Your honest brutal constructive feedback needed

Hello all you awesome Unity users. We have just released a prototype demo for a virtual reality project we have been working on. The goal behind is for you to upload Panorama Photos and share them in virtual reality with your friends. The social elements such as adding friends, leaving comments, and liking photos is currently in our mobile app/ website but is being worked into the virtual reality experience as well. Think of it like a social media virtual reality app. Please check out our website and Kickstarter and leave brutal honest feedback. Would you use it in the future? Are you confused? Do you see the purpose be hind it? What would make it better?

Download the demo:
https://stampaspot.com/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/312421515/step-inside-the-photo-virtual-reality-grid-of-gaia
Follow the project on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGridOfGaia
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheGridOfGaia

 

Okay, so... brutal and honest... You asked for it.

• The name. Virtual Reality: Step into the photo - The Grid of Gaia (alternatively, Step Inside the Photo - Virtual Reality - Grid of Gaia). And in the Kickstarter video, it sounds like you're saying Grids instead.
• I'm assuming you did the voiceover for the video as well. Either it's a bad time of the year for allergies, or you just don't have a radio voice... A good voice actor could add some excitement the video is definitely missing.
• Project goal is to release for Oculus. There's a lot more competition there than you may think, and looking at 360 degree photos is one of the more boring things you could do with the tech. You have mobile device (Cardboard/Gear) support as a $40k stretch goal. That needs to be the base product, with Oculus as a stretch goal.
• Check for typos or spelling errors. I see "poor" where you meant "pour".
• On the subject of stretch goals, my bullcrap detector goes off right away. Stretch goal to hire an artist? That's sort of an expected thing as a base cost for the product. It feels to me like you really need $40-60k, but are afraid of not getting the money. So you set the goal to $10k, hoping to get at least that, and if you don't get the rest of the funding, just dump out what you already have done. This may not be the case, but it's what I see when I look at projects that are defined in this way.
• More crap: You say "we" when I suspect you mean "I". A lot of people do this, sure, but if you're just one guy, that should be disclosed, don't you think? Maybe in the Risks and Challenges section that you (or anybody for that matter) don't use properly. "We will work hard" is not a risk the project faces.
• Your website looks like it's just promotion for a Flight Simulator X mission pack that you made?
• One of the last things you say in the video: "New doors are opening in the world of technology, and we want to ride the wave..." Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

Alright, brutal honest feedback... here we go...

First, the things that I agree with @Schneider21 on... well basically everything but I just want to go over some highlights:

• The naming scheme is very confusing. So there is Virtual Reality: Step into the photo - The Grid of Gaia, Step Inside the Photo - Virtual Reality - Grid of Gaia, there is the Stamp-A-Spot website, on that website there is "The Grid Of Gaia - Virtual Reality" and there is your Vertical Flight Productions site. That is a lot of naming schemes to remember... Is the product called Grid of Gaia? Is Step Inside (into...) the photo a subtitle? What does the Stamp-A-Spot name have to do with anything thing? I am assuming the Vertical Flight Productions thing is completely separate from this project, but it is the first website to show up right under your Kickstarter bio. Why is it called Grid of Gaia in the first place?!? Very confusing.
• The voice over does sound like you have a cold or your allergies were bothering you. You might want to consider finding an alternative to the voice over work like a text overlay if that persists.
• A lot of the stretch goals should be there from the get go. Hiring an artist and support for mobile should automatically be there, especially hiring an artist. So even with the $10,000, the app is not going to look polished or have a visually appealing interface (I'll get to the interface stuff later). I am not saying you can't make the app visually functional, I am just worried about navigating the app with easy to follow directions and paths. And I would go for the mobile platforms because the people who are posting the pictures are probably already using the mobile device and ecosystem to do so.

Ok so now for my specific feedback:

• The interface is confusing... Before I go any further, I want to state that I am fully aware that you are not a graphic designer or an artist. But with that said I have next to no idea what is going on in terms of how I would be interacting with this app. The only thing that I have got fully is that I could look around in a photo with 360 degree of rotational freedom. Other than that I have no idea how you get to that photo, why there is a house that has a sign in it saying "The Boarding Room", or why there is a beam of binary code pulling you up into space. You mention that you can fly around the world, but you were on the ground for a portion of the video which had floating object all over the place, I can only assume that those are the ways into viewing the photos.
• The other portion of the interface problem is the art itself. Again, fully aware you are not an artist, but the fact that you may not get an artist to help you out with the 3D modeling or any graphic design is really troublesome. There are like 5 different fonts used throughout the video, the color scheme looks like it is straight out of the 90s but in a bad way, and the "Circuit World" texture is very distracting from the experience. Go easy on the amount of fonts and either cool it with the colors or fully embrace the 90s aesthetic but tastefully so.
• The Kickstarter itself also has some problems. The biggest one is that, judging based on your social media posts, you started the campaign cold. Even worse you haven't been posting on those accounts that often since it started. There aren't any pictures of what the app looks like on your Kickstarter page other than the mentions pic. Add some more pictures of what the game actually looks like. Make some cool headings for the different sections, and most importantly, EXPLAIN WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO WITH THE MONEY! I have seen many Kickstarter projects where they don't explain what the money is going to be used for. Is it for marketing? Development Kits? Music? Sound? No one wants to blindly give money to people without know where it is going, do a pie graph of how you are going to divide the work or some description.
• The last thing that I will mention is the timing of release. Q1? That is a fairly short turn around time. When the Kickstarter ends it will be late October, early November. You're going to release it between January and April? May at latest? It seems like a lot more work than 4 or 5 months worth, but I could be wrong. The other part about the timing of the release is that only early adopters of VR will be able to use this, on top of that people have to take 360 photos and video for this to be worth while. It may be too early for this to really work because people's friends might not have both things or the patience to take 360 video or photos.

Phew... That was a lot, sorry if it sounded a bit harsh but I say these things to try and help. I don't have any VR equipment and I really haven't experienced VR either. Hearing this pitch isn't getting me excited to tell my friends, "Hey guys! We all have to buy VR headsets for this!", but that isn't necessarily your target audience, even though it technically is if you want people to share their photos. At any rate, I hope these critiques help and best of luck on your project and Kickstarter.