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Kickstarter $200+ tiers?


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Other community members have got the digitally-delivered department well covered, and I'm all outta ideas on that front. Hell, I'd certainly consider applying some blunt force to my piggy bank for a chance to become the brazen, twenty-foot-tall mayor of Perähikiä, Finland for all eternity.

However, if cursory glances at some other Kickstarter projects has taught me anything, it's that human beings have an ineradicable tendency to fall head over heels for all things swag, from low-end trinkets (coffee mugs, keychains, mousepads) to strictly limited edition, or even one-of-a-kind, officially sanctioned paraphernalia (figurines, plushies, jumpsuits with unit badges and caps to match). Stuff that makes for tangible pieces of personal history.

I don't think we've explored all avenues of incentivising with physical goods just yet.

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pretty much anything that replicates cafepress would probably work.

http://www.cafepress.co.uk/

Xenonaut caps would be quite cool, either with the Xenonauts title or a little alien head.

A mug with some fictitious Xenonaut base name or with a "You think Your day is going to suck" image

xenot1.jpg

always good for a work mug.

all the way up to "Well, you don't want to get probed sober" shot glasses :-)

what about Xenonaut coverall pyjamas?

that's just the low end swag. Little busts of the aliens would possibly be great dependant on cost. Collect 'em all as you go up the tiers (to a reasonable level)

xenot1.jpg

xenot1.jpg.1031f18b440efac951259352dadcf

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I like the understated feel of the mug, though I would rather money was spent on development than shiny's. I prefer the game improvements-

My ideas

expand it so:

$100 you get to name a soldier and a pilot -

$150 you get to name a soldier and a pilot.. With pre-selected portraits and nationality. Pilot portrait will probably be selected from the kickstarter portraits.

$200 1 Real pilot portrait or vehicle portrait - face in the game

$250 as above with a personalized incident that occurs on the world map

$350 as above with ability to design decals for aircraft

$500 as above with a piece of signage developed by you.

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There should be a 1 dollar tier; reward could be a highres wallpaper or something very little but still attractive. The idea behind the 1 dollar tier is that once they are part of the kickstarter they may well get tempted to increase their pledge during the coming weeks. It keeps them coming back.

Also for the 5000+ reward tiers how about letting them choose an extra tileset according to their prefs; i.e. jungle, snow, tundra, whatever... It would basicly grant those backers something unique to add to the game that we will all benefit from. It kinda depends on the cost of making a tileset I guess. And the whole fly to england thing and have lunch with you... Well ok... I would simply keep that in as cream on the pie for the 5k but in all honesty; Yes I'd love to have lunch with Brian Fargo or another historic big name game designer - which with all due respect - You are currently not (yet).

Also in your update you said you didnt plan on updating untill the goal was met. Wrong. Kickstarter is social media. Treat it as such. Create an interactive experience, make them part of it, create a community, create an us feeling.

Edited by DrAtomic
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There should be a 1 dollar tier; reward could be a highres wallpaper or something very little but still attractive. The idea behind the 1 dollar tier is that once they are part of the kickstarter they may well get tempted to increase their pledge during the coming weeks. It keeps them coming back.

Also for the 5000+ reward tiers how about letting them choose an extra tileset according to their prefs; i.e. jungle, snow, tundra, whatever... It would basicly grant those backers something unique to add to the game that we will all benefit from. It kinda depends on the cost of making a tileset I guess. And the whole fly to england thing and have lunch with you... Well ok... I would simply keep that in as cream on the pie for the 5k but in all honesty; Yes I'd love to have lunch with Brian Fargo or another historic big name game designer - which with all due respect - You are currently not (yet).

Also in your update you said you didnt plan on updating untill the goal was met. Wrong. Kickstarter is social media. Treat it as such. Create an interactive experience, make them part of it, create a community, create an us feeling.

You have read that $5 000 reward wrong DrAtomic :P

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@flash Did you mean soldier or a pilot? Having too duplicate names for them could be weird. Pilot portraits should be cheaper than soldier ones if they are in game, they really won't show up nearly as much. personalized incidents do kind of worry me, I could see those taking away from the overall cohesive atmosphere of the game, though they'd be very trivial to implement and variety is good.

@DrAtomic Some kind of token digital gift for a $1 or $5 donation does sound like a good idea.

re: making it feel like a community, Chris has done a pretty good job of that on the forum, but no one was expecting kickstarter to take off so fast (I suppose having stretch goals predefined would have been a good thing, or set to be voted on, but live and learn) so waiting until it gets funded is probably just him being cautious and not wanting to overpromise (something he does perhaps a tad too much, e.g. steam and desura keys, os x and linux versions) but as this is his first game that's probably a wise way to go about it.

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@flash Did you mean soldier or a pilot?

Meant to say they can pick 2 names, but they have to be different. So it could be Im a xenonaut and my bro is a pilot.

My reasoning for bundling with lower band is that you want a larger pool of names to avoid repitition and it makes ir more interesting than going through the phonebook.

