Tag Archives: animation

Kickstarter Rewards Updated (or Removed)

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The Kickstarter for “James – Journey of Existence” is picking up a couple backers, which is reassuring given that it isn’t even on the “Ending Soon” projects page yet for Video Games. Anyhow, some backers might notice that the description for the project was shortened a little, and more importantly, the rewards were updated. Or rather, some of the rewards were removed completely.

A lesson I learned from this campaign: when putting a new game on Kickstarter, people probably don’t care about your game yet. So when you offer physical rewards such as documentaries, art books, or soundtracks, very few people would actually be interested. It can even hurt the campaign, as you appear vain to be willing to spend money on making such things before an audience ever suggests they want it. As much as I would love a plush toy of The Cat in “James – Journey of Existence,” I’m probably the only one who does.

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The Importance Of Communication…

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of communicating with different people, both supporters and nay-sayers about my hand-drawn indie game “James – Journey of Existence.” Both with Kickstarter and this blog, among other social media sites, I’ve tried to post updates and respond to everyone. However, it has happened often with both sides that they would completely miss important information I’ve posted when writing a comment.

This has quickly become my biggest pet-peeve: making a comment before actually reading an article. This is very common, especially on video game news sites where the fanbase is as “passionate” as they are. I don’t mind too much if the comment is nice, where I would then kindly repeat what I’ve said elsewhere. But more than once, people have poo-pooed “James – Journey of Existence” and used examples to help back their claim.

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New “SD” Demo For “James – Journey of Existence”

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Have you tried the free demo yet of hand-drawn, hand-animated 3D adventure “James – Journey of Existence?” Were you able to run the game without it crashing?

As I’ve mentioned, the hardware requirements for having HD frames for animating the characters is demanding. A couple gamers have already complained that it would crash instantly. This is almost entirely due to the RAM, which requires almost 3.5 GB of FREE, UNUSED RAM: that means not in use by the operating system or other software. That comes out to requiring 5-6 GB of RAM on most standard computers. The processor, video card and hard drive requirements are manageable by comparison, but the game will crash if not enough RAM is available.

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Did You Want To Be Part The Making Of “James – Journey of Existence?”

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TO INTERESTED INDIE ARTISTS:

I’ve already been contacted by a few musicians from across North America interested in becoming part of the project. Who knew putting your game out there, on Kickstarter or Youtube, would be a way to make contacts with talented people so easily!

I do desperately need proper musicians, but I can’t really pay anyone until unless the Kickstarter campaign is successful (and yet, I can’t easily have a successful Kickstarter campaign with proper musicians, but c’est la vie). Until then, continue to feel free to send in your names for consideration with links to sample work, I appreciate any and all feedback and interest. This goes for all musicians, 2D-artists, 3D-artists, and yes, even programmers!

Of course, spreading the word to make this Kickstarter reach its’ goal sooner would allow me to start hiring others sooner, so by all means, show “James – Journey of Existence” to everyone you know! Even if it never reaches its Kickstarter goal, I want as many people to see it as possible, to get people to think: “Oh… I suppose a game could be made like that…” If I get that, then I would be satisfied.

– A.H.

48 Hours On Kickstarter…

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So my campaign for “James – Journey of Existence” (http://kck.st/19wTNSh) has already gone for over 48 hours. We have 12 backers, 11 of which went for the cheaper $5 early-bird reward tier, and 1 generous fellow who went for the physical copy at $60.

My experience with Kickstarter so far? It’s a great way to get people to see your project, succeed or fail. And using pledgers as a basis, it’s a great way to confirm to yourself that your idea has potential or has a existing audience. Social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or others, should all be used and tested to spread the word, and each may have varying results. Kickstarter backers tend to be very nice, and may have suggestions on how to improve your page, and some might network using Kickstarter to find extra work, which could be to your benefit to growing a team (or joining another team). And a Kickstarter without a good website writing a story about you is likely to fail, unless you somehow got a big audience of fans beforehand.

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