What happens when a project fails?


Thanks to a question from Spectral Dragon following my last article, I have a subject for my slightly belated next entry. I will in future articles go back to my plan of going through each part stage by stage, but for today, I’m looking at what happens when projects fail to reach their goal.

So, you’ve spent months prepping and developing an idea, drumming up interest through social media and launched your project with a great deal of enthusiasm. You have a reasonable target set but things aren’t going as you planned and you don’t reach your target. What do you do now?

If you chose to use Indiegogo and their flexible funding system, even if you didn’t hit your target, you get the funds that people did back, minus Indiegogo’s cut, which is larger than the cut they would take if the project was fully funded on the fixed funding system. It is then up to you to find the funds elsewhere to keep your end of the deal and get the backers their rewards.

If you have used Kickstarter or another site, you will most likely be on a fixed funding system – if you don’t hit your target, peoples pledges don’t get taken. There is no cost to you for this, as KS take their fees from money taken from pledges before it gets to you. All you will have lost is the time you put in to planning the project and any funds already invested in prototypes etc, which you may well have had to put in any way to fund the project yourself or to secure funding in a traditional manner.

Not getting funded isn’t the end of the world. Every project is kept on Kickstarter, regardless of whether it received no funding at all or millions of pounds of it. If people backed a project by you, you can still communicate with them through the update and comment sections. This allows you to ask people where they think you went wrong, what they think you should do next and anything else you can think of.

There are three things you can do if a project fails. The first is to give up on it. If you received no funding and you have done everything you can think of in terms of advertising it on social media, getting people involved, it might be that simply there isn’t a market for your idea.

The second is to find another way of funding the project. If you have already done the planning with regards to costs, prototypes etc then you are in a great position to find funding in a traditional manner. When they realised that they wouldn’t hit their target, Dark Space Corp (Rick Priestly and co) decided to cancel their project and look in to alternative methods of funding Beyond the Gates of Antares, including releasing what was to be their KS exclusive miniature Hansa through Warlord Games.

The third way is to learn from your experiences and go again. Maybe spend a few months prepping more stuff, adjust goals, do more marketing and bring the project back to the table fresh. This has been done successfully by several companies, including Bombshell Miniatures with their Counterblast game, Games and Gears with their Battle Boards and more recently, Hangar 18 with their pin ups project. All failed first time around and took on board comments, revamped their ideas and brought them back.

In conclusion, what happens when a project fails is up to the developer. They can find a comfy corner to sit crying into their beverage of choice, or, they can look at what went wrong and learn from it, coming back stronger.

A note - if any of this appears jumbled or unclear, or you think I've missed something, let me know and I'll try and do something about it