ashesh, if you flip over, you can keep driving on the roof =P

Actually, rather than discussing one, existing tutorial, I was thinking about conversations encompassing multiple tutorials, or discussing authors we like, or taking suggestions for tutorials people want to see (there's a thread like that in the old Construct Classic forum), or discussing tutorials under development (like this!).

As we can see, there's not really an "ideal" place to do that, at present.

Is the How Do I...? forum right for this discussion? It looks like virtually all the posts in here have to do with technical questions about using Construct 2 itself.

Kyatric,

With respect, I don't think that's appropriate. That's where the tutorials themselves go, but it's not a forum for discussing tutorials and related concepts. You wouldn't create a tutorial to have a conversation about tutorials you like, or authors, or the etiquette of editing others' tutorials, etc. You would do that in a forum, like this.

BTW, LobsterSundew, I think it's cool you do your Lobster's List, and I see you've contributed videos to help out at least one of the projects you backed. I've contributed to about, oh, 2% of the projects you have, but they were all very important to me =P, and one of them was by a friend.

You're what Malcom Gladwell calls a "maven," someone who's an information specialist who "accumulate knowledge, especially about the marketplace, and know how to share it with others."

I agree with alspal that Construct 2 General is not the best place for this thread.

Hopefully we can get a KS and/or tutorial forum!

As you point out, there are dozens of technical details with regard to running a KS campaign (you could just as easily have described all the steps to setting up an independent website to use for reward management, integrated shopping, web-public project updates, long-term sustainment of your backers as an opt-in mailing list, a place to handle Paypal during and after the campaign, etc.!), and while I think most people know how to open a bank account, you have both the knowledge and the inclination to share your expertise with others, and I hope now that you're in between semesters, you take the time to do so!

=P I wouldn't say that you "missed" anything, since you were primarily just establishing your bona fides by listing some of the steps/considerations a KS project manager will have to deal with as a brief example, and discussing the scope of your KS experience (very cool!), but when you mentioned that Kickstarter will provide a 1099-K, you've touched on a much larger and murkier issue: local tax regulations!

Amazon Payments, for example, will definitely send a 1099-K not just to you but also to the IRS, reporting your income, so the burden after that falls on the project creator to handle all local tax laws. As has been discussed on Forbes/ Kickstarter's Sting in the Tail: Tax, The Daily Dot/ The Hidden Cost of Kickstarter Success, and even individual tax firms' websites, you have to account for Federal and State taxes, the applicability of sales tax and the implication of shipping to states in which items were manufactured, you could well wind up owing self-employment taxes, and in the U.K., HMRC is going to view your rewards as pre-sales subject to VAT.

It's a mess, and the best advice is to hire a CPA or other tax expert to advise you on the particulars of your campaign. In many cases, consultation will be free and you will only be charged if you take advantage of their actual tax preparation services.

—,

I'm certainly open to suggestions, but not only is there no tutorial discussion forum, but on my thread:

Tutorials Forum for C2

Tom said, "I don't think we need a new forum for tutorials."

I wish I could speak more to the trend you've observed, but there appeared to be about three forums which weren't exactly right for tutorials discussions, but for which an argument could be made. If Kyatric or Arima want to move it to General: General Game Design or somewhere, I have no objections, because it was a coin flip for me, since this isn't really about Game Design, per se, either.

[Thread moved from Construct 2 General to How Do I...?]

We've had some homegrown Kickstarter (KS) campaigns here at Scirra, most recently/notably Andrew aka NotionGames and his team's deservedly well-funded Super Ubi Land.

While we're a smallish community, there's a lot of talent represented, and KS is currently one of the best ways for indie game developers to circumvent the old guard of venture capital and big-label publishers.

Even though KS currently only accepts projects from U.S. and U.K creators, there's nothing standing in the way of a multinational team designating a U.S. or U.K. team member as the campaign lead and pulling off a completely successful (and legal!) project.

With all that said, it seemed about time to consolidate our lessons learned and best practices, and so I've spent the last month or two researching the elements which go into planning, running, and fulfilling successful KS campaigns. With any luck, sometime Sunday evening (Eastern Standard Time) I'll post what may be the first of several tutorial articles laying out the principles I've learned from others or identified on my own and through participating in successful campaigns and observing certain failures.

This tutorial will discuss five practices and considerations which seem to be either absent from the more common discussions of KS success/failure or are under-emphasized, much to the detriment of many a project. For example, while I know for a fact that some KS backers and a few project creators have dealt with this issue, the blogs, Gamasutra post-mortems, and even academic research papers aren't talking about how to advertise your game in established communities without creating a backlash from loyalists bristling at your commercial invasion.

If it turns out that there's a significant degree of interest, I can develop a whole series of tutorials covering one or another aspect of KS management and guiding principles.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or questions, go ahead and post! I'll also keep this space updated.

Cheers,

David/RandomExile

Using Chrome, the website worked for me. I thought Kazuko Island had an engaging exploration/fantasy feel to it.

Works!

I like both your old and new characters, and they each seem to express different personalities.

Discmach,

I've been conducting a study for the last couple months into the factors effecting Kickstarter success, and it's been suggested to me by some of the project creators I've talked to that I should consider providing professional consulting services for indie developers.

I'm writing an informal blog-style Kickstarter Tutorial for the Scirra website, which might turn into one in a series of such tutorials, entitled "The Top 5 Secrets of Highly Funded Kickstarters." I'm covering DLC/DRM/Exclusive Content, how not to be hated on third-party forums, planning and structuring rewards, and others.

These are by no means the *only* factors that count (I've identified 74 individual factors in 7 categories), nor even the overall most crucial (structuring and pacing the campaign, immediate backer/inquiry feedback, etc.), but I've selected what I believe are the five most important ones which are under-reported or not yet covered. Proper reward structure, however, is one of those truly critical factors and is both more complicated than one might expect and easy to make errors in.

Even a lot of successful campaigns might have been able to do even better if only they'd more effectively incentivized and balanced their reward tiers (something Ashley and Tom have had to think about very carefully as they gamified the Scirra website, for example). What are you truly incentivizing versus your intent?

You mentioned feeling overwhelmed, and maybe putting together a solid game plan and clearly laying out what precisely needs to be done would help. If you're interested, maybe we could talk more about how exactly I might be able strengthen your project and/or directly support you.

While I've participated (and quite closely, in certain cases) in a number of campaigns, I've never actually managed or directly consulted on one. If it turns out that you think I'd be an asset to your project, I think we can arrange some quite favorable terms to reflect my fledgling status. I'd be happy to discuss my personal qualifications privately and send you my real-life resume and references so you can know and be confident with whom you're dealing.