I would love to have pilots brought into the game with images and if you got to pick name and callsign with the force player feature, you could really personalise the experience.

ATM my pilots are meat for the grinder. If my brother was flying that interceptor I would be way more careful.

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Another thing you can do is just give the poster to everyone above $50 that has another physical item. They're pretty cheap and it'd make the whole this or that or that simpler.

Postage of posters is expensive. You would be looking at 10K in postage because of the item shape/size.

I think a better option would be a digital print, that could go in an A4 sized envelope. But that would still cost about £1 to post these days in the UK, due to size and weight.

Edited by flashman
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Depending on where you price it in a mug would be nice to have.

Collectable figurines of ingame alien models or UFO models would probably be nice to toss in.

Not just high quality prints but signed high quality prints.

Start putting things in boxes, signed. So a boxed and signed version of the game. A physical CD, signed by the composer, that sort of thing.

If you implement military terror missions, or the "save person X" missions, then have higher donators be the people you need to rescue. Not that the aliens would be killing them but rather that the aliens work to capture them alive and get them back to their UFO. IF they succeed they will take off in the UFO ending the battle. So you'd have to rescue them before that happened basically. I dunno just tossing ideas out here.

Add their home towns (or towns of their choice) to appear on the ticker of places attacked (not sure if this is already in).

Limited Potential: but upon discussion with Chris we could nickname some of the weapons in the game like we had talked about. Subject to approval from Chris of course.

A mock-up fake medal from the game but done up in actual metal with a fancy ribbon etc. Not sure on the cost of that however.

Not sure how much of this is in the last 9 pages haha.

Edited by Hellstormer
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A mock-up fake medal from the game but done up in actual metal with a fancy ribbon etc. Not sure on the cost of that however.

I was just about to suggest this. A cool faux military medal would be awesome. I've got no idea what it'd cost to create, though.

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If you're walking around with a glowing alien head chain and you get abducted ...well I'll not say you had it coming...but...

And that's where Captain Thothkins and his loyal band of Xenonauts comes in, of course... we're just setting the stage of the hostage rescue mission being talked about on the "poll" thread.

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Honestly, I think the 1000$ tier is a bit lacking.

Same as 500$ tier but you get 5 MORE digital copies and credits moved to the beginning of the game.

Im thinking instead of the 5 extra (for a total of 10), you get something really rare/premium...like 5 digital copies and 2/3 boxed copies (1 signed) or something to that effect...

That way you can edit the 5,000 tier to say that Chris will personally deliver the goods to you over lunch...

Edit 2: Just had an awesome idea for an added bonus for the 5k tier:

Assuming that later on in the game, xenonauts will have a custom uniform (as in made from researched materials, is ultra light and provides some protection (thinking along the lines of that grey/beige colored flight suit that soldiers in x-com started with))... you can have one commissioned to be made - which would probably run 2-300$ or so.

This would not only be a one of a kind / collectible.. but can also be used as a publicity stunt if you take pictures so that you can make a story about it later and drive more sales.

Edited by Ghost1082
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Right lads. Since I've had to be forced out of the Chinook, here's what we're going to do. Kilrathi, you take this grenade and ...BOOM!*

Bah! when they said I'd be joining the suicide squad, I thought it was because our enemies were so numerous, not because we were so thick.

*post originally contained Proximity Grenade and then High Explosive. Neither of which are in Xenonauts.... quick! add them to the list of things to add with Kickstarter pennies!

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I think we are hitting a wall with what is currently there at $100+ and I think new chances to get in the game would provide a wall breaker or make people up their pledges. If we had an unlimited number of portraits it probably woulda hit 70K by now.

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@DrAtomic Some kind of token digital gift for a $1 or $5 donation does sound like a good idea.

re: making it feel like a community, Chris has done a pretty good job of that on the forum, but no one was expecting kickstarter to take off so fast (I suppose having stretch goals predefined would have been a good thing, or set to be voted on, but live and learn) so waiting until it gets funded is probably just him being cautious and not wanting to overpromise (something he does perhaps a tad too much, e.g. steam and desura keys, os x and linux versions) but as this is his first game that's probably a wise way to go about it.

Ow jeah, credit were credit is due, Chris has been more then awesome on the forums.

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The merchandise is less of a powerful attractor here as Xenonauts is not an IP with a huge fanbase filled with nostalgia. While that IS the case for X-COM, then Xenonauts is still Xenonauts, and it doesn't have the same cultural heritage. I don't think you'll gain much from giving away more physical things than are already in the thing. A box might sound like a good idea, but boxes are the kind of thing that people who pull in millions in funding can do. And verging on the pessimistic side of cautios, as I tend to do, I'd not count on too much over 100k. If that goal is reached, as we can already see funding has dropped off pretty drastically compared to the last two days.

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Looking at other projects, I expect the final tally to be somewhere between $150k and $400k, but I doubt it'll be much more than that unless revamps in the stretch goals and reward tiers (and mentions in the press) dramatically change things.

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