Harebrained Schemes - Interview @ US Gamer

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Harebrained Schemes was interviewed on US Gamer to talk about how to have a successful Kickstarter by putting your ego aside, and communicating with backers.

Kickstarter is just a service. Sometimes amid all the doom and gloom, people forget that. Kickstarter is meant to connect creative people to fans who are willing to fund interesting projects. Two weeks ago, problems with that service were highlighted when veteran developer Peter Molyneux was called out on the mishandling of his first Kickstarted title, Godus. The Godus situation showed many of the ways that Kickstarter projects can go wrong. Kickstarter drives over-promise, over-estimate, get delayed, and get cancelled all of the time.

What about when Kickstarter works?

Seattle-based developer Harebrained Schemes is rather good with Kickstarter. The studio has Kickstarted three gaming projects, two of which they've released. The small team of around 20 developers has delivered on the promise of the service consistently. Their first title was Shadowrun Returns, a game adaptation of the popular pen-and-paper RPG series. That funding drive closed at $1.8 million, far above its original $400,000 goal. The studio followed that a year later with Golem Arcana, a tablet-enhanced miniatures board game. Last week, Harebrained finished the Kickstarter for Returns sequel, Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Like the first Shadowrun drive, they finished far above their intended goal.

So what does Harebrained Schemes do differently? That question led me to this conversation with Harebrained Schemes co-founder Mitch Gitelman about the developer's success on Kickstarter. I ask him about what a developer needs to have a successful Kickstarter project.​