A Hard Paywall Can Be A Huge Barrier Between A Customer And Paying You

from the how-not-to-succeed dept

Paywalls are one of those things that have had us scratching our heads for a while. We had questioned the New York Times for its paywall and have shown that it might not be quite as successful as it claims. The main problem with such paywalls is that people don't like to have their use of a product interrupted and further use blocked unless they pay. Such reactions are not limited to online news either. Other forms of media have much the same issue. 

Over at Games Brief, a number of game developers were asked about paywalls in games and whether they should be used at all.

Harry Holmwood writes: “A colleague and I downloaded New Star Soccer at the airport and were playing it on a flight back from Germany last week, got hooked, but then hit the ‘hard payment’ point where we had to pay to continue the career. As we were on a plane at that point we couldn’t do the IAP and had to stop playing. Over the weekend I was tempted to pay and play but didn’t bother – the moment was lost, and I suspect now I won’t do it at all.”

Are hard paywalls a good idea, or should you always make it possible for players to keep playing?

While most developers were pretty varied in their opinions on this question, the general theme is that putting up walls in front of the consumer and preventing them from playing more is something that should be avoided. Take this comment from Philip Reisberger from Bigpoint.

In general, we’ve seen that it’s most important to have the users playing. Monetization is always to be regarded as consequence of gameplay. There are some really core-style titles where a hard paywall is possible, but I’d regard this rather as an exception than the norm.

While it is possible for such hard paywalls to make some money, it would be better to have as many people playing as possible. As soon as a person is no longer able to play, they are less likely to pay into the game. The question then goes to how do you get those people to pay if they can play for free? This is where opinions vary widely. 

By allowing a consumer to continuously play, you can provide multiple opportunities for the consumer to evaluate how much they actually value the game they are playing. This is where proper selling of freemium options comes into play. If you have already sold the person on the game itself as something fun to play, then the next step is to sell them on the extras. This can be done by showing them how the core experience can be enhanced by such extras. As Tadhg Kelly of What Games Are explains.

In some cases (Temple Run, Bejewelled Blitz) it’s the same. They basically sell boosters and cheats to make better score runs, and since the core action of the game is so compelling it’s more likely over time that you will buy. Bringing a money-now question into that dynamic is inappropriate for the same reasons as the grind game.

The core issue to remember with paywalls is that it is very difficult to convince someone that paying for the ability to keep playing something they have been playing for free is a very tough sell if all they are getting is just more of the same experience. You need to sell them on an expanded experience, one that they wouldn't otherwise get if they were playing for free. Of course, there is no one way to do it. There are a variety of market factors that can determine how and when you go about charging your customer.

Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO of nDreams, sums up this overall market reality. 

I’d be very wary about ever saying that a particular model/route is ‘the correct one’ or that you should ‘never’ do something. Every game is different and every platform is different. In PlayStation Home, where we publish most of our games, it’s beginning to appear that ‘paymium’ may be the most commercial route given the size of the audience, their propensity to pay and the ease of generating awareness. But on iOS, being new to the platform, freemium is the only model that makes sense to us currently.

FYI, I don’t believe the gaming world will end up existing purely of games that you can play forever with continuous loops, return mechanics and daily bonuses. I believe there will always be games that have a beginning and an end and a strong linear storyline. For these kind of games, I’m not convinced that freemium is necessarily the correct approach.

This variation in the marketplace would then allow for many different ideas of monetization both good and bad, both successful and unsuccessful. However, putting barriers between the consumer and your goods makes it more difficult for that consumer to buy. Look back at the original question. Because of external circumstances at the time of hitting the paywall, that potential customer was not able to process a transaction. That delay then led him to rethink the idea of purchase and, as far as we know, he has not made a purchase, even though he enjoyed the part of the game he played. Why would you want to limit your potential to make money in such a way?

Filed Under: hard paywalls, paywalls, video games

The Pirate Bay Pays Off For One Enterprising Game Developer

from the from-pirates-to-privateers dept

For all the rhetoric we hear that pirates are evil, thieving scum, they sure do have a massive positive impact on creators who choose to work with them. Take for instance the recent success held by Sosowski, the creator of recent indie hit McPixel. When Sosowski found his game on the Pirate Bay, he didn't flip out, he didn't curse, he embraced the pirates there and turned them into an opportunity for success.

If you dare risk a visit to the Pirate Bay and specifically the page for McPixel, you can see exactly what Sosowski did. He first thanked pirates for uploading the game and then gave away free gift codes.

Yay! My game is here! As weird as it sounds I am actually excited about this.

Anyways, I am not any average video game company, I am just one man making games for a living, so feel free to give me all your money if you like the game!

