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Out With the Old, In With the New

The Launch

On Feb. 26, we launched our Kickstarter campaign in the hopes of funding the rest of Spycursion’s development. Our spirits were high (even if our energy levels weren’t), we hit 2% funding within a few hours, but most of all, we were just excited for our studio to move into a new phase of its life. We had lined up PR contacts and were running a really clever — perhaps too clever — marketing campaign. At that point, all we had to do is wait for the inevitable surge in backers.

Early Bird

Admittedly, we should have seen the signs. By Day 3 I was beginning to, but to be completely honest, I spent most of the first three days of our campaign so exhausted from the preparation of it that I could do little else but refresh social media feeds and ask Mauricio why more backers weren’t coming in. The press weren’t responding to us in nearly enough volume, our ad campaign was a total flop, and our mailing list on its own wasn’t large enough to drive the early traffic we needed. We had focused all of our energy on that 72-hour period, and it netted us a whopping 4% funding. I was about to call a pow-wow with Mauricio and Dan to figure out how we could save this floundering campaign. Until…

CRACK!

Did you hear that? That was the sound of my wife breaking her wrist (in a very complicated and interesting fashion, she says). So, yes, I spent much of the next week focusing on her rather than our Kickstarter campaign.

The Doldrums

By the time I got back into things, our campaign hadn’t advanced much further and we all agreed that it was more or less doomed. That’s when we made the decision to move to Patreon and shared this update on the Kickstarter page. Since that update, Mauricio and I have been working on said Patreon page, discussing our new development plans… and looking for jobs. C’est la vie.

The Future!

As you may have already gathered, development on Spycursion will continue! It will be at a slower pace, no doubt. We almost certainly won’t be able to hit the Q4 2020 goal that were aiming for with the Kickstarter campaign. On the upside, if we can get our sustainable funding situation worked out, then you’ll have happier, less stressed-out devs working on the game — which means greater productivity and fewer bugs!

For now, we’ve launched a Patreon page to serve as both a funding boost and a barometer of how our fans are feeling about the game. Right now, our membership tiers are very simple: For every month that you back us, for an amount of your choice (more on that in a minute), you get one month of Spycursion gameplay after it’s released. We will certainly add more tiers, and possibly raise the minimum price tier, as time goes on. For now, we’d just like to know what our supporters want in terms of rewards. Let us know if you have reward ideas or other thoughts on our Patreon page!

In diagnosing the non-success of our Kickstarter campaign, one of the conclusions we reached is that the pricing and value we offered didn’t line up. Our pricing was based on a fuller, more polished version of Spycursion that we had in our heads — rather than reflecting the presentation that we were able to showcase at this stage of development. People don’t see what’s in our heads, they only see what we can show them, and what we could show them didn’t justify the price points. (And yet, it clearly did, for those who backed us. A friend pointed out that some backers were willing to pledge over $200 for a game that’s 18+ months away! That’s certainly not nothing!)

This is why the “pay what you want” model we’ve adopted on Patreon is key. We’d like our supporters to think carefully about what they see, what we’ve shared, and our own capabilities, to decide what a month of Spycursion is worth to them… and then tell us! At this point, we’re expecting a lot of $1/month backers, and that’s perfectly fine. Over time, we hope to earn more supporters and more trust. The nice thing about Patreon is that we don’t have to get everything right at the beginning; our fans can help us over a longer time period in molding Spycursion into what they’d like it to be. We hope you will join us on this journey!



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The Spirit of Kickstarter

Kickstarter has changed a lot over the years. Observe this video game project from 2012… and then observe this one from 2018.

Go on. I’ll wait.

In 2012, a tiny independent game studio could launch a campaign without so much as a video trailer and net $150,000 in funding. Meanwhile, in 2018, established studios learned they could repackage their old releases, toss them onto Kickstarter with some collectors’ items, and fund a successful campaign literally overnight.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Myst games. But I can’t help but feel that’s not really what Kickstarter is for, ya know?

Some people have told me that we shouldn’t be launching a Kickstarter campaign. “You aren’t a big studio with an established audience.” “Your graphics aren’t very good yet.” “You don’t have gobs of marketing dollars.” All of those things are true. I certainly wish inspiration had struck back in 2012, when those weren’t necessities — we might have surged past our funding goal a long time ago.

