Week two // H0RUS glow-up // Xiaoli tier // MEATPUNKS recc
about 3 years ago – Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 12:21:29 PM

Week two hullabaloo 

We're halfway through the duration of the campaign and passed the $100k mark last night. Yikes!

The keen-eyed among you may notice that the chart has had a bit of a different behavior for the last few days. This is almost entirely due to the launch of the ad campaign that Backerkit has helped us put together for Facebook and Instagram. I was hoping to be able to dive into the details for this update like I did for calculating ROAS, but I think it'll best be broken out into its own post and after we've had a little more time to sit with the data that's coming in.

Glow-in-the-dark stickers!

On a bit of a lark, I noticed that Sticker Ninja offered this as an option and they had great reviews, so I figured why not! Let's have some fun!

I thought this would be a late-campaign surprise, but they got the proofs back to me super quickly and they're just too cool to sit on. The glow-in-the-dark material requires changing the lime-green logo to white (or near-white) but I think it still works. So yeah! The H0RUS stickers are now gonna be glow-in-the-dark as a freebie. Cool bonus!

Xiaoli tier — Homebrew mech incoming!

It's been zipped up! Zounds!

We've zeroed in on this zone much faster than I expected. The details are still under ziplock and key, but I can zap you this zoo of a hint about what kind of zesty mech we might be seeing that's home-grown on Verdevilla.

Strongly recommend: MEATPUNKS

The TTRPG for Extreme Meatpunks Forever released earlier this week! It's a game that pulls no punches, is Powered By The Apocalypse (both mechanically and, like, literally narratively), the meat mechs are these gross and beautiful entities literally made of blood and belief (one of the available weapons are "Screaming Mount Vents"), and its tagline is Be Gay. Pilot Mechs. Kill Nazis. — so um yeah I figured that there'd be some overlap here in what y'all are into. The art and layout is gorgeous, lore is frighteningly well-thought-out, and just reading through the rulebook will leave you Changed.

Check it out at sinisterbeard.itch.io/meatpunks. There are also communities copies available for marginalized communities.

Sticker #3 — (Reactor) Stress is a resource
about 3 years ago – Sun, Mar 12, 2023 at 09:13:37 AM

Happy daylight savings, everyone! It is the day that we are reminded that time is a social construct, an illusion carried forward by the momentum of the systems we have created. Truly a blessed day, for without it we would forget that we ourselves wrought this apparent foundation of the universe.

And if time is something we created, it's something we can bend. Push your mech's reactor to the 1d6+4 heat limit and you'll find that you can do more with the time that you have (one quick action's worth, to be precise) (how was that for a transition from the intro paragraph to the topic at hand).

Today we have the third sticker for Veteran tier and up: REACTOR STRESS IS A RESOURCE.

Like daylight savings time, this is a common refrain* to help remind us that if you end a mission with anything more than a single point of reactor stress remaining, you've basically left action economy on the table.

* well, technically, "stress is a resource" is the actual saying†, but out of context that sounds like some kind of weird hustle culture thing and we don't want that.

† after doing a search, it looks like "reactor stress is a renewable resource" was actually its first recorded form, so we've kind of come full circle here.

This design came from me playing around with the idea that we had a H0RUS sticker, what if we had one for the other manufacturers? I knew I wanted to do this phrase, and Harrison Armory seemed like the best match for it — but how to fit both the reactor symbol and the HA logo on the same design? Playing around with layouts, when I put four reactors in the corners it tickled a faint design memory. Where had I seen something like this before?

After some miraculous googling, I found it: the Indian-head test pattern used to calibrate old television sets. It's a cool bit of technology, with all the lines an numbers set up to reveal where your errors were if your set was incorrectly processing high- or low-frequency signals. It also weirdly includes a Native American wearing a headdress? Dunno what to say about that besides it sounds like part of the same sort of gross cultural impulse that used that icon as a football mascot. That shit's everywhere.

I couldn't think of any way to tie in the little numbers to something meaningful in Lancer gameplay or lore so for now they're just little numerical greebles. If you can think of some kind of Easter egg to throw in there, I'm all ears.

