What I learned from Kickstarter

What I learned from Kickstarter
By Tyson Bennett

As many of you know, Act of Treason went live on Kickstarter recently (early Feb) and did not perform as well as I had expected. It's unfortunate, but it gives me a chance to learn, develop and improve. There are a number of reasons for this and I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on what happened here. Hopefully you can gain some insight from my thoughts and observations.

I've ordered this list, the biggest fumbles are at the top:

1. 1,000 followers, but in the wrong places: I had 1,000 followers as my initial audience. This 1,000 was spread across Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, the Act of Treason mailing list, etc. The conversion rates were quite low for most of these. I peg that to 1) a lack of engagement from me and a long span of time between their acquisition and when the Kickstarter launched. 2) announcements and posts can be very easy to miss on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, where a great deal of my followers resided. And 3) A follow doesn't necessarily mean "I am interested in your product and I want to buy". Sometimes it can just be a follow back, or a "I like what you posted". It's a weaker link to your product when compared to say an email subscribe. All these together culminated in a low hit rate and less pledges than expected. Email signups did perform the best, but it was also the method where I had the least followers. In hindsight, I would focus purely on the Act of Treason Mailing List as my method for gauging the level of expected pledges. I would also consider periodically sending out important updates to that mailing list to get a rough feel for engagement and opens. If only 1% of your audience opens your email, then that's a fairly good estimation of the number of engaged subscribers you have. You can work out from your Kickstarter budgeting how many engaged subscribers you need to have a successful campaign and there you go, roughly accurate forecasting. 
2. Length of the campaign: My initial research suggested that many Kickstarter campaigners choose to babysit their project full time. This helps them to get the most out of it and gives them the time and resources to respond to all queries, tweak the marketing campaign, add more details & create art assets, and so on. Added to this, I had read that campaigns up to 14 days perform better than those of 30 or 60 days. This is believed to be due to the shorter length of time creating a "urgency", where people are more likely to act on it sooner, rather then plan to act on it later - but then forgetting about it. This is not my full time job, and so I decided on a 14 day campaign with me taking the time off of work to check on the campaign. In hindsight, if you're a small publisher, only one day off is needed - the day of the launch. You use launch day to blast out on all of your social media channels and inform friends and family. This gives your project a good head start. Afterwards, you can just monitor it a couple of hours each day. If you've done you're due diligence, then things should be ticking along nicely, and you shouldn't have to do any major course corrections. If you're a small or first time publisher, you'll likely have a much smaller, manageable audience - full time monitoring is unlikely to be required. In hindsight I would aim for 30 to 90 days, especially as a new publisher.
3. Advertising was ineffective: I made the mistake of thinking that I could use advertising to bridge any gap between my funding and my Kickstarter goal. This can only work under rare circumstances. It is possible to pump marketing with cash in order to get conversions if, and only if, there is already a large following. In the case of no initial following then there's nothing to build off of. A lot of what drives pledge conversion is confidence - am I confident that what I'm going to buy is going to provide me with value? In the case of a Kickstarter Project that's thriving, a great deal of confidence is given to the visitor simply through the fact that there are so many others who have been willing to pledge. A visitor thinks "Wow, all of these people have seen value in this - there must be something here" (subconsciously probably). I think it's similar to walking down the street, looking for a restaurant. If you see an empty restaurant nestled in among a sea of bustling restaurants one might ask "Why are their no customers?" It could be the service is bad, the food is terrible, the food takes too long to arrive, or all of these things, or none of them. But it doesn't inspire confidence, and so you typically don't take the risk. After all, there surely is a reason right?.. Right? The mere fact that the restaurant has no clientele scares off any potential customers. It's a vicious cycle, and well known in restaurant owner circles. How to get over this "hump" is an art of itself, and a very important aspect of running a successful restaurant. It could be the best restaurant ever, but if there are no people willing to go there it hardly matters. People use popularity as a barometer for success. It's a form of efficiency and outsourcing in decision making. It would be a rather tiresome affair to go to each restaurant and try their meals. Outsourcing this kind of decision to popularity is something we humans do all the time - it makes for an easy, and typically somewhat adequate decision. Put simply, advertising may have gotten a few clicks, but those clicks were unlikely to turn into pledges because the Act of Treason Kickstarter page was "an empty restaurant". Advertising is going to be almost entirely ineffective unless you can get enough pledges so that the Kickstarter page inspires confidence to the passerby, so to speak. All in all, what this means is that you can use advertising to add fuel to the fire - but you can't use it to start the fire! Lesson learned!
4. Timing: I launched my campaign on a Friday. Not ideal. Initially I thought that it wouldn't make a difference, but you get a period of about 24 to 48 hours to show up as "New to Kickstarter", as well as on other sites that have a "new to Kickstarter" embed on their webpage. This is prime traffic, and best of all it's free. Ultimately, the best time to launch is when Kickstarter and other affiliate sites are getting the most traffic. Jamie Stegmair has some good info on this. He suggests avoiding Monday's and Fridays' and to launch mid morning. I was planning my launch strategy on what worked best for me so that I could babysit the campaign - not what would drive the most traffic. In hindsight, I think it's best to have it set up solid from day one so that it doesn't need babysitting, and then squeeze every last drop out of the launch timing unless it's absolutely not possible to do that.
5. More detail: People were still unsure about some aspects of the Act of Treason, such as the Court and Quest cards. There was plenty of details on the game, but a few blanks here and there for some of my more observant visitors. Thankfully, this is an easy fix. In the future I can include some more detail.  Simple additions such as showcasing some of the Court and Quest cards, as well as having a rules video and a play through video are great additions. These additions to the Kickstarter page are definitely planned for the next Kickstarter run.
6. Comparison to The Resistance: This comparison was made in comment sections here and there and in some questions directed to me. It's a little annoying to have your creation compared to something else like this - and not just because I'm not a big fan of The Resistance. Don't get me wrong, it is fine game and I understand why people enjoy it. But Act of Treason isn't like The Resistance in my humble opinion - and I didn't design it to be like The Resistance. I totally get it, it's a popular game, and it's of the same genre. To the uninformed it's a completely natural first question to ask - "How are these two things different?" Act of Treason is much more of a hybrid of both Mafia and Battlestar Galactica, incidentally the two games I played most before starting my work on Act of Treason. I think doing a direct compare and contrast between Act of Treason will be beneficial as it will help people with the question of "How is this different to The Resistance", and help them to get up to speed really quickly on Act of Treason and why it is different. I will write a blog post going in depth on the specific differences between these two games as well as an analysis of the game theory of Avalon. This can then be included on my FAQ for the next Kickstarter. I may do a blog post about some in depth strategy on Avalon / Mafia, and why I can't really get into these games as much.