I get it that in some countries PayPal doesn't work, or the price might seem really high for some of you, so here are some gift codes for you:
[gift codes snipped]

Most of all, enjoy the game, tell your friends about it, and throw some coins in my general direction if you like it!
All the best,
Sos

This little heart felt message not only led to a lot of people on the Pirate Bay to think more highly of the developer, but it also led the Pirate Bay to seek out Sosowski in order to promote his game on its Promo Bay service.

As a result of the developer's unusual reaction, The Pirate Bay tracked down Sosowski and the two teamed up to promote the title through the torrent site's Promo Bay initiative which it launched earlier this year.

The site has been offering a link over the weekend directing visitors to McPixel's site whilst Sosowski has been running a pay-what-you-want offer on the game. Visitors have also been allowed to torrent the game for free over the weekend to try before they buy.

These two events working in conjunction with each other led to two great benefits for this one man development shop. The first is that the pay-what-you-want sale ended with a total of 3,043 copies sold at an average price of $2.56, with the top price paid being $140. The second benefit is that McPixel is one of the first ten games to be selected by Valve through its new Greenlight service. It is no secret that being accepted by Steam is often a major milestone in an indie developer's career.

This is yet another story in how piracy can often act as free advertising for artists. This story follows a very similar trend to that of Dan Bull when he used the Pirate Bay to help his single make the charts. There have been a lot of other great stories about artists taking piracy in strides and still managing to be successful. The trick is to accept that pirates are not your enemies, but potential customers who need the right reasons to buy.

Filed Under: business models, mcpixel, piracy, sosowski, video games
Companies: the pirate bay

10 Lessons That Made Dimeword's Kickstarter Campaign A Success

from the an-overnight-success-takes-years dept

As of this writing, my Dimeword campaign to fund public domain literature has more than doubled its funding goal and is still rising. 10 hours from the publishing of this article, the Dimeword campaign will end and I can finally start writing 100 stories for the public domain. Boat drinks!

I wish I could take all the credit for its stunning success, but most of Dimeword’s success roots from years of reading Techdirt. Through Techdirt, I’ve learned from the likes of Gerd Leonhard, Amanda Palmer, Nina Paley, Jill Sobule, Jonathan Coulton, Tim Cushing… too many to count. Techdirt keeps teaching me and all too often I find my poor brain is full.

In the spirit of the “decimal” theme of Dimeword, here are 10 things I learned — mostly from Techdirt — that supercharged the Dimeword campaign.

1. START SMALL AND START NOW

Principle: Before the internet, authors could toil away on a manuscript and gain royalties on book sales. The internet made copies easy, and the old model was upended. The only long-term solution is to build a fan base from the ground up, and that takes time. A lot of that time is unpaid. But if you reach out to fans, and give them something they really value, then they’ll tell their friends about you. Do that enough, and you hit a tipping point.

Practice: I “started small” in 2009 by creating the Infinite Distribution Panel on Twitter (the phrase “infinite distribution” is a hat tip to Masnick’s Approaching Infinity). It took me a few years to really understand how best to use #infdist, but I have a good flow now and it continues to be a great way to converse with like-minded people about piracy and digital distribution news.

Because of #infdist, Mike Masnick asked me contribute to Techdirt during his paternity leave. This was a great opportunity to increase my online presence, so I immediately accepted.

One day, I realized that if I were to ever crowdfund my own feature film, I needed to have a committed group of fans willing to throw down when I asked them to. I’d taken a break doing any kind of writing to make sense of how artists can thrive in this new economy. I knew it was time to step back into the stream so I launched Dimeword with the hope that if I could just get just 100 of my friends and followers to chip in $10, I could raise a simple $1000 goal. If I did it right, I’d have acquired my first small group of paying fans.

Results: Thanks to being a frequent Twitter user, and writing for Techdirt, and doing various writing gigs over the years (including five years of blogging), Dimeword rocketed to its $1000 goal in less than 60 hours. As of today, five backers have donated $100, and one (here from Techdirt) has donated $500. I credit this response to my non-stop reaching out to new fans, chatting with them, engaging, conversing, entertaining, and learning from them.

2. SELL THE SCARCE. SELL YOUR SCARCITY.

Principle: Whenever radical new technologies come along, goods or services that were once scarcities suddenly become abundant and industries focusing on only selling those scarcities fight tooth and nail to defend the old way. Instead, they should be understanding what new scarcities are created by this new abundance and upgrade their business model to sell those new scarcities.

Practice: When I first looked at my campaign, I tried to see it from the perspective of someone trying to destroy my own industry, er… I mean, from the perspective of an author trying to compete with a better value proposition. What is scarce now that only I could sell? In one sense, a big scarcity these days is not using standard copyright protection. So I chose to release my stories with a Creative Commons License. After thinking about it, it seemed to make more sense to go further, to push my work out into the Public Domain. That was certainly something I didn’t see anyone doing. That’s my scarcity. Then I looked at ways to incorporate other “generatives” like embodiment (creating a limited edition hardback copy), convenience (an email with all the stories), exclusivity (being among the first to get the stories), etc. I tried very purposefully to work in as many of these elements so that the “reasons to buy” were scarcities made valuable by the abundant nature of public domain literature.

