Behind the Scenes: Jukebox Kickstarter Launch
The Jukebox Journal (Devlog)
First things first: If you missed the social blasts, JUKEBOX 🎤 IS LIVE ON KICKSTARTER! Back it today, tell your friends!
This is a “behind the scenes” post about what happened right before and during the first week of the Kickstarter, including:
How did Jukebox end up on Dicebreaker?
How did I make the promotional video?
What was that first day of launch like?
Cool things in the first week!
How did Jukebox end up on Dicebreaker?
On January 9th, a friend informed me on Discord that Jukebox was in Dicebreaker. "HOLY CANNOLI" was my exact response, and then after reading, "I don't think I fully emotionally processed this. Jukebox is on the list with D&D 2024, Daggerheart, and Stormlight 🤯".
It is still wild to me that my little indie game ended up on that list. As a creator, it was an unexpected validation that I'd made something that people want and a HUGE boon right before the Kickstarter. Someone (presumably Wheels, thank you Wheels!) at Dicebreaker really made my year.
But HOW does one end up on Dicebreaker?
I’ve had a few folks ask me this. I think this was 95% luck. The lucky and non-repeatable part was the timing of a tweet and the fact Wheels is a karaoke lover. Here's the 5% that wasn't luck:
Follow media folks on Socials (or have friends that do): Wheels from Dicebreaker posted a tweet looking for 2024 game recommendations; co-conspirator Taylor forwarded it to me, and I jumped on responding quickly since it was time-sensitive.
Have a press kit: I have a Jukebox press kit. At first, I thought making a press kit might be overkill, but I've used it a bunch at this point. The text became the basis of my Kickstarter page. Given what Dicebreaker wrote, I'm sure they read it. If you want to make your own press kit, I made mine from Plus One Exp's sample and video about making a press kit for Down We Go.
Make a Press kit: Plus One Exp’s Press kit how-to video
Have your elevator pitch: I'm not a marketing expert, but I spent a while working on a quick elevator pitch. Here’s what I put to describe my game:
Relatedly, I’ve been making Facebook advertisements (I managed to get some free ad credit). I found the Prelaunch Club has a ton of insightful information, both technical (what buttons to push) and about writing compelling elevator pitches and ad copy.
Free Kickstarter Marketing Resources: Prelaunch Club
Have one good image ready to go: Lia's cover image for Jukebox is eye-catching and perfectly encapsulates the game. I'm so glad they said yes to this project. On my part, I had a promotional graphic ready to go for the tweet.
Friend hype never hurts: I asked the collaborators to Like the post. I don't think it's why it got featured but having a few upvotes never hurts.
How did you make the promotional video?
The Jukebox promotional video came together right under the wire and I was extremely lucky in that my friend Jon had good lights and more importantly good sound equipment.
I've also made small videos before (though it's been a minute), so I generally knew how to write a script. I knew I wanted to show folks playing the game. We are not professional actors, so it was going to look a little "home movies". I'm lucky I wrote a game about musicals since sincere and goofy is an easier vibe to hit on a low budget.
This playset playbill prop is what the actual playsets will look like (printed on your home computer). The Jukebox rules booklet prop is a fake book since this Kickstarter is literally to get the money to print it. It looked surprisingly decent on camera.
All my friends were SUPERSTARS: they were having fun and singing and that's the heart of what Jukebox is. Jae graciously stayed late, fueled only by some butter pasta, to get the opening shots.
Shout out to CurtainUp Musical Theatre Karaoke: A few days before the shoot, I realized I had a potential copyright issue. It's actually not super great to show others YouTube videos in the background of an advertisement. I looked around for karaoke videos I could legally use and found contact information for a few karaoke video creators. CurtainUp Musical Theatre Karaoke gave their blessing to use their videos, which are awesome and look (and sound) great. I'm so glad to have featured them in the background, and you should check them out for your next karaoke night!
Extra credit if you can identify the different karaoke videos used in the promotion 👀.
Finally, here are a few 🔥 tips for making a promotional video:
The basics: Focus on good sound. Do a read-through with just sound, reading the script. If you have a shot of you talking to the camera, take a wide shot of yourself and a close-up shot of yourself. This allows you to cut in between if you goof up. Take b-roll shots for the same reason.
Consider a teleprompter: I read technical scripts to a camera for a living, and it turns out I'm still rubbish at memorizing lines. I can usually stumble through with a teleprompter, though. Turns out your laptop or tablet can easily become a teleprompter with Teleprompter Mirror. It was still a little hard to look natural - the best setups will have the teleprompter very close to the camera - so I mostly used it as easy access to the script.