In summary, Kickstarter chewed me up and spit me out - I had no clue what to expect. It's one of those classic situations where you don't know what you don't know. Which is perhaps my one of my favorite sayings right now. That and: Sometimes you've got to look the fool so you can become the master. Both quotes are amazing and I think they really help to spell out that you have to be willing to try and fail if you want to succeed - everyone looks foolish when they start out at something new. That's just life. I'm just glad I can pick myself up, dust myself off, and give it another crack.

That about raps it up. I'll be putting up a Dominant Strategy article very soon as well as a Developers Diary, going over what I've been up to and my next steps.

Until next time,
 Tyson

Development Diary #9 - Less than 24 Hours to go

Hey Y’all,

Under 24 hours to go until Act of Treason launches on Kickstarter. It all just feels so surreal.

The Update

Let me take you through some of what I’ve been up:

• Updating the Act of Treason website (playaot.com) and prepping it for the Kickstarter launch. It’s mostly new art assets and concept images, but the biggest update was adding the rules for Act of Treason, which are all sitting online now at www.playaot.com/rules.
• Created a press release, and sent it around to various bloggers and board game related news sites.
• Act of Treason is now up on Board Game Geek. If you've played it, feel free to create an account and post up your review.
• The Kickstarter page has seen a ton of work and is looking very swish now. I’ve included a mixture of text and what I’ve been calling “long tiles”, which are basically just images. I call them long tiles because they are tiled down the page and are typically quite long. A fair bit of work went into Photoshop to make sure they all look good and they covered all the needed information.
• I created my own company called Saffron Entertainment. It doesn’t have an identity of itself yet, or website, or anything really - right now it’s basically a holding company for Act of Treason, but it will be getting its own unique personality & all the frills sometime after the KS launch.
• Prepared some blog posts to come out before and during the campaign. A recent one went up for those who are interested in learning more about me and my future projects. You can read it here. Also, expect posts to come up soon for both The Dominant Strategy as well as parts 3 and 4 of the Design Journal.
• I created an Act of Treason video with some basic animation for the KS page. It's embedded below. It took me roughly three days out of a planned two. First was getting the VO right, cutting out the background noise proved both necessary and more difficult than I had anticipated. That was most of Day 1. Days 2 and 3 where on the visuals, first half and second half respectively. I had most planned out ahead of time, but winged a couple of parts when I arrived at them. I think it’s important to stay adaptable for situations like that - you can sometimes stumble upon an easier and/or better solution if you stay flexible and open to it.

