Business Opportunities Weblog

November 23, 2010 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

According to CNNMoney, on November 1, Andrew Plotkin posted a crazy plan on Kickstarter: he wanted to quit his job and spend his life writing text adventures.

That’s 1980-style, old-fashioned text games — you remember Zork and Adventure — a genre which hasn’t been commercially viable for 20 years. He had the notion that a new generation of book fans, carrying e-readers and smart phones, could bring interactive fiction back to life.

Fourteen hours later,he had achieved his month’s goal. By the end of the first day, fans had contributed nearly $12,000.

How did he do it?

* Say up front what you want to do, why you want money, and how that money will be converted into something awesome. (A list of features is not exciting, of itself. Describe an experience.)
* Have a great video. I wrote a script, and then my co-conspirator Jason McIntosh and I whaled over it. Jason threw away a bunch of stuff and added a bunch of stuff; then we filmed it. Twice.
* Think about your audience and who wants what. I have contributors who want an iPhone game, contributors who want interactive fiction, contributors who want to support my open-source projects, and contributors who want to support me. These are not all the same people. Rewarding all of these groups appropriately is non-trivial, and there has been some discussion about the way I did it.
* For a game project, include a demo. (I realized this only barely before launch-day! The demo that I posted represents two intense weekends of work; I hope that’s a good omen for my production rate in 2011.)
* Don’t be afraid to plug yourself and your CV. I know you’re all saying “how could you fail to promote yourself?!” but I had to be chivvied into it.
* Contrariwise, don’t be a jerk. Actively don’t be a jerk. Say thank you to everybody, early and often.

Photo by Andrew Plotkin.

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Tags: Advice, Funding