

How I raised $24,000 on Kickstarter (for a text adventure) - ido
http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/15/technology/kickstart_plotkin/index.htm

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abecedarius
Trivia: total donations came to $31,337, exactly.

New interview of the author:
[http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/intervi...](http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/622/)

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thorin
Great link, although 24K doesn't seem like much for a lifetimes work! I look
forward to playing some of the games. The teaser reminded me of Infocom's
Hitchhikers Guide for some reason...

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ido
He eventually raised 31k, and this is just for the development of Hadean Lands
- which he will also be selling on the app store once completed.

So the sum is more like bootstrapping the monetization of a lifetimes work by
financing the first project!

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thorin
Yes, I can see it going somewhere now with the growth of mobile devices. I
love the old text adventures. Retrotastic.

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jonhendry
If you haven't yet, check out inform7.com. It's a free system for developing
text adventures, with a sweet GUI IDE (cross platform Win/Mac/Gnome) and a
language that's similar to English yet has interesting support for
relationships between game items. (ie, you can define a relationship of
'loathing' between characters that influences reactions.)

It can compile to the same format as the old Infocom games, or to glulx, a new
format by Andrew Plotkin (the guy this thread is about) that allows for bigger
games.

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thorin
Thanks, I'm looking!

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markkat
This makes me happy. I loved Zork, and I don't see why text adventures need to
be outdated. I would love to boot one up on my Kindle.

On that note, I can't see why anything fun should be declared 'dead'. There is
something a MUD can offer that WOW cannot.

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pjeide
Wow. This is the same zarf of "Zarf's List of Interactive Games on the Web"
circa early '90s.

<http://www.eblong.com/zarf/zarfs-list.html>

Nice to see this guy is still doing big things. I'm sure some of you must
recognize him by that page as well.

(reference: His kickstarter profile @
<http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/zarf> shows website eblong.com which hosts
the legacy "Zarf's List")

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steveklabnik
The money quote:

> First, spend 15 years working hard on projects with no reward but community
> goodwill.

Instant success takes 10 years of work.

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motters
It sounds as if he had already built up a reputation within a certain
community, and is now just capitalising on that. Without that reputational
factor, he probably wouldn't have been able to raise much funds.

~~~
steveklabnik
Yep.

"Without running every day, he probably wouldn't have been able to run that
marathon."

We love instant success stories, but the reality is, you have to prepare and
be ready to seize your moment when it comes.

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jamesteow
Those tips are sort of less helpful to some people when it's already hard to
get past step one: getting your project accepted at kickstarter.

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jgoewert
It wasn't that hard for me. I had a creative project. I had a plan and a
reason for seeking funding upfront. I had something to give to those that
funded me.

That seems to be the only real requirements.

Of course, I only got $25 pledge towards my $4,000 goal. So it must not of
been that good of an idea.

~~~
patio11
_So it must not of been that good of an idea._

How did you market it?

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sp332
There's a bunch of technical details in the Kickstarter updates, if you're
into that kind of thing :-) [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-
lands-inter...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-
interactive-fiction-for-the-iphone/posts) they're labeled "The Techy Post,
Part _n_ of 4"

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veb
WTF? Man, the Internet does not cease to amaze me at times... Eh, good luck!

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pvg
You could try reading the guy's bio -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Plotkin>

Or even the article -

 _But I guess everybody who succeeds on Kickstarter has to answer this
question.

How did I do it, really? First, spend 15 years working hard on projects with
no reward but community goodwill._

~~~
ulf
That is the correct answer on a LOT of "How do you do it"s, actually.
Sometimes there are alternatives, but you cannot beat a longtime community
involvement if you want your voice to be heard...

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postfuturist
The total now is $31,337, no joke.

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rick_2047
Seeing this I have some faith that my latest lark might get some attention
(not money attention, but people attention). I am going to work on a hand held
text adventure play thing. Going to post the schematics on the web, I could
use an aruduino but that would overshoot my small (very very small) budget.
Lets see where this goes.

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oofoe
Please check out the Ben Nanonote -- this is just the sort of thing that it
might be good for. I know that some kind of inform interpreter has been ported
for it, but a nice little adventure client could be very spiffy!

Project page: <http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Ben_NanoNote>

Sales site: <http://sharism.cc/> (You can also use ThinkGeek, I believe.)

I have one of these things with the latest firmware (OpenWRT linux with some
modifications). It is an incredibly cool device. You actually have a keyboard
that has all the stuff you need for programming (or general unixy/emaily
things), a pretty nice colour display and a reasonable amount of horsepower. I
like to think of it as an SGI Indy that I can put in a pocket...

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rick_2047
Thanks for the pointer, but no this is not what I am thinking. This project is
supposed to be a intermediate level electronics project. This is most probably
going to have a black and white screen and an avr controller of some sort. I
chose IF to implement on this because I love solving little text adventures.

