Why is the Citizens of Earth Kickstarter failing?

[Kuala BangoDango]

This is the first I've heard of the game too though to be fair I don't browse the Kickstarter very often and don't have the funds to donate to any right now.

However I can toss in an idea or two to help out if indeed low advertising is part of the problem. I don't know how long it would take to implement something like this, or how difficult it would be, but perhaps you could do a Twitch week (or weekend) with an associated Twitch backer tier where anyone who Twitch streams their playthrough of your demo (can have a requirement of must complete the demo or at least a certain portion) during that weekend automatically gets the "Twitch backer" status for their linked Kickstarter account (if they have one).

While it's of course not an actual $ donation for the purposes of Kickstarter it is an advertising-type donation since streaming on Twitch would get the game in front of more people's eyes, especiaally if streamed by some of the more popular Twitch/Youtube celebrities. Any reward for the Twitch Backer tier could be purely cosmetic like a Twitch badge for the VP character or special Twitch streamer recruitable NPC.

Anyway, it's probably too late to implement something like that but it was my thought on how to get the game out in people's view. Good luck on your Kickstarter.

 

[Ryan Vandendyck]

I follow VGA, and Fraser does up their shows quick enough. They've done demos with the devs in their Twitch chat to ask questions and stuff during their live shows, so you'll have an audience of at least a few thousand not counting their followers who are only on their Youtube.

Cool, I'll try to reach out to them again!

Try hitting up Quill18 on youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/user/quill18 )
He's not huge, but has 107,000 subs and is a fellow Canuck.

While, not as big as TB and the like, that's probably to your advantage in this case as he doesn't have thousands of messages to look through.

I'll definitely try contacting him, thanks for the recommendation!

I'll admit I'm not a marketing genius, but why not simply go around the internet advertising a cross between earthbound, pokemon, and suikoden? Surely that's an awesome tag line. And if that doesn't work, try something like "Hey, do you want to do various awesome things? Well, this game lets you do those various awesome things! Support it and stuff.", of course replacing "Various awesome things" with whatever you do in this game.

Like, if I was advertising mechwarrior, my main advertising theme would be "Hey, do you like blowing things up with giant robots?". If I was advertising rogue squadron I'd go "Hey, want to be luke skywalker and defeat the empire in an X-wing?". If I was advertising GTA, I would go "Want to blow up stuff as a crazy criminal and hear lots of swear words and drug references?".

You probably get it by now. This isn't a guaranteed tactic, but it's certainly how I'd advertise to myself.

Well we certainly have done a lot of that. But then we get typical responses like,
"This game doesn't look like Earthbound. FAIL"
"This game looks too much like Earthbound. How dare they! FAIL"
And more along the same lines. Although I'm sure there are RPG fans out there that appreciate a game that draws inspiration from such classics, there are just as many haters it seems

 

[Friis]

The last Comedy RPG I paid money for was episode one of Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness... Never again.

 

[Racecarlock]

I'll admit I'm not a marketing genius, but why not simply go around the internet advertising a cross between earthbound, pokemon, and suikoden? Surely that's an awesome tag line. And if that doesn't work, try something like "Hey, do you want to do various awesome things? Well, this game lets you do those various awesome things! Support it and stuff.", of course replacing "Various awesome things" with whatever you do in this game.

Like, if I was advertising mechwarrior, my main advertising theme would be "Hey, do you like blowing things up with giant robots?". If I was advertising rogue squadron I'd go "Hey, want to be luke skywalker and defeat the empire in an X-wing?". If I was advertising GTA, I would go "Want to blow up stuff as a crazy criminal and hear lots of swear words and drug references?".

You probably get it by now. This isn't a guaranteed tactic, but it's certainly how I'd advertise to myself.

Well we certainly have done a lot of that. But then we get typical responses like,
"This game doesn't look like Earthbound. FAIL"
"This game looks too much like Earthbound. How dare they! FAIL"
And more along the same lines. Although I'm sure there are RPG fans out there that appreciate a game that draws inspiration from such classics, there are just as many haters it seems

Ok, so just say "In this game, you can do this cool stuff and this cool stuff and this other cool stuff". I'd say that would work to some extent.

 

[Miss G.]

i went to the kickstarter page and the first thing that stood out to me was a political comedy rpg where you play the vice president. yeah thats not going to grab alot of people any those outside of north america as a rule dont really get or care about american style politics

Just reading this part and all the blank and/or vague snippets of stereotypical smear campaigns long past that popped up in my head pretty much backs this. All I know of American politics is whatever nonsense spills over into my country's airwaves, since we have American programming to make up for our underwhelming and meagre local TV offerings.

