Story and Art Progress, and Some New Challenges
Two months have passed since we completed our Kickstarter. We have accomplished quite a bit, although much of it is behind the scenes. I've sent out keys to Quest for Glory, Jolly Rover, and MacGuffin's Curse to most of the people who have answered their surveys or sent email. Chris Fong is working through the current set.
If you have not yet answered your survey or email from Hero-U, please take care of that as soon as possible. We've sent surveys to everyone who backed at the $50 through $1,050 tiers, and sent emails to $20 and $35 backers who paid for add-ons. I need to sit down with Lori to design the surveys for the $2,500 and $7,500 backers, as they are involved in creating game content.
Lori has already incorporated ideas from some of our Benefactors and Monster Lair backers. The story "synopsis" now weighs in at 11 single-spaced pages and contains all the major game events. You will have plenty of exciting content to explore in Rogue to Redemptions!
Have Some Madeira, M'Dear?
We are starting to get some fabulous artwork. Here's a great new background for the Wine Cellar, the first "dungeon" the player will visit in Hero-U. This one is by John Paul Selwood (aka JP):
Incidentally, JP is also doing art for The Hidden Crystal (http://kck.st/Rmh3tO), an illustrated book project that has just four days left. Daniel Gimness and JP could use your support.
Another project I'm supporting is Under the Half-Dome (http://kck.st/XwiOlu), a musical album from Ken Allen based on pieces he created for Sierra games including Space Quest, King's Quest, and my own Castle of Dr. Brain. Ken makes great music, and it would be fantastic if he gets enough pledges to actually come out ahead on the project. (Music projects are notorious for costing more than the money raised on Kickstarter.)
Some New Challenges
Two of our team members have decided to reduce their involvement in the project for personal and financial reasons. Because we barely scraped by with $9,000 over our minimum goal, we were not able to pay for full-time work to any of our contractors. In fact, my current projections show Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption running at a $50,000 loss, mostly because I underestimated the cost of fulfilling all of the premiums. This includes the art time needed to customize Yearbook pictures, paintings, and statues, so that's good for the artists. But we also need to get all the game art assets, so the premium reward art is an additional expense to the project as a whole.
As a result, all of our team members are working on other projects simultaneously with Hero-U. Andrew Goulding and Eriq Chang have full-time commitments on other projects, and decided that 60-hour weeks before we even start Crunch Mode are more than they can handle. They will continue to work on specific pieces of Hero-U, but will not take part in the main development effort. Andrew is graciously allowing us to continue using his MacGuffin's Curse engine under the Hero-U code, so we still have that strong head start on development.
Lori and I are "more than full time", but of course taking only a cost-of-living salary. Lori is focusing on the story design and working with the art team. Currently, I am spending much of my time on reward fulfillment and other tasks needed to keep the project running. I'm beginning to feel a bit like Mortimer Terk, the overworked school administrator at Hero-U (here's a character study by Terry Robinson):
Fortunately Lori is a workaholic and easily makes up for the time I spend on non-design tasks.
Balancing the Budget
How will we make sure we have the funding we need to complete the project? As a start, we are getting some additional funding through our PayPal page (http://www.hero-u.net/KS-store) – So far we've raised $4,700 from new pledges and $1,400 from Kickstarter upgrades. Please tell your friends about the opportunity to be an early backer of Hero-U. Pre-support is available until March 31 and counts towards project stretch goals. After subtracting the reward costs for those pledges, the PayPal pledges are reducing the project deficit by about $5,000 so far.
We have a number of other options for raising funds later if we need them, including outside investment or personally covering the deficit. Everyone on the team (including Lori and me) is working for well below our normal rates to keep costs down. We hope that Hero-U can generate enough sales to raise everyone's rates for our upcoming games.
In any case, we are committed to making the entire Hero-U series, and to making every game exciting, fun, meaningful, and beautiful. Based on what we've seen so far, we are definitely going in the right direction. We look forward to hearing your feedback on the Hero-U forum at http://www.hero-u.net/forum/.
William on February 9, 2013
@corey
Thanks for the explanation. I think what you are saying is that no tier costs you more to fulfill than they contributed, BUT some tiers take more to fulfill, and an unexpected concentration of pledges in those tiers means that psychical fulfillment is reducing your actual game budget amount down from the $400k more than expected..
Corey Cole Creator on February 1, 2013
@William: Every tier is profitable. It's a question of how much of the gross income from the tier goes into the project budget. For example, at the $50 tier, backers got everything in the $35 tier plus a game key which cost us about $7 (including fees and expenses). Kickstarter and Amazon charged us about $1.35 for that extra $15. So the incremental benefit to the development budget is $6.65 for the extra $15 contributed at that tier. A new backer at the $20 tier would bring in $18.20, all of which goes directly into the project (as long as you consider sending the game key to be "free"; it isn't quite).
If that all made your head spin, it makes mine spin too. :-) We needed generous rewards at the higher tiers to encourage larger contributions, but less of that additional funding goes into the project percentage-wise. It's still much better for us to have a $100 backer than a $20 backer, and we are *very* grateful for everyone who contributed extra... but five $20 backers are "better" for the project than one $100 backer. We needed everyone at every level to make this work.
Peter Rootham-Smith on January 26, 2013
Thanks for sharing about the progress so far! The good bits and the challenging bits. Feeling one is helping to make Hero-U in a small way is worth a lot.
William on January 25, 2013
My suggestion for other kickstarters would be to price the physical reward tiers so they can be profitable (or at the very least, break even) regardless of the number of backers at that tier. Or use more of the limited quantities option.
