One thing I've learnt very quickly during the first few days of our Kickstarter campaign for Polarium, is that relying on other people can be VERY dangerous for a game's life.
When time is literally of the essence and having a time zone difference of several hours to everybody you need to deal with, things become frustrating very quickly.
Another issue is that you soon realise that the world is a much bigger place, considering how many people in the world play games and how many games are being developed at any one time.
So, marketing (or informing the people who can let these players know) is critical for a Kickstarter that revolves around the funding of a game.
When you've spent four days straight, just emailing and linking global gaming mags and news websites of the project and game itself, not to mention the three different platforms Polarium supports, you're looking at hundreds of thousands of potential financial supporters. With a goal of £30,000 and having three backers pledging £40, you begin to feel very nervous that you really should have made £5000 by now.
With a mere 27 days remaining, I know we're not going to meet our target.
But one can hope.
This has made me realise that you can have the best game in the world, but unless people know about it, your game is dead in the water. Ipso Facto, sometimes the hardest part of game development is in the spreading of the word that it exists.
I have hope though, that as the days progress and new Polarium Alphas are released, more and more people will become aware and want to be involved.
We can't be the only UK based indie setup that has absolutely no success? Hmm...maybe a curse exists that Iím not aware of...
A more positive (but still realistic) news update to follow hopefully then. And the first of the brand spanking new, Narrow Monolith Podcasts to record next week! It'll be good to get the team back together to natter for a bit and to get their perspective on things...
Ciao for now.
Dante Knoxx, Lead Design, Narrow Monolith
POLARIUM CAN BE VISITED AT KICKSTARTER [HERE]