Personal Stuff

So about two weeks ago, windows decided to push updates on me really hard, and so I decided to go ahead with them. The next thing after I boot back into windows - my screens are glitching out and artifacting, flashing gray for a frame or two. Thanks Windows update! I trouble shoot to try resolve it via updates etc, but it keeps happening. The graphics card is the likely culprit - Gigabyte GTX980Ti for the tech nerds out there who are interested. So I decided to take my graphics card out and clean it. That's when I notice that it's boiling hot. I'm beginning to suspect overheating.

Sure enough I clean the card to remove the dust and then when I plug it back in I find out the fans either aren't spinning, or are making weird noises when they do spin. Sure enough, shortly after plugging in the card the fan falls off and I'm getting the artifacts again. I jam a large fan next to the case for a while until I can get my hands on a replacement - it actually worked too! No more artifacts while I had that setup. The culprit fan must have not been spinning for a while, or something came loose with it? Who knows. All I know is that I'm down one boss graphics card. RIP.

My makeshift cooling setup

Now I'm running my brothers old card, about the same power as an Xbox360 gfx card. While I wait for gigabyte to examine the card under warranty. The timing is just great as you might imagine. Right as the Kickstarter campaign is about to begin. Oh well, could be worse. I mean I could have had my hard drive fail with all my Act of Treason stuff. Instead I just had my hard drive fail with all my old movies and TV shows. Yes, you read that right - one of my hard drives failed like a few days ago! Afterwards I Immediately rushed and backed up my entire Act of Treason folder. At least I can still work and all my files are alright. That's the main thing. It is genuinely painful to work on some of my files now however. Even slightly large Google Docs documents are laggy at times!

Okay Google

So when I first started prepping Act of Treason for Kickstarter, I knew I wanted to have a website dedicated to Act of Treason. One of the things that really got stuck in my craw was that my website wasn’t appearing on google unless you typed in something very specific like “Act of Treason board game” - even then I don't think it was top of the page. Back then, typing in just “Act of Treason” had my website on page 5 or something, which might as well been tantamount to it not existing.

I’m proud to announce that when I typed “Act of Treason” into google today I got the following:

3rd result, not bad! And when I type in “Act of Treason board game” the results are even better still! It just feels good to make progress on something like that, especially when it has mostly resolved itself.

Learning From Mistakes

I was going through the Kickstarter, typing up the "Risks and challenges" section. For the unfamiliar, this is an area that sits at the bottom of your Kickstarter page. It is for the project creator to explain: "The risks and challenges that come with completing your project, and how the project creator is qualified to overcome them."

A rather important section for some projects and for backers too. It helps set the stage for what could go wrong and should be used by the creator to honestly reflect on where they could become stuck, which allows the backers to make a informed decision about the level of risk they are willing to take on.

In typing up that section, it made me realize something: It’s all about trust.

Trust is a huge part of any business interaction. If you don’t trust whom you’re dealing with, it’s unlikely that you’ll give them any money in exchange for a good or service. Why? Because you can’t be sure of the level of quality you’ll get, or that you’ll get the product or service you asked for. Heck, you could potentially not get the product or service at all. Any number of things can go wrong in a business situation, and not having trust and confidence in whom you’re conducting business with means that you might not get the outcome you want. Trust means you're confident that you'll come out okay, even when things go wrong.

Now, with all that in mind, I need to come clean about something that has been buging me.

This was not a great promotion I ran. I’m going to peg this one up to me not being so great at marketing - but even then I should have known better! Some of the things I mention in my post when I first revealed this are just straight up wishful thinking. It just wasn’t very grounded of me. I’m going to unpack it a little here for you so you can learn from my mistake. 

Let's start with the reward of this promotion - doubling the marketing and art budgets. My rationale at the time makes some sense:

“I wanted a reward that didn't detract from the product and divert attention or effort elsewhere. I also wanted a reward that all backers could enjoy. A reward that would be fair to all backers. This reward is in line with my main concern - making the best game possible.”

While I stand by this rationale, the biggest issue with the reward is that it’s vague, and not very tangible or salable. What does "double the budget" actually mean? Having values such as an increase of $4,000 for both would have been much clearer and more transparent. But even then, that’s not a very salable reward. No one is going to get excited when you tell them that they should sign up to a mailing list because they then get to increase the numbers on somebody's else budget.

A better reward would be in line with all the rationale I laid out above, while at the same time being  more tangible, salable and clear. I would give you an example, but if I could do that I would have run a better promotion in the first place. Something like adding a new card or two into the game kind of works, but that comes with it's own cost. I for one am very dubious of any Kickstarter game when they do this - offer to increase the components or mechanics of the game as a stretch goal or bonus. I wonder, "why am I not getting the most complete/best product when the idea is already out there and tested?", and "Doesn't adding/removing that component upset the balance of the game?" Both fair questions.

Another smaller mistake, but a mistake none the less, is that I should have taken a different tact with the x3 mailing list “rule” worked into this promotion. I should have only applied a 1 for 1 across all social media accounts, OR only included the mailing list in the promotion. Having mailing list sign ups count for x3 followers is a confusing and convoluted message.

In marketing, I think you should treat everything that you do like you’re playing Chinese whispers - if it can be miscommunicated, it probably will. You should always aim for the clearest and most impactful message you can as this has the greatest distance - a convoluted message won’t travel very far. This is one reason that memes have the spread that they do. They are a short snappy highly shareable idea or message that provides some level of value - The messages you give out to the public should be almost like memes. Clear, short, snappy and valuable. If you can do that, then the message will share itself. In hindsight I should have gone with email signups only for a clearer message.

But by far the biggest error I made was the amount of followers needed for the promotion to be successful. 4,000!? Are you serious? In my defense, I figured that if they were to all be email sign ups which is what I was pushing for the real number is ~1,333. Added to this I already had quite a few signups which made the number of signups I needed less still. But having such a large number as the goal would have made me look like I was living in a dream world - and let's be honest, in some sense I was.

I did see an increase in the email signups at the start of the promotion. I want to thank my supporters for that, but I’m sure it’s much less than it would be had I included a sensible goal, focused purely on e-mail signups, and had a much clearer, salable, and tangible reward for hitting the goal. My bad.

As it turns out, after doing some more calculations and juggling the budget, you’ll be getting some of this reward for free anyway. I really want to see the final product have great art, even at the lowest possible funding goal. So the minimum Art budget for Act of Treason has been tweaked to just under double of what it was to ensure this. The marketing playbook has also had some rework to allow for easy scaling. I might not be doing more marketing spending, but I most certainly will if the advertising has good hit and conversion rates.

Please don’t make the same mistakes I did - focus on simplicity & clarity. Run your ideas past someone first who will be willing to challenge you.

----

That about covers it. I look forward to the post Kickstarter blog write up where I can break down what went right (or what went wrong).

See you on the other side.

Cheers,

 Tyson

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Development Diary #7 - 10th of Feb

Hey Y'all,

Today I am excited to announce that on Saturday 12pm on the 10th of Feb Act of Treason is planned to launch on Kickstarter ( Friday, 9th,11:00 am GMT).

To aid in a successful launch I will be running a promotion leading up to the release date. As previously mentioned I've been toying with bonus "Social Media" stretch goals to help spread awareness of Act of Treason before the Kickstarter goes live. After much deliberation I have landed on going ahead with this plan, and aiming for 4,000 followers which should be an obtainable goal. That should be enough to help me to secure funding for Act of Treason.

4,000 may seem like a lot to some of you. I have laid out my rationale below which I help explains where I'm coming from. I'm trying to choose a number that will yield a successful Kickstarter - nothing more.

To reward all of us for hitting 4,000 followers, I will personally turn my pockets inside out and lay down *double* of the budgeted money for both the Art of the final product as well as the Marketing during the Kickstarter campaign. This helps me and it helps you. I get to make a more beautiful product that I can be prouder than a gushing parent over - and you can have a nicer, better looking game that you can love playing with your friends. We all win!

Note that there are additional art budget increases in the kickstarter stretch goals as well. So even if we don't hit this goal, there is still plenty of opportunity to fund even better kick ass art for Act of Treason.

It wasn't easy to come up with that reward. I wanted a reward that didn't detract from the product and divert attention or effort elsewhere. I also wanted a reward that all backers could enjoy. A reward that would be fair to all backers. This reward is in line with my main concern - making the best game possible.

It's easy to just say doubled - what does that actually mean? Well, for the Art, the current baseline  budget is ~$5,000 USD. Which is roughly break even when hitting the Kickstarter funding goal. This will double to ~$10,000 USD if we hit 4,000 followers! Marketing during the kick starter is currently set to $2,000 USD. Naturally this will increase to ~$4,000 USD. Keep in mind, marketing doesn't just help me! More marketing means more pledges and more pledges means hitting stretch goals. It means even more budget. It means economies of scale. It means negotiation power, etc.  Ultimately, this all leads to an even better product for you!

So, How'd I settle on 4,000? Well previously on the blog I've floated the figure of 1,000 eyes on, within the first 24 hours. Or even better 1,000 pledges within the first 24 hours. I have been assured by others and my own research that this is a good step in the right direction, and will definitely help to reach a successful kickstarter campaign.

