Bitcoin funded console game

[Foysal]

Hello boys and girls.

My name's Foyz and I'm very very new here!

I created a games company at the beginning of this year called PixelPoppers in the UK and we're in the middle of developing our first action, sci-fi, RPG, FPS game on the XBOX, if there's enough funding we'll target all the platforms. XBOX development is going well, but very slowly at the moment.

So here's the deal, my team and I are looking for beneficiaries to help fund game development!

If you are interested then please post here so I can keep track. Please DO NOT SEND BTC UNTIL TOLD TO DO SO! If you have any questions, you can contact me direct on my mobile, which I will happily give to those that message me with the serious intention of helping out.

Here's what you get for your help!

1 BTC and above
End credit thank you listing
A downloadable copy of the game.

5BTC and above
The above and..
Free copy of the prequel digital comic.
In-game content. (As yet, undecided)

10BTC and above
You get all of the above and..
Signed poster by the dev team.
Physical copy of the game.
Free copy of the soundtrack.
Unlimited DLC access.

20BTC and above (20 seats)
You get all of the above and..
Signed "I made this" T-Shirt.
Framed, "I made this" game poster.
Signed physical copy of the game.

80BTC and above (8 seats)
All of the previous tiers and..
An in game character designed after you.
Producer listing in the title and end credits.
Invite to the launch party and accommodation.
Limited edition, personalised access smart card with your character design.

The biggest beneficiaries will get the following as well as the above tiers 200BTC and above (5 seats)
I will fly you over and get you accommodated, and you will be a VIP at the release party hosted in the UK
An in game character designed after you and will be allowed to give your character a name of your choice. (within reason!!)
Executive Producer listing in the title and end credits.
Use your exclusive smart card to gain access to our UK game lounge when you fly over for the launch!
Collaborate with the team to add your own ideas to the game. (NDA required)

The rewards above are still incomplete and I may add more depending on the number of people wanting to participate.

Thanks for reading everyone! Happy Christmas

I wanted to show you guys a character development storyboard, but can't quite figure out how to insert an image here lol.. oh well, I'll try later!

Edit: Here's the main character storyboard.



https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=72017277400F28C4!6616&authkey=!AJtj8UmXpkN5eWI&v=3&ithint=photo%2c.png

~Foyz

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[LoneMiner]

~$600USD just for a mention in the credits?

~$3000USD minimum for a copy of the game?

Good luck with that...

[Foysal]

~$600USD just for a mention in the credits?

~$3000USD minimum for a copy of the game?

Good luck with that...

No need to be facetious!

Have you not noticed how much the price fluctuates? I've seen it down to $300 recently, which would drop the tiers to $300 and $1500 respectively. All it'll take is for another major world development and the bitcoins are suddenly worth nothing... but hey ho..

Game dev is very expensive, esp in the UK - it costs £400 just to do a character storyboard, I have a dev license from Microsoft, but need more funding for the project.

If you have a suggestion on the tiers, I'd be happy to hear!

[Foysal]

Have changed the tiers to make it a little more enticing to everyone hopefully. Any suggestions are, as always, very welcome.

~Foyz

[gogodr]

From a fellow game dev, I think you should take this advice:

*Advance a little more the project to something you can showcase and get people hyped.
Since you are looking for crowdfunding, use kickstarter or indiegogo and make sure that you can deliver the game a year after the funding campaign ends or earlier. Otherwise hype will have a negative impact on you.

*The tiers are abusive. you are practically asking for 600$ for a copy of your game. Being an early adopter is not a plus for the customer, it is only a plus for the developing company, take that in consideration.
200BTC from 1 person is not proper for crowdfunding. That amount of money is an investment, you can't expect for someone to invest 120k$ on the development of your product without getting some return of the sales.

*When you are going for crowd funding, you want to set your rewards as low as possible and get a lot of people in the boat.
If you want few people investing lots of money, look for investors, but you will need to provide return, there is no such thing as free money.

*If you are going for a massive crowd your tiers should be something like this (Inclusive rewards):

1$ or less:
Our Sincere Thank you for contributing to the development of our game.
10$ or less:
A heads up from our main twitter @yourcompanytwitter
40$ or less:
A special mention in the credits of our game
A Digital copy of the game
60$ or less
A special early adopter T-Shirt
100$
A physical copy of the game
A poster
150$
All DLC + Sountrack
200$
You get all the physical rewards signed by the whole team

And so on.


*£400 for a character storyboard is ok if it contains the character concept and involvement in the game, The creator of the game haves to plan the whole process and while not underpaying your artist you need to make sure that they are not making things that they won't use and charge you for it (It happens often).

And at last.
*why do you want to do an XBOX game? I hope you are early enough on development to rethink that. If you need crowdfunding, going for a console tittle is out of the question. Doing an XBOX live game is really easy and there are not many barriers, but contacting microsoft buying the licence and having your game published as a full game is quite the barrier and it is quite expensive. Since you are not going under a trusted Microsoft publisher, they will most likely deny you the licence if you can't prove that your game is worth. Worth not in terms of quality, but in numbers (projected sales)


I hope you find this useful and really take in consideration this advice. Merry Christmass

[Foysal]

From a fellow game dev, I think you should take this advice:

*Advance a little more the project to something you can showcase and get people hyped.
Since you are looking for crowdfunding, use kickstarter or indiegogo and make sure that you can deliver the game a year after the funding campaign ends or earlier. Otherwise hype will have a negative impact on you.

I thought about kickstarter, but then heard that it is very hard to actually get the pledges people put forward, so I thought it might be an idea to put a feeler out here instead.

Like I said previously, we're on track, but it's going slower than anticipated, funding is quite thin on the ground at the moment.

*The tiers are abusive. you are practically asking for 600$ for a copy of your game. Being an early adopter is not a plus for the customer, it is only a plus for the developing company, take that in consideration.
200BTC from 1 person is not proper for crowdfunding. That amount of money is an investment, you can't expect for someone to invest 120k$ on the development of your product without getting some return of the sales.

I didn't think they were abusive at all, the price of a BTC fluctuates greatly, one of the other reasons I thought I'd post the game development here is two fold, no one is investing USD. So it isn't hard earned cash per se. BTC can be $600 today and $400 next week which is why the asking BTC is as high as it is. All pledges are going in to game development, with full involvement of the benefactor.

*When you are going for crowd funding, you want to set your rewards as low as possible and get a lot of people in the boat.
If you want few people investing lots of money, look for investors, but you will need to provide return, there is no such thing as free money.

I've not put any details about investment in this post, but the high tiers are going to involve a lot of one to one with myself and the benefactor.

*If you are going for a massive crowd your tiers should be something like this (Inclusive rewards):

1$ or less:
Our Sincere Thank you for contributing to the development of our game.
10$ or less:
A heads up from our main twitter @yourcompanytwitter
40$ or less:
A special mention in the credits of our game
A Digital copy of the game
60$ or less
A special early adopter T-Shirt
100$
A physical copy of the game
A poster
150$
All DLC + Sountrack
200$
You get all the physical rewards signed by the whole team

And so on.

That seems far too low. The pledge has to go towards funding the project as well as supplying the rewards.

*£400 for a character storyboard is ok if it contains the character concept and involvement in the game, The creator of the game haves to plan the whole process and while not underpaying your artist you need to make sure that they are not making things that they won't use and charge you for it (It happens often).

My artists are very good and we have some concept art for the project already, I have a few characters still needing development, and it will cost a lot to develop it all.

And at last.
*why do you want to do an XBOX game? I hope you are early enough on development to rethink that. If you need crowdfunding, going for a console tittle is out of the question. Doing an XBOX live game is really easy and there are not many barriers, but contacting microsoft buying the licence and having your game published as a full game is quite the barrier and it is quite expensive. Since you are not going under a trusted Microsoft publisher, they will most likely deny you the licence if you can't prove that your game is worth. Worth not in terms of quality, but in numbers (projected sales)

I think you are thinking of an Indie game as being easy to develop, I have a long relationship with Microsoft developing business to business software and my company is a Microsoft partner, this is our first venture in to games development and we have been given the opportunity to create a live arcade title.

I hope you find this useful and really take in consideration this advice. Merry Christmass

I do appreciate the advice, but I would ask that benefactors see the bigger picture here and realise that this could be a potential investment opportunity as well. Unfortunately I cannot discuss the nitty gritty details unless a formal NDA is signed, but I am happy to do so for anyone that is interested.