Finally, if you work in an honest-to-god nuclear reactor and have the freedom to put stickers on things in there, PLEASE let me know and I'll send you a pack of these for free as long as you post some pictures of having done so. This offer does not expire (until I run out, I guess). EDIT: on second thought, is it legal to post pictures from inside reactors? I don't think so. Please don't break any laws. I'll take your word for it.

Olive

One week in // add-ons // ad-ventures // Palisade recc
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 08, 2023 at 07:18:27 AM

Halfway there

Current mood: This is so much work! Why am I working so hard! We'll either get to the final stretch goal or we won't, either way is great! I've promised Mark that I'll delegate more; that's what teams are for. Thanks, Mark.

We're sitting pretty at a whopping 385% — over halfway to the final stretch goal of $150k, with three weeks to go. Stellar. ✨

Coins as addons

So: we've backed ourselves into a bit of a corner. We've been trying to figure out how to offer coins as add-ons, but have been stymied by where we set the price points for the original tiers. If we set the cost any lower than $54, then it obsoletes Elite because it's strictly cheaper to choose Veteran and grab the coin as an addon. But if we set the cost any higher than $50, then it becomes clunky to add more coins to a Squad. It's like a $4 anti-window.

So we've just made it available at $50 to prioritize convenience over making the numbers line up perfectly. If you wanna optimize and save yourself that $4, well, I was looking for ways to make the coin more affordable so let's call it an opt-in small discount if you need it.

We also considered coming up with more coins designs (one for each manufacturer?), but then we remembered that our main job at this point is to make sure the scope of this campaign doesn't bloat and become undeliverable. As such, we've shuttered adding any more options beyond this coin-addon for now.

Backerkit & advertising

We've just started working with Backerkit to help do pledge management + advertising. I personally have never done, like, an Advertising Campaign, so we're doing this as an exploratory experience to see what it entails and how it goes. The folks at Backerkit been very helpful and communicative in bringing me up to speed in their system (I attended a conference they put on in 2018, very chill).

The biggest thing I've learned so far is that all the fancy click-through cohort pipeline audience retention statistics can come down to one number: for every dollar of advertising you put in, how many dollars do you get out? ("return on advertisement spending", or ROAS, calculated by avg pledge / avg margin)

It needs to be higher than you might think for it to be worth the effort; that dollar you put in needs to make itself back and then also cover all the costs and obligations that come with someone giving you money. The cost of the thing you need to give them, the shipping, the government wanting a slice of the fact that someone gave you some money... to actually break even, you'll probably need a ROAS of more than 2.0 (again, "for every dollar you spend, you get two dollars in return") or way more when dealing with hefty non-digital items. It's different for every project, but here's the calculation I did for this campaign for the minimum ROAS we'd need for spending money on ads to be worth it.

You do small runs of your ads to experimentally determine out what your ROAS actually is going to end up being. If you're above the minimum you calculated, you're golden. If you're not, well, good thing you tested.

There's also two different kinds of cost that I ran into: costs that are flat ("it costs $4 to ship this product") and costs that scale with revenue ("the government takes 20% of whatever you charge"). Interestingly, for expensive/high-margin items like the coin, flat costs become almost inconsequential while revenue-scaling ones grow proportionally; it's easy to spring for some deluxe option that costs a few more dollars per unit, but the tax rate stays proportionally significant.

...and as I write this, I come to the realization that labor costs are in the "flat" category — it'll cost the same to package something up no matter how much it's being sold for. Is this how the math works out at scale? With regard to, say, corporations who claim they can't afford to pay their workers more? Makes you think.

Anyway, hope that was interesting to folks. Here are some drafts of potential fb/insta ads I made as a novice ad-maker, I don't know if we'll end up using them!

Strongly recommend: PALISADE

Finally, Friends at the Table is an actual play podcast that has been foundational in how I understand worldbuilding, the mecha genre, and the dynamics of empire. Tomorrow they are starting PALISADE, their newest season. It's on a world beset by colonializing imperial powers and features the struggle of its inhabitants to survive that process — obviously, a huge inspiration for Viridian. If you're hungry for this kind of story, you can't do better than giving them a listen.

