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Indiegogo collects the money as soon as you pledge. Kickstarter waits until the campaign is finished.

There's also a difference between fixed and flexible funding campaigns.

Kroothawk wrote:Seems that indiegogo doesn't distinguish between successful and unsuccessful campaigns and reaching any goals, they collect the money in any case. Weird, but good to know.

It depends on whether or not the one who started the project selected the "Flexible Funding Option" If yes, as this one did and was stated on the page, then they get the money regardless, if no, then they don't unless it hits it's goal.

Kroothawk wrote:Seems that indiegogo doesn't distinguish between successful and unsuccessful campaigns and reaching any goals, they collect the money in any case. Weird, but good to know.

Hi Kroothawk. Yes, the type of campaign we ran is called a Flexible Funding campaign, where all funds contributed are received by the campaigners. (UPDATE: D'oh! I see others answered your question before I finished typing. Sorry for the duplication!)

We thought that was most appropriate for our situation. It seems to have been something of a double-edged sword, though, in retrospect, as we received feedback from several people that the Flexible Funding campaign put them off contributing, as they saw EW:FE it as an all-or-nothing proposition rather than a help-us-complete situation. Seems Kickstarter has trained everyone into only doing things the Kickstarter way. But we also clearly needed to do a better job of explaining that we were already pretty much committed to making the game—roughly $47,000 worth of commitment; not an investment you walk away from lightly.

Oh well; 20-20 hindsight and all that. If we ever end up running another crowd funding campaign, we've certainly learned a number of valuable lessons that we can apply.

For now, though, we're all about moving forward and progressing the current EW:FE build to try and get it to a proper playable Alpha using the funds received from our campaign. Stay tuned!

Some additional insight into Indegogo might help here too.

I think the 'flexible funding' option comes at a price though, doesn't it?

Doesn't Indiegogo take a higher percentage if you chose that option and the ultimate goal isn't reached?

I thought that's what I'd heard, though I certainly could be wrong!

Alpharius wrote:Some additional insight into Indegogo might help here too. I think the 'flexible funding' option comes at a price though, doesn't it? Doesn't Indiegogo take a higher percentage if you chose that option and the ultimate goal isn't reached?

Hi Alpharius. You're correct. They take, I think, 4% if you reach your goal, and 9% if you don't. A pity, but part of doing business with Indiegogo.

Just while we're talking about this, we've done a lot of navel-gazing as to whether we should have go with Fixed Funding instead for Flexible Funding, and how many potential backers (we had more than 19,000 visitors go through) may have been put off by the fact we were running a Flexible Funding campaign. Realistically, though, given how high our contribution-per-visitor ratio was in the end (around $0.40, which is very high by crowd funding standards), we remain of the opinion that what hurt us the most was the reticence of the major games media players to cover our campaign. If we'd been able to get 100,000 visitors through, we probably would have hit our $35,000 target.

I should mention we did everything we could to engage with the major gaming media, and it's worth mentioning that Gamespot is carrying our videos, but they're just not interested in supporting crowd funding campaigns by talking about them. It makes me a little sad, really, as it pretty much spells the death of the crowd funding dream for new indies—established players only need apply, it seems—but then again I can see there's a certain Darwinian fairness to it.

But all is not lost. We have other avenues we're exploring, and the funds we did receive are helping us get the game closer to playable so we can share it with potential investors and so on.

Honestly guys, Indiegogo is an extremely poor choice compared to Kickstarter - both in terms of going with the well-known big dog and also in terms of the way they handle pledges - taking funds immediately.

I'd say that anyone who wants to crowdfund a project really should go the extra mile and do whatever it takes to get their project on Kickstarter rather than IGG...

scipio.au wrote:Honestly guys, Indiegogo is an extremely poor choice compared to Kickstarter - both in terms of going with the well-known big dog and also in terms of the way they handle pledges - taking funds immediately. I'd say that anyone who wants to crowdfund a project really should go the extra mile and do whatever it takes to get their project on Kickstarter rather than IGG...

We're not a US-based team, and so we could not use Kickstarter without jumping through some serious legal hoops to set up a US Amazon Payments account.

