As the campaigns for FTL and Takedown were getting started, the developers at Stoic watched with interest. Stoic is a development power trio composed of Arnie Jorgensen, a veteran artist with tours of duty at DC and Image Comics before working at Retro Studios and Ion Storm, John Watson, who started as a programmer at NASA before jumping into the games industry at Sony, and Alex Thomas, the trio’s only lifetime game developer who began his career at Wolfpack Studios before they changed their name to Kingisle in 2005. The three met at BioWare, where they worked on The Old Republic together. Jorgenson and Thomas also worked on several side projects with BioWare’s blessing, including an iOS children’s book called DinoBoy. After The Old Republic shipped, they recruited Watson and they soon left BioWare began work on The Banner Saga. The timing couldn’t have been better. By coincidence, The Old Republic launched last December, and Double Fine’s Kickstarter campaign started shortly afterwards in early February.
“Truth be told, Kickstarter was part of the plan back at the formation of the company,” says Thomas. “At that time the highest games could make was roughly $30k. Our friends from White Whale – currently working on God of Blades – had a successful run and encouraged us to go for some extra funding since we’re paying for production out of pocket using our own personal savings. Then Double Fine and inXile blew the doors off the Kickstarter thing, which was pretty surreal to watch, knowing that we were working towards the exact same goal. Suddenly we weren’t sure how to approach it. Ultimately it became obvious that the right thing to do was to ask for the real amount that we could use toward making the game the biggest we could while still manageable for three people.”
How did they come to this conclusion? They did their homework. With a handful of campaigns either completed or in full swing, the Stoic trio had enough material to formulate a solid plan. The first part of this plan was to avoid going in cold. “We did a lot of research when we were planning out our campaign but the best advice we got was to talk about the game early and often, pre-launch,” says Thomas. “By the time our page was ready to go we had a lot of people already interested in the game, which got us to our goal quick, in turn generating a lot more media attention and so on and so forth.” They also took special care when it came to the different rewards Kickstarter backers would receive at different levels. “One of the things we’re most happy with is the extra time we took to show all of our prizes at the start of the project,” Thomas elaborates. “As far as I know we were the first to really go all out with [it] and I think people have really connected with that.” Finally, they made sure people would get a preview of the game itself. “Another top priority was to make sure we had an actual game to show and make sure it was an accurate representation of the final product. Without a big name backing us we knew we’d be relying on the quality of the game itself to get people interested and the sincerity of how into it we truly are.”
After doing their due diligence, Stoic’s initial goal for The Banner Saga was set at $100,000. Were they still nervous about a goal like that even after planning so carefully? “Yeah,” confirms Thomas. “So to elaborate on that more, we were pretty nervous about reaching $100k. Unlike [Double Fine Adventure and Wasteland 2] we didn’t have any high-profile names supporting us, just our reputation as leads from BioWare and a game concept. We even considered playing it safe with a lower target with a whole whiteboard full of pros and cons. One of the pros to sticking with $100k was ‘It’s what vikings would do.’” Like the FTL team, their worries were for naught. The Banner Saga currently sits at roughly $570,000 with time still on the clock as of the writing of this article. “To be at over 500% funding now without even asking for future milestones is pretty mind-blowing and encouraging,” summarizes Thomas.
And what of the factors that come with success? Does Stoic feel like such success in their Kickstarter campaign relieved some pressure, or did it add pressure of a different sort like it did with the FTL team? “That’s an interesting question, we’ve recently been talking about this because you’re absolutely right on both accounts,” Thomas answers when asked about the topic. “When there was no expectation we were planning to market the game as more of a grass-roots effort, like the trend with games to come out in alpha and grow a fanbase over time. With all the attention we’ve gotten recently that’s probably not the right approach anymore. We’ll be keeping fans up to date on our progress but I think there’s a certain expectation now that didn’t exist before. Plus, as we add top shelf talent to the project there’s the pressure of making sure everything meets that high standard.” Still, Thomas has a hard time being picky. “I can’t complain though, it’s the kind of pressure we’re happy to deal with and clearly it’s given us a lot of breathing room to give us a chance to make the game we really want to make, not a compromised version. I think we’re in a better position now than we ever could have hoped for.”
Like both Christian Allen and the FTL team before them, Stoic is also being careful not to overextend itself. “One of our primary objectives throughout this whole thing has been to run the campaign with quality and integrity. Sounds like corporate speak but it’s true,” Thomas says. “We’ve gone out of our way to avoid exaggerations and false promises. Basically, we never set out to make the game bigger than something we could handle with a small team, which has become an interesting problem because our backers are really interested in what we’re going to be doing with all the overflow donations. We’ve decided to keep the scope the same but up the quality everywhere that we can – animations, sound, music, additional programming support, QA, playtesting, writing.” Being level headed and realistic clearly doesn’t exclude being excited, though. Thomas adds, “When we started working on the game we knew it was something we were way into but we couldn’t be sure other gamers agreed. More than the funding. what Kickstarter has done is told us beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are a lot of people interested in the game. Nothing could be more inspiring.”
The success of The Banner Saga seems like the culmination of the lessons learned during the dawn of the Kickstarter movement, when Takedown and FTL were among the first to follow in the wake of Double Fine Adventure. The lessons on presentation that Serellan learned and implemented during Takedown’s campaign, to the effects of both FTL’s positive press and the surprise pressure and momentum that it gained all seem to ring true. Was the success of The Banner Saga at least partly due to this? If so, does that mean that it represents the future of this Kickstarter movement, beyond long awaited sequels and campaigns led by big name developers?