Check it out 8pm EST Thursday March 9  at twitch.tv/friendsatthetable or their rss feed at friendsatthetable.net. It's going to be a great time, I'm certain.

I hope you're having a good week!  🌺 Olive

Trans gobbo sticker reveal + more Drink Deep coins available!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Mar 04, 2023 at 10:42:07 AM

Good morning! (it was morning when I started writing this) Today we have the first of the three unannounced stickers and some reward limit increases!

The second sticker: everyone's favorite gremlin 

This iconic gremlin started as a pride month joke in the PilotNET discord server. JennyWasHere#3141, who in 2019 made this edit of Tom Bloom's original goblin art, says:

"Context, i think at the time i was making a lot of pride flag edits I made the scrolling pride flag lancaster server icon, and i made several other mechs with flags and the goblin + trans flag + dab was just, peak of that kind of content, so i gave it a shot, and its been our banner ever since"

It's common for a new face to tentatively show up (Lancer is a wargame that deals with some serious themes, it's easy to imagine a community that leans in a nasty direction) and end up sticking around with a note that the banner helped set them at ease. Additionally, as an unexpected side-effect, it has become weirdly good scarecrow for chuds; every so often someone lands in the server and throws a fit about it. Like, come on, it's not here to exclude anyone, it would be so easy to be chill and co-exist. C'est la vie.

This 4.5 x 2.5 inch beauty joins the H0RUS logo in the sticker pack at the Veteran tier and above. Two more stickers remain TBA!

Khajiit has coin, if you have warez

I'm in the process of signing up with BackerKit, which will allow us to handle the logistics of increased shipping quantities. As such, I have increased the tier limits of Elite from 140 -> 360 and Squad from 40 -> 120, once again making the DRINK DEEP AND DESCEND coin available. I still haven't quite worked out how to offer the coin as an individual add-on like some folks have asked about, but I'm working on it and it's a definite possibility.

Here's what that looks like, again, if you need a reminder.

Thank you again to Henry Werrell for taking the initiative to make this rendering! 3D stuff is not my wheelhouse so I wouldn't have thought to do so.

(Y'know, when we were talking about the possibility of doing this coin as a reward, the conversation went something like "well, I don't know, they're not as easy to create as stickers and will make shipping way harder. But I personally think it's super cool and selfishly want one for myself, so let's chalk it up as Olive's One Indulgence and do a small run as thank-yous to whoever happens to pledge that high.")

More Spacer pilot portrait slots!

After checking in with Martina, we've also increased the slots of the Spacer tier from 10 to 20. See your OC's face rendered in beautiful pixels! Check out Martina's art at tinyartjar.studio and follow her on twitter at @TinyArtJar.

That's all for now.

We're doing great. As expected, things have settled down after the first few days and I've been able to start working at more sustainable pace. The general rule-of-thumb is that Kickstarter campaigns get 1/3 of their funding in the first few days, 1/3 over the long middle period, and 1/3 near the end. It's not a rule and exceptions are common, but by that point of comparison we are doing very, very well.

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

🌺 Olive

Step 2: Draw the rest of the owl
over 3 years ago – Thu, Mar 02, 2023 at 04:32:37 PM

Recap of yesterday

Neat! We're sitting at just about a cool 300%! Everything besides the final stretch goal has been unlocked (we'll get to that in a moment). Highlights from yesterday & status updates on each tier:

• I projected needing somewhere between 430-460 backers to reach our 100%; we made it with only 361 people! That's an average pledge of $55, which is absurd given that most of the Kickstarter campaigns I researched have an average of $38-$48.
• This is mostly due to the stickers and Drink Deep and Descend coins being extremely popular; we've run out of both the Elite and Squad tiers twice now; both the initial limit was reached and then after I doubled them. I will likely be increasing the limits again, but first need to make sure that we can handle the logistics of the increased quantities. Keep your ear open.
• The Ultra tier to hang out with me and make a map also emptied very quickly, which skewed the average pledge event even further upwards. These limits will not increase; congrats to those who nabbed them!
• The Spacer and Vehicle tiers to commission custom pilot/mech art are almost all gone. These limits may increase after I have some conversations with the artists.
• All four LL12 HMG Asura Everest 360 Noscope have been claimed. Simply incredible. I am not currently planning on increasing this limit.
•  Xiong Xiaoli is still available, which honestly I'm glad about. Let's all stew on what we'd like to see ;)

If you're curious, here's the spreadsheet I used to try and predict the shape of the project. I need to update it with the real proportions of how popular each tier has been, but it highlights just how unexpected y'alls obsession with shiny things has been.

