stillalive studios started developing of Son of Nor as a hobby project and had their breakthrough with a successful Kickstarter campaign. Here they explain how being successful on Steam is influenced by that and what you need to consider after release.

[cms]dspYoutube(‘Dmc6Eb5vNzU’,’580×326′)[/cms]

»Son of Nor« is a successful project in many a respect. stillalive studios have been founded via the project and have since then grown from three hobbyists to 13 employees. We founded a company and started a successful Kickstarter campaign that made over 150,000 dollars. We got through Greenlight when it was still hard to get the green light at all, and we were even featured on the Steam front page carousel for several days. Press, YouTubers, streamers – they all gave us their attention. Is this enough to be successful? What advice can we give to indie teams that are planning to take similar steps along their way? We’d like to give some answers to that in this article.

Why Kickstarter?

We had thoroughly prepared our Kickstarter campaign. We knew it would be difficult, especially since campaigns by indie teams usually aim for something between 5,000 and 15,000 dollars. We, however, were trying to make 150,000 dollars with our campaign; just enough budget in order to finally be able to pay our team. At that time, »Son of Nor« was nothing more than a hobby project in desperate need of more manpower. But to do this, all team members would have to give up their regular jobs and dedicate 100% of their time to working on the project.

So we read every article that we could find about Kickstarter. After all, the future of the project and, as a result, that of the team was at stake. We went through articles, analyses and first-hand reports by people who had performed successful Kickstarter campaigns as well as articles by so-called Kickstarter and marketing experts.

The following points were mentioned again and again:

A campaign must start out with a big bang and should by no means slow down, otherwise you may risk a standstill.

One should not underestimate the effort a Kickstarter campaign takes. Thorough preparations take a long time, and once the campaign has started, everything else is standing still. Backers demand updates and stretch goals. Something always has to happen. There’s no stopping, even after the final whistle: Thank-you notes, databases for addresses, surveys etc.

The first few days and the last days are crucial. More often than not, the last few days see as many donations as the first week.

The rewards structure needs to be carefully thought through. Price levels, too, must be designed in a way so that backers are always tempted to pick the next higher one.

By no means should one underestimate the costs of material goodies: manufacturing costs, production costs, global delivery costs…

Nobody really reads the campaign text, people only watch the video. Nevertheless, all information needs to be presented nicely on the page, otherwise it looks empty and untrustworthy.

Since most people only watch the video, it is one of the crucial keys to success. If you manage to create curiosity and a feeling of “I want this”, you’re already halfway to the finish line.

Nothing like a product that meets demand. Double Fine’s »Broken Age« called all those adventure fans feeling neglected to action. »Pillars of Eternity« was aimed at a huge »Baldur’s Gate« fan community. A »Flappy Birds« clone met nobody’s needs.

At stillalive studios, we spent more than three months preparing the campaign. The project virtually brought the entire development of the game to a standstill. Being an unknown team working on our first project, we weren’t able to activate an existing fan base – a problem which probably one or the other indie team will have to face.

With what turned out to be a wise foresight, we already began in the early days of stillalive to establish a fan base. We created Twitter accounts and gave account on our everyday development work. Additionally, we provided photos and screenshots on our Facebook page and a weekly, ambitious video on YouTube showing the progress we made on development. Two years and over 115 videos later, we still reported about our progress online: We posted the videos on Indie DB, in forums such as Unity3D, on TIGSource, spieleprogrammierer.de, GameDev and more, and we tried to inspire developers and gamers alike. Travelling to game events like gamescom, GDC, QuoVadis and others helped making contacts, too. Friends from other indie studios can be a big help when it comes to spreading news!

The campaign was meticulously worked out, and the rewards and the campaign video were tested dozens of times with external people. How did we implement the points called-out? What went well and what didn’t? These are our most important learnings:

Big bang campaign launch

The closest allies of a small indie studio are the three Fs: Family, Friends, and Fools. Nobody was afraid to inform family and friends a few days ahead of the campaign launch and ask for their help. Word about our project spread quickly via letter, email, Facebook friends, friends of friends and Twitter acquaintances. After all, especially parents want to aid their offspring with tidy sums for such undertakings. That’s one of the many reasons we love them.

We certainly couldn’t afford to live without support from the media. For months, we collected email addresses of journalists who might feel susceptible to the concept of the game. We established contacts, and some of the gaming sites like Kotaku, »Rock, Paper, Shotgun« and many more even reported about us prior to our campaign.

