On this episode of the CrowdCrux Crowdfunding Podcast, I talked with Thibaud, the creator of the V-Commandos Kickstarter project. His crowdfunding campaign raised $86k in 30 days from 663 backers!
We discuss the preparation that went into the project, how he was able to raise that much money on Kickstarter, and tips he has for new creators who are looking to raise money online for their tabletop game.
This podcast episode was made possible by Fulfillrite. They help you ship out your rewards to backers and make reward fulfillment as easy as pie!
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Transcript
Sal: This podcast episode is sponsored by Fulfillrite: Kickstarter and crowdfunding reward fulfillment services. If you have a successful crowdfunding campaign, you are going to have to ship out your rewards to your backers. I recommend using Fulfillrite you can check them out at Fulfillrite.com.
Hey guys, welcome to CrowdCrux Crowdfunding podcast, my name is Salvador or Sal. We typically air these episodes on Fridays and we talk about everything you need to know to run an awesome crowdfunding campaign. If you have any questions or comments, or you’d like to reach, out you can always find me on Twitter. My handle is @sbriggman.
Sal: Today we are going to talk with Thibaud who ran the V-Commandos Kickstarter campaign, which is a tabletop game. They originally had a 40,000 dollar goal but manage to surprise it and raise 86,000 dollars from a little bit more than 600 backers. This is an amazing success. Thanks so much for coming on and I look forward to talking with you about your experience with Kickstater and how this project came to be.
What is V-Commandos and how long have you been working on the project?
Thibaud: Okay, V-Commandos is a board game that is set for a world war two setting. We’ve been working on the game for one year full time. There is me and others working to create the game.
Sal: Okay and how long have you been preparing for your Kickstater?
Okay and how long have you been preparing for your Kickstater?
Thibaud: I would say several months. It took a lot of time to create a page, to create all the images and get quotes from the manufacture to have a good idea of pricing we could place on the site, so in fact it took more time than what we expected and wanted to prepare as well as we could. We were a bit late on our schedule to launch a Kickstarter and we are a bit close on Christmas.
Sal: I know that english is not your native language. Did you have any trouble with that and how did you overcome it?
Thibaud: Yes, I think this is one of the reasons why we didn’t do video. It was not an easy decision and I hope it was not a problem for us. But we put a lot of emphasis on the introduction video.
Sal: How did you prepare to promote the project?
How did you prepare to promote the project?
Thibaud: We prepared a lot before. We tried to start to build a community around the game like on BBG forum and another french forum and boardgaming forum. We created a facebook group months before the game and shared play testings and etc. We also went to GenCon, which is a board game convention in the US. I also tried to communicate with a lot of websites about the game before the launch.
Sal: Okay, when you did hit that launch button, I am looking at your Kicktraq stats here and you guys got a lot of funding within the first week, around $20,000 and you sort of slowly progress upward, like a linear trend. That first week was it friends and family in your existing network, where were the pledges coming from?
Thibaud: Yes, I think mostly friends and family and also the people waiting for the game because they have heard about it before, I think a lot of gamer were waiting for it, so eager to see the game, and so most were friends and family and people that already know about the game.
Sal: When did you notice that strangers were starting to pledge to the project?
When did you notice that strangers were starting to pledge to the project?
Thibaud: It will be difficult to say because it’s difficult to track on a daily basis where people come from. You just have the details of where people come from but it’s not on a daily basis, so it’s difficult to know. You have to do a screen shot – that’s one tip I saw – each day to see the difference.
Sal: Okay then, so maybe you could talk a little bit about the breakdown. Where did the pledges come from throughout the entire campaign? Facebook? Email? Kickstarter?
Where did the pledges come from throughout the entire campaign?
Thibaud: Okay, the first one is direct traffic, so probably with a newsletter or the links we sent to people. The second is clearly Kickstarter. Then it was board game geek. Then it was Facebook. Lots of pledges come from Kickstarter. It’s important to post updates regularly. We didn’t do it enough at the beginning. In the end, we made more updates and several updates per day.
Sal: Do you think the updates factor into the Kickstarter algorithm?
Do you think the updates factor into the Kickstarter algorithm?
Thibaud: I don’t know exactly, but I know it helps being more visible on kickstater, so I can’t tell you why exactly, but I read that and I think it’s right.
Sal: How may video views did you get throughout the project?
How may video views did you get throughout the project?
Thibaud: Get around more than 4,000 views and 60 percent were completed. We only did two minute video. One advice is to do short videos. Around 40% of the people didn’t watch the video entirely maybe because there was a black screen at the end.
Sal: Okay, that’s incredible numbers. You guys also have a lot of comments on your page.
Thibaud: Okay, yeah.
Sal: It’s like over 676 comments on the project. Did you find that a good way to interact with backers or how did you use the comments section?
Did you find that a good way to interact with backers?
Thibaud: I really tried to answer as soon as I could to any question. You receive an email at each time there is one comment. And I tried to be on the phone to answer quickly any messages.
Sal: I think that is really good way to sort of feel the connection with your backers.
Thibaud: Clearly yeah.
Sal: Now these upper tiers. I am looking at your reward here. There is a 2,000 dollar, 5,000 dollar tier. Did you have to approach strangers? Those are expensive tiers.
Did you have to approach strangers for the upper tiers?
Thibaud: The rewards, it’s a bit expensive, board game are expensive most of the time. One of my surprises were that most of the people chose the pledge with the expansions. It’s around 63 percent of the backers chose the game + expansion. I was really surprised about that.
Sal: That’s incredible, and the 5000 dollars rewards and 2100 dollars reward – you offered those. Were those strangers who pledged?
