Robot Turtles Kickstarter midmortem at $250k | Hacker News Reader

Robot Turtles Kickstarter midmortem at $250k

danshapiro.com

102 pointsdanshapiro54 comments

OP here - happy to answer any questions in the comments.

Hi OP.

What programming concepts does this game cover that aren't already handled by the 1994 game RoboRally? Or is this "RoboRally for little kids"?

The latter! Although by accident, since I hadn't played RR before inventing RT. RoboRally is vastly more complex and has oodles more depth. Robot Turtles is entirely pictorial and great for ages 3+.

That's cool RoboRally is a great game anyway so bringing it to kids is a good idea.

Not a question but a point:

While you did everything else right (from what's enumerated in the "midmortem" to the game's rules), what put it over the top for me was the very high quality of the graphics. Especially that shot of the turtle who's delighted to achieve that red gem prize.

It sets a very good tone for the game, what can be expected from it, etc.

Thanks hga! That's great feedback. I have very little artistic skill personally, so it's really rewarding to be able to bring this stuff to life.

Hey Dan, no question just a small gush: this is one of the best KickStarter campaigns I've seen in a while. The video is great, it's fun reading the story and seeing the extra content, and I think more toys like this should exist in the world. I don't have kids but I feel excited about it anyways - best of luck to you!

Thanks gbelote! Nice to be able to give something back to the HN community, which was helpful in figuring out how to do Kickstarter right.

Hey Dan! Congrats!

Do you think you were able to get most of your press because "teaching code to kids" is so trendy right now?

Would you advice other Kickstarters to look for similar trends?

Thanks! Yes and yes. Not necessarily a trend, but to think about how you're going to get the word out from the beginning. Speaking in the abstract, I would rather have a great marketing idea and develop the product from that then vice versa.

That's a really informative and well-done mid-mortem. Thanks for writing that up.

How sure are you about the negative impact of "early-bird". The purpose of it is to create a sense of urgency in the first group of people who visit the page, to make sure that the campaign takes off right away. Doesn't this outweigh the "you're being ripped off" thing?

Dan can probably give better answers, but as an early backer I know that I was quite eager to get in before those "early bird" copies sold out. I also recognized, though, that if I'd missed them I would have been significantly more hesitant to pledge at that point (both because the price felt higher and because it was comparatively a much worse deal). That makes me think that his (accidental?) strategy of including an early bird tier and then regularly increasing its limit might be the best of both worlds.

I have no data, but this Wikipedia article explains the theory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

"Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. During decision making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor. For example, the initial price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the negotiations, so that prices lower than the initial price seem more reasonable even if they are still higher than what the car is really worth."

If you wanted to do an early bird special, one solution might be to add something extra at the early bird tier (but keep the same price). Or even charge $1 more for something that seemed to be worth >$1 more but was unavailable otherwise. E.g. the early bird copies are signed.

Hmm. Ok. I'm thinking there might be some strategies to mitigate the anchoring effects, which definitely exist. It seems to me that it's a tradeoff, however, and it's not obvious to me which circumstances lead to one or the other being the best approach.

Hey, great idea! I immediately became a backer. My 2yo daughter is already a solid "Memory" card game player and is sure to love this!

My Question: It seems to me there's a big gap between your game and MIT Scratch... In particular, Scratch, though quite good, still has a steeper learning curve than necessary, I think... (i.e. "Robot Turtles" works for 3yo, but then "Scratch" may not be viable for someone under 7yo, I would think.)

Do you agree with this assessment? Do you know of a good next step for a kid that has mastered "Robot Turtles"? Unless I find other alternatives I'm thinking after my kid learns "Robot Turtles" (and is still having fun with this sort of thing) I might need to develop some custom software that can act as a bridge to Scratch.

I haven't played with Scratch in detail, but expect to graduate my kids to it (or something similar?) as soon as they can read. I won't claim expertise in age 8+ since I haven't dived in depth.

One anecdote: I learned BASIC on my C-64 at age 7 sitting on my dad's lap, writing simple 'games' out of if-then statements. I think that traditional programming languages like Logo and Basic may be viable with mom/dad help as soon as they can read.