Results: It’s worked. I’ve gotten over 50 people pledging $10 or more. Amazingly, I have 5 donors buying the paperback book for $100. Here’s the cool part: at $100, the book has been paid for, so I can spend $62 per unit to print it and not bat an eye. And yes, it really is going to cost that much because I’m pimping out the book to be uber-high quality. The people who pledge big get big value. That’s my scarcity.

3. MAKE FANS, NOT MONEY

Principle: Money is important, and without it, you fail. So of course you’re in business to make money. But — and this is the mind trick you must conquer — money is not the reason you are in business. You are in business to help people solve their problems. Do that better than anyone and you will have more money than you know what to do with. If you focus only on making money, the temptation is too high to make an inferior product in favor of a higher profit margin. And mediocre products breed unsatisfied, resentful customers. Great products breed devout fans willing to champion you and your work to anyone who will listen.

Practice: The goal of my campaign was first to get 100 fans to donate $10+ so I could safely write 100 stories for them. That wasn’t about the money — that was about going to people I already knew who love my work and asking them to be my patron so I could set some time aside to work. It was about finding my first small group of fans. After that, I knew the next phase would be to find totally new fans to buy in for just $1, so I set a stretch goal for a bonus story tied to the number of fans that is triggered once I meet my goal of 100 $10 donors.

Results: This hasn’t worked exactly as I expected. As of this writing, I have 59 $10+ donors and 12 $1 donors. This is mainly my fault because I haven’t been as active as I should have been to reach out and let ALL my friends and followers know about Dimeword. On the other hand, I found five $100 backers and one $500 backer, so I suppose it balances out. My hope is that I get another 100 $1 donors by the end of the campaign. If I’d worked harder and longer at this, I might have gotten 1,000 $1 backers. Still, it’s not bad for a first campaign. And my next campaign will have this campaign as part of its backstory — word of mouth about the quality of my perks should get exponentially greater as I do more Kickstarters.

4. BUILD TRUST WITH THE CREATIVE BOTTOM LINE

Principle: “Creative bottom line” was coined by Amanda Palmer. Make great perks. Spend almost all your money if you have to. Fans will love it.

Practice: For my books, I’ll be using Blurb, which offers high quality publishing options. For the $100 book, I’ll likely be doing 8.5″ x 11″, 110 pages, super premium paper, and no Blurb logo. Per unit cost for just 7 copies? $62. Do I care? Nope. I want donors to feel like they’re reading a $62 book. They’re probably expecting a $30-$40 book, but it’s going to feel better than that. They will like what they get for $100. On the next campaign, I’ll go into it with their trust that my $100 option is sure to impress.

Results: I have no direct data on this, but I’ve always set a very high bar for myself creatively and everyone knows that when I do something, I do quality. I’m the dude who stayed up all night just to hunt for formatting errors on every page in my college newspaper.

5. $1 TIERS ARE PARAMOUNT

Principle: Whenever I see a campaign with their $1 tier offering just a thank you and nothing else, I wince. Amanda Palmer’s $1.2 million Kickstarter gave away 311MB of digital downloads for $1. And what effect do you think that has on a casual fan? For accepting just $1, you let them legally download all your digital content (which costs you nothing to copy and send to them) and they likely become a more serious fan of your music. On the next Kickstarter, they’ll happily give you more money for your $25 CD, or more.

Practice: I positioned my $1 tier to have incredible value: you get all the stories in an email eight weeks before the book comes out. If I happen to write a novel, you get a novel. Costs me nothing to copy and send, so my profit margin is 100% (well, 82% after fees and taxes). Some might argue that I’m “giving away the farm” for only $1, but my goal isn’t to make money off my $1 fans — my goal is to pinpoint who my fans are so I can more closely connect with them. Did I mention that I receive all the donor emails at the end? An email of a potential fan must be worth at least $1, no?

Results: Only 14% of my donors are from the $1 tier. I want that number to explode out to 1000%. Likely won’t happen, but I really want lots of small donations by the end. I’m still thinking of ways to entice this…

6. ADVERTISE NATURALLY WITH CONTENT

Principle: “Buy now!” is a push sale. “Isn’t this cool?” is pull sale. The former is seen as spam, the latter is seen as conversation. However, both promote. If you strike up conversation about your project, and keep talking about your project’s value, your audience will naturally want to help you in your mission. However, it can’t be disingenuous talk about value — it must be totally authentic.

