Failed Kickstarter, what’s next?

tl;dr summary: Thanks to everyone that supported us by pledging to the Kickstarter, by giving us a shout out, by telling a friend, or by joining our live stream Tuesday night!!! Even though the Kickstarter failed, we are still seriously pumped by the support that we did get! Thanks also to everyone that worked on this “uphill all the way” project (and to everyone that personally supported everyone working on this project, we couldn’t have done it without you)!!!

As is obvious to all by now, we did not make our funding target and we are going to have to shelve most of the plans we had promised if we’d made our goal – but not, by any means, all of them. We have already convinced ourselves that it is possible to modernize Midnight Stranger, [MODE], and Stranger Still using HTML5 (and Javascript) technologies so they can be experienced on most current platforms (both desktop and mobile). That certainly hasn’t changed, and remains something we still want to do. This unsuccessful Kickstarter means it will continue as a part-time labour of love for a few of us rather than being our full-time gig until it was done (the Kickstarter really was to kick start the process). I (James) still want to get the basic code functionality written and tested (I’ll continue to post updates at http://obeing.net/ms_techdemo/index.html as I make progress), Jeff still wants to do more productions (S.O.A.R.C.E. is still in his back pocket waiting for the tools and some funding), and we have a few people that have said they still want to help with some of the grunt work and testing.

What we’re not going to be able to do until we get some additional resources is to make the generic authorware tool and runtime (obeware) that were one of the key deliverables in the Kickstarter goals. Instead, we’re going to focus on doing a hand-cobbled “one off” port of Midnight Stranger to HTML5 and get it out the door (free, like were planning), and then see if we feel up to giving the same treatment to [MODE] or whether we are going to take some other path to move us closer to our long terms goals with its port to HTML5. The good thing is that once we’re done the Midnight Stranger port, we will have most of the basic runtime functions coded and will be in a better position to look at more generic ways of moving forward, at new productions, and giving people some tools to try their hand at it themselves. The other good thing is we’ll have a released “product” that people can easily try out for themselves and it will help to build a little bit more momentum going forward… maybe even some, gasp, press coverage. We launched the Kickstarter with nearly zero momentum and knew it wasn’t going to be easy to gets things moving, but we are definitely ahead of where we were a month ago.

The failure angle is pretty straightforward, but we learned so much about what we should’a could’a done (and will do if we try something like this again). We are certainly wiser for having tried. The major failure (and we’ll have to sit down and scratch our heads about why this didn’t work) was in not getting any press from the info-outlets where we really thought this would be right down their alley. There is little doubt that if we’d had even just two or three more mentions, we would have had a pretty good chance of hitting our target. Their business is to get eyeballs or ears on their sites with stories and content that they think people will be interested in, so the failure lies completely with us for not making a compelling enough case (they have no reason to cover something that doesn’t get them excited or at least meets certain criteria). The momentum factor is certainly a suspect, but there could also be some YAKC factor at play as well (“Yet Another Kickstarter Campaign” from a bunch of unknowns) that shuffles our press releases into the great bit bucket in the sky without consideration… we had hoped the quirkiness and creativity of our pitch would have mitigated that somewhat, but apparently not. We had a great interview on the CBC, 9 hours before the deadline, but it was too little too late… although a lot of people heard it and it seems to have opened up some very interesting doors for us, but more on that some other time if anything comes of it.

The success part is a little more subtle. When we decided to try a Kickstarter, it was based on a feeling that there had to be enough people “out there” that would want to see something like this happen, if only we could reach them to let them know. We had a definite hope that because of SuperGreatFriend‘s Let’s Play of [MODE] that there would be enough people to take us from $0 to something greater than $0 (if people don’t see at least some early adopters, then it will stay at $0 from start to finish). To say that we were thrilled at the result would be an understatement… the support from that group was tremendous and definitely exceeded our expectations (thank you all again)! It was enough that many other people (not from that group) who heard about it were willing to chip in as well, some very substantially, to see it happen (and thanks again to all of you as well!). The fact that we raised nearly a third of our goal is heartening to us and has convinced us that there is a way forward, and that it’s more of a when than an if (something we could not have been sure about when we started). All of the work we did also challenged us to question our motivations and capabilities (and also challenge our limitations as well, some of which proved to be unfounded and some grew in importance), such that we’ll be much more focused now.

So, what’s next? After we’re all done sleeping for the first time in over a month, we plan to go slow for a little while and chip away at bits and pieces of the demo (James) and getting the media files ready for reassembly (Jeff). The live stream was so successful that we’ll probably do a few more going forward (why didn’t do one a week during the Kickstarter? Blame it on sleep deprivation, but it actually didn’t occur to me until the day we did it at the very end… file that in the failure column of the spreadsheet for sure). We also plan to try to build relationships with more Let’s Players and news outlets; to work with organizations that do multimedia, human/computer interface, and virtual reality research; get our social media house in order; and generally work on getting our act together to support another attempt at launching something bigger than just a Midnight Stranger port (which is just an important step along the way). Finally, I’m getting a list server up and running (was hoping to have it going before sending this update, but our service provider had a problem… they’re working on it and I’ll send out the info on how to sign up as soon as they’ve sorted it out). We’ll be doing both a general newsletter you will be able to subscribe to for announcements, and a more technical update newsletter if you are interested in the gritty details of what’s happening at OBE.

Thanks again everyone, and here’s to seeing what the future holds for us. This was a good first step! Feel free to contact me (or anyone on the team) if you have any questions, suggestions, or want to help out going forward.

James
jbotte@obeing.net

P.S. If anyone want ISOs of Midnight Stranger or [MODE], knows how to run old Windows 3.1 multimedia programs, and can tell a few people about it, our contact information is on obeing.net… drop us a email!