In order to reach 1,000 I figure that we'll need more than 1,000 followers. The conversion rate for each social media account I have isn't likely going to be 100%. I imagine that for twitter I'll have a very low conversion rate of say 10%, and for the email list I will expect something along the line of 70%. Because of this I definitely need more than 1,000 followers across all social media if I want 1,000 pledges within the first 24 hours.

Also to note, nothing stops people from signing up to more than one social media channel - which is fine. However, what this translates to is an even lower conversion rate for each social media channel. For example, the same follower could be spread across 4 different media channels, but would only result in one sale. Because of this I would imagine that 4,000 is at least the bare minimum needed to get that delicious 1,000 within the first 24 hours. If anything 4,000 could be too low - but I want to set an obtainable goal for you all that incentivises both you and me to make this project a success!

Note there will be some foot traffic from Kickstarter as well as marketing traffic from my advertisements. So naturally we will get a few bonus pledges that won't come directly from followers, but the more we get in the first 24 hours increases our chances of hitting that glorious front page and getting that prime spot on that Pareto distribution.

4,000 Followers just seems like a good start to me. Who knows, if we happen to hit 4,000 quick enough I can always offer another bonus reward!

Here is our progress so far:

It's looking pretty nice so far, but we only have three months to hit that 4,000 follower goal!

Now, as alluded to above, I believe the email signups are a much stronger indicator of interest than the other social media follows. Because of this I have offered a very nice x3 bonus for *all* email signups - the strongest indicator to buy of all the social media. After all, an email signup is someone who has taken the time to sign up either using a link on the blog or from the website - they aren't just looking for a follow back.

This is reflected on the graph above, so the actual number of email signups is around ~25 at the moment, this gets boosted to ~75. If you wish to help me out, you know what to do.

Thank you to all of those who have followed the journey so far and I hope to open my arms and invite many more of you in the coming weeks!

The Part One of the Design Journal was quite well received, which I am humbled by. I'm glad to see people enjoyed reading through it and hopefully they gained insight from it. In the pipeline is part 2 of the Design Journal and I will be also running a series called The Dominant Strategy, where I will be talking about all aspects of game design, game theory, and game analysis. This is inspired a little bit from the stonemaier blogs which discusses all things related to Kickstarter. A fantastic resource which I hope anyone looking into releasing a game on Kickstarter checks out - A ton of great info there! Well I want to do a similar thing, but for Game Design! The first article of The Dominant Strategy will be "What makes games fun", and I can't wait to share it with you!

Both part two of the Design Journal and Article one of The Dominant Strategy will be posted up in the next week or two.

Until next time squad fam.

Papa bless,
 Tyson

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Development Diary #5

Hi all,

It's been a while. A lot to cover off since the last update.

For a start I've been in hospital with a collapsed lung (spontaneous pneumothorax) - just felt a spike of pain and shortness of breath on my way into work a few weeks ago. It was kinda scary at the time. Spent roughly 5 days split over two visits getting it sorted. There was also the strong possibility that I would need surgery, but after further review this is not happening (phew!).

x-ray of a collapsed lung!

The final prototype has arrived and it's looking glorious! I've been prepping the game for blind playtesting - I have a group all set and ready to go. A prototype is on rout to them as we speak. I'm very much looking forward to hearing how they get on. I'm looking into getting more blind playtests set up too. As much as I'd love to jump into third party reviews, I need to make sure all the blind playtests go smoothly.

Prototype looking very shwifty if you ask me

There was a great update that I put through on the website recently as well. It was mostly quality of life stuff, and should hopefully get more people pointed through to either the email forum or the twitter page. Which was a major goal of the update - trying to land more conversions to the Kickstarter hype lists buy improving the user experience and clarity of message for the 'purchase' page. The Email list and Twitter page will be the core ways I'll be tracking 'hype'. Not that the other social media isn't important! It's just negligible at this stage in comparison to the others.

You can't tell me that that doesn't look amazing

My main efforts right now are getting the word out and marketing - Blind playtests and 3rd party playtests are a bit of a "set it and forget it" kind of deal, but I'm actively tracking tracking the ones I have ongoing. Honestly, my traditional advertising has been working the best so far it seems, but that's mostly due to me not being a "Social Media" kind of dude. It just doesn't come naturally to me (heck it barely comes along as a learned behaviour).

I'll also research around to see what's my best approach for advertising - It's one of those things that I've researched in the past, but since it's not my forte I'm in definite need of a refresher - stonemaiergames.com actually seems like an amazing avenue for this. The guy behind it seems like a bit of a genius when it comes to marketing and running a successful Kickstarter. I'll definitely be spending some time this weekend going through their countless articles and using the insights to fine tune my approach.

