Influenced by classic and modern games, World of Anterra is an innovative, open world roleplaying game.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
My Kickstarter Story - "The Prologue" Part 2
If you've been following along with my Founder's Journals you may be wondering how the team made it through all this with me. Well, despite the (many) financial hardships, I've always managed to pay the team, albeit late at times. I never asked anyone to work for free, never put pressure on them to stay, and always offered to support them in finding new jobs. Each time that we ran out of money, I would always prioritise my team over myself. This doesn't mean that running out of funds didn't impact them. They had to deal with the uncertainty of not knowing when (or if) they would be paid, and deal with concerned families, friends or partners. I am very grateful to the team members who stuck with me through it all, but I always worked hard to shelter them from the hardships... maybe even a bit too much at times.
This part of the story involves NFTs. Just know that we never sold, or profited from NFTs. No hate (maybe 🤏) to those who did, but NFTs didn’t match our goals, although we did get quite a few pitches to make WoA NFTs. "We can help you raise $10 million with World of Anterra NFTs!" 😆
We went from being desperate for work to turning down projects.
Due to the NFT rush, we had many projects pitched to us. We were uncomfortable working with NFTs, but we needed the funds to continue developing WoA. So we took time to get to know the people behind these projects and only when we thought we could work with them did we consider taking them on as clients. We ended up accepting a few design and preproduction contracts and approached each project with the same curiosity and passion that we would any game. The fact that NFTs were part of it didn't matter; we just focused on making great games!
After jumping between projects, we had two partners come with big offers to move into development, but we could only pick one. We were about to choose the partner who aligned with us the most culturally, but we received a counter offer that included an (promised) investment in 81monkeys to help fund WoA. These were the funds we needed to grow our team and bring a strong project to Kickstarter. The contracts were drawn up, including a LOI (Letter of Intent) for the investment, and we were off to the races!
And we never stopped working on World of Anterra!
The team and I worked hard on the game, and boy, was it good. Within 5 months, we had a fully playable beta version (with no NFTs yet) that was good enough to run tournaments with their community. The feedback was great! Unfortunately, things weren't so great for our partner. They had not fulfilled their commitment to invest in 81monkeys, and instead were burning money on other projects. I pressed them hard, but at a certain point it became clear to me that they probably never planned to pay it, and may have just used it to get us on their project.
Once I realized the investment wasn't coming, I decided to pull the plug on their project. They were getting a discount on their game, because we were working hard to prove ourselves worthy of the investment. Were we being played? Whether it was intentional or not didn't matter. I told them they needed to sign a new LOI that included a 100k non-refundable deposit towards a future equity purchase before we would continue working. This was a huge risk, because we desperately needed the contract, and we were too far away from our Kickstarter to survive without the funds. But we were killing it with their game, and I was confident they wouldn't be able to find a better partner. Boy, were they pissed! After a bit of a back and forth, they paid us the 100k, which I put in our bank as security for our Kickstarter. They kept paying us to work on their game until about 4 months before our Kickstarter was set to launch. That's when they told us they couldn’t pay their last two invoices. This is how we ran out of money before our Kickstarter.
That partner did end up paying their outstanding invoices by the time our Kickstarter ended, but not until we went nearly 3 months without any funds. Thankfully we had that 100k I forced them to pay, which became the lifeline we needed to get to our Kickstarter. I don’t know how we would have made it, had I not pulled that stunt, and demanded a non-refundable deposit...
The irony of it all is that an investment in 81monkeys would have been the best thing they did with their money!
- Stephane - Game Director @ 81monkeys
Our Kickstarter was extraordinary, but how we got there may be even more so.
These founders’ journals focus (mostly) on the struggles and the hard times, but with every breakdown comes the opportunity for triumph. If you take anything away from these posts, I hope that's it. I know I'm not the only one who has gone through this, nor will I be the last, but I believe sharing our stories is one of the best ways we can support each other. There’s a lot more to these stories, but I'm keeping it succinct for these posts.
I tried everything to get funding prior to taking on World of Anterra: equity investors, publishers, grants, work-for-hire projects, but most of these efforts fell short. The truth is, I was playing it safe. I had a dream and a vision to make World of Anterra, but I didn't think we were ready. We were focusing on smaller mobile projects, because I thought it would be an easier path. This meant the studio I was pitching and building was different from what I truly wanted, which was to make a PC/Console game. That's not a recipe for success, authenticity is.
The COVID lockdowns proved to be our first real test. We had a funding partner for our first game which was in soft-launch on iOS and Android, but the pandemic hit their business hard. And without any notice, our funds were gone. That was the first time I had to sit the team down and tell them I couldn't pay them anymore. I truly felt like I had failed. It was a hard conversation and there may have been some tears shed. But that was also the first time the team took a chance on me, and stayed. We made it through the next few months with the help of Canada's CERB program and some small contracts that I managed to dig up.
That's when I decided to stop playing small and swing big with World of Anterra.
My strategy at this point was to get CMF (Canadian Media Fund) funding, build an "MVP", and bring it to Kickstarter. We only had about 2 months left to apply for the Early Development Phase with the CMF, but I had been investing my free time designing and writing for over 2 years. The team had also been pitching in here and there, and we had a pretty clear vision for the game by this point.
After 2 months of hard work, I submitted our application with only a few hours left before the deadline... then we waited.
I felt excited and motivated by the hard work that went into our application and I was confident we would get it. CMF has a number of categories that they score projects on with different weighting for each one; team experience, project description, market fit... but innovation was one of the most valuable categories.
After weeks of waiting, our scores were in and we scored really high! … but unfortunately not high enough to receive funding. I believe their judges couldn't see past the pixel art, because pixel art doesn't scream innovative or cutting-edge.
I failed again and it stung, but I also learned a lot. The CMF has a structure and requirements that forced me to dig deep on the game mechanics, the business case, and the pitch. This became the foundation for other grant applications, as well as our Kickstarter campaign. We managed to scrape by the next few months. A few small grants and the COVID relief funds from the CMF kept us and World of Anterra alive...for a time.
Unfortunately, our funds would run out again. And again I found myself in front of the team telling them that we were out of money, but this time it looked even more bleak.
- Stephane - Game Director @ 81monkeys