~Foyz

[gogodr]

Just one more thing which I don't think you have clear or I might not be getting that you have it clear.
Crowd funding contributors and investors are 2 completely different things.

Contributors are willing to pay and donate their money so that your game can succeed. Some contributors have deeper pockets than others but in the end all of them are doing a donation. What they will get in return when you finish developing is your final product and the rewards you promised. Again, this are donations and that's why you want to keep the tiers as low as possible and don't filter out little donations.

Investors are not going to donate money to you, but it is a good way to get big amounts of money for a start up. An investor objective is to make money out of you, so if someone invests say 100k$ on you, that investor expects to have a return bigger than that when the project is up and running.

Back in the day crowd funding was not a thing and the only way to approach development of a big product was by getting sharks on your side (investors are often called sharks), you will give out part of your company, sales or net profit to that investors in order to get the money you need to develop the product. Now with crowd funding the table flipped and it is known that people are willing to pay in advance for products that they think they will like once finished and are willing to help the development by giving their money to the developers directly, that way the devs don't need to go and seek for investor and can keep the whole property of the product. This was a huge flip for investors since now days crowd funding is pretty common and not having to give up part of your product to investors is a huge plus.

If you still want to seek for investors (which are the only ones that are not millionaire philanthropists and will give you the amount of money you are asking for most of your tiers), then you have to make it clear: If I were to invest 100k $ in your product, in how much time will I see my money back and how much will that investment give me as return in the next 3 years ?

Situations where you are certain to need investors:
Crowd funding had some projects that raised millions of dollars out of donations to develop products, but if you are working on a product where even that amount of money is not enough, then you might need to approach investors.

You are much time away from finishing the product, but you need money to continue developing and see that hype will only damage your product. You can seek for little investors in order to keep your project secret until the time is right to hype it up.

[LoneMiner]

Have you not noticed how much the price fluctuates? I've seen it down to $300 recently, which would drop the tiers to $300 and $1500 respectively.

So? Even at $300 I'd expect more than just my name in the credits (and now a copy of the game since your edit).

All it'll take is for another major world development and the bitcoins are suddenly worth nothing... but hey ho..

That isn't the problem of potential backers/investors, that is your problem for choosing BTC as your funding method.

Game dev is very expensive, esp in the UK - it costs £400 just to do a character storyboard, I have a dev license from Microsoft, but need more funding for the project.

Again, not our problem. Your job is to try give us reasons to back and support your project.

If you have a suggestion on the tiers, I'd be happy to hear!

Have a good look at Kickstarter projects for an idea of acceptable tiers, because yours do not come close to being reasonable.

http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=35&sort=most_funded

I agree with everything gogodr said too.

-----

If this thread is to gauge whether people would be interested in funding a game via BTC then great, but it fails as an actual sales pitch. I'd be more than happy to contribute to such a project, providing the presentation is to the quality of a Kickstarter project and the pledge tiers are reasonable.

Also you might want to fix your use of the word beneficiaries, as we would be benefactors and you are the beneficiary.

[DreadKnight]

A proper crowd funding campaign is quite a challenging task to get right. Been studying about this subject for quite a few months now and I'm still not confident, even if I've been working on my open source game project for quite a few years now with a lot of people and I have something quite playable to show... it seems gogodr has quite some good insight in his posts

[ORabbit]

+1 that your tiers are about 50x too high.  Rethink your prices in millibits.
The way crowdfunding works is by getting a ton of people on board for a low price.  Look at the Humble Bundle for a different model.  The latest bundle has sold over 160,000 copies so far at an average prie of $4.41.  That's over $700,000, and they accept bitcoin too.  It seems that you are looking down your nose at piddly little sums, but those small amounts add up.  I doubt you'll get 160,000 pledges through this forum though.  That's why Kickstarter is the place to be - traffic.  But very few people are going to toss their bitcoin around because the price is so volatile.  It's not play money.

[Foysal]

Thanks for all the advice people!

I've already had a few responses from here, looks as though not everyone thinks the way the few of you seem to, but then, that's expected.

However, I do like to hear all views, and would love to hear from some of the more seasoned forum members as well as the noobs.

Thanks!

~Foyz