Actually, if you’re going to build a large world with a small team, you have to rush, all the time, for a long time!
Consider the “A Tale in the Desert” series, which I think is one of the most successful, indie, large-world games.
It wasn’t perfect along any axis, but it had a large world with lots of players where the interactions mattered. That allowed it to do great for many seasons!
However, when it comes to large world games, it’s actually the gameplay, and managing a large number of players (how to get them to go to varied places, and not immediately grow bored!) that’s hard.
Building levels with props and environments is important, and requires artist skill to be sure, but that’s generally not what kills these kinds of projects.
Thus, if you want to have a chance to get more than $180 for your kickstarter, you probably want to make sure that potential backers see enough “real” there that they can imagine themselves actually enjoying it, as displayed.
Also: $25 including shipping for a shirt and a hat? You’re making no money for yourself on that pledge level. Don’t be afraid to up-charge for the pledge items, to make sure you get the funds you actually need to deliver the game in addition to the pledge rewards. If I were to ONLY buy a T-shirt or hat, I’d go to Old Navy or H&M or something. Thus, you are not competing on price for the rewards!
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It depends, honestly. In terms of the trailer, the quality wasn’t as appealing to most. Gameplay was one of the aspects I was thinking about for the project. I think it’s a little too early to show off too much, but I’m not disagreeing with that ideal.
The problem with the teaser is that I didn’t show that much. That was my intention because later down the road, I wanted to produce a more efficient and well informative video. You can say that the teaser was something to hold me off till I get the two videos out to finish off the year. The Kickstarter was “partially” planned to an extent, things like the budget goal, and the organization of how the campaign was going to be was put first at the time. I’m not regretting the Kickstarter campaign because of the obvious errors that I corrected with the feedback from it. And I did get a few others to check it over, to preview the campaign just to confirm if it should be launched.
Lastly, while I’m also trying to establish a small team, this is a one man team. I’m admit, I’m not proficient in most areas of game production (programming and blueprints being my weak spot) but I’m very thankful for the feedback I receive to fix those errors.
All in all, thank you for the feedback. It helps the project achieve it’s goal even more further due to the fact the community (you guys) gives feedback.