Practice: My 10 AM chats were intended to softly sell Dimeword while providing genuine perspective on Dimeword in particular, or other related topics like crowdfunding. I tried very hard to make each tweet “retweetable” by itself so that 2nd-degree readers would gain enough interest to look more closely at @Dimeword. You can’t make people share stuff — people only share stuff worth sharing. So a huge benefit was that, in addition to trying hard to connect with fans, I was also forced to create quality work. Additionally, I asked to be interviewed on Litopia, write this piece for Techdirt to be timed for the last day of the campaign, be a guest on #Scriptchat, and host a telethon. All events are opportunities for me to talk about my campaign, though I make a point to rarely ask anyone to donate. My hope is that the more others see how much energy and planning I’ve put into my campaign, they’ll convince themselves I’m a superhero worthy of some of their pocket change, amirite?

Results: I had a little traction with the 10AM chats, but not nearly enough. If I’d started sooner, say a week or two before the campaign, then it might have had a bigger following. The Litopia interview went well and was perfectly timed at 6 days before the deadline. The #Scriptchat is happening concurrently with this Techdirt post and my telethon (psssst: right now!). If my hunch is right, all the heat will converge at once and push Dimeword up, up, up…

7. DELIGHT

Principle: Delight your fans. However much money they give, give them so much more value in return that they’ll feel they got a bargain. They’ll brag about you to others, they’ll be repeat customers, they’ll become avid fans.

Practice: I felt that $1 to buy all the stories in an email would be a great bargain to many, especially since they’d get it 8 weeks before the book’s official release. And $10 for an email, PDF and the opportunity to be an author’s patron was also not bad value, especially when you consider how much time collectively goes into all the individual parts. But I’m adding more to all that. I’m including extra things, many of them small (see “8. Offer Gratitude”) which, together, should make the donor feel really appreciated. And for the higher tiers, I plan on going the distance to make the book look truly awesome. Here’s the part everyone overlooks — the packaging is as important as the perk inside. Even if I ship in a plain USPS box, I’ll write cool and fun stuff on the outside of the box and I’ll wrap the perk inside with special paper, etc. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “Medium is the message.” First impressions matter a great deal. Apple knows this, which is why opening a new Mac is a near religious experience I always look forward to.

Results: I have no data yet on this, or how well received my perks will be. I shall report back.

8. OFFER GRATITUDE

Principle: You can definitely file this under “connect with fans”. Gratitude costs nothing but a few seconds, but it can really mean a lot to someone to let them know they made a difference in your life. I went to NYU film school and my teacher, Thierry Pathe, made a comment that sticks with me to this day: “When you send your film to the lab to get it color corrected, in the comments section, write a thank you. It doesn’t have to be anything more than, ‘Thanks!’ but it matters to them. They don’t get paid much, so a ‘Thank you’ goes a long way.”

Practice: At about half-way through the campaign, I emailed all my donors one by one to thank them. At a minimum, every perk will also have a “Thank you!” written on the outside of the package, and probably again on a special note inside. When possible, I ask for feedback, which is an interactive way of showing gratitude. This shit matters, yo. It sets you apart from everyone else. Plus, it’s just good karma.

Results: Who knows for sure if the “personal touch” worked, but after my individual emails, one donor upped their donation from $100 to $150!

9. HAVE FUN

Principle: When people see you’re enjoying yourself, it’s contagious. People respond because it’s an invitation to connect.

Practice: I had fun on this campaign because in part, I did it to learn about crowdfunding. I didn’t have to worry about missing my goal because the goal was set so low. I could try many new things to see what worked. One day, I did a Flash Story by inviting others to sift through my tweets (“Count back 10 tweets. Find the 10th word. Add the 10th letter of the alphabet to create a new word. What is it?”). For the last 10 days of the campaign, I’ve done twitter “mini-lectures” every morning at 10AM and opened it up for questions afterward. As of right now, I’m doing a telethon on YouTube… for 10 hours. See how it’s playful?

Results: I gathered 55 followers on Twitter in just a month, which is a high response rate. The @Dimeword account wasn’t set up to be an engagement account — i.e., equal followers to followed — just a “push” account for news, but I still use it to chat with others. Whenever someone asks a question, I try to get back to them asap. I ask questions back. I jibe. I try to be serious, but stay playful. My fans seem to respond well to that.

10. EDUCATE WITH TRANSPARENCY

Principle: One business strategy is to reveal more inside information than your competitor with the hope that it shames them into revealing more information so that consumers can then choose the competitor with the slimmer profit margin, i.e., you. Because transparency instills honesty, it puts you way ahead of the pack.

Practice: I’ve made little secret how much each of my perks cost, but I’m also going to release a spreadsheet that details ALL perk costs (in money and time) and the exact profit margins. My 10 AM chats are an insider view to me as a person, but also an insider’s view of Dimeword. I’m also going to use the telethon today to write a story live, and then explain how I write a 100 word story. How’s that for pulling back the curtain?

