You should do that: Questions and suggestions from the Interwebz

I wrote a post recently about how social media may be overrated for marketing, but that doesn’t mean, paradoxically, that I think social media is over-rated. I think social media is often under-rated for its value as information.

For example, as part of our Kickstarter campaign, I have received a number of questions and suggestions from people, most of them very reflective and thoughtful. Some made us change our design and some made us decide we need to explain our products, company and project better. Some were just amusing.

1. Wouldn’t 7 Generation Games have a wider appeal (and more potential sales) if you didn’t have such an emphasis on Native Americans? 

Probably. However, our games started on the Spirit Lake Nation and half of the people working on the project are from Spirit Lake or Turtle Mountain. Our original intent was to provide an adventure game to teach kids math that would appeal to children on American Indian reservations. It was only after we had developed a prototype with promising results that we started being contacted from parents and teachers off the reservation to find out how they could get the game, too.

2. Is the game installed on your desktop or played over the web?

Both. The game is installed and played on your desktop, which speeds up the graphics much more than streaming video. However, you log in to our server, where your game state and other data – specifically on the math problems you answered and the lessons you took – are stored.

3. Won’t people hate the fact they are paying for  a license rather than getting a permanent license? Isn’t requiring internet access a turn off?

Both of these go back to question 1. The schools WANTED a system set up to be as hands off for them as possible so they had minimum work to do. Having an internet connection allows automatic updates. Because multiple students will play the game in the school computer lab, it’s not like your own personal game console where you start the game you left off. A major factor for schools and teachers is having the automated scoring of math problems and the ability to get an average of their class or school, find out if there are problems their students as a group are having. All of this is easier if all of the data go to a central point. It is also backed up automatically. All of the schools have internet, even in very remote reservation schools. There may be some that don’t but we are not working with any of them.

4. How can you have children’s confidential data on your computer? Don’t you need mad security for that?

We don’t have any confidential information. We have a username, a teacher name, age and gender. We send the school a list of usernames and the teacher assigns them. The same with individuals or social service programs. YOU know that Greybear is Samuel Jackson, Jr. but we don’t.

5. Why do you only take payments through Amazon?

That is all Kickstarter is set up to  do. We have had people give checks or cash to a friend to back us on Amazon through their account. Yes that isn’t the most convenient way, but there are a lot of other benefits to Kickstarter. They handle the payments, people come specifically to Kickstarter looking for projects to fund.

6. Why is a signed photo with Ronda one of the prizes/ why don’t you offer signed gloves or other prizes?

Kickstarter rewards have to be related to your product. Ronda was involved in helping us design the game and will be further involved modeling some of the poses for fight scenes (not too much fighting, since the game is aimed at children in grades 4-6 right now, and eventually up to grade 8). Read post 3 on our updates page for more information. Since her fight gloves, getting a seminar from Ronda and other UFC-related or MMA-related rewards have nothing to do with the game, under the Kickstarter terms of service, we can’t offer them.

7. Since you are 52% of your target with 8 days left, do you think you will make it?

Yes. According to Kickstarter, 98% of projects that get to 60% end up fully funded. We are almost to that 60%. We have an ad coming out soon on the American Horror channel on FilmOn host Hart Fisher did just out of the goodness of his heart. I just did two radio shows still to be aired plus several interviews with blogs, newspapers. In addition, according to most resources I have read, most campaigns receive a jump in pledges near the end as people who have been meaning to pledge quit putting it off. If you are one of those people, head on over to Kickstarter and pledge now. Get a license for yourself, give one to a school, get a signed photo, a cool poster or even be a character in the game.

8. Now that your game has received more widespread attention are you going to reduce the focus on Native Americans?

No.