26: Strange Sickness: Running a Crowdfunding Campaign for a Historical Research-Based Game

26: Strange Sickness: Running a Crowdfunding Campaign for a Historical ResearchBased Game

William Hepburn and Jackson Armstrong, @medievalabdn, University of Aberdeen We ran a successful #ickstarter campaign to make Strange Sickness, a narrative game based on our research into Aberdeen’s medieval records at Aberdeenshire Archives. We’ll share some of what we’ve learned so far, especially thinking of those who want to do something similar. The Strange Sickness Kickstarter ran from 25 Nov to 17 Dec 2020. It raised £6,611 from 220 backers, exceeding our minimum funding target of £5,000. This has allowed us to progress to development of the game, with release planned for summer 2021.

The game idea grew out of a series of projects investigating Aberdeen’s medieval council registers. William explored games as a possible output while working on one of these projects, & secured a Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities Creative Economies Fellowship held in 2019, with Jackson. Out of this work came the idea of releasing a game about medieval Aberdeen. This was developed over a long series of discussions with existing and potential partners, including wonderful people from Aberdeenshire Archives, University of Aberdeen, Intelligent Plant, and ONE Codebase. We explored funding (academic, arts, commercial), audience (games, history, local interests), organisation, what each party wanted to achieve. William connected with & researched game developers working in similar areas via events & reading (& playing games!). We were thrilled to find Katharine Neil via her work on the ground-breaking Escape From Woomera and Astrologaster by Nyamnyamgames, and also visual artist Alana Bell, with interests in games & history, from Grays School of Art 2020 online degree show at Robert Gordon University. In 2019-20 from ChivasBrothers, Chivas News Room funded William to work on creative responses to the Aberdeen records, including game ideas. This led to a grant application to a call for projects from humanities addressing covid-19. The app didn’t get funding. But we believed in the game behind the app & explored other routes to raise awareness & funding, esp. with support of University of Aberdeen Development Trust. We decided on crowdfunding a nonprofit project to build a game to raise support for Aberdeen Covid-19 Emergency Appeal. So we founded Common Profyt Games. We read advice on how to give campaigns the best chance of success on KS site and elsewhere. Worked out issues such as budget and scope of game, stretch goals, rewards and how best to present all of this on campaign page. Shared drafts and built up campaign gradually. We benefited from fantastic publicity support from Scottish Games, ONE Code Base, Interface, Scotland IS, chambertalk, University of Aberdeen Development Trust, Aberdeen Uni Alumni, and Aberdeen University Students' Association. This helped broaden our reach, on top of networks around http://aberdeenregisters.org and Medieval Aberdeen. Success and publicity gave profile and track record for other potential funders to see. Led to additional support from Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service and match funding via Aberdeen University. We doubled the amount raised by crowdfunding. This allowed us to widen scope. Challenges: building campaign while doing day job; connecting with people in other professional fields; impossible to plan everything - a step into the unknown. Opportunities: learning new skills; bringing research to wider audience. We hope to see more such projects!

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