Kickstarter is an avenue we continue to look at, but it's not something we could realistically have taken on when we started our campaign, and indeed still couldn't now, as we don't have a US-based team member to act on our behalf.

For the time being at least, then, we're focussed on more traditional methods of capital raising.

So what happens to all those who have pledged? Now that the project is going to take X-amount of time (longer) to complete, when will they see their "perks"? Or was this a different arrangement where no perks were promised?

Delephont wrote:So what happens to all those who have pledged? Now that the project is going to take X-amount of time (longer) to complete, when will they see their "perks"? Or was this a different arrangement where no perks were promised?

Hi Delephont. There certainly were perks offered, ranging from licenses for the game through access to the closed Beta and even Alpha testing programmes.

ABOUT THE BEHEMOTH PERK
There was also a "physical" perk in the form of the awesome new Marcovian Behemoth model from Exodus Wars. Those minis have either already been dispatched by Exodus Wars or they are about to be, so those people who bought the Behemoth perk should have them in their hands relatively quickly (I know at least one of the minis was destined for Australia, and those people are at the mercy of the usual international postage timeframes—which is why I employ the term "relatively"; my fellow Aussies on here will be familiar with that old pain...<sigh> ).

ABOUT THE ALPHA AND BETA PERKS
The Alpha and Beta-related perks will be made available to those backers as soon as those builds are available, and we'll of course be keeping the whole community abreast of where we're at as development progresses.

Alpha Testing
For those not familiar with software development, an Alpha build is a functional build of the game that has a lot of the final features and assets incorporated so a to make it playable. The main goal of Alpha testing is to ensure the game design works as intended and makes for fun gameplay. It also serves to help us identify any significant gaps or logic errors in our design, as well as any glaring bugs (in things like our networking code). The Alpha will basically offer a single scenario with two fixed sides (that is, not army building yet) that enables the QA testers (which is us and those backers who bought the Alpha perk) to play the game and identify any issues along the lines mentioned above. Alphas typically crash a lot, but it should nonetheless make for a fun game if our design holds up the way we think it will.

The Alpha build is the one we're working on currently, albeit in a less focussed way now that our campaign was not successful—we're back to working concurrently on three projects: EW:FE of course, but now also two as-yet unannounced casual titles (we need to secure our revenue streams, and casual games aimed at iPhone, iPad and the web are how we'll achieve that). As soon as we have a good idea of when the Alpha will drop, we'll be communicating with those backers who are joining us for the Alpha testing.

Beta testing
Beta will come some time after that. Again for those not familiar with the terminology, a Beta build is the functionally complete game, but it may not necessarily have all the final build's polish. Betas often have a non-final UI, for example, and will still have a number of bugs to be identified and resolved. The QA testers and our Beta participants will play the game and again identify any issues they may experience.

ABOUT THE FINAL GAME
Once Beta testing is complete, we'll be putting the final spit-and-polish on the game and shipping it on all target platforms, same day as promised. How soon it then appears for sale will depend on how distribution works on the target platforms (currently unknown for PC and Mac, but we'd love to get on Steam, and App Store for iPad; Linux will almost certainly be via direct download from our website).

That's probably more information than you wanted, but hopefully I've answered your questions.

Re-posting Membraine's most recent Facebook post (facebook.com/membraine):

Hi everyone,

It's been an awesome month here at Membraine Studios. After raising $7,430 via IndieGogo we are determined to get as much value out of your contributions as possible. To that end, we've individually kicked in another $2,570 - pushing us up to a total of $10,000 raised for further development.

With this nice round figure, we have a plan to push as as close to Alpha as possible. We're also chasing alternative streams of investment, to ensure that Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire is the very best it can be.

During August we had to focus on our consultancy and casual games work. However, we were able to implement our Command & Control system - our revolutionary unit and formation movement system that meshes the tactile nature of tabletop wargaming with the speed and efficiency of our computers. This is a huge win and we can't wait to share it with you!

Once again, we'd like to thank everyone who is following us and especially those who have helped fund us so far. Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire is in production, but we have challenges ahead to ensure its delivery and quality.

Cheers!
Mark, Josh & Glenn