Ragar looks at the recently cancelled crowdfunding campaign for the user-generated content focused MMO.

When Money's Involved, Ask Someone to Proofread

I mentioned earlier that there was a quicker way for a Kickstarter project to annoy me than taking away backer rewards. Admittedly I'm a writer so I may be a tad biased about this subject, but this is a valid concern when it comes to something as heavily based on writing as a Kickstarter project. Sure you may grab someone with an interesting project introduction video, but you can only convey so much information in a six to ten minute clip. If your opening video has done its job, the next place potential backers will look is in your overall project description. Some may dig into all aspects of the game's design, others will only look for specifics on what's included in each tier, and a third group may simply be curious about the stretch goals already unlocked and those still ahead. If it's available, you can please many of these fans with media like new videos and concept art, but, for the bulk of both this overall project description and the updates that should follow it; your interaction with backers will be through text. Since your words are the bulk of what your fans will have to base their opinions on, you would prefer to put your best foot forward here, correct?

Now before someone goes and tells me I'm nitpicking or starts linking to mistakes I've made in past articles (chances are if I didn't ask our copy editor to read it, there are probably errors), 100% perfect grammar and spelling are not what I'm pushing for here. Mistakes happen - we're all human. Certain circumstances, however, do call for more care in one's writing though, and asking strangers for money with a Kickstarter certainly qualifies.

Let's focus on one of the updates as an example, Update #26: "What does monsters do?" Setting aside that headline, the update itself is a single, massive paragraph with obvious questions that end with periods, missing punctuation and run-on sentences. There’re no pictures or other media to support the concept behind the update and the ending feels relatively abrupt. This could have been made a much stronger piece with a paragraph break to block together thoughts, a graphic in the middle illustrating the Karma system for monsters they were writing about, and a more detailed conclusion talking about how this concept fit into their world vision and where it fit in with the feedback from their community roundtables.

I mention these points not out of spite, but rather to highlight the importance of properly written and laid-out project descriptions and updates. Those blocks of text are often the only real interaction you have with your backers after they've watched the initial Kickstarter video and made their pledge. Your would-be backers should then be able to go into your project description and your recent updates and see detailed, well-written outlines for your goals, your game design concepts, etc. A Kickstarter backer's primary form of interaction with the developers after the initial video is usually through these text updates, so it's in the best interest of anyone seeking crowdfunding to put a great deal of effort into the text and media that represents their project.

Conclusion

Despite the critical tone of this article, I wish NeoJac all the success in the world with their game. I'm hopeful the new ideas that came up during the Kickstarter can be incorporated into making the final product a much stronger game. The purpose of this article was not to poke fun at an unsuccessful Kickstarter, but rather to highlight some of the reasons why they did not hit their goal. None of the problems I've highlighted here are exclusive to the Neo's Land Kickstarter; dig through the Games section of Kickstarter and you'll be able to find past and current projects that remove rewards, forget to proofread their updates, and/or fail to provide updates to their backers. I would be ecstatic if other developers looking at this article or at the NL Kickstarter would look at their own plans and improve them to avoid these problems. Stronger KS campaigns lead to higher pledge counts and the potential for better games - everyone wins! Well, other than my wallet, but there's no pleasing everyone.

Michael "Ragar" Branham