Results: I’ve always been in favor of transparency because it’s a mark of respect to your customer. Rather than dissuade customers from your product by letting them see exactly how much money you make, transparency tells them that you think they’re smart enough to see the numbers and recognize that well-earned profits are well deserved. Everyone knows Apple has a 90% profit margin, but we keep buying their computers because we get such amazing value out of their products.

The overall take home message is that one hell of a lot goes on behind the scenes to make a campaign successful, much of which happens years beforehand. And some stuff isn’t as obvious or as measurable as we would all prefer. For example, how much impact does a written “Thank you!” on a perk package make in helping to forge a stronger connection with a fan? For the indie artist without marketing resources to track the minutia of customer relations, we may never know.

What I do know is that, without Dimeword, I might have never found my highly dedicated fans. If there’s one lesson that should linger here, it’s this: the heart of business, the heart of providing solutions to customers and, indeed, any interaction with anyone for anything, is about connecting. Artists aren’t in the business of making art. They’re in the business of connecting with others through art. You can connect with others 1000 different ways — Techdirt is rife with examples of exactly that — but they’re all essentially a variation of being human enough to discover what you have in common with others and then allowing them a chance to converse with you about it. From those connections, sales happen naturally.

One of my favorite quotes is from The Big Kahuna. The veteran salesman tells his young sales associate:

It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or ‘How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.’ That doesn’t make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are — just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.

Or, as someone put it to me years ago, “People like to buy from warm and fuzzy.”

Ross Pruden is a writer-filmmaker behind Dimeword, a crowdfunding campaign to fund new literature for the public domain. A live telecast is happening now until 10PM PT, and details are listed at Dimeword.com. Today is the last day of the campaign, and the lowest tier is just $1 — the best value of all the tiers. Sacrifice today’s latte and make Chris Dodd cry!

Filed Under: connect with fans, dimeword, lessons learned, public domain, success story

'Amnesia' Is Selling So Well, The Developers Have Forgotten All About Piracy

from the sorry,-can't-talk,-busy-selling-games dept

Swedish developer Frictional Games is celebrating two years of success with its sleeper hit “Amnesia: Dark Descent.” In a lengthy blog post (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun), the developers run down the continued success of their very niche horror game, along with praising the communities that have grown around the game.

[If you're not familiar with the sphincter-clenching scariness that is Amnesia, take a look at the following video, which will allow you to hilariously enjoy someone else's complete hysteria. NSFW.]

Frictional Games attempts to run down the sales figures on Amnesia, a problem somewhat complicated by its inclusion with a Humble Indie Bundle. Long story short, though: sales were unexpectedly good.

The biggest reasons for the uncertainty is that Amnesia was part of the Humble Indie Bundle (HIB) earlier this year and Potato Bundle last year. Both of these account for quite a lot of sales. Without counting the units bought there our total lands at 710 000 units. Adding all HIB and Potato Sack sales gets us to 1 360 000 units in total, which can be called the optimistic figure. This means that, optimistically speaking, Amnesia has sold almost 1.4 million units!

Frictional adjusts for the Humble Effect by providing a “pessimistic” estimate based on the assumption that ⅔ of all bundle purchasers already owned a copy of the game:

This gives us about 920 000 units in total, pessimistically speaking. So saying that we have sold a million units seems fair. Wait… a million units! Oh shit!!

Not a bad total at all, especially for a non-AAA studio whose game featured combatless horror and whose advertising was mostly word-of-mouth. Even more surprising, the two-year-old game continues to sell at a brisk pace, even at full price:

Not counting any discounts, the monthly full price sales lie at over 10 000 units. This means that less then every 5th minute someone in the world is buying a copy of Amnesia.

Why are sales still so strong? Frictionless credits two very active communities:

This success is due to many factors, some of which are the uniqueness of the game (horror games without combat do not really exist on PC), the large modding community (more on this later) and the steady flood of YouTube clips (which is in turn is fueled by the modding community output).

Opening up your game and letting your fans build on your foundation is one of the best ways to rack up sales months (or years) after the release date. Just ask the developers of Arma, whose Arma 2 (another 2-year-old niche game) continues to sell very well, thanks to a strong modding community, including one of its own employees who developed the amazing “Day Z” zombie survival mod.

The output of modding community has been quite big as well. Amnesia is as of writing the 2nd most popular game at ModDB and sports 176 finished mods. Not only do this amount of user content lengthen the life of the game, it has also increased the amount of YouTube movies made with an Amnesia theme. There are lots of popular Let's Play channels that have devoted quite a bit of time with just playing various user-made custom stories. As mentioned earlier this have probably played a large role in keeping our monthly sales up.

It is quite clear that allowing users to create content is a feature worth putting time into. I also think that we managed to have a pretty good balance between having simple tools and still allowing a lot of possibilities.