Thibaud: These are retailers. They just contacted us during the game so we discussed together to create a pledge specifically of them. You can create new rewards during your campaign. I was really happy to see retailers be confident about the game quality.
Sal: That’s incredible; I didn’t even know the retainer was looking at kickstater projects, looking for new product that’s very cool. Did you ask them how they found you or found out about you?
Thibaud: No, I didn’t ask them.
Sal: Okay, cool, so throughout the entire project you maintained interest with updates. Did you do anything else?
How else did you maintain interest throughout your project?
Thibaud: Yeah, the most important thing we did I think is changing the stretch goals. You can update your page as much as you want during the campaign. We changed the stretch goals four times during the campaign. It’s a big number, but in the end we try to be generous to stimulate the last days of the campaign and I think we were successful doing that.
Sal: A stretch goal is where if you as a creator say we have a 10,000 dollar goal, but if we hit 15,000 we’ll offer these extra goodies and perks. It incentivizes people to pledge more. You seem to have a very good community surrounding your project.
Thibaud: Yes, Its seem to have very good experience, no problem I mean, only positive attitude goes around, really great, am okay with that.
Sal: Okay, let me ask you a question, so you have 663 background that’s a lot of people. I am not sure you anticipated many going in. How have you managed all these different variations with the rewards you are offering? Did you use Kickstarter surveys or an excel spreadsheet?
How did you manage your rewards?
Thibaud: We are going to use BackerKit. We didn’t want to do it ourselves, like for the shipping we are going to work with amazon fulfillment. We tried to avoid adding multiple boxes or assets to simplify the shipping.
Sal: Keep it as simple as possible.
Thibaud: Yeah, clearly.
Sal: How did you discover BackerKit and what do they do for a project?
Thibaud: My friend referred me to them. They are used by a lot of big projects. They are helpful for the shipping and additional pledges. If new pledgers want to join, it’s still possible. Also, it allows backers to upgrade their pledge.
Sal: Moving forward, when are you guys planning on shipping your rewards.
When are you guys planning on shipping your rewards?
Thibaud: We plan to ship them in November this year, so it also another advice, we know some people are wondering why is it taking so long, because the game seems to be not so far from completion, it’s because I think it’s our first experience. We know that creating games takes time and we want to do it as well as possible and know that people are kind enough to be patient with other Kickstarter projects. So we prefer to announce this November and ship at this date rather than announcing in the summer and veing late.
Sal: I think that a good way to go about it, just because you are so public that being transparent as possible is setting a realistic date. You don’t want to have to apologize.
Thibaud: I agree with that, you just know that by doing this you certainly lose some bankers because some people don’t want to wait but it’s a choice to be transparent.
Sal: If you could go back in time and re-launch this project, is there anything you would have done differently?
Is there anything you would have done differently on your project?
Thibaud: It’s a good question, I think the main thing we should have improved is communication before launch. Lots of people have told us they didn’t hear about the game. I think maybe with the things we should have done, are trying to communicate more on the game, but you know communication is a full time job its a real job and it’s not a my usual job and I’m not very good at this, so I had to learn and do my best. Next time, maybe we should have worked with someone.
Sal: Good point, Did you have a team behind you? Did you assign roles?
Did you have a team behind you?
Thibaud: I am the only one in the company, but several people are helping on the art side and a little on the business side. There are several artists. Also – a lot of friends are helping.
Sal: When you were doing the Kickstarter, did the artists help out with marketing?
Thibaud: I did the page, the Kickstater page, which is also a lot of work, it’s important to know that. Yes the artist did specific art for the campaign, for the stretch goals, that weren’t in the game yet. The video also takes a lot of time and the artist help me to create the videos. So you need a lot of energy and time.
Sal: You have a lot of like images on your project page. Did you decide to do that from looking at other projects?
Why did you use images in your project?
Thibaud: Exactly. I come from the video game industry and I know that people need images and I think they are better than words to communicate on your project. They also need to see everything in the box when it is expensive. There is one image where we show lots of assets inside the game box and we updated it throughout the campaign to make sure people understood what was inside the game box.
Sal: Good point. The last question I’ll ask is about your experience with Kickstarter before you launched this game. Were you a backer of other projects? Did you do research at all?
Were you a backer of other projects? Did you do research at all?
Thibaud: Yes, in fact I backed several projects, even before thinking about creating one. Also of course, I spent a lot of time to explore similar projects. I think it’s very important to see success and to see failure and to understand what works and doesn’t. I would recommend checking out Stonemaier Games. He has good advice.
Sal: The other site I always recommend checking out is Kicktraq. They also have a chrome app that will help you see the stats of each campaign.
Thibaud: When you run a project, you always have an eye on Kicktraq to check.
Sal: Yeah, I’m not sure how accurate their predictions are though.
Thibaud: Yes, but you’re right. It’s difficult to say. The first days can be blurry but afterwards it can help.
Sal: The last question I have for you mentioned before about the rewards and not expecting having an expansion pack being more popular than your original game. Would you structure your reward tiers any differently?
Would you structure your reward tiers any differently?
Thibaud: I think I would keep them as they are, but one important thing is that once someone backs one of your reward tiers, you can’t modify it during the campaign. So it’s important to have your text clear and the price can’t be changed after someone pledges.
Sal: Excellent point, well if people have an interest in checking out your game work, where can they do that?
Thibaud: There is a Facebook group which is V-Commandos. We also have a website. There is also BackerKit on the Kickstarter page on the top of the page and you can pledge if you are interested in the game.
Sal: Okay, awesome. Thanks for coming on the show!
** This transcript is paraphrased in places.
