On Funding

Our Kickstarter for Hipsters: The Card Game has been live for 10 days at the time of this posting. We’ve raised $2,025 dollars of our $9,500 goal. We have 53 backers – 53 people made up of friends, family, and total strangers – who want to see our game get made and own a copy of the final product. At 21 percent of our full funding goal, we’ve definitely made some considerable stride – but we have a long way, a very long way, to go.

From what I understand, Kickstarter campaigns go something like this: You see a surge of funding in the beginning of your campaign, a plateau in the middle, and a big push at its end, when that invaluable 48 hour remind notice kicks in for folks that are interested, but haven’t backed just yet. At three days and counting of hovering right around $2,000, I’d say we’re pretty thoroughly entrenched in the plateau stretch of our campaign.

Matthew and myself getting ready for a Hipsters playtest event.

So, what now?

Historically, I’ve always been pretty uneasy asking other people for things. I didn’t grow up poor per se, but my mom was single and putting herself through college until I was in high school, and so I grew up feeling like asking for anything was not only in bad taste, but shameful to a certain degree. As a result, the moments in my life where I’ve needed to ask for help have stung considerably.

But so here I am, running a Kickstarter for Hipsters and finding that in order to make this game happen, I’m going to need to do just that. Ask people for help.

The caveat here is that I’m not soliciting donations for the sake of keeping myself afloat, covering my rent, etc. – we’re trying to make a quality game with quality materials, and we’re looking for people that believe in our game and want to own and play it. And so far, we’ve met a lot of people outside of our backers who like the game, who believe in its character and design. But still, there’s that gap between belief and action, the translation of removing your wallet from your pocket, entering your information, and then clicking submit. A lot of people might want our game (our 2-player Youtube video has racked up a few hundred views, and we’ve got a good thing going on Facebook, too), but going through the work of making that donation on Kickstarter is a few steps beyond wanting it.

So here it is, the pitch. If you believe in my game – if you think it looks fun, cool, or interesting (even if only in terms of the text and illustrations) – please take a few minutes and back us on Kickstarter. There’s a cliché about every dollar counting, but it’s certainly true in this case. The more people donate and the more frequently they do so, the better chance we have of being surfaced higher up on the Kickstarter website, and the better chance we have of being featured as a staff pick. Both of those things can boost a Kickstarter campaign tremendously.

The Mini Van Card

Beyond donating, I can’t stress enough how important telling your friends and acquaintances is to us. Posts on Facebook & Twitter are priceless. Seeding our page us on discovery sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg and Reddit even more so. Hell, just describing it to someone in person and telling them to look it up is huge for us. Want to actually play the game with some friends who are on the fence? Hit me up – I will send you a copy of our game to do so with.

Okay, pitch over. It feels weird to make it, but I believe in this game enough to endure the awkward and uncomfortable feelings that come with, well, asking for money.

If our game doesn’t get funded, it won’t be the end of the world. It’ll be a huge bummer, and it’ll hurt, but life will go on. And we’ll probably go on to make other games (there are talks of a time travel board game and something currently titled, “Giant Dead Author Killer Robots”) regardless of whether or not this project gets funded. But if we do make this game, those future projects will come sooner, they’ll come with more oomph and excitement, and hopefully, they’ll have folks who are already excited to play them.

And hey, let’s not forget about why we’re here right this moment – back us, and you’ll have a kick ass Hipsters Game to play with your friends and family to boot. Thank you for reading, and for your support.

Hipsters: Our Kickstarter & Reflections on Collaboration

Today, I launched my first ever Kickstarter Campaign for Hipsters: The Card Game. As much as I'd like to toot my own horn, I couldn't have come this far without a good friend and business partner (Matthew). If you check out my last post, you’ll see some images/ideas from early development. Since then, Matthew and myself have been tirelessly iterating, arguing, and inking tiny pictures. The result is a 59-card deck fully fleshed out in terms of characters and items, and about 50 percent complete in terms of art.

Art, art, and more art

Now comes the long haul – the marketing push, the completion of the game art, and the continued development for some of our stretch goals. On any other project, right about now is when I’d be tugging at my collar and looking for the exit. But I find myself today pumped and entirely ready to do this thing.

As Hipsters is the first real collaborative effort I’ve been a part of (as a writer, I tend to hide in the shadows and scurry behind large rocks when groups or potential partners emerge into view), I've learned a thing or two about the creative process in a collaborative environment, namely the numerous benefits it’s provided so far.  For one, argument is paramount. And it’s just as necessary (no more, no less), than compromise. One benefit of working with a partner is that you can voice your opinion outside of your own head, which – if you’re like me – ends up sounding a lot different than it does rattling around your skull. Secondly, you have someone to either confirm or deny the value of your ideas. If you know how to listen, it’s a huge help in side-stepping landmines and cashing in on tiny gold mines (if you’ll forgive the stale metaphors there). Lastly, if your ideas do genuinely suck, you've got someone to help you pick up the slack.

Check out a quick look at the game in action.

I can honestly say I would not have launched this project were I working alone. Sure, I might have had the idea and pushed it a bit, but it likely would have been stuck on a previous, sub-par iteration, and I seriously doubt I would have remained focused enough to power through over these past two months to produce as much content – and as focused content – as we have together.

So yeah, here we are – 29 days to go and tons of work to do. In the next month I’ll be drawing, writing, celebrating, despairing, and most definitely arguing. As of the time of this post, we have only 6 donors and are at 3% of our final goal. I don’t know if we’ll get there –I’ll do everything I possibly can to see that we do, but as of right now, I have no guarantee.

The only thing I do know is that this project won’t be my last collaboration.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to check out our Kickstarter!