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Thinking about KickStarter


PacManPlus

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This may seem completely out of the blue, but I recently re-read my "Trying to figure out what I should do..." blog, and realized that I'm not any farther along than I was a year ago when I wrote that.

 

A few people have mentioned 'Kickstarter' to me, especially when I was working on Bentley Bear, but I didn't care for that path for two reasons:

1 - It seems very pompous (to me) to start a kick starter campain to do something you love doing.

2 - How do you put a price on developing software?

 

After seeing a few recent layoffs here and not 'getting' this field at all, I was thinking of actually attempting a kickstarter campain for me to fully develop (as a third party developer) Atari 7800 games for a 5-year period. This would do a few things:

- It would finally allow me to do one of the two things I love to do.

- I could work on it full-time and possibly get more games out the door in a year.

- Gives the 7800 a shot in the arm of software titles that it really needs.

 

The only problem, is to be able to support myself for at least 5 years and health care, normal bills, etc - plus the revenue to make the carts, I would have to ask for a rather large amount of money. This is where I start getting uncomfortable. I would have to ask between 300,000 and 400,000 to get this going (remember, this is for at least 5 years). I could split it down and have different backing amounts, some that include a cart of each game made, some higher ones that give a list of 5 games a person would like to see on the 7800 and I would choose one, etc.

 

This would obviously take a *LOT* more thought and working out, but does this seem entirely crazy to you guys?

 

 

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I used to read the blog of one developer that attempted to go full time indie on modern platforms. He eventually had to get a job again. If you think his insight might be relevant I can try and dig up the links.

 

The thing about asking for money is that you have to have a product people want. I'd only contribute to a kickstarter if you were making a 7800 version of batari BASIC. Problem is, I doubt if many others realize the value of more accessible classic gaming development tools.

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Thanks, guys.

 

Yeah, I was never actually comfortable even seriously thinking about this, and the answers here kind of put a clincher on it.

 

Funny; Nathan - right after I wrote that I thought to myself, "that's even if people would be willing to do this in the first place".

 

 

Ok - you just confirmed my gut feelings.

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I think of it like when I was going to college and working full time: I did neither at an optimal level.. but, I did get to go to college :)

I work and I homebrew.. but, it takes me a few months to complete a simple project instead of a few weeks :P

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I just recently changed jobs / companies. Some things I did:

 

1. Check out "What Color is Your Parachute" from your local library. Even if you aren't able to complete the exercises yourself, there's a lot of battle-hardened insight also in there. (Like the pyramid which shows how traditional want-ads are about the worst way to find a job.)

 

2. Consider hiring a "Career Coach" (coachfederation.org has an RFP process) For me it helped identify some of my key skills, attributes, etc and confirmed I'm well suited to the kind of work I do (advanced technical support). I also got a rework of my resume and cover letter.

 

3. Network, network, network. LinkedIn is a great place to start (and it works even if you don't pay). I got my current job via an automated LinkedIn job posting suggestion. But I think a big kicker was an ex-coworker was working at the same company - so I bcc'd him on my application so he could put in the good word for me. I also got an interview with another company which started with my LinkedIn profile being a search result for their recruiter. My Dad got one of his jobs (years ago) because a 2nd cousin got his resume in front of a VP.

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I'd throw money at you! But you've already seen me sing your praises all over this forum because of everything you've made so far. If you Kickstart, I will donate, good sir.

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