Coming up with an idea for the next great video game can be challenging enough on its own. Once you’ve got an idea, though, your next task is even more challenging: finding funding to bring your idea to life. Fortunately, there are several resources you can draw on to help bring in the necessary money to get your video game project going. One of the most popular of these resources is crowdfunding. To help your crowdfunding experience go smoothly and successfully, here are four smart practices for crowdfunding your video game ideas.
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Have Plenty of Content
Since video games are largely a visual medium, it’s vital that you have pictures and videos from the in-game experience to add to your crowdfunding page. Of course, since your game is in the pre-development stage, this content will largely be mock-ups that may not reflect the final product. Even with this limitation, though, it will be far easier to get people to buy-in to your idea if you help their imaginations along with plenty of visual content.
Use a Scalable Platform
One of the limitations of traditional crowdfunding sites is that they can help you raise money but don’t offer much support once your campaign has ended. Among the best practices of crowdfunding you can employ, then, is to use a platform that allows you to scale your game once you have successfully launched and funded it. This will help you to stabilize your long-term funding, especially if you don’t have a chance to build out a dedicated website for the game.
Get Social Media Influencers Onboard
Everyone loves to join a bandwagon, especially when it comes to a new video game. Therefore, to help your crowdfunding campaign succeed, it’s a good idea to get some social media influencers on board. Even if they’re just commenting on the potential of the concept you present to them, the fact that they offer approval of your idea will provide serious legitimacy that will quickly increase your funding. If you’re able to follow-up with these influencers once the game has been fully developed, then you’ll be that much further ahead.
Provide Unique Keepsakes
To truly increase the ownership people have in your game concept, you need to help them feel like they are part of an exclusive club. After all, if your game takes off and becomes the next big hit, they want to be able to say that they got in on the ground floor. To help with this buy-in, it’s a good idea to create one-of-a-kind collectible keepsakes to send to your backers as you’re working on the development of the game. This can include things like concept art, ultra-exclusive cheat codes, or just about anything that will set these early supporters apart from future players of your game.
Once you’ve successfully funded your video game and released it to the general public, it’s important to stay hungry. Don’t rest on the success of your first game, as you never know how long this success will last. Instead, keep moving forward to develop new games, learning from the mistakes and successes of your first experience.