Free Teleprompter: Teleprompter Mirror
Davinci Resolve 18 is free and SO GOOD: A few days before shooting the promo I opened up iMovie, figuring it would be a "good enough" editing program. I struggled to get text over the video and do simple cuts. So the night before the Kickstarter I looked up reddit threads about free editing software and found Davinci Resolve. Holy 🐄 it is such a good program. I was shocked it was free. I haven't edited for a decade, and that was in Final Cut Pro and Premier. Davinci felt as powerful as those options (mind you, my memory is foggy).
Free Editing Software: DaVinci Resolve 18
Make gifs quickly: Want to know how I made the page-turning gif? Gifski! It was extremely simple to use and free.
Free Gif creator: Gifski
Getting Music: I knew I wanted some cheesy background music and figured there'd be something generic and free I could use. It was trickier than I thought to find free music. I ended up grabbing a track from Fesliyan Studios, which will give you a license to use their music with a small donation. They have a wide array of different tracks and background music moods.
Reasonably priced commercial music: Fesliyan Studios
THE JINGLE
The Jukebox Jingle was an unhinged last-minute plan that I begged for some help recording the week before the Kickstarter. I asked some friends who have a band, Coffee Bong, if I could crash their band practice and borrow them for 15 minutes. The prompt was "sing a 5-second jingle". That was enough to produce the Jukebox Jingle, which has been stuck in my head and does make me smile.
What was that first day like?
This is perhaps oversharing, but I was up until 6 am the morning of launch day putting the final touches on the Jukebox promotional video. In the day before launch, I had:
Made the team graphics
Solidified all my tiers and items (this was pretty stressful; as soon as someone backs a tier, you cannot change any of these details)
Made all of the "fancy tier" graphics so people knew what they were getting
Created a sample page from the templates
Added another drink to the long list of drinks I owe Gordon for creating the Jukebox mock-up image
Edited and uploaded the promotional video
Drafted and sent an email to friends and family about the Kickstarter
With Meg and Richard kindly providing celebratory fizzy drinks, I hit launch a little before 10 am EST (apparently, 10 am EST on a Tuesday is one of the best times to launch a Kickstarter).
Pledges began coming in after the first few minutes. Friday put us immediately into the triple digits by backing one of the Sponsorship slots (the rest went extremely fast). The 350+ pre-launch followers, friends, and family started pledging. Folks who saw the amazing social boost that the collaborators and my community participated in started pledging. In particular, I want to thank the stretch goal writers who had some great posts:
To the question "Will Jukebox fund?" The world answered with a resounding YES by putting us over the $2500 mark within the first 90 minutes. Within the first day we'd hit two stretch goals and were well on the way to the third. That was a huge relief. Of course funding was great, but hitting those stretch goals meant I could actually hire the folks I wanted to hire.
Chris over at Hectic Electron Games (who ran their own Kickstarter in 2021) advised me to do three things upon funding, which I appreciated. 1. Add a funded in 90 minutes banner to the image. 2. Post an update to my Kickstarter celebrating the win 3. Update my itch.io page to point more prominently to the Kickstarter.
Danny encouraged me to drink water. Anthony called me to celebrate. Ethan and Taylor gave live backer updates and told me multiple times to nap.
Around 6 pm, I got an email that Jukebox had been selected as a Kickstarter Project We Love. As I explained in a previous post, choosing Kickstarter was about marketing and reach. Getting a Project We Love tag was something I'd hoped for: it requires a good project page, a lot of early excitement, and for Kickstarter to "choose" you. In turn, it sends more folks to your campaign. It’s one of the chicken and egg things. If you’re popular, you’ll get a Project We Love, and if you’re a Project We Love, you’ll be popular.
The early funding gave me the permission to guiltlessly take the evening for myself: I finished up work, had a quiet dinner with the family without my phone, and then headed to bed.
Cool happenings in the first week
Valiant Dorian Designer Spotlight
Valiant Dorian hosts a game design interview show called Designer Spotlight and graciously had me on to talk about a bunch of topics:
Night Noon Games
Another creator, Michael from Night Noon Games, made a ridiculously kind (and un-prompted) reaction video after seeing the Kickstarter:
(Michael also made that Jukebox promotion reaction video)
The Renaissance Gamer Interview
Brent Jans was kind enough to host an interview about Jukebox. I talk a bit about myself and then dive into:
Writing for D&D versus making your own system
The different steps of the playtesting journey for Jukebox and what I learned from them
How the game works for singers and non-singers
The Jukebox application process and diversity
A list of cool games
Thanks for reading, and if you haven’t already, back the Jukebox Kickstarter:
Over and out,
🫙 👁️ 👁️
Congrats on your successful funding! These posts of yours are really fantastic. As someone striving for to do their own project launch, your post provide a ton of insight. Looking forward to seeing Jukebox out in the RPG world!