We set this site up for our new game Crabitron and decided to call it Crabstarter. It is intended to be a light-hearted parody of Kickstarter, while showing real sales.<p>One of the main reasons we set it up is because we wanted to have some hope of recouping our investment in this game. In order to do that, we felt that we couldn't go for rock-bottom pricing and hope for a mega-hit. That seemed crazy and unrealistic.<p>Instead we gave our game the price we thought it deserved — $5. In order to help App Store players get over the "sticker shock," we set up Crabstarter. When you see that five dollar price in this context, it suddenly doesn't seem so high.<p>We also wanted players to see that we were real human beings, and not a faceless company. So we tried to make an honest video in the format of a standard Kickstarter video.
Brilliant concept IMHO. A lot of people don't realise the amount of work that goes into creating this kind of stuff, and sadly the race to the bottom that's happened with games on the app store has meant in a lot of cases it's hard to for developers these days to justify the large development costs.<p>I also love that you've given it a price and not gone with a freemium model. I'd much rather pay $5 for a (good) game up front than be constantly annoyed with offers to "buy more coins" etc.
The game looks really fun. I'm going to get it now.<p>One thing I looked for and didn't see was additional tiers of contribution a la Kickstarter. The post-game credits tier, the t-shirt tier, the poster tier, etc. The art and game looks so fun I would've tossed in an extra $20 to support you guys and get a shirt.
I like the idea of the top-up, in-app purchases. Makes me wonder how successful a much-loved, popular app would do if it adopted a 'get free, pay what you want via in-app' model, along the lines of Radiohead's In Rainbows sale. Think something like ... Monkey Island 3. Unfortunately, if my maths is correct, Crabitron has sold barely any (literally 1-3) top-ups :-(
I'm going to guess that KS will be sending a C&D. It's a cute site, and I like the idea, but the style is way too close to KS. They have to be concerned about people stumbling onto this and not getting the joke.<p>On the other hand, if it gets popular to the point that KS sends a C&D, then the site probably served its purpose. Overall, a neat marketing idea.
I feel as though a much more exciting thing you guys are doing is Codea - <a href="http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/" rel="nofollow">http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/</a>. It looks so cool and something a lot of people could relate to, given the major shift to tablets.