In hindsight, Logo is probably the obvious next step :-)

Great project/post!

FYI, I've written about a bunch of TTGs for Wired, if you're not talking to Game Salute yet, you might want to—they seem to be a common through line in my stories. They help a lot with logistics/pricing/etc.

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/05/game-salute/

Thanks for the pointer!

How does the writing a whole program at a time play option work with multiple players? Is it just whoever figures it out wins?

You take turns running their programs. There's typically a lot of debugging, although in theory you might just do it once. You can see a video example of 'write program' in the most recent update I posted.

The rules say that everyone who gets a jewel wins. In practice, my kids very much compete to see who finishes first. :)

Hi OP,

I'd be interested to know the numbers for international uptake.

What distribution of countries are you shipping to that going from US to international turns a $29 shipped game into a $60 shipped game?

I don't know, and won't until I get the backer surveys at the end of the project.

hey dan, looks amazing - just what i need to stealth teach my 4 year old

question: is it possible to get a PDF/print out version so that i can start playing robot turtles with my son till the international version ships?

Calling the post a "mid mortem" is catchy and it caught my attention.

But it's really more accurate to call it the less appealing "mid vita"?

I have to say though that my first reaction to "mid mortem" was "failure and 250k seems contradictory, what's going on here?"

The project will be terminated on September 27th, so I thought the name worked :-)

I have to agree that I thought midmortem meant it was being shut down, less than a day after I interviewed you! ;) Definitely a clever use of words but mortem still feels like you were killing the project halfway through.

Awesome game. Cannot wait I get my hand on a box and play with my 6yo nephew.

Question for OP: the game introduces kids to the imperative paradigm. As somebody who's been exposed to Logo at the age of 6, I can tell I had an awesome time moving the turtle around. But: do you, Dan, think that one can build an equally compelling game based on the functional paradigm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming , where you have no "side effects" and all you can do is create and compose functions?

Stated otherwise: Turing Machines seems just fine to play with. Any idea on how to make Lambda Calculus just as sexy for kids?

Instructions for playing this game in functional style are included, but you need to order 25 copies of the game.

More seriously: I don't think the game is too biased towards imperative style and would be useful foundation for any future language choice. Yes, it is technically imperative, but those cards don't move the turtle as side-effects. That's their primary effect. A stack of cards behaves much like a function. Similarly to how concatenative languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenative_programming_langu...) are usually viewed as functional rather than as imperative stack manipulation.

Step 1: Teach me functional languages.

Step 3: Profit.

In all seriousness, I don't think I'm qualified to teach those concepts to anyone, let alone kids. But there's some awesome discussion on robotturtles.com/community about future directions with both similar and additional rules and pieces. I bet you'd find some folks there who could help!

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6398018

My comment there...

This seemed very familiar, then when I saw phrases in the Kickstarter like "You are the computer and they get to order you around", the lightbulb went on: http://drtechniko.com/2012/04/09/how-to-train-your-robot/

...it's a very similar game, for the same age group, except you order around people in a room instead of turtles on a board. (Not knocking Robot Turtles. There's room for both)

This is fantastic! Same basic idea, but with physical movement and exercise. At least for the grownups.

This post is extremely helpful and the game looks awesome, I wonder if the tactile experience of an actual board game may be more of an effective teaching aid for young children. It will be interesting to see how kids take to it when it is released.

My buddies and I have a project in the same space and are considering Kickstarting too.

We are building a platform game that teaches programming through gameplay by incorporating a terminal-like language we created called codePop.

If your interested check it out at www.betathegame.com

Hi Sam, I've seen beta before and really like where its heading, can't wait to try it out when there is a build! We are working on another learn to code game and I'd love to chat with you about your experiences if you have the time. You can reach me a gsaines at gmail dot com. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you!

I think it was also brilliant to post this halfway through: I had forgotten all about the kickstarter, and now I am a backer.

never heard of this kickstarter, went and grabbed an early Turtle.