Oh, and I almost forgot - A very cool update is that I've put more rules for public consumption on the official Act of Treason page! Feel free to check them out and stay updated on our social media so you can see when I publish the next batch of rules.

Read the rules update at www.playaot.com

Until next time friends.

Cheers,
 Tyson

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Development Diary #4

Hi all,

Sorry for the bit of a hiatus since my last post. There are a few reasons for this which I've detailed below. Nevertheless things are still getting done and I'm very proud of how things are turning out - Rules are really coming along and everything is lining up for blind playtesting - I'm sure that when everything is done and dusted we will have a fantastic looking product with streamlined mechanics that Loyals and Traitors alike will really enjoy.

I've been quite unwell as of late. I managed to get sick *twice* with a nasty throat bug since last blog post. I've been feeling better at times... feeling much worse at other times. I think some of this has to do with exercise, but I'm beginning to suspect that it's been mostly diet related. I'll be starting up a food diary and tracking what I eat and how I feel each day to see if I can isolate if it is certain types of food that are the cause. Feeling tired, low energy, bloated, among other things. I don't wanna whine, but it's something I need to work proactively towards. I'll also be trying to cut out as much sugar as I dare to. I'll let you know how I progress and if I notice any major differences - who knows, it might help someone out.

Example of me working hard on Act of Treason

Those of you who follow the blog, you'll know that marketing isn't my forte. I'm trying my best to figure out what works and what doesn't. Twitter seems to be *the* number one place for people who are interested in upcoming Kickstarter projects like board games and so forth. I don't actually don't like Twitter for a number of reasons, the main one being that they seem to be quite political, often silencing people wherever possible who disagree with their companies political stance and views. Google and Facebook are just as culpable here. Since I'm a strong proponent for free speech that kinda rubs me the wrong way. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of Twitter, most of my followers seem to be coming from there. As much as I dislike Twitter I will focus my efforts to gaining followers on Twitter and staying in with the followers (other than this blog of course). So please make sure you follow me on Twitter to stay up to date with any major developments. Naturally I will also be echoing out the other important updates over my other social medias listed here.

One message I need to remember to push is how Act of Treason is going to be a great game for those who love that social deduction styled games like mafia and werewolf but are looking for even more opportunity and ability to deceive, bluff, persuade. I think that's the strongest part of Act of Treason. Act of Treason was designed specifically to allow players to flex their social deduction and prowess as much as possible, And that's purely because that's exactly the game I wanted to play! I got tired of playing games like Mafia and Battle Star Galactica where the opportunities for social deduction are limited. Playing Act of Treason is very humbling. Just when you think you've got a handle on how to play well, someone will show you that you can still be fooled and maybe you don't know everything you think you do. It's not an easy thing to fit all this into a soundbite however. "Act of Teason - Betray your friends, Deceive a Kingdom." It's close isn't it? it's certainly the best I've heard so far.

Example draft of the rules

I've been fixing up all the assets so that they are as close as they can be to the final product. This helps as the less changes I have to make, the less something will go wrong in the drift from the prototype to the final revision. I always try to follow the adage "Train how you play". I think that is fantastic advice that is applicable in so many parts of life - and definitely applicable here. The Act of Treason Prototype is close to the final product in everything other than the final art. It should just be a matter of 'dragging and dropping' in the new artwork to make the game look as nice as possible. Everything else is already in place. Part of revising the assets involved me getting the Rulebook as close to the final as possible with the layout, diagrams and references in place - this is actually a major task surprisingly, and I don't doubt that blind playtesting will reveal even more changes that I need to fit into the rulebook to help smooth out any sore points. I've just been working on the rulebook all of today, it's surprising how the tiniest of details can help to smooth out the explanation for new players. I look forward to having the best rule book possible, as well having the rules online, and in a video, at www.playaot.com.

Example of the online rules

We are getting very close to the Kickstarter. Once I get the Rulebook checked a couple more times by third parties, and I get my prototype from Game Crafter delivered and checked, then I'll be ready for blind playtesting! After that it's third party and then right onto the kickstarter! Very close folks! I can see the horizon and It's looking glorious!

I also want to give a shout out to Shem Phillips (@garphillgames on twitter) who I met at Boardgames By The Bay, a local board game convention in my area. He has given me some great advice on how to progress towards the Kickstarter. Feel free to check out the awesome games he has made here. I also found out about the Game Artisans NZ Facebook Group at the same convention, which will be a great resource for me going forwards.

I've not forgotten about some of the other topics I promised to cover in previous posts. I'll be doing a big recap over some of them closer to the Kickstarter - or after. It will depend on the topic. But that's plenty for this week.