But instead of looking at the cards we weren’t dealt, let’s look at the ones we were:

  • An innovative concept in an underserved niche. I truly believe that enough people exist who would be excited enough about Spycursion to back it, as long as we are able to find that audience. (Not always an easy task!) When and where we have found that audience, we’ve received a lot of praise. (And a handful of naysayers, usually related to one of the “cards we weren’t dealt” above.)
  • Secret alien technology. We haven’t played up Lisp too much as an advantage, partly because it’s still largely uncharted territory for game development. But both Mauricio and I have often been surprised by how easy it makes certain things. If When Spycursion happens, I won’t say it was only because of our choice of programming language… but I will say that that choice probably helped.
  • A small, but enthusiastic, fan base. That’s you! And, it turns out, you may be the most important part of this whole equation…

It’s important to realize that indie studios like us are no longer competing against the likes of Starlight Inception for visibility on Kickstarter. We’re competing against Myst, and if we try to compete on traditional grounds, we’ll get creamed every time. We’ve done our best so far to put those first two advantages above to good use, but the third one is mostly out of our hands. That’s where you come in.

And yes, this is the part of the blog post where we shamelessly ask you to share Spycursion with all of your family, friends, enemies, acquaintances, ex-lovers, and every random person with whom you make eye contact but don’t click the Back button yet because there are good reasons why you should do so!

If you’ve spent any amount of time browsing Kickstarter, you’ve probably seen those projects from very non-startup companies with high-budget videos and suspiciously low funding goals. You know, the ones using spammy crowdfunding agencies, the ones that make you think to yourself: “This entire campaign is solely for publicity, isn’t it?”

Well, we’re the antithesis of that. We’re just a couple of people with some ideas and skills who came together to bring a game to life. As a brand new, zero-budget studio, we’re using Kickstarter for its original intended purpose — to “kickstart” a creative project! Kickstarter is, and always has been, our Plan A. (There are contingency plans — all of which have significant downsides — but those are better off in another post.) Sadly, that also means we’re facing some headwinds that we arguably shouldn’t have to face. That’s why your support (financial and/or social) is crucial to our success.

Do you love the concept of Spycursion and the long-term vision we have for it? Splendid! Share. This. Game.

Do you love the concept of Spycursion but hate how the graphics look right now? Excellent! Share. This. Game. With the support of you and all your family/friends/enemies/etc., we can afford some better art and all of the graphical bling-bling you can handle.

Do you love the concept of Spycursion but are skeptical that we can actually pull it off? Glad to hear it! Share. This. Game. With the enough support, we will pull it off, and if for some reason we don’t, we’ll be open-sourcing the whole shebang for you to try pulling it off yourself. (See the “Risks and Challenges” section of our Kickstarter page.)

Do you hate the concept of Spycursion altogether? Cool beans! Share. This. Game. You never know who else might enjoy it in your stead.

Did you come from /r/lisp or Hacker News and you just want a Lisp game to point to when people trash your favorite language? Superb! Share. This. Game.

Share our Kickstarter page. Share our trailer. Share this blog post. Share it on Facebook. Share it on Twitter. Share it on Reddit, or Mastodon, or Pinterest, or whatever your favorite social networks are. Share it on 4chan just kidding please don’t do that. Share it on your blog. Share it on a postcard. Share it at parties. Share it especially with people you know who happen to be in media and/or very rich. Share. This. Game.

With enough sharing (and broken records), we can bring Spycursion to life. That, in my opinion, is what the spirit of Kickstarter is all about. Thank you for your support!





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Our Kickstarter Launches February 26th!

We’re excited to remind you that our Kickstarter launches February 26th!

We’ll share the pre-launch page with you when we’re ready, but we’re looking for $100,000 to help us get Spycursion off the ground.

We’ve got some exciting backer rewards planned, so we hope you’re hyped!

For more information on our plans for Kickstarter, see here.

Check out our trailer if you haven’t already for an idea of what Spycursion is all about.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter to keep up with what we’re up to!

What is Spycursion?

We’re glad you asked! Spycursion is our “edutainment” hacking MMO that aims to teach players how to hack and code. We want to get people more invested in the world of programming.