The tool we opted to use was MailChimp where you can send free emails to up to 2,000 recipients and track the number of emails opened or even clicked on. This was especially helpful in terms of optimizing further emails and following up on those who hadn’t opened the original email.

However, the trends on Kickstarter kept changing rapidly. The gold rush claimed its first victims. Journalists were literally flooded with Kickstarter emails causing a certain weariness and almost an aversion among them. There was hardly an outlet left that still wanted to report about campaigns. It took us a lot of extra energy to get any coverage at all.

We also didn’t shy away from asking for help outside the team. Our close partner Remote Control Productions (RCP) came forward with substantial assistance in terms of developing and spreading the campaign. Additionally, we also weren’t afraid of spending a considerable sum on hiring a PR agency and a social media expert for the duration of the campaign – always with the goal in mind to increase our reach. The PR agency even organized a press tour through Germany and Austria. We personally visited more than ten media outlets. It was indeed that direct contact that made us stand out from the mass of Kickstarter projects, which was reflected through additional coverage. The connection to RCP even resulted in articles in GameStar and PC Games.

Through our international team we kept trying to address the national pride in all countries. I think in hindsight this was also an important piece of the puzzle. On the one hand, there was a project which wasn’t developed in the US for once: People from Austria, Switzerland, Ecuador were all working on the project. On the other hand, there was the press which had the opportunity to turn this into a story. The underdog and small developer from Austria (and Switzerland, Ecuador…) was trying to finance an ambitious project on Kickstarter! That went down well. We were met with a lot of goodwill.

The time factor

We had read about it in all articles, but we only really grasped it when we were right in the middle of the project. A Kickstarter campaign is a full-time job for the majority of the team. It required three months of intensive preparations. Just before launch, all hell broke loose. For 18 hours of the day, we were working our butts off in order to finish the final assets, texts, videos and communiqués.

But it’s after the campaign has been launched when the real work begins! The masses are jumping on the project, and everybody has questions; questions which are addressed in every little detail in the campaign text which, however, nobody reads. Plus, those questions aren’t just asked on Kickstarter; they also reach you through email, Facebook and Twitter. All hands need to be on deck!

This is where our international team excelled. Since we had members in Europe and the Americas, we were able to offer 24-hour support. One of us was always available. This raised our popularity. Quick, precise and friendly replies inspired the backers and turned some of them into loyal fans.

The rewards structure

Our campaign was launched at a time when material goodies were very much in vogue. We thought we needed cool gadgets in order to win backers. Game boxes, maps, manual – we even advertised an »Amulet of Nor«. All in all, we organized the rewards progression quite well.

However, in the follow-up to the campaign, the creation and production of those goodies took us several man-months. An amulet had to be modelled, and several 3D print shops had to be compared in terms of price and quality. Individual rewards were delivered by various suppliers and then had to be forwarded in the right packages to the right backers – an incredible logistical effort.

For the next potential project, our team has already agreed to offer useful digital goodies and – if possible – avoid physical rewards altogether.

The campaign video

We knew from our own experience that we usually only watched the video of a campaign. A lot of transactions were impulse purchases based on the videos: »Wow, what a cool idea! I want to back this!«

We definitely wanted to have game footage since most campaigns from studios that didn’t show any game footage in their videos put us off. Exceptions are teams with a strong pedigree such as Obsidian with »Pillars of Eternity« who, despite showing no game footage at all, made nearly 4 million dollars. Indie studios like us need to be convincing by showing what we do, if we don’t have a glorious past to rely on.

What is also important in my opinion is good humor and personality. A Kickstarter video is a fight for popularity and eventually for a credit card. You should get the message across that you are an enthusiastic team of indie developers. Your friendly neighbor from next door! That’s as far as the »Do’s« are concerned.

Now on to the »Don’ts«. We wanted the video to provide as much information as possible, which is why it was a full 9.5 minutes long! It required an epic level of attention span considering today’s online behavior if the video was going to be watched all the way to the end (just 7.77 percent of the people watched the video to the end). In »Son of Nor«, we put great emphasis on the story, which is why we wanted to feature it in the video. However, the truth was: The gameplay in »Son of Nor« didn’t depend on the story, which made it uninteresting for most people. All they wanted to see was some action gameplay!

Bad audio was also an absolute no-go. Characters in echoing rooms, mumbling something that’s almost impossible to hear, puts backers off immediately.

