Learn & Master Cocos2D Game Development

In Newsflashes, link to articles that I found insightful. This one about Kickstarter Stats & Analysis was very insightful. They analyzed almost all Kickstarter projects, including the many hard to find ones (because they failed and it seems Kickstarter doesn’t want you to find those).

The result is the astounding infographic at the end of this text, but do read the article also to put things into context.

Fortunately for us, gaming and software are the categories with the most projects overshooting their target goal by several factors. Downside is, this is only true for large projects.

Most importantly you should ask for the sum that you need. Be realistic, don’t ask for too much or too little. They also mention that projects with a video are more likely to succeed. So much nothing new. But I think there’s one additional and crucial metric for software projects they didn’t consider: the prototype.

It is incredibly helpful to have a working prototype or demo that you can showcase in the video. It should show the essential feature your software is all about. Show us how it’s supposed to work, how it should feel, what it might look like. It doesn’t need to do much more than that. It can be crappy code. It can use assets that will never be used again. It’s important to show backers that you’re capable of delivering what you promised. This is THE key aspect of crowd-funded software projects.

Actually, it’s nothing new. It has always been very important to demo your software project to potential investors and publishers. But even among game developers there were many who felt making a prototype/demo was a waste of time that was then (always) missing at the end of the actual project.

Quick Side Note about OUYA

On a related note, I did not back OUYA. It left me wholly unimpressed.

What peels away the layer of marketing speech and allows us to see how unprofessional they really are is how they mention some people working on this would get fired if people knew who they were. If you were aware of the legal ramifications allowing or perhaps even supporting these illegal activities, you would not make any mention of it to anyone. Said companies may rightfully own the illegally developed technologies, and sue for copyright or patent violation and demand licensing fees plus damages. This puts the entire project in jeopardy before it even got off the ground.

I wrote more about OUYA in german, but for the english speakers I recommend what the PA Report wrote, that they’re just selling a dream.

Kickstarter Stats Infographic

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