I don't think kickstarter is the correct platform for the kind of funding you're wanting.
You're essentially looking for people to invest in your company. Without the incentive or rewards that an investor would generally look for, I think you're also hugely underestimating the cost to launch a company, and hire artists.
Generally when people are investing in a company, they expect
shares, ownership, or a guarantee on return on investment, you're
offering none of those. There also needs to be a business plan, and a business forecast, where you see the company, in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, a projected growth, you show none of that. You want to create an LLC and hire a few artists to make content packs.
Further more, no-one looking to invest in a company would be interested in any of your reward tiers.
I suggest you pull your kickstart - it'll harm your credibility as a content provider - it says you can't produce the quality of content required to fund yourself. Judging from the video, you can produce quality content, but this kickstart is not doing you any service.
It also shows that you're not willing to take a personal risk and invest your own money in hiring artists and paying the legal fees and hosting a website(which is so cheap there is no excuse not to have a professional looking site) to make this happen on your own.
There are a lot of artists on here, who have taken the personal risk and started their own company's with their own money. They also don't jump on kickstarter to ask people for funding for their personal company, they find avenues and areas they can work to generate the income get their company's start, and to keep them running.
And to re-iterate, you're looking for investors, someone to invest money into your company, an investor would expect shares, ownership, or return on investment of some kind. You're offering no incentives to an investor.
What's more, I believe this is against the rules, specifically the 'Projects must create something to share with others.' rule. https://www.kickstarter.com/rules
Oh god this is so bad, I don't want to shit on all your dreams but this is so bad I don't even know where to start, you haven't formed an LLC, generally this is a smart thing to do before a kickstarter campaign due to liability, you don't have a professional site and your myfreesites links to a 404.
You aren't creating anything to share as the above poster said none of your demo assets don't look groundbreaking, sure rocks trees flowers all that, I have to question the demand for this sort of stuff beyond say a UE4 pack or whatever you could pick up off the marketplace, why wouldn't someone just seek out a freelance artist if they want an asset? or one of the studios in china who are already working with your business model and whose price you will likely never be able to compete with?.
Right now we have to talk about the video, I understand public speaking can be a pain in the ass, but wideshot on a poor camera reading from an autocue placed to the far left (or your right) is not a great idea at all, it is also read with no passion or prose, it feels all like pressured speech you are trying to force out to tick all your boxes and get it done your body language as well is very closed off, elbow in hands pressed together.
A lot of this will be important to rectify if you do go the route where you should be if this is what you want to do (although I do question your business plan) as pitching to investors will require these skills, you got to know what your talking about and convey it with passion.
like everyone else, not be harsh, but how are you going to be able to afford to hire more artist (even if this was falling kickstarter's rules for an actual product to be made)? $5,000 wouldn't really cover a month once you start including benefits and taxes, and that is assuming you were going to spend all $5,000 on hiring more artist. you would also have to provide that artist with the tools they need including a computer and all the software licenses for them to do their work. that $5,000 would be gone before they worked their first hour and you still would need a website.
I'm going to echo what KaptainKernals said. you should probably invest your own money in some sort of professional website. They are really affordable. Your asset pack looks like its on par with similar asset packs on the the Ue4 and unity market places. You should be able to make a few more and eventually money will start coming in. there are a few posts on polycount about how long it took for some artist to start making a descent living selling assets. and there are a few more you can find with a quick google search. but your rewards really do not give much to entice someone looking for game assets to pledge money to it. for the price of the goals that actually will give an individual or company an asset pack they could buy a lot more by just buying what is currently on the market place.
And I'll throw in here that based on my own experiences, getting a pack into the Unreal marketplace is a 5-6 week endeavor. And then maybe another month (or longer) before you see any money. So your 1 month of expenses isn't going to cut it ...
why wouldn't someone just seek out a freelance artist if they want an asset? or one of the studios in china who are already working with your business model and whose price you will likely never be able to compete with?.
Well I know some western artists and studios living off selling stuff on the unity store + all other marketplaces, and choosing a freelance artist over buying a environment set of the marketplace isn't even comparable, think of all the stuff that's in one of those 80$ sets then imagine you paying an artist roughly 350$ a day to make the same set, how much would that cost you? Also China isn't that cheap anymore, recently the offers I get from china is more well paid then those I get from western studios.
But back on topic, this Kickstarter might not have been the best Idea, I think it's ok if you say you want this amount of money to create 2 specific environment sets, and if you pay into the kickstarter you get the 2 sets for cheap, basically pre ordering. But it gets very fluffy when you want the money to set up the company + hire staff etc, it just sounds very unrealistic, the money would be gone after buying licenses. and handing out shirts and key chains etc just creates work that you won't gain anything from, not to be rude but It's a company that haven't even started, who would want the shirt and key chain?