Also I agree with the other comments, price it according to the market and what it would sell the best at. For instance, have the MSRP at $25 or $30, but do a good sized pre-order discount. Also, some indies will have their direct from website price higher, and steam lower. That way people who want to help you out and are willing to pay more, have an option to do so. While I prefer it when my kickstarter price is lower than what it goes for on release, I'd much rather you guys have more sales and a successful company than any particular pricing point.
David Melanson on January 25, 2013
Additional Paypal donation made...now I no longer feel bad! :-)
Corey Cole Creator on January 24, 2013
@David M.: Lori has been having a great time working with your custom content; she tweaked part of the story to work with your characters. The Day of the Dead also turned into "The Nights of the Dead" to accommodate the many spirits we've added to the game thanks to our backers.
@Guran: I will definitely look at Steam's recommendations for price point, but I will accept a slightly lower total income if we can use that to thank our backers. It may also pay dividends in next game's Kickstarter if people know they are buying in at a discounted price.
Corey Cole Creator on January 24, 2013
In case I wasn't clear, I am not at all concerned about the projected deficit. We fully expected that we would need to raise $500K to fund it. We set the Kickstarter goal at $400K to give a better chance of reaching the goal, knowing that we have many additional funding options going forward.
For others running Kickstarters, here's where I made my original projection error - I correctly guessed that more than half of our backers would choose the all-digital $20 and $35 tiers. In fact, those two tiers have 4,100 of our 6,100 backers. But I didn't stop to multiply that out. In dollars, those two tiers account for less than $100K of the $409K we raised. More than 75% of the proceeds came from tiers at which a high percentage goes to rewards. Result - Almost $100K in reward expenses, about $35K of which is actually part of the game in the form of paintings, Yearbook images, and so on.
Daniel Gimness on January 24, 2013
Yes, more Hero-U games Lori and Corey! Thank you so much for the mention about my kickstarter The Hidden Crystal: www.thehiddencrystal.com
I will help support Hero-U however I can!
All the best,
Dan
Guran - St Christopher's Alumni on January 24, 2013
I don't mind if we have paid more money on KS than the end customer will be doing. Following your excellent development updates is a reward in itself and well worth some extra bucks! In the end I think most backers want your game to be successful so we can have more Hero-U games in the future :)
Guran - St Christopher's Alumni on January 24, 2013
@Corey I think it will be wise to let Steam decide the price point, if you manage to get on there. They have experimented with pricing alot and know what price will get the most revenue. When Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb put his first game on Steam they lowered the price from $24.95 to $9.95:
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.se/2011/08/avadon-is-out-on-steam.html
His typical budget is around $200k for a game which is not that different from Hero-U.
Zoe Patrick on January 24, 2013
That artwork is phenomenal! It sucks you guys are having money issues. I feel so bad now for my multiple emails to you about the rewards system. Hang in there! I know whatever happens, Hero-U will be the best game ever!
Chad Armstrong on January 24, 2013
My own thoughts pretty much echo what Michael has already said.
Still, glad to hear that Andrew and Eriq might still have a hand in this game, even if it is not full time.
David Melanson on January 24, 2013
Thanks for the update! Artwork looks great!
...and I feel horribly guilty. However, today is payday, and either this afternoon or tomorrow morning I shall endeavor to assuage that guilt.
Poor Lori must dread emails from me by now though.
Michael on January 24, 2013
It is sad that Andrew Goulding and Eriq Chang had to step back. I was very happy to see them in the team as they two are passionate, professional and perfect candidates for this kind of game. I wish you best luck in this undertaking - making a game is a big challenge.
Darklord on January 24, 2013
Nice work! Love the wine cellar! :-)
Corey Cole Creator on January 24, 2013
@SD: My intention is to close the KS-store page on April 1 and open a new pre-order page. I expect to raise the game price to $25 at that point; I want to make sure that early backers get special treatment. The retail price once the game ships will be $29.95. This is subject to change - The distribution sites might scream - but I think we can do it.
@Maus: Wait until you see the new Shawn O'Conner. I decide to hold him for a later update. We have a really talented group of artists. We're tracking all of the work closely, and will add additional artists and programmers only if we see the need. I expect we will add a part-time programmer (we have a good one lined up), and we'll see about the art needs.
Michael Hartmann
Superbacker
on January 24, 2013
I'm sorry to hear that making the game turned out to be a bigger struggle than expected. I hope once the game is finished you will reap the rewards you deserve.
Maus Merryjest AGL589 on January 24, 2013
The art looks beautiful--- anything we can do to help make this game a reality, let us know. You know you have a loyal and devoted fan base who love your games, so... just let us know!
S.D. on January 24, 2013
Thank you for the candid transparency; it must not be easy to lay the truth out sometimes, but it's frequently the fastest way to convey accurate information. The concept work on Mortimer is fantastic; I can see why you brought Terry on-board!
We backers are behind you 100%, and we can be relied on to help. All commitments I made personally can be counted on, and I will help in whatever way I'm useful (though, sadly, further tier upgrades are not in the cards). I'm pleased that the PayPal pledging system is helping defray costs, and I strongly suggest you keep it open past March 31st; but as a standard pre-order and merch shop for non-limited edition goods. Clearly you have the courage to continue; so must we! :-)
Joseph Austin on January 24, 2013
You guys have passion, and that's why your games matter to people. As a developer of software I'm proud of yet not entirely passionate for, I both envy and salute you.
☜☆RSF☆☞ on January 24, 2013
Thanks for the update guys. I can certainly appreciate the challenges ahead & readily understand Andrew & Eriq's reasoning as well as their continued support of Hero-U. Thanks Andrew & Eriq!
Also, us backers will most definitely help where we can, and we know you guys can do it (and do it well)! :D