Imaginary Explosions: How Exploding Kittens plays on their community’s laughter

What do kittens, playing cards, and imaginary explosions have in common? Well, since Exploding Kittens became the most-funded game on Kickstarter, you could say it’s an enthusiastic community of backers. We talked with the Exploding Kittens’ Director of Community, B Cavello, about building your audience, using Twitter and channeling a playful spirit throughout the whole process.

Why did you choose Kickstarter to launch Exploding Kittens?

Kickstarter was the platform for Exploding Kittens because of its reputation. Kickstarter is almost synonymous with “crowdfunding.” The Exploding Kittens campaign, like many campaigns, was created around the funds needed to place a minimum production order. The way Kickstarter campaigns are set up, that minimum fundraising goal is clear, and you’re safe from being beholden to anyone if you don’t meet your goal. Kickstarter offers the best rates and a really great team of folks within the company to assist creators in making their project a success.

What strategies led to the best results?

Our Kickstarter campaign certainly evolved over time. By the end of the campaign, our conversation with backers was about what we were creating together. Rather than centering the conversation on money (after all, we had already more than hit our goal!), we centered the conversation on the playful spirit of what we were creating. Our backer achievements had been so successful that we actually had to amend them.(Plus it turns out @ellen on Twitter is NOT Ellen DeGeneres. Sorry, random Ellen!)

At the end of our campaign, we had compiled our backers many incredible achievements and they unlocked the final stretch goal on our list: a mysterious thing of hilarity and wonder. As such, we did the only thing there was left to do: PARTY! Our party allowed us to celebrate the community that had come together and empowered our backers and fans to be ambassadors of Exploding Kittens. We used our Kickstarter page and social channels to amplify the creativity and playfulness of our fans.

How did keep your community engaged after your campaign ended?

Closing out a big campaign like ours is an undertaking. After addressing hundreds of emails from people claiming to have missed the end of the campaign by a single minute, we had to have some serious introspective conversations about our ability to keep the promise that we had made despite having approximately 100,000% scale on what we’d originally planned. Part of that was ensuring that the product that we were about to send out to hundreds of thousands of folks was a good one.

To do this, we challenged our fans to be a #KittenConsul and create a video application for a sneak preview playtest deck. We had a limited number of decks, and we wanted to ensure that we got the thorough testing and feedback that only incredible Kickstarter backers can provide.

We were not disappointed. On Kickstarter, Twitter, Facebook, and with #KittenConsul even YouTube, we kept in touch with our backers about the feedback we were receiving and the steps going forward. We tried to remain transparent while being mindful that too many cooks can spoil the card game.

This is a project update I made to communicate our timeline once we were in production. I’m just really proud of it. Turns out it takes about 9 months to make record-breaking, award-winning card game on Kickstarter!

This is a project update I made to communicate our timeline once we were in production. I’m just really proud of it. Turns out it takes about 9 months to make record-breaking, award-winning card game on Kickstarter!

If you could give one piece of community building advice to Kickstarter creators, what would it be?

Communities are slow growing trees and take a lot of work to support. It’s not a sexy answer. I’m sure that other people would give different advice, but I am perhaps overly honest. People come to me all the time asking about how I became the Product Development and Community Director for something as sensational, incredible, and huge as Exploding Kittens, and as much as I’d like to take all the credit, I owe it to my other teammates for spending collectively decades of their careers establishing trust, demonstrating excellent game design, and making really great jokes. Just like in middle school, being popular requires a ton of luck, stress, and hard work.

Communities are slow growing trees and take a lot of work to support.

While my advice is not “give up” like Bo Burnham, it is “don’t plan around overnight change.” If you don’t know who is or how to reach the audience for your idea, yet, do more research and build more relationships. Your campaign and your project idea will both benefit.

You can play a life-sized game of Exploding Kittens at #KickstarterFest on July 30th!