 

[Ham Blitz]

I for one never heard of it till now (to be fair, I really don't browse through kickstarter at all, I just find out about things via web personalities mentioning/doing playthroughs of demos of it, an more recently Nerf Now has been mentioning a few kickstarters), but after watching the video all I have to say is... To the Wallet Mobile!! Well, first I guess I need to get wheels for that, and a motor, and a chassis shaped like a wallet, and a steering wheel, and a car battery and... you what, it'll just be easier to pay over the internet then I don't have to leave my house (or seat).

 

[Ryan Vandendyck]

i went to the kickstarter page and the first thing that stood out to me was a political comedy rpg where you play the vice president. yeah thats not going to grab alot of people any those outside of north america as a rule dont really get or care about american style politics

Just reading this part and all the blank and/or vague snippets of stereotypical smear campaigns long past that popped up in my head pretty much backs this. All I know of American politics is whatever nonsense spills over into my country's airwaves, since we have American programming to make up for our underwhelming and meagre local TV offerings.

Well although the setup is politically-themed, the game is not really a political game. Nor even a "comedy RPG". It's an RPG that has a humorous, modern-day setting that does poke a bit of fun at the American political landscape. Which, like yourself, we (up here in Canada) have a distorted perception of. But I guess that's sort of the root of the joke. Like Earthbound was a Japanese take on American culture, we're presenting a Canadian take on American culture. Although again, there's really a lot more to the game than just that joke.

 

[Ryan Vandendyck]

I for one never heard of it till now (to be fair, I really don't browse through kickstarter at all, I just find out about things via web personalities mentioning/doing playthroughs of demos of it, an more recently Nerf Now has been mentioning a few kickstarters), but after watching the video all I have to say is... To the Wallet Mobile!! Well, first I guess I need to get wheels for that, and a motor, and a chassis shaped like a wallet, and a steering wheel, and a car battery and... you what, it'll just be easier to pay over the internet then I don't have to leave my house (or seat).

Thanks! I really appreciate your support . And it's great that interested backers like yourself are still finding out about the game. Hopefully that trend will continue and we'll keep gathering momentum.

 

[Miss G.]

i went to the kickstarter page and the first thing that stood out to me was a political comedy rpg where you play the vice president. yeah thats not going to grab alot of people any those outside of north america as a rule dont really get or care about american style politics

Just reading this part and all the blank and/or vague snippets of stereotypical smear campaigns long past that popped up in my head pretty much backs this. All I know of American politics is whatever nonsense spills over into my country's airwaves, since we have American programming to make up for our underwhelming and meagre local TV offerings.

Well although the setup is politically-themed, the game is not really a political game. Nor even a "comedy RPG". It's an RPG that has a humorous, modern-day setting that does poke a bit of fun at the American political landscape. Which, like yourself, we (up here in Canada) have a distorted perception of. But I guess that's sort of the root of the joke. Like Earthbound was a Japanese take on American culture, we're presenting a Canadian take on American culture. Although again, there's really a lot more to the game than just that joke.

Could be really fun. Fraser and them are Canucks as well so their commentary will add some nice flavor to the demo if they get around to doing it in time. Kinda on the unemployed side at the moment, so I can't donate, but I hope the you tubers/Twitch people you contacted bring in lots of people who can back you guys and get you on console where I at least have some eShop/PSN credit to spare.

 

[Cowabungaa]

1. Kickstarter Fatigue

And also perhaps Kickstarter Disillusionment.

There have been quite a few stories of Kickstarter failures recently, even from relatively big names. I reckon that doesn't help with gathering funds now that the big explosion of Kickstarter has subsided. People are more wary of developers who go to Kickstarter for funds now. They want more certainty that a developer knows what they're doing.

There's been too many stories of overly enthusiastic start-ups that bit off more than they could chew.

Yes we have, although as you say I'm sure they get hundreds of e-mails daily. The ones that have responded have really liked it though. Perhaps it's worth re-emailing them and hoping they don't think I'm too bothersome!

Last year I chatted with the folks of Reptile Games who were just making their first game, which recently got Steam Greenlit, and they couldn't stop hammering on how important it was to throw yourself out there as, especially as a small developer, people will barely come to you, you have to get to them. So yeah I wouldn't say trying to keep in contact is a bad thing.

I must say, kudos for getting a demo out though. Not many Kickstarter projects have that. Shows, to me, that you guys have properly thought this through and aren't in over your heads. I'd support it if I wouldn't be worrying about whether I can buy enough food this month, let alone Kickstart something.

 

[Ryan Vandendyck]

1. Kickstarter Fatigue

And also perhaps Kickstarter Disillusionment.

There have been quite a few stories of Kickstarter failures recently, even from relatively big names. I reckon that doesn't help with gathering funds now that the big explosion of Kickstarter has subsided. People are more wary of developers who go to Kickstarter for funds now. They want more certainty that a developer knows what they're doing.

