as a type this. Have to say I am very impressed with this game, and I hope my lil video helps get you guys some more exposure!
  • edited
    And bam there's the link :

  • @reefTV: Awesome! Thanks a lot. Every bit helps :)
Sign In or Register to comment.