When you give your fans a toolbox and invite them to not only create, but share the results openly, they become your advertisers. Without spending a cent on promotion, a developer can turn hundreds of individuals into a street team that shamelessly plugs your product because they love it. Respecting them enough to allow them to build on your original creates the sort of loyalty that locked-down software never will.

Oh, and as for piracy, the supposed bane of PC developers' existences? Here, in total, is all the developers have to say on that subject:

It has been over a year since we even thought about piracy. With sales as good as above we cannot really see this as an issue worth more than two lines in this post, so screw it.

Make great games. Extend the life of your software by opening it up to modders. Support your community. These simple steps (well, the last two are much simpler than the first) have allowed a small developer (11 employees) to command the attention of PC gamers and critics, resulting in Amnesia earning back over 10 times its cost. Who needs to worry about “lost sales” when so many people are clearly willing to pay?

Filed Under: amnesia, copyright, piracy, sales

Filmmaker Using BitTorrent & TopSpin To Distribute Free Copies Of Older Movie To Promote New Skateboarding Documentary

from the bittorrent-as-promotion dept

Skateboarder and filmmaker (often focusing his films on skateboarding) Stacy Peralta is releasing his latest skateboarding documentary, Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, about the Bones Brigade skateboarding crew — Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero, Mike McGill and Tommy Guerrero — which Peralta helped put together in the first place. Rather than go the traditional route with releasing the movie (as he’s done many times, including with the acclaimed skateboarding documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys), Peralta has decided to go direct to fans. The movie was shown at Sundance earlier this year, where it got some attention and had a bunch of opportunities to go with traditional distribution partners, but instead Peralta figured it was time to take control, noting that the DIY ethic of direct-to-fan is similar to the way skateboarding evolved in the early days:

As skateboarders, as people that have always lived on the outside, have always had to sneak over fences or through the back door, have always had to create our own terrain, we’ve decided to put that ethic towards how we release “Bones Brigade: An Autobiography.” We turned down all of the conventional offers for distribution when we came out of the festival in favor of doing it ourselves.

One part of this DIY approach is that to promote this new movie, Peralta teamed up with BitTorrent and TopSpin to help with direct-to-fan digital distribution and promotion. Via BitTorrent, people can download a “Bones Brigade Bundle,” including a bunch of extras, and then using a TopSpin feature (either on the web, or directly in the uTorrent client), if you submit your email address, you can download an entirely free copy of the classic skate film, The Search for Animal Chin, which was released 25 years ago, and featured the members of the Bones Brigade. So the combined effort, from Animal Chin to the Bones Brigade documentary is sort of a “full circle” situation.

It’s great to see more filmmakers really embracing both direct-to-fan, but also realizing that things like BitTorrent aren’t automatically bad, but have a place in a marketing campaign as well. In this case, it’s interesting to see Peralta using a combination of a few different tools to create an integrated and comprehensive campaign not only to market the new film, but also to distribute the old film (the first time it’s officially available in digital format). Oh, and if you’d like to download The Search for Animal Chin, there’s an embedded widget right below this sentence…

Filed Under: animal chin, bittorrent, bones brigade, direct to fan, diy, documentaries, downloads, movies, skateboarding, stacy peralty, tony hawk
Companies: bittorrent, topspin

The Inevitable Crowdfunding Backlash When People Realize Projects Fail & Change

from the early-excitement-can-lead-to-disillusionment dept

We’ve been unabashed champions of crowdfunding and platforms like Kickstarter for quite some time now, though we’ve also tried to temper some of the hype. A little over two years ago, for example, we used the story of the open social network Diaspora as a possible warning for some of the initial excitement about projects. Much of that comes from just knowing what entrepreneurs go through: the initial idea is exciting, but things change over time, and expectations change… and some projects fail. When you’re dealing with investors, that’s one thing — they’re sort of designed to expect such a thing. But crowdfunding had a different vibe. Because people got so excited in the idea and really (quite literally) bought into it, we worried that as some projects failed, it might lead to a serious backlash.

It may be a coincidence that we highlighted this risk with Diaspora (one of the first Kickstarter projects to go really “big”) a couple years ago… but it’s possible that our worries are coming true. Last week, I saw a report from Liz Gannes at AllThingsD, which suggested that the Diaspora team was focusing on something completely different, a “collaborative web remixing tool” called Makr.io. The team definitely went through some significant hardships so it’s not that surprising that they’ve shifted gears. Given that story, it’s hardly a surprise that they’re now officially “handing control of the project over to the community.” They claim they’ll still be playing an important role, but it seems pretty clear this is an effective withdrawal from the project, which never really caught on the way some people hoped.

And, of course, this isn’t just limited to Diaspora. Bloomberg recently had a (well-timed) story highlighting how an awful lot of successful Kickstarter projects, at the very least, don’t meet their deadlines to actually make or ship a product. This has turned at least some people off to the service, which (again) is unfortunate.