These days, we would therefore develop a Kickstarter video in elevator pitch-style. In brief: Get your point across as quickly as possible, thus showing the best game scenes first instead of keeping them for last (7.77 percent!) and then meeting the backers on an emotional level with sympathy, face, voice and enthusiasm about all the cool features that you have to offer them.

A trendy product

Of course, we’re all convinced of our own idea, otherwise we wouldn’t be spending time or money on a project. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough. The market, the consumers seem to move from trend to trend like a swarm of grasshoppers. If the last good RPG games already happened a while ago, simply announcing an interesting RGP concept can move the masses. Tim Schafer, Double Fine: Finally a proper adventure again? That project was bound to make 3.3 million dollars. After all, there was a reason why Kickstarter campaigns that would retrieve old titles from the basement and sell them as »spiritual successors« due to a lacking license were so successful. »Spiritual successor« had become a real buzzword in campaign videos, and it still is to this day. It just helps if you can address an existing fan base.

We weren’t aware of those kind of dynamics. With a completely new IP and a basically unknown game principle, we were fighting for every backer individually.

Where did the campaign traffic come from?

So much came from press, friends, YouTubers – which did we benefit most from? Relatives and friends certainly supported us with the largest per capita sums. But to our surprise, most people came directly from Kickstarter and not through press coverage: a full 44 percent from within Kickstarter. »Son of Nor« was also a »staff pick« and was therefore featured on the front page. Also the mechanics of backers sending out emails to their friends network, worked fantastically – kind of like a confidential tip.

At the time of our campaign launch, the press was already weary of Kickstarter, so it was very difficult for us to get a mention at all. We made a lucky strike when we presented a brain computer interface from medical research as the control device for »Son of Nor«. A game controlled by mind power? A lot of people thought it was a fake, which attracted a lot of attention, but the technology really does exist. Numerous game sites thought this was worth a story, and so our video was watched more than 80,0000 times within a short period of time (especially on Kotaku, PC Gamer and RPS).

But not before long, reality set in once again. Although the headline attracted a lot of curious people, it turned out those people merely wanted to satisfy their curiosity and weren’t actually interested in the project. 43 people backed us that day – only slightly more than on any other day during that phase.

We started looking for ways to attract new groups of backers by analyzing campaigns which ran at the same time as ours, like that of Larian Studios for »Divinity: Original Sin«. They gave us the decisive hint by affirming what we had experienced, namely that the press could hardly mobilize any more backers. Readers, too, seemed to have grown weary of Kickstarter: Our top referrer was Rock, Paper, Shotgun with just 48 backers. Consequently, Larian turned towards YouTubers, which carried the »Divinity« campaign across the finish line, according to Larian’s CEO Swen Vincke.

We therefore started diligently to contact YouTubers. Let’s Players with high subscription numbers played our sandbox demo in PvP mode and apparently had a lot of fun doing so, considering the number of funny glitches that happened during their sessions. That worked out particularly well during the last few days causing the campaign to take up speed again.

Every measure we took was a piece of a jigsaw puzzle: Media, the brain device, constant tweets and Facebook posts, and YouTubers. If one of those pieces had been missing, we probably wouldn’t have reached our goal of 150,000 dollars since in the end we came out with just 151,000 dollars. Close call!

Kickstarter résumé

In the end we had 75,886 video clicks and 2,244 backers. However, all of our tips should be handled with care since times are changing rapidly. Today’s games market is very different from two years ago when we were running our campaign. Gaming habits and mobile games take a different position. It’s important to thoroughly analyze current projects on Kickstarter. What are they doing well? What is it that makes people back them? These questions should be asked in today’s context, and strategies for one’s own project should be devised accordingly. It hasn’t gotten any easier as Katie Chironis, among others, just recently reported on Polygon. More and more teams with ever tighter budgets are fighting for the favor of financial backers.

Steam Greenlight

In our opinion, Greenlight is no longer a big issue since Valve has opened its doors. Games are being waved through by the dozens, and it’s only a question of time to get one’s game onto Steam with a little PR and marketing effort.

We weren’t afraid to use the spotlight of our Kickstarter campaign in order to draw attention to our Greenlight campaign and thus quickly got the green light.

An interest from a publisher

Having reached 150,000 dollars on Kickstarter and Greenlight on Steam also showed that there was public interest in »Son of Nor«. This also appealed to Viva Media, a US publisher which we managed to win over. Viva supported us with more cash that helped us expand the scope of our game. Among other things, we implemented full voice-overs for all characters with AAA voice actors!

