A new Kickstarter update for The Mandate has been posted, and we get a look at how the developer will be handling PR in the future.
More information.What are we doing on the PR front?
Before you jump the gun, we are not saying that this is an easy ride. We’re working 24 hours a day, non stop, monitoring the situation. A lot of you have started saying “look, guys, you need to get the PR to back up the concept right now.” Although we haven’t talked about this yet, we have been looking into our options since day 1 of the campaign.
In short, it isn’t much use spending resources on press release distribution for day 1 of the campaign. The press have Kickstarter apathy. They aren’t interested in a project that hasn’t got any funding, or any backers. When you are asking for $500,000, if there isn’t any indication that anyone is interested, the press will not discuss your project regardless of who sends out the press release.
One week later, we absolutely have the statistics, community, concept, content, ideas, people, and smarts to start pushing the PR card hard. Now is the time to launch the PR campaign, and that’s why last week was spent in meetings with various top PR companies. Every conversation we had was about you, and how any PR and marketing strategy will affect you. “Do you understand our demographic?” we repeated regularly.
Who we picked, and why
Starting from Tuesday, we are working with Dead Good Media (but we’re still in talks with other people), a UK based PR company who specializes in some of the more niche titles. We’ve been grinding their agent through and through; testing his knowledge on games like Mount & Blade (a game that some PR companies had never even heard of!), and ensuring he knows the right sites to hit, and the right regions.
Some PR companies would point us towards the US demographic, demanding changes in our approach to make the game more appealing to the US. We simply said “we are not making a game for a nation, we’re making a game for a generation.”
It has been a rather difficult road finding the right PR guys for the job, but Dead Good Media know we’re a Euro-centric developer, and they’ve got a good handle on the European and US markets. We want US players, and we love hearing from US players, but we really don’t think altering the game to maximise exposure in US markets is the right creative decision, when the European markets have so warmly greeted us with open arms. “Are you alienating the US markets?!” some PR people reading this might cry. No, we’re simply saying: “If you want to play The Mandate, come and play it. Welcome to the community.” It’s an RPG. It has influences from major American television shows. We do not feel as though US gamers will feel alienated.
However, some of the lore and historical references in The Mandate predate the founding of the US, or draws inspiration from another continent… Rather that is incorrect, Alaska was part of Imperial Russia until 1867 - two years after the end of the American Civil War.
Of course, we want The Mandate to sell, but we want it to sell on its merits, without compromising on either vision or depth.
Wrapping it all up
Backers, we appreciate your support, and we sincerely mean that. However, we can assure you that we’re organized enough to get us to the $500,000 we’re asking for. Week one was a bit of a test, and everything we’ve achieved so far, we’ve achieved with barely any media attention. We’re gunning for that media attention now. If a single article on The Escapist can get us $6,000, then what about all the other sites? There’s a lake of untapped potential out there, and that’s what we’re heading towards. We are in safe hands. You are in safe hands.