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Just a slight correction: FTL had a very successful kickstarter which generated tons of marketing and hype before launch - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64409699/ftl-faster-tha...

Bastion was also published by Warner Brothers so it had some significant weight behind it.



Slight addendum for your slight (and correct) corrections :) Both games had been in self-funded development a long time and had achieved some degree of critical acclaim before Kickstarter and signing on with WB, respectively. I might argue that their previous work had created the conditions for them to earn those victories and reap the benefits.

For Bastion, it's probably good to be explicit that WB did not provide them funding. The benefit to Supergiant was access to advertising and speeding their way through the publishing process for Xbox Live Arcade. A significant victory they sought out and earned, to be sure.

In the case of FTL, the success of the Kickstarter may have generated some additional buzz because of how much they beat their goal. But the reason they beat their goal was that their game had already been discovered and appreciated (even in its early form) by a community of people passionate about games. Without organized marketing on their part, aside from showing the game to many of their colleagues.


In the case of FTL, the Kickstarter campaign was a marketing campaign and a very effective one.




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