How to do a Kickstarter right, the Kitfox Games way

• Tweet
• Pin It

Over on Gamasutra, Tanya X. Short of Kitfox Games sets out her lessons learned from the successful Kickstarter for Moon Hunters. The team, which had already developed and released mobile game Shattered Planet, set out to raise C$45,000 and closed the campaign with $178,986 from 6,044 backers.

The post-mortem is excellent, and not just for what it shows about running successful campaigns. It shows what it takes to be a successful CEO of a small indie developer. There are some great techniques, like making sure the team guessed how much the project would raised, which Tanya calls an “exercise in predictive powers”. I do this with my clients all the time, for every major change we make, and it is a brilliant way of focusing people’s minds on what they are going to achieve, and how they will achieve it. Kitfox also understands how to connect with its community, and how to use that relationship to lead to Kickstarter success.

Tanya is humble, admits her mistakes, accepts the role of luck in anyone’s success, and is careful not to post-rationalise things that turned out differently to how Kitfox expected them to go. She also provides great advice for anyone wanting to run a Kickstarter or run an indie developer.

And if you organise conferences in the games sector, I think Tanya should be on your list of awesome female game developers that the industry needs to hear from.

Related Posts

• 

  Trash Goblin is 124% funded, with 24 hours to go!
  Trash Goblin is 124% funded, with 24 hours to go!
• 

  I’m back, and I’ve launched a Kickstarter!
  I’m back, and I’ve launched a Kickstarter!
• 

  Should Amplitude be free-to-play? Audience research suggest that it should.
  Should Amplitude be free-to-play? Audience research suggest that it should.
• 

  [Gamesbriefers] What makes you back a crowdfund campaign?
  [Gamesbriefers] What makes you back a crowdfund campaign?