Impressions from the exit on Kickstarter

a Few months ago I published an article about the technology of mixing textures used in our commercial project. This project went on Kickstarter: Steam Squad.
In this article I want to share first impressions of crowdfunding, legal aspects of working with Amazon, and, of course, to advertise yourself.

About us

Probably the most informative part of this article — a law review, but before we go to it will tell you a little about us.
We are a team of developers of Saint-Petersburg. Three programmers, a game designer and two artists — Alexey, 239, Academy. Game we make a little over a year and we now have in the development of two projects. Global strategy Aethelings and turn-based tactical wargame Steam Squad. As for technology, we chose a bunch of Unity + Blender and very happy with it (primarily because Unity is C#). Of really interesting we have in the Studio is a 3D printer Makerbot Replicator 2 as we, like many, think that 3D printing technology is very promising. Now we print the figures from our games. If you have any questions we will be happy to explain their plans, views and impressions about it.

Legal aspects of access to the Kickstarter

Through our personal contacts, we were able to conclude an Agency agreement with a company from Washington. This is a real firm, which is engaged in business within the state more than a decade. However, Amazon has verified her account over eight days, asked a huge number of documents, while on the sixth day requested all the documents from scratch. Overall it was a very tedious and troublesome.br>
Here what conclusions can we draw? The main conclusion that we did: Delaware or any other offshore not pass verification with a probability of 99%. If you want to work with Amazon, it is better to forget what you read about offshore companies in the United States. About the firm, specially for Kickstarter or other Nasonovskii activities a week-a month ago, nothing definitely can not say, but be prepared that if you do not have a solid payment history in the US, Amazon will pull your soul to pieces. After talking with the people from the group Russian. we learned that Indiegogo in this plan is much friendlier.

About moderation on Kickstarter, nothing special to say, it took 12 hours. If you meet their guide line, the way it should be. However, some friends have written that are waiting for moderation for two weeks, but this is an exception.

Influence community

If you have more or less large community of fans that still don't guarantee you on Kickstarter. This should be ready. People may be willing to buy a game on Trims for twenty and it does not come to Kickstarter with a game for a tenner.

This is especially true of people from Russia and Eastern Europe. In a number of places is still considered that the easiest way to buy the game — buy it in a real store on physical media. In practice, this means that you will have to seek contacts with the Western press and specifically better than us. Here can help various PR agencies. They can at an early stage to detect errors and improve your press releases and help with mailing to editors of hundreds of specialized sites. We used the services of guys with iSpreadNews.

Another important observation concerns the willingness of the project. If you have a place or feature is in the alpha stage, it is better not to show them. You can scream that this is only alpha, but the verdict is unambiguous — that's the way it will look in the final version.

About the project

When developing the game we made a bet on thought-out universe and story. The history of the world in detail from the thirteenth century. Technology sides thought until the composition of the fleets. In the game it will all be detailed for 30 missions, 10 for each of the three factions. In principle, what is a turn-based wargame all are, but that people would not jump to conclusions on the video of our alpha version to clarify — the game's machinery, driven units, stationary artillery, destructible bunkers and shelters, hand-held artillery, fighting in the port on the background of a very peculiar aircraft carriers and many other interesting things.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru