Dungeon
Crawler Carl the RPG crowdfunding campaign was one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns ever and a remider as to many publishers are now using
crowdfunding, notsomuch as a means of raising funds to publish a product and
moreso as a promotional device (See “Dungeon
Crawler Carl: The BackerKit”). After
following the Dungeon Crawler Carl campaign, a crowdfunding campaign
from another publisher popped up in my social media ads, only this one was
touting that their campaign had fully funded in only 15 MINUTES. That sounded
pretty impressive so I took a look at it, which now means that ads for their
campaign keep showing up all across my social media feeds. The magic of
tracking and algorithms.
Anyhow, funding in 15 minutes should mean quite a bit of
excitement about the product and, looking at the campaign now, the amount of
money it has raised is comparatively impressive but the project’s funding goal
was only in the mid four figures, a comparatively easy figure to raise and
create the opportunity to promote how quickly it funding and how far in perms
of percentage the project is over goal. This is what copywriter Bob Bly refers
to as the “magic of false logic”, not lying or misrepresenting the situation
but making manipulating existing facts to make the result sound far better than
it is through skillful writing. I also have heard this referred to as “fun with
statistics”. For example, if a particular game has not sold a copy in six
months and then sells two copies, I can legitimately claim a 200% sales
increase in six months. Is that a true statement? Absolutely. Does it reflect
the actual popularity of the game? Nope.
