Zombies, Run! - a successful kickstarter story
Apple allowed one of the studios to accept pre-orders for the game intended for distribution on the App Store, and also supported it on the Kickstarter service. As a result, three months in the top 10 highest–grossing apps in one of the categories of the American App Store.
Last February, after Tim Shaffer, with the help of Kickstarter, scored several million dollars for his new game (as we have already written about), hysteria began around the service. Studio after studio began trying to repeat the success of the creator of such games as Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango. Some, by the way, succeeded.
The popularity of the service also raised the question of whether the projects implemented in this way will not disappoint the players. After all, as a rule, any work is work for the result. In turn, the developer may be deprived of motivation when, roughly speaking, he has already been paid for the project. It turns out to be something like work after you have already been given a loan for a living.
Anyway, the other day the studio Six to Start decided to tell about its successful experience. Six months ago, Apple gave the company the green light, allowing it to collect pre-orders for the game Zombies, Run! both with the help of the Kickstarter service and outside it.
However, even before that, Six to Start faced a small difficulty.
As you know, one of the main features of Kickstarter is that a person who has significantly funded the development of the game gets its version for free when the game comes out “from the stocks”. But it is not entirely clear how it is possible to distribute several thousand copies of a paid iOS game for free between the sponsors of the project, when there are only 50 promo codes and the opportunity to test the application on only 100 devices?
Since the studio was developing a free version of the game with limited content in parallel, the following decision was made: before launching, send all sponsors a link to the server where they can register their account. After that, they must download the free version of the game, and enter their account details at startup. This would open access to content that is closed from others.
“However, it was not clear how Apple could treat this,” one of the developers writes in the company’s blog. So another difficulty was for them to tell Apple what and how they were going to do.
I didn’t have to write explanatory notes. Kupertinovtsy turned to them first, interested in the game. Moreover, in the future they helped Six To Start with advice, and also did not mind when, after the end of the Kickstarter campaign, the studio continued to raise funds from fans.
Total Zombies, Run! “earned” $72.6 thousand on Kickstarter (the goal was to raise $12.5 thousand). Its release in the App Store took place on February 27, 2012. 3 thousand people got free access to the game. Since the start of sales, the Six to Start project has been in the top ten highest-grossing applications in the United States in the Health and Fitness category. The price for the game at the moment is $7.99.
This little success story is asked by the developers themselves not to be perceived as a recommendation for action. In their opinion, what was allowed last year may “not pass” this year or in the future. Anyway, a precedent has been set, now those who are looking for funding for an iOS project on Kickstarter have someone to look up to.
