T3D Components: A Community Purchase Post-Mortem

So, anyone that'd been following the project or Dan's parallel posting of it may be aware, the Community Purchase campaign for the T3D Component system I've been working on came and went without success.
So, given that as far as I'm aware, this is the first real community purchase campaign for the Garage Games community, a postmortem of it would allow myself and others to better understand what went right, wrong and can be better next time.

What went right:

-I had a fairly solid product that was demonstrable, and progressive updates to the project as the campaign was running let me do updates that would further incentiv-ize people to pitch in.

-It almost succeeded, meaning there was definite community interest and support. If there hadn't been issues holding it back, I've no doubt the community would've funded it.

-Dan Buckmaster.
Dang dude, I should just let you manage the campaign next time! I'm not particularly grandly sociable in outside communities, and tend to feel somewhat uncomfortable posting outside of the 'targeted' group. Dan did lots of supporting posts, and even tried getting stuff posted onto reddit's game development subforums(which I didn't even know existed until he did). If it had been done at the start, it probably would've had a pretty sizable impact on the campaign.

What went wrong:

-The demonstration video, while technically showing off the project, did a poor job of conveying what it actually DID.
Part of this is because lots of the work happens in the code/background and isn't super-easy to show off, but I didn't do a good job of explaining what it was doing even on-screen. I wanted to avoid tons of annotations or subtitles on the screen, but I ended up not providing enough information which made the video hard to understand.
I also heard some people suggest it should be higher resolution. It was the best I could do with my poor computer, but it's definitely a valid point.

-Outreach
--I made the assumption that most of the interest would be in the garagegames community itself, and that's where my focus was. While not incorrect, it was shortsighted of me.
Namely, the blogs I put up didn't stick to the front page, so without being spotlit by GG, they would get buried by other peoples' updates.

--Another issue is that not everyone visits the GG site on a regular basis. They may hop in on occasion, but that could easily be during the last day of the campaign, so they don't have time to think about if they'd contribute or not.
Reaching out to other communities, such as the Torque3D.net site, or the subreddits would likely help quite a lot. It definitely couldn't HURT the campaign.

--Even posting to other engine forums - if done tactfully - could potentially draw contributions. There's lots of people using unity that liked Torque for other things, so they may be willing to pitch in to make it better.

--I did try posting a blog to Torque3D.net, but while it said it posted, I never saw it materialize. I didn't have time at the end of the campaign to really back and forth with whoever manages those posts, so that ended up biting me in the butt for not doing it right at the start. Getting it up at the beginning and making sure it all was correct then would've been a lot smarter.

-Product breakdown
--I had a difficult time figuring out the best way to explain what the system did, exactly. Many people here - at least on a basic level - understand 'Component System' to a degree. If for no other reason than knowing that Unity nebulously uses them somehow.
What ended up being a problem is I made the assumption that people would've seen enough elsewhere to be familiar with the basic concept and possible usages, again due to other engines like unity or T2D using them. I didn't account for the knowledge gap on MY end, where there is an entire spectrum of what's considered a 'Component-Entity System', so what that means for Torque was quickly lost.

--I also didn't really demonstrate or explain why it would save time. Again, I figured it would be self-evident to anyone that's spent time working with ShapeBase or the Player class, but again, while some of the programmers familiar with the engine guts may get it, artists or light scripters wouldn't understand why it helps.
ESPECIALLY if they didn't ever look at T2D.

--Dan pretty much totally schooled me on how to coherently explain the system. I tend to get a bit rambly or repeat a fair bit, so the message can get lost in a sea of kludge. A straightforward, ideally example-driven post would've helped a lot in why it would be useful.

--Protection of the work. I needed to try and find a balance of how to give examples of what all it did had going for it while not just dumping the whole system, since that'd sorta invalidate the idea of the campaign - for better or for worse ;)
This largely stems from me not explaining correctly and having a terrible video, so trying to provide explanations later would've been easier with real examples, but I can't just code dump the guts of the system, which is also one of the most important parts in understanding what the system does.
Again, better explanations and demonstration videos/pictures would've remedied this from ever being a concern.

--Slow updates.
I was working on updates to the backend, adding behaviors and the like as the project went on. While this was good for letting me do updates to the project, I'm not very skilled in video editing and the like yet. So I didn't have a timely way of showing them off. I need to streamline the process I use for editing videos going forward so it doesn't take a week of work to get a video presentable.

What's the future?

This is a bit more free-form, as it's not easy to figure what would be best for round two, but here's some definites:

-A much better demonstration.
Instead of a basic highlight reel, I'll look at doing a mini-tutorial for building a top-down click control game like an RTS or dungeon crawl using the component system. It'll do a lot better job of showing how it can be easier to work with, and save time and effort.

-Probably ask Dan to help me not sound like an idiot ;)

-Post elsewhere, such as the subreddits, Torque3D.net and maybe some of the other engine boards. I'll also talk to someone at GG to see about getting the blog in the spotlight if they feel it's worthy. And do this right at the beginning, instead of in the 11th hour.

-Probably won't use Indie Go Go.
It's good for what it is, but I found the site to be a pain to work with, especially the updates to the project as it went on. I went with it largely because prior GG crowdfunding attempts had used it so I figured people here would have a bit of a familiarity with it, but in retrospect that really doesn't matter.
I'm not sure what I'll use in the future though.

Part of the reason I went with a crowdfund site is because (and maybe it's just me) it felt a little skeevy to ask for money that went pretty much straight into my pocket until enough was contributed that I would finally release the product(such as through paypal or whatever).
Another issue with crowdfund sites is the time limit, like 30 days.
Several people posted right at the end that if there was a bit more time they would have contributed. Fact is, this month ended up being pretty rough for a lot of people budget-wise, and a time limit like that makes it harder for people to contribute if the timing doesn't align just so.
Something like the paypal donate button would bypass those concerns handily.

Maybe no one else minds paying out to paypal for their contribution, but when I was putting together the campaign idea I can't say I was fond of that, even though I knew I personally was legit. Let me know if you guys that that'd be a better approach next time

-There will be another attempt somehow, and I'll do it as soon as is feasible
I'm going to try and get a proper demonstration put together for this, and more core behaviors to make it feel like a better investment. I may adjust the price to reflect that, but that's not concrete.

This is what I felt flopped the campaign, and some bits that I saw from other posters. I want you guys to give feedback on what you think was good(probably nothing ;) ) and what you'd preferred to have seen for the campaign.

Even if it didn't succeed this time, want to give a MASSIVE thank you to all the people that pledged, or helped me/gave feedback as I stumbled around like an idiot on this first try. We'll do it right next time guys ;)

So, THANK YOU!