> Contrary to what many people think, people don’t find new projects through Kickstarter

This is a major failing of KS and one that I simply cannot understand why they don't fix. Project discovery is horrible.

I am mostly interested in technology projects. One look at the projects I've supported makes this very obvious. Yet, for some unbelievable reasons I keep getting these "what's new on Kickstarter" emails promoting art projects. Sorry, I enjoy art but I have nearly zero interest in most arts projects on KS (I did back one a long time ago).

This also means that I completely miss out on some projects unless I read about them elsewhere or laboriously browse through KS to try and decipher what's new. The second part is another failing.

The website is not designed for easy discovery. I couldn't care less about their staff picks. They don't have enough people to cover the range of tastes and interests out there. What I want to see are tools to list projects based on various sorted criteria of my own choosing. "Popular this week" is also horrible.

For example, I want to visit the site today and list technology projects in chronological order with the newest project at the top of the list. Add a layer to that and allow me to, perhaps, filter by keyword or some other criteria. Let me discover what's new on my own.

Then, once I've created a search and sort criteria, let me subscribe to email updates based on that criteria. eBay does this pretty well and, therefore, promotes discovery without members having to actively spend hours browsing the site every n days in order not to miss out on bargains.

There's also a missing layer when it comes to helping campaigns succeed. I've seen campaign that failed but raised a fair amount of money. Because I never learned of the project I did not have an opportunity to support it. I would imagine this is the case for thousands of people who, like me, are too busy to remember to check KS every Monday (or whatever). Their lack of discovery tools damages project owners by not allowing them to reach the entire KS addressable market for their project.

Further to that, KS is also failing at connecting the dots. If someone is consistently supporting tech gizmos for photography it is likely that they'll appreciate a quick email when someone posts a new project in that domain. This would create instant traction for a lot of projects that are never discovered until it is too late.

Anyhow, I enjoy Kickstarter but really can't understand why they don't seem interested in doing a better job. I know they started it more as a destination for art projects and that's what they try to promote. Well, like it or not, they make most of their money off other kinds of project --mostly technology from what I can see. Isn't it high time that they accept reality and make major site improvements in order to reflect the patterns their audience exhibits?

At some level there's a huge opportunity here to do this really well by helping project originators reach an audience as well as supporters discover that which they are interested in. Do this really well and people should flock to the solution. From an entrepreneurial standpoint nothing is harder than marketing and reaching an audience. KS is squandering the data they have and forcing project originators to almost start from zero for every project, despite the massive audience KS could reach with one email.

I wish for the same features you describe, both as a creator and backer. That said, they have a very specific vision for their company and business, and have decided not to follow the money when it points them away from that vision. Hats off to them for that.

I wish they would clearly state their vision. If they don't want me as a backer or project creator that's fine. I simply don't understand making things so unnecessarily difficult in this day and age. From the outside it looks like they just don't care.

Unlike you I don't respect this position. If they want to be about art but happen to be making their money with tech, then have the balls to focus on art and make 5% of the money they are making now (or less). That would be sticking to their vision. Instead they make money on tech and promote art, even to those who have zero interest in the segment. That's not sticking to your vision. That's hypocrisy.

That might be true, but their UX remains broken even for people who do support their vision. I have backed plenty of quirky, art, or dance projects and I love backing those people even for no reward. Kickstarter have all the data in my profile. It would be quite possible for them to point me at non-commercial, small-scale artists but they just don't do that. Instead the thing most close to something useful is the Popular feed from the various categories. But it takes a lot of clicking and is not very useful anyway. There are a lot of projects I would have loved to back that reached the end date without me knowing. Kickstarter are leaving money on the table, not just for them, but for the artists they host as well and that's a pity.

> Kickstarter are leaving money on the table, not just for them, but for the artists they host as well and that's a pity.

