Hello everyone and happy new year. Today we have January 2nd and I have a special guest today. It is my co-designer and friend Christian Kudahl. Hi Christian and welcome to the show.
Today we’re going to be looking back at the year 2022, and reflecting on our very first Kickstarter campaign for the game, Mindbug.
For those who may not know, Mindbug was a project that was funded on Kickstarter in 2021.
For us, the Kickstarter campaign was a huge success, raising almost $400,000 from more than 10.000 backers all over the world. This was way more than we anticipated and it allowed me to fully realize the vision I had for Nerdlab Games and turn this from a Hobby Podcast into a Games Publishing Company. We spent the entire year 2022 designing, producing, and fulfilling Mindbug.
Unfortunately, this also led to a shift in priorities and I no longer had as much time for the podcast. It always makes me sad because without the podcast the game wouldn’t have happened in the first place and I’m incredibly grateful for all the support from you throughout the journey.
Anyway, that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to review 2022 and talk about the lessons learned from the Kickstarter campaign here on the podcast.
Let’s start with a few things that went well:
One should not make important decisions based on the user comments of a few users. You quickly get the impression that all backers are of the same opinion if you receive 5, 10, or 15 comments on a topic. In the end, however, these are just individual opinions of a few backers. I’m not saying that those opinions shouldn’t be taken seriously. Of course, this is direct feedback from your customers. This is very important and they should be answered and taken into account in the decision-making process, but in the end, 10 comments do not reflect the opinion of 10,000 backers. This part is easy to be misled.
Never change the product or the pledge levels during the campaign
Ultimately, it’s about finding the right balance between incorporating user feedback and staying true to our original concept. But you should never ever take away anything you have promised.
But that wasn’t all that went wrong with the box. It was produced incorrectly and thus played a large part in the delay in the project. As a result, we had to send them to the different hubs by express, which cost us a lot of money. And although we chose the best and most stable material that our supplier could offer, the box was and is clearly too unstable and did not meet our quality requirements. We really regret that and we will definitely put more emphasis on it in the future.However, overall we still think the campaign was a great success. There will always be challenges and unplanned events. One of the most important things we learned is that the vast majority of backers on Kickstarter understand that a project of this size can’t always run smoothly.
In return, however, they expect a high degree of transparency in your communication. After all, the backers are part of this project and therefore deserve to be informed about all relevant topics.
We are very happy that we have successfully delivered all products and that with your help we have reached our first milestone for Nerdlab Games in 2022. Now we are working hard on the next milestones for 2023.
Thanks for tuning in to the Nerdlab Games Podcast. Until next time. Keep shooting for the moon and nerd like a boss!
