[Updated 24/09/2024]Leading up to the now cancelled Kickstarter campaign, I had 5 prototype floppy disk USB drives made up. This was due to Kickstarters rules that any physical goods should be real examples, and BandCDs had a minimum order quantity of 5 (however, they did tell me that you can get a single one, but it was expensive due to the break in production for other larger orders).

The Kickstarter only had 4 backers going into the final week so, I thought why not reward the people who actually turned up. Therefore, they are all getting one of these each for free, once the game is finished! I am even going to pay the postage.

Why did the Kickstarter fail to get more backers I hear you ask? I have theories but no solid proof. My main theory is simply that Kickstarter did not promote the campaign on the site. It's the same for Itch, Steam, and most other sites where internal traffic is what drives sales, they all have algorithms that respond to outside traffic. If your project draws thousands of outside traffic to their platform you will most probably trigger the algorithm to suggest you to the team as an interesting project and drive the internal traffic to your game. However, if like me you have a tiny social media following (because I don't use bots, perhaps or, maybe because to me it's game dev not fame dev), you get buried under the 'Projects We Love' etc. Of course this is a great way to gatekeep the ecosystem from the great unwashed starting up businesses willy-nilly. I get it.

Another red flag that I noticed during the early days of the campaign was the sheer number of marketing gurus and bots taking the opportunity to try and scam money out of you. This ranged from cold calling me via email, messages, and even discord. They ranged from profiles pretending to be from Kickstarter themselves, offering mentorship programs, coaches, to more obvious marketing gurus promising to get you in front of their long list of super backers. The thing is, there's nothing stopping these scammers from asking for refunds or cancelling pledges just before the campaign ends and after taking your money of course. It really is a cesspool.

I thought it might be a way of building an audience for the game but, as mention above, if you don't already have an audience Kickstarter probably won't promote you. This is a pattern I am experiencing across most platforms online.

So, rather than let the situation make me bitter, or cancel the game because it seems like no one wants to know. I am giving back to those who showed up and took a chance on my dream. This also makes these physical copies pretty rare gaming collectables. Bet you wish you'd backed it now, don't ya? One thing I can assure you is, you won't see me doing any more crowdfunding now I know a bit more about how it all really works.