Kickstarter Games: Where They Are Now 97
We keep hearing success stories of indie video game projects that found funding through Kickstarter. Some have simply met their goals, while others have far exceeded the money they original asked for. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has provided updates on the progress of a huge list of funded projects. Many projects turned out to have unrealistic release dates. For example, Double Fine Adventure missed its August timeframe because it's getting a new engine. The new Leisure Suit Larry missed its October plans and hasn't been terribly open about a new one. However, most projects are humming along nicely, and some, like FTL: Faster Than Light have been completed and well received. The article exhorts all developers working on these games to make communication a priority, since the users are the ones who put up the cash, and deserve to know what's going on.
Re:Not to disparage anyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
InXile? Last thing they did was Choplifter HD, just this year. Before that, Hunted: Demon's Forge in 2011.
As for Chris Roberts, the last major game he did was Freelancer which was late, but ultimately delivered. I'd expect Star Citizen to be similar.
It hasn't been all that long. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's remember that while games have been funded on Kickstarter for a long time, the current stream of them didn't really start until these past ten months; and only some as far back as that. We're not going to see the results of a lot of these projects until 2013. Even ones that are scheduled to be done by the end of 2012. If EA misses dates with hundred million dollar games, you can expect one or two guy projects with fifty grand or less to slip, too.
I've backed about 350 crowd-funded projects, over the last couple of years. I track them in a giant spreadsheet with as much info on each as I can, including current status (fulfilled, partially fulfilled, overdue, etc). Several have completed. A few have gone beyond the delivery date, but have maintained regular updates and contact with their backers, and most of the rest are still in-progress.
There's not really enough data to figure it out, right now. The real story will start to come together in another year. Having pledged about $7,000 USD and payed about $2,200 USD, I'm not really worried. Many projects will succeed. A few will fail. Most of those will fail, despite the best of intentions and efforts (if it happens in big titles, it'll happen for little indie projects). Maybe one or two will fail due to nefarious reasons. You can nay-say all you want, but the truth is that none of us really know, for sure (which is part of the reason why I back so many projects and track them on a spread-sheet -- I want to actually know the realities of game-related crowd-funding over the long term; not a bunch of anecdotal stuff).
Also, I sent to RockPaperShotgun weeks ago a very lengthy email that contained access to my spreadsheet as well as a long story of my philosophy of backing projects (I think of it as the poor-man's attempt to be a patron-of-the-arts) and a list of things I've learned that crowd-funding project leaders could take a lesson from, over the backing and observation of hundreds of projects. A lot of that seems like it made its way into that article (or that they've made very similar observations over their backing history).
Re:Not to disparage anyone... (Score:3, Insightful)
Given its popularity, I'm surprised there hasn't been an AC2. The Civ games keep rolling on, and a number of the changes they made in the more recent editions could stand to be added to, or at least adapted into, a new Alpha Centauri game (I'm thinking of things like allies pooling research progress and hexagonal tiles and global happiness in addition to local happiness, here) while a number of the things I loved about AC (customizable units, psi combat, xenofungus starting as a problematic tile-wasting nuisance and become one of the best tile improvements in the course of a long game, etc.) have never brought to the Civ games.
I think that, after the lessons learned (both good and bad) about Civ5 and its expansion, it's high time to make a new AC game that incorporates the best lessons from AC (and its expansion) and the last few Civ releases. Of course, given the popularity of Civ, it doesn't seem likely that this would need to be a kickstarter game, but I'd fund it if I could.
Just... PLEASE don't make it Steam exclusive, OK? Distributing on there is fine. Using is as a method for joining games is cool, as long as I can also direct connect. But requiring a moderately resource-hungry and mildly buggy DRM client be running when I want to play the game is not cool, and prohibiting any possibility of gifting or re-selling the game after installing it once (even if I uninstall it) is much less so.
Re:Banner Saga (Score:4, Insightful)
But isn't that breaking the promise to the initial support group? Why not say, great! we can finish and add bonus content, later, or a sequel, whatever.
Maybe I am just bitter because I once worked at a start-up in the dot-bomb era when we had a product "ready to go" but got so much extra venture capital money we had to Eff it up to "raise the barriers to entry, for competitors"... and give the "hockey stick" growth-chart some extra "gravitas"...
Long story, short; "If you play with something long enough, you'll break it..."