Steam Early Access

At some stage, we had come to a point where we decided to publish »Son of Nor« as an Early-Access title. It wasn’t about additional income, after all we had made enough through Kickstarter and our publisher. Above all, we wanted to get feedback on our development status since we were living in our own bubble. The controls had long become engrained into our system. Everything felt intuitive and smooth, so it was time to make it accessible to a broader audience.

That was one of the best decisions for the game, although at first we received a lot of criticism. Websites daring enough to feature an early-access title wrote that we had given a new meaning to the “Early” in »Early Access«. Through the Steam forum, we received some feedback to specific parts of the game mechanics.

This initially put a damper on our spirits. Our play tests at trade shows and with outsiders had largely been positive – what had happened? It was a bitter pill to swallow. It would have been wrong though to bury our heads in the sand, so we rallied our forces and thoroughly examined every single bit of positive and negative feedback, trying to understand it. We intensely discussed potential countermeasures and implemented new ideas for a whole nine months! Some parts of the game were cut entirely, completely revised and re-implemented because players found them too hard or illogical.

Early Access gave our team and the game a new perspective and momentum and even improved its gameplay! For our next project, we will definitely consider Early Access again.

Steam release

Two months before release, most feedback of the Early Access phase had been implemented and almost all reported bugs had been fixed. It was hard to find a suitable release date though. We wanted to launch in a week when our small team would not be facing big competition. After all, three years of hard work would have gone up in smoke if we had launched simultaneously to »Assassin’s Creed«. Our launch would have been left in the dust next to such a giant.

Eventually, March 31, 2015 was thought to be a suitable date. It was a quiet week with only a few titles being launched. Most competitors came from other genres, so we wouldn’t have to worry about clashes.

Due to the fantastic relations of our publisher Viva Media with Steam, »Son of Nor« didn’t just go live; it was also featured in the game carousel on the Steam homepage. Everyone who went on Steam over the next few days would see a »Son of Nor« banner! We were also listed among the top titles in the action, adventure and indie categories for several days. We can’t track the exact numbers any more, but all in all, the banner certainly had more than 20 million impressions.

Pricing

Pricing is an important issue. What price is appropriate for the scope of the game? Will players be prepared to pay at all? At the time of our Kickstarter campaign it was standard to charge approximately 20 dollars for an indie title. Slightly smaller productions were sold for more or less 14.99 dollars. So we considered ourselves well-positioned.

What we didn’t take into account was that by that time there was a large overabundance of games. Dozens of indie bundles saw huge sales figures, and the mobile market was even denser than it already had been.

More press, YouTubers and PR

At the time of release, we reached out to all our press contacts again, for example »Hot Pepper Gaming Fire Sale«, a popular YouTube format where developers can advertise their game to a large audience, but have to eat an extremely hot chilli pepper beforehand. Obviously, you can expect bursts of laughter. 20,000 views were registered, and feedback was exceptionally positive. They loved to see us suffer.

German YouTube celebrities also produced Let’s Plays of »Son of Nor«. Zombey with nearly 840,000 subscribers captured the attention of some 53,000 viewers. A Russian guy nearly had 100,000 views. And an American channel got a full 300,000 views for »Son of Nor«. Our release trailer also generated 148,000 clicks.

Sales figures

Despite a lot of positive user reviews, several hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, Steam homepage with fantastic publicity, some crazy ideas and good press coverage, release day wasn’t as successful as suspected, which we noticed quickly. Sales figures were underperforming on release day which traditionally is supposed to be the best day ever.

Sales optimization

What could be the reason for the slow start? Right after release, the number of people who put »Son of Nor« on their wish list jumped quickly from 10,000 (from the Early-Access phase) to 24,000. Apparently, the game principle had made people curious, but something was holding potential buyers back. Was a 15 percent launch discount on the full price of 20 dollars not enough? Or would Steam customers just wait for the next sale that was sure to happen sooner or later? Easter Sale, Midweek Madness, Summer Sale, Halloween Sale. Steam practically educates their customers to wait for discounts ranging between 50 to 75 percent.

The overabundance of games mentioned above was an additional, crucial factor in our opinion. Due to numerous bundle sales and constant discount campaigns, a lot of unplayed titles reside in the Steam libraries of many people. It’s a widespread phenomenon even in our own team where people think twice about whether to buy an interesting game or rather start to play a title from the library, which they had already purchased.

