All the following is meant in the spirit of dust your self off and get back up and is offering a helping hand. Before you are ready just read the title and come back to this later.
I imagine that was a difficult decision but probably the best move because it really did not look like you were going to make your $ goal.
At any rate postmortem time
. You have some indication of concerns about graphics and you can certainly work on that (I'm willing to help out some there) but content of the KS pitch might have also been an issue.
One of the naysayers (sburke called him Eeyore - LOL spot on) brought up some issues with the content of the pitch (
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/120711-kickstarter-for-new-operational-layer-game/?p=1630386)
Have they come up with a basic design? They didn't show it to anyone publicly. They had a big list of features they wanted, and a couple of map images. I didn't see even a mockup of what the game would look like though. No UI design, just a mention of PC/Mac/Mobile. No indication that they have any idea how difficult it would be to reconcile PC/mobile conceptually, let alone technically. Multiplayer mentions 16 players. How do they propose to do that? Are they going to have a central server for people to connect to? Will it be the largest PBEM hot potato in history?
My suggestion would be to create a pitch that answers some of those questions:
- Show more than just maps - more parts of the screen put it in a Mac / PC or mobile like frame. Show off how the play will proceed. By that I mean with either proto type screen grabs or mockups. Save the explanatory bubble graphics for outside of the fake screen grabs. In other words screen shots are always just screen shots any extra explanation is in the text. What you want is for people to look at the pictures and "see" the product.
- Discuss the issues of multi platform. Clearly the PC / Mac differences are a bit of a misnomer since it should be clear that it will be exactly the same game but running on your choice of computer. But what about the mobile platform will it be the "same" or a less featureful version (perhaps just a viewer). Just make the statement so it is clear - cause clearly some people are a bit thick. OK actually you have to assume we are all a bit thick and spell it out so we don't make bad assumptions - such as - that you have not thought about it.
- Discuss how single player will work. People want to know that single player is part of the product - users will probably start with this so why not the pitch.
- Discuss how two player will work. Probably lots of people will play this way (heck the whole ladder system on sites like theblitz are predicated on that).
- Discuss how the multi player will work. If it is a centralized server or hot potato just convince people that it will do the job.
- And close out with what is left to do and what the KS $ is going to be used for.
Your past KS pitch had a little bit of #1 and implications for #2 and #5 with #3 added in afterwards. Getting back to the thick people reference, I think the problem with your pitch was that too much was left to readers to fill in. So they made assumptions. People like me can see the solutions to all those issues (easily actually) people like Eeyore see all that as unresolved and look for more stuff to worry about. Worries on top of their worries. You need at least some of the Eeyore's to see all their worries addressed and back you.
Regarding item 1 - the UI look of the game. I am not sure where you are with programming. If you have some UI stuff programmed then by all means use it as a base. If not I have seen UI mock ups being done successfully on white boards (with camera snaps hots), hand done sketches scanned, Word documents using the built in drawing tools and Power point using builds to fake menus poping up etc. Clearly white board and hand drawn sketches only work if you are dealing with professionals. Eeyore will have a fit of worry over them. But Word, Power point or some other drawing tool can create something that these guys can see that looks real enough that they can "get" it.
My suggestion for the next time (if that is what you want to do) is to put together the pitch and send it to a few of us (you will be able to tell who is a good candidate from this forum) and we can try to pretend we are Eeyore and find the worry points and you can polish the pitch form that.
Good luck,
Ian