Cheers all,
 Tyson

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Development Diary #3

Hi all,

Just wanted to keep you informed of a few updates that have been going on behind the scenes. I'll try do it quickfire, as there is a lot to cover.

For a start, I've been trying to fix up the website and the google search a bit. This has been more time consuming than I would have liked. The thing is that AoT, Act of Treason, playaot, are all not showing near the top of the google search page. As you might imagine this is a serious issue. This will WRECK my online visibility. I'm still trying to find out what happened and why it isn't showing up. I'm currently working through guides on how to correct this, but unfortunately the cause isn't clear. All I know is that if I do everything to secure the SOE for my site fortifying my position on the list as best I can, which can only be beneficial. It's painful, but like most painful things, it's worth doing. So I'm doing it.

For the website, the main thing I've fixed is the video link, that would take the user out of the website and to the YT channel. This may seem minor, but is it very unprofessional and a disconnect to the reader if they are navigated away from the site like that. We should be keeping the user there as long as they need to start soaking in the information there, and to hopefully convert them into a patron of our excellent product. Keep an eye out for our next video, it will be coming soon!

How the video appears now

Ultimately, I'll be doing more beatification of the site and the product as I feel that it should at the very least lead into more shares. People will be more inclined to share a link to something of high quality. Almost all shares come from a space of "Hey this looks awesome, I saw it and thought I would share it with you because you might think it's awesome too". This is where being 'good' or 'alright' doesn't really cut it. Having a great product is one thing. But demonstrating that the product is great - totally different story.

A mockup of the game box and setup I've made

Anyway. I've also been coming to grips with online paid advertising using very small dollar amounts, but making sure that I'm still getting eyes on page + gearing up. I want to make it so that when the big day hits I've already have maximized my advertising potential.To this end I have a couple of ideas that will help me to get a rough projection on conversion rate, which will be useful in determining how effective advertising will be, and if I should amp it up, or just let it simmer.

I've also filmed some more footage with the help of my brother and his company bbgroup.net.nz. This is all a bit of a learning curve, but I think video is definitely the way forward and I will be trying to use as much of that medium as I can. I need to make shorter snippets and use them in posts. Something like a live play through and having the rules 100% exposed on the website are examples of this, which is definitely something I have planned to do.

An Actual Act of Treason Advertisement

I'll also be trailing videos to use for advertisements, I think the current one I'm using is good, but it needs a much better readout and a call to action to drive those who are interested to join the mailing list, or follow on the social media. It could also be a lot shorter. 30 seconds would be ideal.

I've decided to release a public schedule of things I have still to do with a rough time frame associated with each block of tasks. Bear in mind this is a ROUGH outline of the things I have left to do. But it will hopefully provide some clarity as we move forward. Bear in mind that timelines may get vastly pushed out depending on what blind playtests reveal. But at the same time, lots of these tasks can occur concurrently.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, I had a playtest last Friday, which went awesome. The changes added to the game seemed to have fixed things. As mentioned in Design Diary #1, I would shed some light onto what I was testing, why, and my findings.... But not just yet. That was plenty to cover this week and I have a lot to say on the design choices and my thoughts behind them - So I'll save that for my next post soon. Super excited for everything to follow!

Be sure to follow this blog or out other social media below and make sure to sign up to the Kickstarter Mailing list so we can let you know when the game comes out!

Until next time friends.

 Cheers,
 Tyson

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Development Diary #2

Hi all,

Just a quick update.

Working on more videos with my Brother who runs BBgroup.net.nz so I'll have plenty of content going forwards. Also working on a bit of a secret gambit which will pay off in spades if I can pull it off. I won't share any details here, but I will in time depending on the outcome of it. Needless to say for a somewhat small sacrifice in time I have the change to gain a LOT of exposure, but I can't guarantee I'll be able to pull it off. Time will tell.

In case you haven't seen it. Video below explaining in brief what Act of Treason is - More to come!:

I've got two playtests lined up over the next two weeks and development has been going well. Once these playtests are done I’ll be in good place to begin blind playtests – I’ll ask groups of completely new players to pick up the game and understand/follow the rules without any assistance from me. I’ve run blind playtests in the past and the results can surprise you. People get snagged or confused about something you wouldn’t have guessed. It is mostly to ensure the game components are easy to follow and intuitive as well as the rulebook is clear. Blind playtests are crucial though, as you won’t pick up such issues before it’s too late without them.

So I'll be spending some time on revising the old rulebook which has become a bit of a tangled mess - The new draft I've been preparing is far slicker and hopefully will be a much better rulebook once I'm done with it.

Make sure you guys are getting enough rainbow

After blind playtests, I’ll be able to send the game out to 3rd party reviewers, which will be important step as not only do they have their own followings that they can bring to the kickstarter, but if they do a good endorsement of the product, it will significantly help to convert more visitors to the Kickstarter page into pledges.