Of course, these kinds of platforms are only a few years old, and of course they’re going to go through growing pains. I hope that, as they continue to grow and find success, at least there’s some greater recognition — and public admission — of the potential risks involved, so that they don’t take people by surprise, and that people understand that as much as they love an idea, execution is the truly hard part. Investing in the idea is great, but there’s a risk involved that the end result won’t match the snazzy video that the team put together for Kickstarter in the first place.

Filed Under: business models, changes, crowdfunding, failures
Companies: diaspora, kickstarter

Game Developer Refuses Publishing Offer; Realizes It's Better To Stay Independent

from the breaking-down-gates dept

The world of video game publishing is being turned upside down. Much like other entertainment industries, more and more game developers are learning that publishers offer little additional value for the costs they come bundled with. This realization is following other recent events in which game developers, who could not find a publisher interested in their game, ended up crowdfunding and raising the needed money that way. The primary crowdfunding tipping point for video games was Double Fine and its adventure game. That was followed by a number of other successes such as inXile's Wasteland 2 project.

Now it seems that even with publisher interest, some developers are choosing to stay independent by crowdfunding their new games. Of this group is Revolution Software, which makes the popular adventure series Broken Sword. Charles Cecil told Edge that his company was approached by a publisher to strike a deal for the 5th game in the series, but Cecil had turned them down.

In an extensive interview, Cecil says the industry’s “biggest third party publisher” was interested in taking the new Broken Sword. Instead he decided to seek $400,000 in funding for his new point-and-click adventure through Kickstarter.

“The publisher approached us and asked ‘what do we need to do to publish Broken Sword?' I was enormously flattered, but decided it was better if we self-published,” he tells us.

Cecil continues to explain that staying independent allows him and his company to control the development and schedule of the game, something lost when signing a publishing deal. He continued to explain that after a publisher takes its cut of the revenue, there is little, if anything, left for the developer.

Publishers take all the risk when they fund a project, but they also take what a developer would see as a disproportionate cut of the revenue. At Revolution we had not made royalties on a game for over a decade until digital distribution which pretty much saved us.

This is something we see regularly in just about every industry. The publisher, label or whatever used to hold all the cards and were able to pull off such deals. Very few of those deals have turned out to be all that profitable for the actual creator. Now, we continually highlight numerous cases of artists pushing back, even to the point of lawsuits. However, the most common method of pushing back is to go independent, much like Cecil here.

Taking a look at the Broken Sword Kickstarter page, it seems that this independent attitude is resonating with fans. This campaign was launched on August 23rd and as of this writing is nearly halfway to its $400,000 goal. Much like the other Kickstarters I mentioned above, this one looks as it will go well beyond that goal.

With all these independent successes happening throughout the games industries, the question must be asked, “Is there a place for publishers?” That is a question those organizations will have to ask within themselves. We have written before that in the future, those companies will have to move away from being gatekeepers and into being enablers. Those companies that refuse to adapt to that reality will find that they will have a tougher time of staying successful in the future. Until then, those enablers that make things happen, such as Kickstarter and other crowdfunding services, will continue to gain ground and enable successful careers for artists.

Filed Under: business models, independent, video games
Companies: revolution software

A 'Too Polished' Kickstarter Video Is No Substitute For Connecting With Fans

from the true-success dept

Kickstarter has become a powerful tool for artists and creators to take their future in their own hands and succeed or fail by their own merits. While a Kickstarter based business is not a guaranteed success, it is one of the many powerful tools for that purpose we highlight here on Techdirt. Much like any other business model, running a successful Kickstarter campaign takes a lot of work and a lot of speculation about what your potential fans and backers expect. With all this in mind, it is great when people, who attempt a Kickstarter, share their experiences, whether good or bad.

Over at Gamasutra, one such creator, Ryan Payton, shares his experience running the recently successful Kickstarter campaign for Republique. As Ryan explains this Kickstarter was not an easy success.

I was driving across Seattle's 520 bridge on a beautiful, sunny afternoon on the third day of our Kickstarter campaign, dazed and confused, and momentarily considered hitting the red “abort mission” button on our whole Kickstarter. Fifty-five hours into our campaign and we had only gathered 11 percent of our funding goal.

It was this moment that he realized that he needed to figure out why it was not going as smoothly as he expected. While he lists a number of reasons for why the campaign was struggling and what he did to turn it around and eventually succeed, it was his first discussion point that took me by surprise. One of the reasons he felt his campaign was not succeeding was that many people thought the campaign was “too polished.”

A week into our campaign, we were surprised to see dozens of comments online from people saying: “Look at that game, look at how expensive their video looks… They don't need our money.” Meanwhile, our company bank account was getting dangerously low.