Spycursion may be educational in nature, but it’s as much a game as a learning tool. Expect more details on the MMORPG aspect of the game in the future!



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Post-PAX Plans: What’s Next?

PAX was an amazing experience for us and we’re incredibly happy with how it turned out. We want to thank everyone who got in involved, no matter how big or small your contribution. Even if you just retweeted one of our PAX tweets, you’ve helped us and that means a lot. We’re extremely grateful for your support.

What’s next for (defun games ()) and Spycursion you ask? Well, let’s run you through it.

Currently, we’re deep in development on a whole bunch of game developer stuff. Animations, bug squashing, camera code, etc. Nothing super exciting or announcement worthy just yet. We’ll be sure to update you on anything exciting!

We do have a few other things planned, though. Firstly, we’re getting ready to launch our Discord server. This will be a great place for people to discuss Spycursion, us, the weather, or whatever else strikes your fancy. More details on that coming soon.

Secondly, since our first puzzle event was such a success, we’re thinking of doing another! If you took part in the PAX West puzzle event a couple of weeks ago then stay tuned because we’ll have more to say about this soon. If you have any feedback about our last puzzle event, please don’t hesitate to hit us up on Twitter, email, or Reddit.

And, of course, we are continuing to plan the various aspects of our Kickstarter campaign. We want it to be as good as it can possibly be so don’t hold your breath for a launch date just yet. It’ll begin when it’s ready and when we’re ready.

Join the Team

As always, we’re looking for lovely people to join our team and lend a hand. If you, or someone you know, is into the idea of Spycursion and has some expertise in software development, particularly experience with Common Lisp or a Lisp-like language, then get in touch. We’re extremely passionate about Spycursion and, like you, we want to see it come to life as soon as possible. A little help on the development side will allow us to bring that dream closer.

We’d love to hear from you! For more information, see here.



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Our Plans For Kickstarter

Earlier this week we shared our ideal vision of Spycursion. A “what if” of the game’s ultimate potential if everything works out like we hope it does. In order to approach that potential, we’re taking this project to Kickstarter.

Our project is a big one, and we’re incredibly ambitious about where we want to take it and what it can be. This is why we’re taking this route. We want Spycursion to be everything we say it will be and more: a sprawling world of subterfuge and espionage centered around a variety of busy and detailed cities where hacking, brokering information, performing espionage and daring thefts are just a few of things you’ll need to do to get by.

As with all good things, though, this is going to need capital, something that we have a strong need for as a small indie studio. I say capital because it isn’t just money we need, we also need talent. As it stands we’re a very small team, there’s only a small handful of us, and only one of us is spearheading the actual development of the game at the moment, and that’s Scott. Dan is the Community Manager and PR, but he has no clue when it comes to coding or programming (it’s true, I really don’t).

If you’re reading this and you want to join the team, see here for more info. We’d be delighted to hear from you!

Anyway, enough preamble, let’s talk details.

  • When will the Kickstarter launch? Well, to be honest, we don’t know yet. We’re still working on building an audience and getting the word out about Spycursion. We’ll launch when we feel it’s right. Don’t worry, though, we’ll be sure to give plenty of notice. If you’re paying attention you won’t miss the launch.
  • What is our goal? We’re quite ambitious for Spycursion because we have so much we want to do with it. That’s why we’re currently thinking of $50,000 as a starting point. That number may change as we go ahead, but that’s our base number.
  • Elastic development. The better the campaign goes, the more of Spycursion’s initial vision we’ll be able to fulfill at the game’s launch! Over time, we can, of course, expand the game based on player feedback and revenues; it might just take longer that way. Some game features will be included as Kickstarter stretch goals.

What can you do now, though? We’d be extremely grateful to anyone that wanted to back the Kickstarter when it launches. Otherwise, though, if you’re a dedicated follower or simply someone who likes the idea of what we’ve got planned, spreading the word about Spycursion and its upcoming Kickstarter is the best thing you can do right now. Share it with anyone you know who might be interested, stay tuned to our social media pages, and help share the exciting updates we’ll have in the future.

We hope you choose to come along with us for the ride, and we hope to see you there when the Kickstarter launches!