Lots to be done whiles all that’s happening though - Website is up and is undergoing updates. I’ve also put out a video explaining what Act of Treason is and all the social media is in place. I’m slowly gaining followers, especially on twitter for some reason. I’m doing some learning as I’m prepping things, as I've mentioned, marketing is very new to me. Reading books on the topic, etc. For the most part I’ve just been preparing assets such as images and videos for promotional use later.

One plank at a time

All in all, things are progressing well. It feel a little like one man building a house at times. Yes there is progress, but there is so much to do it just feels like it will never end. Nevertheless I'm slowly ticking things off of my to do and inching closer and closer to a very polished and very slick final product that I know I can be proud of.

 Cheers,

 Tyson

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Development Diary #1

Hi all, just a quick update on how things are progressing with Act of Treason.

I won't be sharing too many mechanics with the game this time around as I've not had a chance to try out my latest changes - that'll be in two weeks or so. Once I've tried the new mechanics I'll do a full dissection on what worked, what didn't, and why. But honestly, this week I've just been so focused on getting the groundwork for the promotion going I've not had much time for anything else.

Global Progress chart - blue arrows show recent progress

As you can see from above we are getting a lot done, it just unfortunately takes a while! Each one of these is a large project in and of itself. A 'three level' system really doesn't do it justice. I might update that to have 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% levels. Very easy to track progress then for both me and you! (This is actually live on the site right now -> you can check it out at the bottom of the about page)

Last week has been mostly geared toward prepping for my next play test. The design pieces are done there. The important conceptual work is done, I just need to do the boring labor part of cutting a hundred cards or so and slipping them into sleeves. This week has mostly been devoted to an update of the website, and a few other minor things as well such as cleaning up wordings and the look of various things (cards, website, rules, you name it), and making new promotional art.

Just one of the many updates to playaot.com

Now don't get too excited, it's not a total overhaul to the webpage. Ultimately I still love the very minimalist design of my website, so it's just a few minor quality of life enhancements. For example, the 'featured wall' (as seen up above) on the about page will be added. I think the featured wall is important as it provides for a very easy 'hierarchy of information' for a new reader to follow.

We don't consciously do this - but we are constantly assessing our surroundings and categorizing the importance of all the information we come across. Things of minor importance we don't track and, things of major importance we do. The number of lights in the room might be of very low importance for example. The number of people might be highest importance, or the nearest exists, or a person of interest. Everything fits somewhere on that spectrum. The featured wall gives the uninitiated a sample of things that indicate that they are of 'high importance'. Otherwise there is just a sea of information and the reader could quickly become frustrated and rightly so if they can't find the information they are looking for. But more importantly, the user isn't shown what is deemed to be important. 

Why is this necessary? Well without this you're sending the message that effectively all information contained within the site is equally important - which is profoundly not true. You're not providing direction, which can be fairly annoying to a reader who simply wants the answer to a would be simple question "What is this about", or perhaps "Where can I learn more?", or maybe even "I'm looking to purchase one of these as I have learned enough from else where". These are likely the three most common questions a new website user will have when coming into the website for the first time (I haven't done the research, but, you know, it's likely true or near enough to truth). I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a website with the simple question: "What is this Business, Product, or Brand about?" and the website seems almost intentionally vague. What, where, how, why, when and who should be answered somewhere on your website, not necessarily in that order.

Another lovely snippet from the website

All of this is nothing new. Many websites do something similar, flagging important information to the user. It's just fascinating to me as it's a whole new world that I now have to be open to and think about.

Oh I also am adding analytics to the site - which I can't believe I didn't add before. I still don't know what I'm doing with it all too well. But at least so far I have managed to get some rudimentary analytics and reports running with it. So will hopefully be able to expand on that in the coming weeks and get up to speed with it before I start rolling out the serious advertising.

I have to say things have really begun to progress rapidly with Act of treason, and it's really hard to pin point exactly why. I think there are actually multiple factors that have all culminated into giving my the motivational groundwork to push off from. I think Jordan B Peterson with his Self Actualizing Suit really helped - you can learn more about him in the op-ed I will be releasing asap. I think my exercise regime really helps. I think having just a little bit of extra time away from work really helps. And I think the added weight of responsibility helps - having responsibility for others who rely on you really does change the dynamic of the situation. Altruism kicks in and you're not just in it for you anymore, you're in it for those you love and those whom you want to support. This is one reason why married people tend to earn more and be more prosperous - they likely have more children, and thus more responsibility.

Anyway that's enough for today. Thank you for reading and see you next time.

Cheers,
 Tyson

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