As I sought out reasons as to why our campaign wasn't resonating, I realized that people were put off by how polished everything looked. This was disappointing because, yes, in fact, we worked extremely hard to make everything as professional as possible.

This has been one critique of Kickstarter we have seen come up from time to time. If potential backers feel that the person asking for money doesn't really need it, they will complain and withhold their money. This is an unfortunate attitude for people to take because it really doesn't matter who you are and if you “need the money.” What matters is that you are using the campaign to connect with fans and get the money needed to succeed where you need to.

Initially, I was frustrated at the “too polished” complaints, especially when I remembered the late nights and weekends Craig Cerhit put into our video content. I often thought about the rich guys on Kickstarter intentionally making rough-looking webcam videos to appeal to peoples' charitable instincts and subsequently pull in six or seven figures in pledges.

Based on what I have read about running a successful campaign, having a quality campaign video is one of the primary ways to reach your goal. Even Kickstarter tells people that having a good video is helpful in making a project successful. If your video is utter crap, people will lose interest. But is there really such a thing as having a too polished video turn off fans? Honestly, there is no reason why it should be an issue. Having a high quality video shows off the love you have for your project. That is the important thing to convey to the public and especially to build a report with them. Something that Ryan learned as the clock was running down on the campaign as his team prepared both a new video and a Livestream event on the last day.

Instead of focusing the team on Kickstarter success or failure, we decided to host a Livestream party for the final three hours of the campaign and just have fun regardless if we hit our funding goal. Too distracted to work on the game, the team started prepping food and activities for a big online thank you party for the community. At the time, over 7,000 people had pledged a total of $355,000 towards our game. We wanted to thank them, even if we failed and didn't receive the money.

What transpired what something I was dreading the entire month: dozens of articles with headlines like “République May Miss Kickstarter Goal.” While I was anxious about that negative press, it was calling renewed attention to our campaign, which we smartly prepared for: we uploaded an entirely new debut pitch video that reviewed all of the news from the past 30 days (PC & Mac announce, David Hayter & Jennifer Hale), showed new gameplay footage, and addressed all the feedback we got from the community. We slapped a “New Video!” sticker on the top of our page, welcomed all the new and returning visitors, and crossed our fingers that this time they would pledge.

What happened in that last day was an amazing turn around for Ryan and his team. They managed to complete the goal of $500,000 and then some. An excellent ending for what looks to be a great game.

So what exactly turned this campaign around? Ryan and his team did a whole lot of prep work prior to launching but all that prep work did little toward the final goal. What Ryan learned and highlighted in his other points was the importance of engagement with the community in order to connect.

The final three-hour Livestream was the best idea we ever had. We don't know if the 4,500 views sparked increased pledges, and we didn't care — it was all about connecting and celebrating with the thousands of dedicated backers and enjoying the victory together. By the time the clock struck zero, we were at $555,512 and hugging each other.

I don't really know how many different ways we can say it. “If people like you and your work, they'll pay.” CwF+RtB. Being Open, Human and Awesome. And many more iterations on the same theme. The fact remains, this concept is integral to success.

Filed Under: connecting with fans, crowdfunding
Companies: kickstarter

Ubisoft Realizing That Perhaps 'Pirate' Users Are Really Just Like 'Free To Play' Users Who Don't Pay

from the same-percentages dept

Game maker Ubisoft is pretty closely associated with annoying DRM and an insistence that it needs DRM to fight infringement. And yet… the company seems to be recognizing something fundamental as it experiments with “free to play” games that have elements that you can purchase within the game: the percentage of people who pay are the same in both cases.

Yes, you read that right. According to Ubisoft’s stats, when they determine how many copies of their DRM’d games are infringing vs. how many people play free to play games without ever paying… they’re both right about 95%. From that you could make the argument that the people playing “for free” in either case, just aren’t that interested in paying. Thus, cracking down on the infringement isn’t likely to make much more money — and, in fact, may be an expensive waste of time.

Filed Under: free to play, paying customers, piracy rates
Companies: ubisoft

People Are Willing To Pay, Even If You Offer Something For Free

from the some-data dept

Last week, we relaunched our Techdirt Insider Shop with a number of new and different offerings, including (for the first time) the ability to do a “pay what you want” option to get some downloads, starting off with downloads of my book, Approaching Infinity, as well as the research report we came out with earlier this year, The Sky is Rising. We often hear from critics that if people can get something for free, they will, but here’s a clear cut case of where that’s not true (though we’ve seen it in many other cases as well.) It’s only the early going with our store, but already, we’ve seen that two thirds of people who got the books decided to pay for it, with the average price being just under $5. Over 20% of orders were for $10 or more. We’ll be curious to see what happens over time and if it changes. But, once again, it seems to suggest that, even if you’re giving content away for free, if people want to support you, they will.

Filed Under: connect with fans, downloads, ebooks, pay what you want, reason to buy