To summarize the campaign description, that means Mark and I are now on the hook to deliver:

• As the base goal, the bones of the game: finish adapting the tabletop rules into the core engine (mech fight mechanics, downtime/character creation), implement basic content (~2 frames per manufacturer and easy-to-implement talents, cbs, npcs), and an instant action mode to set up fights.
• From the stretch goals, we have a map editor with a total of three biomes: terraformed grassy hills, industrial slaglands, and the chromite-sand velds.
• We'll also have two campaign modules: shortish missions + downtimes in an anthology-style story mode with custom character portraits for the npcs.

The bones of the game have a deadline of September 2024, while the stretch goals will come sometime after that.

Final stretch goal

So: all the funding up to this first $50k is earmarked to pay contractors for the assets that will make the above features possible, fulfill backer rewards, and fees + taxes. Mark and I both have part-time jobs which support us well enough to be able to do this on the side. We have been extremely careful about the scope of the game because, while this split-time work is what allows us to run a Kickstarter without paying ourselves, means that we have to compromise on how much time we can put in.

If we wanted to increase the scope of the game by, say, aiming to port all the core game's frames, talents, and core bonuses, that fundamental day-job // game-dev split would have to change. We'd have to raise enough money to actually pay ourselves enough to not work outside of the game.

Which is why the final stretch goal is such a doozy.

That's an additional $100,000 from the last stretch goal.

That's 750% of our original base goal.  

There will be no more stretchies after this; it's the absolute limit of what I'm comfortable scoping. I honestly don't know if we'll reach it (that's why we call them stretch goals), and to be frank I will be perfectly content if we don't; I already consider this campaign to be an unqualified success, and my primary job for the remainder is to ensure that it does not grow out of control and become undeliverable.

This amount will be enough for Mark and I to focus on this project as our primary job and an extra $30k as a safety buffer* ("oh, yeah, let's just throw in a safety buffer 150% the size of the original goal, no biggie"). It will allow us to work for a full year on it, aiming for a 100% content port.** I will add the caveat that if we are NOT able to reach that 100% in that year, I will consider us to have given it our best effort and release ourselves from the obligation of living the rest of our lives chained to that aim. That's the risk of Kickstarter projects, baybee! I just need everyone to come into this with their eyes open that success is not guaranteed.

Also: the exact timing of that year, should we reach it, is TBD as we figure out how it can best fit into our lives and the development process. It might be up-front, it might be after we deliver the rest of the goals as currently planned, it might be somehow spread throughout.

*I suspect this safety buffer to mostly go to taxes, but haven't had a meeting with my CPA about it yet.

** EDIT: To clarify, this is only talking about 100% of the CORE BOOK; Long Rim and KTB not (necessarily) included.

Closing thoughts

The last 36 hours has been a trip. Working with an existing community who is hungry for what you're serving is a completely different animal than what I'm used to — for Crescent Loom, I spent the full campaign being as loud as I could to reach what this game got in the first handful of hours. Thank you everyone for your patience and understanding as we chart these waters. They're choppy, but I feel safe (if exhausted).

Shout-outs: Amelia (@am_ridz_music) of the excellent Bring Your Own Mech lancer podcast for hanging out for so much of the launch stream, Eld (@dunyakat) and the rest of the mods on the PilotNET server for being so supportive and cultivating such a safe space (seriously, being able make a game in an existing active discord where the vibes are good is an infinite treasure), and Massif Press for making this entire endeavor possible by creating the game and universe and then trusting their players enough to open it up with their third-party license.

 🌺 Olive