It's going to take a miracle for the video game Pro Wrestling X to be fully funded when the Kickstarter clock ticks down at 9 p.m. EST on Dec. 7.
Kalamazoo's Eric Schmidt and two guys from Canada--Dave Wishnowski, the project leader, and their developer, who who frequents internet forums with the nickname "Pickles"--are the men behind the game that they say will bring the fun back to wrestling video games.
To make it happen they have asked
Kickstarter backers to spend $75,000. (With 55 hours to go the project was just 26 percent funded. To get any of the money they must get commitments for all $75,000 they have requested.)
The three wrestling fanatics are the kind of team that could only be formed in the Internet era, when like-minded people find each other online and decide distance is no obstacle when it comes to building a company.
Wishnowski, in fact, started the project on a dare. He had been on a forum complaining about a game when someone told the musician if he thought he could do better to make a game himself. With the support of his wife that continues to this day, he quit his job, taught himself how to make an independent game company, and has been at it ever since. He works on it full-time. Schmidt has a Kalamazoo-based web and graphic design company,
Frogsplash.
Together they want to build a game that recaptures the fun they remember from the early days of gaming. (Their game is inspired by the classic "WWF No Mercy.") They believe that as wrestling games have gotten prettier they also have gotten harder to learn, harder to play and less fun. Beyond nostalgia, their game has been designed with elements other games can’t offer.
Pro Wrestling X has been 10 years in the making and Schmidt says it's reached "white whale" status -- the three men are obsessed with seeing that the job gets done though they keep running into obstacle after obstacle.
There have been near-death experiences, black mold, death threats, stolen code sold to the them, times with money (like a grant from the Canadian government to set up their studio), no money (right now) and eviction notices.
Schmidt says with a laugh that as the project goes forward the book and movie of "the making of Pro Wrestling X" will probably make more money than the game will.
What has kept them going through it all has been the loyalty of their fans. Every Friday an update on how the project is going has gone out to fans and in return fans have maintained their support through the trials and the good times. And fans have said they want the game as badly as the three guys making it do. Their letters of support fill a wall in the studio and lift the team during its lowest points.
Beyond disasters like finding out they had been building the game on a stolen engine, other things have held the project back. The team is very aware of how critical fans can be when a new game comes out and so they have waited as the game continues to evolve. Schmidt says in retrospect their hesitance to ship the game even it if is not perfect has probably hurt Pro Wrestling X's ability to raise Kickstarter funding.
Of the $100 million that Kickstarter backers gave to projects in 2011 game developers typically were funded just 35 percent of the time. Though they are ready for a miracle, the Pro Wrestling X guys are under no illusions regarding their odds for funding.
There is the stereotype of pro wrestling fans to overcome, Kickstarter fatigue among in the Internet savvy, and real questions on how to reach those of the rest of the world who have not been overwhelmed with Kickstarter requests.
At the same time, for a game project, $75,000 is not a huge request. Teams with less experience have had $300,000 requests funded. The difference could be they have shipped a game and have more credibility with potential backers looking to support a winning project, Schmidt says.
That kind of advice is the reason Schmidt wanted to talk, not to hype the project, but to tell those in the Kalamazoo community who might be considering a Kickstarter project some of the things they have learned:
Planning is critical. Your plans will change. Planning and a thorough discussion of options that took place before the Kickstarter proposal went forward allowed the Pro Wrestling X team to adjust the rewards they were giving about 15 days into the campaign and led to their most significant decision--to allow fans who back the game through Kickstarter to have wrestlers they create shipped with the game. Without having thought through such a move ahead of time it might not have been possible to make the adjustment that proved to be what they needed to "dump some kerosene on this fire," Schmidt says.
It's a marathon not a sprint. Pace yourself. Try to go a couple of days without looking to see whether the funding is coming in or not. "You will want to refresh your browser every five minutes to see what's happening," Schmidt says. "You’ll wake up in the middle of the night. You feel you can’t get away from it. It becomes all encompassing." Without pacing you get to the all-important last week and there is no energy left to deal with the frenzy of activity that ensues in the last seven days of the campaign.
Develop media connections before your Kickstarter push begins. A problem Pro Wrestling X has had is getting attention from blogs and websites that would help potential funders find the project. Schmidt says he thinks they may have gotten more attention had they been in contact with media outlets and higher-end websites before launching the Kickstarter campaign to find out whether their appeal was interesting and what would make it interesting if it was not. "We spent so much time crafting our pitch. We went over every sentence and weighed our rewards for each tier of giving. But we didn’t spend enough of our energy on how to get the word out."
Don't assume everyone knows what Kickstarter is. "My mother wanted to be a backer but she didn't understand the mechanics of how it worked." You may have to add an educational element to your pitch for people who want to help but don’t know how.
Know your audience. "Have an army ready to unleash and have them do a lot of the work for you. A lot of our Twitter followers have helped us get media attention."
Kickstarter is an emotional roller coaster. It has a predicable pattern. There is the initial spike as backers find the project, and the team can see themselves popping champaign corks and driving off in fancy cars. There is the period where the donations slow down but those involved convince themselves the giving is still ahead of the curve. Then it flat lines and there is dry heaving and self recriminations begin. Then there is the urgency of the last seven days. Again--pacing is neccesary to get through to the end.
Consider the amount you ask for carefully. "With Kickstarter it feels like there are 300 tiny decisions that you have to make and if you make one of them wrong the whole house of cards comes down," Schmidt says. The amount of backing you are seeking is one of those. "It seems that people like to back what they think will succeed so maybe the secret is to ask for two-thirds of what you need and then it will go over that amount and you get what you need. For us, we decided what was the least amount we needed to go forward with the project."
In the end, whether Pro Wrestling X is funded through Kickstarter or through other means is not as important as the little successes the team has seen since the appeal began. They have made ties with important, big name Pro Wrestlers, have doubled their Twitter followers and have been encouraged to find just how deep the support is for the game of their dreams.
Failing, picking themselves up and carrying on has been the history of Pro Wrestling X. As they have before, they will work to figure out what’s next on their quest to create what fans are hungry for.
"This is not about creating something that’s going to be sold to big companies," Schmidt says. "It’s not about positioning ourselves for the exit. It’s about taking on a big company and building something from the grass roots. That’s the nature of business today--three people in the garage can take over the world. That’s what we’ve always wanted and we know that people want it."