So, in order to prevent the speed our launch had picked up from slowing down and to cross the suspected psychological »library barrier«, we decided to start the first discount campaign sooner rather than later. This had the positive side effect that all Steam customers who had put »Son of Nor« on their wish list were informed about the campaign by email. A discount of 50 percent (that was clearly perceived as significant) triggered the impulse buying behavior, and sales figures increased quite a bit compared to launch. But they still fell slightly short of expectations.

Comparison to other indies

Since we had achieved our goal in terms of press coverage, attention from YouTubers and the incredible Steam promotion thanks to Viva’s relations, our sales expectations were now higher. Did we maybe miss a beat at some point?

In April 2015, the Quo Vadis conference invited developers ranging from indie to AAA to Berlin, a fantastic location to exchange experiences with other teams. We got to hear a lot of similar stories to ours: Despite good press reviews, positive critics, outstanding user reviews and numerous Let’s Plays, sales were underperforming. We also found affirming experience stories online, for example by Trite Games whose game »Of Carrots And Blood« was played by none other than PewDiePie. Three million views later, the following stats were presented: 595 »pay what you want« downloads (corresponds to 0.02 percent). 3 of those 595 were willing to pay something – a grand total of eight dollars!

Our case therefore wasn’t exceptional and we experienced first-hand what was the subject of several speeches at Quo Vadis: André Bernhardt of Indie Advisor talked about the »Great Video Game Crash 2015«, while Dominik Gotojuch issued the warning: »Indies, beware! Meltdown is nigh!« The lecture rooms were packed, but nobody was able to give answers on how to counter this crash or meltdown.

Alternative strategies

Economics lecturers teach you that there are several strategies on how to compete on the market.

You offer something others can’t offer, like higher quality in some areas (story, graphics or gameplay).

You are the first one to offer a completely new, innovative product or you are the first one in a completely new market.

You offer the lowest prices.

And then there’s winning the lottery jackpot: You have a blockbuster hit!

Blockbuster hits usually include one or more of the above mentioned elements, but at the same time they are unpredictable. If there was a recipe for a hit, everybody would be acting accordingly and be very successful. Obviously, that doesn’t reflect reality. Somehow, hits are simply in the right place at the right time, like viral videos – think »Gangnam Style«. And despite oversaturated markets, again and again there are those that stand out. That’s what gives us hope!

We knew that »Son of Nor« couldn’t keep up with the highest-quality games. Our small team is reflected in our graphics after all. We did indeed have a new, innovative game mechanic; however, apparently it wasn’t big enough to be a selling point of its own, thus excluding point number 2. So the only thing left was to bring down the price to a level which would also get people with overabundant Steam libraries to make an impulse purchase. At the end of the day, it’s hard to tell what made the difference; too many elements had played a part here. What we can say for sure though is that future games will have to hold their ground against those overflowing game libraries – either with one of those strategies or with a combination of them.

Can indie games compete in any other category than low price at all? They can indeed score in terms of quality, even visual quality. It doesn’t always have to be AAA graphics. A unique art style can attract gamers just as well as a game with ultra-realistic graphics. And yet, it sends a slight shiver down our spines when reading that even the development of »Monument Valley« amounted to nearly one million dollars. Name me just one indie game with a budget that high!

Indie games can certainly also offer completely new, innovative game mechanics. While AAA titles usually don’t take great risks due to their exorbitant development costs, indie studios can enjoy doing crazy things like »Dear Esther« or »The Stanley Parable« and still be successful.

In conclusion, yes, it has become a lot harder to be commercially successful if you can’t stand out substantially in one of those areas (quality, innovation or price). Above all, it is cost-intensive since »standing out« usually means a bigger effort or less revenue. But luckily, the markets keep changing as well. While existing markets become saturated, new ones develop! First there were consoles turning your lovely home into a gaming lounge, and then came computers. After the saturation of the PC market, it was set in stone that games could only be made by big teams. Licenses for software and engines alone were too costly. Then came handhelds and later mobile devices based on iOS and Android. With gradually less expensive tools (3D, sound and game engines), making games has been democratized. All of a sudden, a one-man show was possible again! This year, the market is flooded with smartwatches and virtual-reality helmets, and hololenses are a hot topic as well. One of those platforms might indeed become a breakthrough. Those who position themselves now, have good chances to make it to the top in a fresh, not yet saturated market where crazy ideas are possible and customers are eager to experiment. There will always be opportunities like this as long as there are innovations. Therefore our advice is: Carpe diem – either with better game concepts or crazy experiments on new platforms.

Chris Polus

Further reading on MakingGames.biz