There's been too many stories of overly enthusiastic start-ups that bit off more than they could chew.

Yes we have, although as you say I'm sure they get hundreds of e-mails daily. The ones that have responded have really liked it though. Perhaps it's worth re-emailing them and hoping they don't think I'm too bothersome!

Last year I chatted with the folks of Reptile Games who were just making their first game, which recently got Steam Greenlit, and they couldn't stop hammering on how important it was to throw yourself out there as, especially as a small developer, people will barely come to you, you have to get to them. So yeah I wouldn't say trying to keep in contact is a bad thing.

I must say, kudos for getting a demo out though. Not many Kickstarter projects have that. Shows, to me, that you guys have properly thought this through and aren't in over your heads. I'd support it if I wouldn't be worrying about whether I can buy enough food this month, let alone Kickstart something.

Thanks! Releasing the demo was precisely our attempt to combat Kickstarter Disillusionment. We certainly see Kickstarter projects failing all over the place. So in order to reassure potential backers that we were legit and not just hyping our basket full of dreams, we spent a year and a half on the demo and released it to the world. Regardless of any financial backing, we surely appreciate your support and well-wishes!

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

-snip-

Having it in Canadian dollars doesn't help, if you had the pricing in USD in the pledge descriptions as well it would help those who want to pledge, but don't want to have to search out the exchange rate for CAD to NZD/ASD etc.

Best of luck, I hope you get the boost you need.

 

[not_you]

hmmmmm

hmmmmmmmmmm

While there isn't anything that I particularly dislike about how the game looks... Something to me just seems..... off...

I don't know what it is... Maybe it's the American-style political view... Maybe it's the formal titles with informal visual style... I don't know, nothing seems to "click" with me...

As to why it's failing, well, it's probably because no-one has heard of it... (which is the general consensus I've picked up from most posters) While Kickstarter has had it's few massive pickups, the only form of advertisement from that is word of mouth... So, yeah, youtube personalities are probably the best bet... At least as you've found out, not all of them check every email in their inbox...

But from what I could gather from the kickstarter intro video, there really isn't much I've gained about the game besides what it was based off and what it's trying to do... I didn't pick up anything about an overarching story or what crisis has happened... Only that you're the vice-president.... And you recruit people.... And it plays a lot like Earthbound mixed with Pokemon....

But, yeah.... I don't know... the concept makes for a good opening, (or at least an intriguing mix in playstyle)... But... yeah..... I don't know....

 

[generals3]

So there's a Kickstarter for an American made (well, Canadian really) JRPG style rpg. It's being described as a cross between Earthbound, Pokemon and Suikoden.

It's barely getting any funding though, and they're only shooting for 100k. The guys running the kickstarter have no idea why it hasn't been funded yet, and I'm at a loss as to why as well.

They even have a demo up.

Essentially, I'm asking what "you" see that's wrong with it (and maybe letting people know about it, if it's simply a failure of advertising).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/499609193/citizens-of-earth-a-modern-rpg

Probably because many think like me: this game looks really bad. Obviously this is my opinion but based on the lack of funding it is the opinion of many.

 

[Fireaxe]

Because a present day RPG setting (with no cyberpunk elements) isn't that exciting?

 

[Ryan Vandendyck]

Having it in Canadian dollars doesn't help, if you had the pricing in USD in the pledge descriptions as well it would help those who want to pledge, but don't want to have to search out the exchange rate for CAD to NZD/ASD etc.

Best of luck, I hope you get the boost you need.

Thanks very much for the well-wishes! You might be right about CAD (even if it is so close to USD as to make conversion pretty trivial). I've also received reports that since Kickstarter Canada doesn't support Amazon Payments, many people dislike the unfamiliarity and back out. So that might be a factor as well.

Your kickstarter page really ought to make the demo link more prominent. I completely missed it the first time around, and I'm betting I'm not the only one.

If people love the demo, then the biggest thing you can do on your page is to get it into people's hands. If they love the demo, then there really isn't much else you'll need to say. So go back there ASAP and add a big "Play Demo Now!" button somewhere very close to the top.

We already have "UPDATE: Demo Now Available!" about as close to the top as we can and "Demo available now!" in the project title. Since the title right under the video can't contain links (and neither can the link at the top in the title), can you see a better spot for it?

Also I wanted to throw out a general thank-you to everyone who took the time to look at the Kickstarter and/or leave a comment here. I really do appreciate you taking the time out of your day

 

[Soundwave]

Probably because many think like me: this game looks really bad. Obviously this is my opinion but based on the lack of funding it is the opinion of many.

Okay, so define "looks really bad". Are you talking about the concept or graphics? Are you saying this from the perspective that you don't like the games this one derives it's nostalgia from? Do you normally like games like this one, but not this one, for some reasons?