I'm pretty sure kickstarter is used for creative projects such as films or games, tangible experiences, software products, etc. and not to kickstart a company. Your pitch would be more correctly placed on gofundme versus kickstarter, although usually the ones that go through on gofundme are people that have suffered a terrible loss/hardship. What you're asking for is more akin to a business loan given out by a bank, which expects the money returned at an agreed upon time with interest.
Now if you were to come back with an actually interesting project like a game utilizing beautiful hand-painted graphics with a unique game mechanic/element/story/whatever that would require a team to produce, then that is different as it has the end goal of a specific creative project. What you're currently asking for is to foot the bill for a business-to-business content provider model which is not what kickstarter is about.
There isn't anything wrong with trying to secure money to establish a business, but that is done through personal savings, investors, taking second jobs, bank loans, etc. and not through a platform like Kickstarter. As an example, Cloud Imperium Games was already a company personally founded by Chris Roberts and a business partner, and they used their personal funds to first produce an actual demonstration or "vertical slice" in the form of a video to show off what they are aiming to produce as the end result of the campaign. What you're asking is to fund Cloud Imperium Games before they even thought of making Star Citizen.
Replies
You're essentially looking for people to invest in your company. Without the incentive or rewards that an investor would generally look for, I think you're also hugely underestimating the cost to launch a company, and hire artists.
Generally when people are investing in a company, they expect shares, ownership, or a guarantee on return on investment, you're offering none of those. There also needs to be a business plan, and a business forecast, where you see the company, in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, a projected growth, you show none of that. You want to create an LLC and hire a few artists to make content packs.
Further more, no-one looking to invest in a company would be interested in any of your reward tiers.
I suggest you pull your kickstart - it'll harm your credibility as a content provider - it says you can't produce the quality of content required to fund yourself. Judging from the video, you can produce quality content, but this kickstart is not doing you any service.
It also shows that you're not willing to take a personal risk and invest your own money in hiring artists and paying the legal fees and hosting a website(which is so cheap there is no excuse not to have a professional looking site) to make this happen on your own.
There are a lot of artists on here, who have taken the personal risk and started their own company's with their own money. They also don't jump on kickstarter to ask people for funding for their personal company, they find avenues and areas they can work to generate the income get their company's start, and to keep them running.
And to re-iterate, you're looking for investors, someone to invest money into your company, an investor would expect shares, ownership, or return on investment of some kind. You're offering no incentives to an investor.
https://www.kickstarter.com/rules
You aren't creating anything to share as the above poster said none of your demo assets don't look groundbreaking, sure rocks trees flowers all that, I have to question the demand for this sort of stuff beyond say a UE4 pack or whatever you could pick up off the marketplace, why wouldn't someone just seek out a freelance artist if they want an asset? or one of the studios in china who are already working with your business model and whose price you will likely never be able to compete with?.
Right now we have to talk about the video, I understand public speaking can be a pain in the ass, but wideshot on a poor camera reading from an autocue placed to the far left (or your right) is not a great idea at all, it is also read with no passion or prose, it feels all like pressured speech you are trying to force out to tick all your boxes and get it done your body language as well is very closed off, elbow in hands pressed together.
A lot of this will be important to rectify if you do go the route where you should be if this is what you want to do (although I do question your business plan) as pitching to investors will require these skills, you got to know what your talking about and convey it with passion.
I'm going to echo what KaptainKernals said. you should probably invest your own money in some sort of professional website. They are really affordable. Your asset pack looks like its on par with similar asset packs on the the Ue4 and unity market places. You should be able to make a few more and eventually money will start coming in. there are a few posts on polycount about how long it took for some artist to start making a descent living selling assets. and there are a few more you can find with a quick google search. but your rewards really do not give much to entice someone looking for game assets to pledge money to it. for the price of the goals that actually will give an individual or company an asset pack they could buy a lot more by just buying what is currently on the market place.
But back on topic, this Kickstarter might not have been the best Idea, I think it's ok if you say you want this amount of money to create 2 specific environment sets, and if you pay into the kickstarter you get the 2 sets for cheap, basically pre ordering. But it gets very fluffy when you want the money to set up the company + hire staff etc, it just sounds very unrealistic, the money would be gone after buying licenses. and handing out shirts and key chains etc just creates work that you won't gain anything from, not to be rude but It's a company that haven't even started, who would want the shirt and key chain?
Now if you were to come back with an actually interesting project like a game utilizing beautiful hand-painted graphics with a unique game mechanic/element/story/whatever that would require a team to produce, then that is different as it has the end goal of a specific creative project. What you're currently asking for is to foot the bill for a business-to-business content provider model which is not what kickstarter is about.
There isn't anything wrong with trying to secure money to establish a business, but that is done through personal savings, investors, taking second jobs, bank loans, etc. and not through a platform like Kickstarter. As an example, Cloud Imperium Games was already a company personally founded by Chris Roberts and a business partner, and they used their personal funds to first produce an actual demonstration or "vertical slice" in the form of a video to show off what they are aiming to produce as the end result of the campaign. What you're asking is to fund Cloud Imperium Games before they even thought of making Star Citizen.