"If I want to get big, I can just follow how it does at launch instead of using this to get dollar signs in my eyes" Fox says the wide open nature of Miller's call for game submissions gave indies a space to be present at E3 via a path that hadn't been open to them before. While E3 has no shortage of indies in spaces like Microsoft's Xbox press event and a handful of indie showcases on the floor, the Kinda Funny Showcase was different. So just to see that explode out of nowhere, to go from, 'It's a cute little thing, I think it'll make back the money' to 'Holy shit'.well, that's the takeaway." Wishlists can be used with some accuracy to, and then with less accuracy years from launch. "And if you look at our Wishlists graph, it was doing fine before, and then the graph just goes straight up. Skatebird's cast of 'birbs' are small, cute, and trying very hard to skateboard in a park the size of a human office desk We had as much wording, equal space in the story. "Holy shit, man! It wasn't even a throwaway! I would have been over the moon with a throwaway mention in that story, like 'Cyberpunk 2077 - paragraphs paragraphs paragraphs - oh, there was also Skatebird, and that was cute.' But we got equal coverage. "The Star is just a regular news site, and their E3 coverage was just one main story and their takeaway was that the two biggest games were Cyberpunk 2077 and Skatebird," Fox says. And it hit."Īside from wide visibility Skatebird received during the showcase, one other major piece of publicity that helped bolster her game's Kickstarter was a piece in The Star, with the headline, "Cyberpunk 2077 rules, Skatebird flutters into sight." Just me, it's the biggest swing I've ever done.
#KICKSTARTERER SKATEBIRD FULL#
"It's the biggest swing I've ever taken as just myself - there's a full team involved of course - but without being supported by a publisher or a platform by even a funding party. "We said, 'Fuck it, let's just take the biggest swing we possibly can," and, well, we did," she says. Fox didn't think too much of it at the time, and hadn't even fully committed to either running a Kickstarter for Skatebird or trying to put together a publishing deal.īut when she heard that the game would receive a full-on trailer and spotlight during the show, she decided to go all-in. It began, for Fox, with a tweet months before E3 asking for indies to submit their games for inclusion in the event. The Kinda Funny Games Showcase at E3 was a new game announcement showcase in 2019, run by YouTube personality Greg Miller.
"We said, 'Fuck it, let's just take the biggest swing we possibly can," and, well, we did" And while Fox acknowledges a number of factors, including her ongoing marketing approach, as factors in its success, she says a large amount of credit is due to the Kinda Funny Games Showcase at E3, and the opportunity it afforded her as an indie developer. At the time of this publication, it's made over $50,000 in funding - well over its $20,000 goal, and has met multiple additional funding incentives.
Instead, she took her idea for Skatebird, and (to pull an analogy from the wrong sport), swung for the fences.įox launched a Kickstarter campaign for Skatebird right in the middle of E3 2019 early last month, and the campaign has almost wrapped up. It's an apt metaphor for Glass Bottom Games founder and Skatebird creator Megan Fox, who similarly didn't give up when her previous title, Spartan Fist, didn't sell well. Other times, they crash and burn, but true to both any skateboarding game and Skatebird's philosophy of "birbs who try their best," they don't give up. Sometimes, they nail those tricks to adorable and hilarious effect. Skatebird is an indie game about tiny, cute birds doing wild skateboarding tricks in a miniscule skate park.
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