Bloom: Memories - Interview @ Core-RPG

Forum member m00n1ight notified me of a new interview on Core-RPG with Dani Landers the developer of Bloom:Memories. So lets all thank him for the new interview.

Your project has a long and difficult story and was funded on Kickstarter only on third attempt. What, in your opinion, was the reason for the failure of the first two attempts? And what makes you go on and try again, despite the fact that many novice developers lose their hearts after the first failure?

Well, the first time I went to kickstarter, I had pretty unreasonable goals… no one knew me (I was coming from nowhere)… and just had a handful of concepts for an idea I wanted to do. So, it wasn't a big shock looking back why I failed.

After that, the attempts just weren't far enough along in the build to really show much to anyone. It was still a lot of talk and looking for help to make it a reality. Finding more team members (my first attempt I was alone), getting more concepts and game models done, or just sorting out some story / design.

Eventually I had enough to show and prove to people I could actually do what I was saying I could do.

What makes me keep going and not give up is just confidence in myself. I KNOW have a story to tell, and a world being made, and a game being created. I KNOW I can make something special. So, for me, giving up makes no sense. The issue is more about how I'll get to the end of the road, not IF I'll get there.

Also, failure isn't really the end of doing something creative (or anything in life). Failure is just practice… it teaches us what we did wrong… and our next attempt is even better.

I don't think anyone has ever done anything great without failing. We don't give up trying to walk because we may fall down when we first start. Eventually we get there, it just takes a bit of drive and trust in ourselves.

According to latest studies, the interest in crowdfunding is running down. Kickstarter is flooded by the pot-boilers and cloned projects, so players and journalists is getting pretty tired of searching for some diamonds in the mud. Journalists in particular is paying much less attention to the new projects now. Have you encountered this problem with news blackout during your Kickstarter campaign?

Yup, I was noticing the drop-off of interest / trust in kickstarter when we went there also. Journalists would do "group articles" on a lot larger number of kickstarters… and people seemed more used to seeing it as a place to get the game a bit cheaper or wanting bigger rewards to match major kickstarters they had seen (which wasn't really how it was early on in KS).

But, even with that, I think kickstarter is pretty important to seeing a new wave of games made by people without the resources to make them the traditional way though. For example, thanks to everyone who spread the word and backed us we were able to push ahead with Bloom. Had kickstarter and gamers not been there to help us… it would have just been one less game getting made.

I really feel like journalists, developers, and gamers are all working together for the same common goal… to make even better games and push the medium forward. Something like kickstarter brings those groups together to make something happen that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

So, overall, I hope journalists and gamers don't get too bored with sites like Kickstarter. Thanks to them stepping in early, new stuff is getting made and they are making a difference.