That’s a lot of responsibility!

Another reason to consider doing a pre-order is because your customers ask you to. In my case, I had requests from dozens of Dirk 1 customers who wanted some new levels to play. They asked for a pre-order option, knowing the game wasn’t done yet. They had been reading about the game in my newsletters and were eager to get their hands on it.

So for me, it wasn’t a monetary need that drove my decision to do a pre-order. My other games still sell fairly decent. Because of that, I haven’t really advertised Dirk 2 much yet. I put an ad in IGM and a banner up on Game Tunnel for a little while (mainly to generate interest), but that’s about it.

But one of the side benefits of doing a pre-order is that I now have several hundred dedicated beta testers (who paid for the privilege). And many of them are very vocal about changes they like and don’t like, and many of them offer good suggestions for improvement. Obviously I have to pick and choose which suggestions to implement, but I think overall the game quality is going to be a lot better because of it.

One other thing I thought about, Gianfranco: I also have a monthly e-mail newsletter that I publish that shows my progress on my current game project. Some people probably don’t read it, but I’ve had e-mails from numerous customers/subscribers who have told me that my newsletter is one of the few they enjoy reading. I always try to include screenshots or images of some kind to show what I’m doing. My newsletters are available here if you want to take a look: http://www.mygamecompany.com/newsletter.htm

Of course, I already have an existing customer base that is interested in sequels or similar games, so it’s easy to engage them with the regular newsletter.

It’s definitely a case by case basis and something that should really be weighed before pursuing.

Unfortunately there seem to be an increasing number of people looking at “pre-orders” (or “rewards” in Kickstarter terminology) to fund developments when they have little to no experience of finishing the product. I often read posts on forums from prospective game devs who are looking at “crowd-sourcing” as the place to start a project rather than a strategy to fund something that is already well defined and underway – “We’ll do a couple of screen mock-ups, write a blurb and get a Kickstarter going for $20K so we can become indies over summer break!”. Fortunately most of these never get the funds but it’s only a matter of time before there’s a major failure to deliver.