The First 48 Hours: 5 Takeaways

I have a huge amount of respect for creators–especially first-time creators–who take an ample amount of time to research, plan, and execute their crowdfunding project. Not only does this result in greater chances of success, but it also demonstrates that the creator is trying to serve their future backers to the best of their ability, which I love.

Sam McDavitt is one such creator. I became aware of what Sam was working on in May of 2023 when he reached out to me to ask if he might interview me about game design and other topics on my YouTube channel. I really appreciated that Sam was looking to create a public conversation that others could participate in–a spirit of generosity, openness, and transparency really resonates with me.

Sam had already been working on his game, Everstone, for quite some time. Now, 10 months later, Everstone is live on Kickstarter, and I invited Sam to share his thoughts about the first few days of his campaign. Thank you, Sam!

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Before getting into my insights from the last two days, I want to quickly thank Jamey for the “How to Design a Tabletop Game” section of the website. I stumbled upon it 3+ years ago when I had the crazy thought of designing a board game. That section of the blog literally provides you with everything you need in the process. The only thing you need to supply is the effort to complete all the steps.

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On the day of writing this, I am precisely two days into the launch of my first-ever crowdfunding campaign for Everstone: Discovering Ignis. 48 hours in, the project is 76% funded with 355 backers and $19k pledged. 

Everstone was not the first game I designed when I found the blog years ago. I had three other concepts that I took to the stage of making prototypes that fizzled out. However, Everstone is the first one I’m trying to bring to market. There is so much I’ve learned in this journey of getting to the point where I’ve gotten to hit the Kickstarter launch button, but today, I wanted to highlight the five things I’ve learned after the first 48 hours. 

1. There’s no such thing as being too prepared

Jamey’s book and others talk about all these lists to create to get you to launch day and to have a list of all the steps you need to take on launch day to be successful. These lists are essential and were what helped keep me moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, the list is not foolproof, which is okay. I had the wrong box checked for shipping on my core pledge, which said it was only available in the US. Double-checking that specific shipping box wasn’t on my list, but that was not the end of the world. The community around the project helped bring that to my attention, and I was able to fix it.

2. Not funding on day one isn’t a failure

This one has been the most challenging insight to process. Campaign exclusives and artificially low funding goals are marketing tactics that are very prominent in our current crowdfunding space. It initially felt discouraging seeing other projects that show “funded in X minutes” or “500% of funding goal raised day one!”. It took my wife Mikayla to remind me that I need to be more proud of having 350+ people support the project on the first day, especially as a first-time creator.

3. If Everstone funds, it will be because of the community built around it

If there is just one insight to take away from this launch, it is that it is so so so important to grow and connect with a community around the game. Friends and family will help throw a little money at my dream of creating Everstone, but while I’ve been in the chaos of sweating out how to find another backer and struggling to hit our funding goal, the people who have been there with me are the people whole believe in Everstone.

I’m genuinely grateful for having a group of 6 early adopters of Everstone. 5 out of 6 of them I had never met before this project, and 3 of those 5 I’ve only connected with over the internet. All six members have been throwing out ideas for how to find the next backer, and they’ve celebrated every little step we were inching toward the funding goal.

4. I might have set unrealistic expectations for myself

If I were to go back to before going live, I would have taken more time to process what I’d set my project up against. I’m not sure I would have changed my actions, but I wish I had time to absorb what I was trying to do:

• I’d decided to go with one version of the game because the differences between a deluxe copy and a retail copy felt negligible.
• I’d decided not to have any exclusives in the campaign because I agree with Jamey that I’d instead foster inclusivity with my products.
• I chose to set a realistic funding goal that was the minimum needed to go through all the steps of this project.

The culmination of all these decisions meant needing 424 backers to pledge for a core copy of the game. Looking back at the goal of trying to achieve that many backers on day one as a new creator under the budget and time I had at my disposal is very lofty. Then again, don’t they say shoot for the stars?

5. Everstone’s campaign is something I should be proud of

I may be ending with one insight that’s just a personal reminder, but many people want to do something but never take the action to do it. There are a lot of opportunities to give up on the way to launching a crowdfunding project. Getting to click the live button to show Everstone to the world has been the payoff of hundreds of hours of work. No matter where the campaign ends up, I owe it to myself to, at some point, recognize the successful moments and learning opportunities I’ve had with this process. 

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These were the biggest takeaways I’ve had from the start of my first campaign. If anyone else aspires to do something similar, I’m happy to help you on that journey in any way I can.

Campaign Update: As of Monday, February 19th, the project is 100% funded. The main way I was able to get the funding from 76% to 100% was by making the effort to reach out to specific people that I believed would be more likely to support the campaign. I found that even though it takes more time to write something personal than it would be just to spam the campaign link everywhere, the majority of people I reached out to directly would often give suggestions of who else to contact on top of helping support.

After the first 24 hours of Everstone going live, the campaign still had positive growth from all the work that went into it pre-launch. Still, the time I spent reaching out and contacting all the people I’d connected with while developing the game really made a difference in getting to the funding goal sooner than what Kickstarter was projecting.

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Also read other Kickstarter interviews and guest posts.

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