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!