That's exactly my point. I have been working on a tech project that is currently slated to go on KS. I find myself wondering if a site like indiegogo might be a better idea. KS does not help with discovery. I don't have a huge network. I woild prefer a service that actively informs it's userbase of relevant projects based on their profile. This would have a multiplicative effect on gathering supporters. I, too, have experienced coming upon a KS project of great interest to me only to learn time had run out. Multiply this by thousands of people and you have a situation that is far less than ideal for project originators and backers alike.

kickspy.com is what you are looking for, and as a bonus the dev seems responsive to feedback :)

The impression I get from their various press releases and comments is that Kickstarter is not really interested in the tech gizmo scene. They're kind of pushed it away by some of the rules they've added.

I'm also not sure they're making most of their money off of technology. Look at KS's 'Most Funded' page [1]. Sure, the projects about delivering A Tech Toy are generally making more. The Pebble's the only thing to break 10,000k. But scroll down a bit and the highest movie made 5,000k.

In fact, if you go look at the stats on their page summing up 2012[2], 'technology' is #5. Behind games, film/video, design, and music. What would happen if KS dropped the tech category? Hell, let's be aggressive and drop the game category too. All its big projects are pretty technical.

Games + tech pulled in $112,118k. People pledged $319,786k across all categories that year. So technology AND games pulled in about 1/3 of their pledges. Not too bad. But most of that was from games. Drop the gizmos, and they're only dropping $29,000k in pledges. (KS takes 5% of all pledges, so that's only about $1,450,000 out of $15,989k they'd be losing in terms of income.)

I think KS is doing the exact opposite of a pivot: the market found a use for their idea they didn't like, and instead of rebuilding things to make that easier, they're digging in their heels and insisting that it should only be used their way. Which is often a recipe for disaster, but not in the case of Kickstarter - it's clear there's a pretty good revenue stream solely in being the man in the middle of crowd-sourced art grants. Which is what they built the site to do.

As to whether or not they should be sending out smarter auto-generated mail based on what you've backed, whether or not they should let you build smart filters, I dunno. All I can say is that as a comics creator, KS worked damn fine for me as is, and I'm pretty confident it'll work equally well for the campaign I'm about to launch in a week or so.

1:http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/most-funded?ref=footer 2:http://www.kickstarter.com/year/2012#category 3:http://www.kickstarter.com/hello?ref=nav

interesting. i have an idea for a game that appears to be roughly in the same spirit, though in my case the game is intended to be 'a puzzle game' that in a sense just happens to involve basic programming. there are non-trivial and interesting ways to get across various programming things... even very arcane programming things

If any of the crowdtilt folks are reading this - think you could do a similar analysis for nonprofits?

when i was a kid i remember playing something called Logo .. i think on C64 and it was a turtle that received instructions i don't remember well .. im sure google has some more ..but im too lazy . champion

looks good, the thing i dread with higher sales is getting calculations wrong and ending up thousands in the hole, but i guess there are ways round that :)

I spent a lot of time before launching the Kickstarter figuring out a process that would not get more expensive with volume! In short, I'm using a commercial manufacturer who can handle very large quantities, and Amazon for shipping.

how are you using Amazon for shipping? i know they fulfill for people selling via them, do they handle fulfillment for others?

Looks like Amazon does allow for fulfillment of orders made via other channels: http://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/benefits.ht...

thanks :)

the only other caution i'd give anyone contemplating this regards quality control - you can't always count on the manufacturer to make sure everything is ok before they ship to amazon for instance, i'd recommend supervising the manufacturing process if you can, i met a photographer who had a large run of art books printed in the far east, he basically slept in the factory during the print run, every 2-4 hours they would wake him and he'd check the printing - it was a few days or a few weeks for the whole job 24/7

or i guess have an agreement with the printer that they will reprint and ship any defective items at their own cost.

Right - it's fulfillment by amazon, multichannel fulfillment. Regarding the child article, I'm printing with a century-old company based in Michigan. I'll be flying out to see the first ones come off the line. Doesn't guarantee quality but it helps to keep an eye on it.

i guess with a game it doesn't have to be all or nothing when it comes to returns - i bought a game with missing cards once and the company had a woman who's job was dealing with this scenario - basically asked me what was missing and sent those cards out, plus a few more which may have screwed the game slightly but much easier & cheaper than returning to a store or mailing to amazon etc, i guess you've thought about this already :)

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