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.
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"Your browser apparently is not modern enough to support Canvas. If you are blocking scripts, you need to stop that to stand a chance of playing the game. Take a look at a screenshot of what you are missing out on."
Classy.
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Um, it seems to have stalled my browser. Latest Firefox.
Keep working!
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Your game is crap - I followed the instructions but having "hold down the left mouse button for a description" and "hold down the left mouse button to interact" means that no matter what I do, I always get only a description.
You Idiot, did you even try plaing your own game?
Banner Saga (Score:5, Interesting)
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..."
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Not to disparage anyone... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not trying to bad mouth any particular game developer here,
But this is why you don't want to put a whole lot of money into companies or brands you don't know.
Wasteland 2 sounds great - and it might be, oh how I hope it might be. But when was the last time those guys made anything? I'm willing to gamble a bit, but you have to be prepared to lose.
Obsidian and Project Eternity, well they've been around a while, they've made some good games (that made a lot of money, not necessarily for the studio, but that made a lot of money) so I figure I can risk a bit more on them.
Chris Roberts (Wing commander Fame) and his Star Citizen... again, like wasteland, I can hope, but I figure the odds of losing my money are high on this one too.
And those are just the big ones. People asking for 10 grand, or 50 grand or even less than half a million, I don't have a lot of confidence in their ability to pull it off. 7 or 8 people for a year costs a million bucks and you need a couple of years to make a decent game. You can have some fun games that are faster to make than that, but odds are if you want content it takes time and money, and if you're not asking for that kind of cash your goals are unrealistic at best.
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Why not somewhere in between? There's a lot of space between "7 or 8 people for a year costs a million bucks" and "me and my college buds just need enough money for Ramen and Internet access". I think there are a lot of possibilities for indie game success within this huge gap.
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How many $50 donations are you going to kick into social media crowd-sourcing if you only get one "$50 deal" and one (9 combined) "$450... not even a write-off"...?
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It's the psychological value. I've played X-Com EU for a very long time, and over the years I kept looking for the next bext thing, an improved version, but everything that came after was severely lacking. If someone would announce an X-Com EU clone or newer version that would truly follow the pattern of the first one, then I would gladly put some money for it. Oh, and let's not get started, Master of Orion, Alpha Centauri ... the list goes on.
I expect that's what other people feel about their favorite game
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Alpha Centauri ...>
Without a doubt the game I most want to see re-envisioned on modern hardware.
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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 nui
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If I recall correctly, EA holds the rights to the Alpha Centauri franchise and is just sitting on it, so Firaxis can't make another one.
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I want to see Spaceward Ho! [deltatao.com] Updated. I see it's on the iTunes store. Some of these turn based stuff would make excellent tablet games.
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Most people don't understand how Kickstarter works.
Kickstarter is NOT a pre-ordering method. It's not a way to get early access and perks to a game. It's to fund an idea. If that idea doesn't pan out, that doesn't matter. You funded something you believed in.
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I understand fully.
But I still don't want to throw away money on a game that won't ever materialize.
Re:Not to disparage anyone... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think of it this way:
I can chip in a few bucks for the chance to have a game that I'm interested in developed down the road, accepting all the risks that come with game development.
Or, I can say I'm only going to pay for finished games that I can definitely get with no risk (except for the risk of buggy stuff that's never fixed or shitty console to PC ports that I regret buying) and, because nobody bother taking a risk on the smaller guy trying something that a niche audience is interested in, it never was able to be made and therefore, it'll never be on any shelf for me to buy. But I can go ahead and spend $65 on the next Bro-Face-Shooter-Dude-Of-Duty-Honor-Medals 14.
I would not advise someone drops their last $15 supporting a crowd-funded project, but if you have some "disposable" income and you care enough to see something created that has an audience, but not a big enough audience to appeal to a publisher who only wants games that'll turn $100 million into half a billion and doesn't give as hit about turning a million into five million, then go for it. It's better than playing the lottery and even if it doesn't ultimately result in a finished product, you often get something out of it.
For example, Project GODUS -- Peter Molyneux is engaging with the community on a nearly daily basis by sharing in brief design discussion sessions and then taking the resulting community commentary into consideration for the next discussion. And others are doing documentaries or constant blogging for their projects. And some offer interesting opportunities to meet people you might not otherwise get to do. Or get collectible things you might not otherwise have a chance to get. Stuff a finished product published by EA on a Walmart shelf won't ever allow you.
The ultimate future of crowd-funding is questionable. We just don't know, yet. But it definitely has potential and while it has a reasonable appeal to some of us, there are also very rational reasons for not wanting to participate. And that's the great thing about the whole crowd-funding thing, potentially: All it should need is enough dedicated fans of a person/product/franchise/genre/whatever to make it a reality. It doesn't have to be a million people. Even if the majority of people hate it, there only need to be enough people who care for it to see it succeed. Direct value-for-value. Directly addressing an audience. A niche. The goal of a smart businessman. There are plenty of things that get produced/funded (both in crowd-funding and in the regular publishing model) that I don't understand or think are total shit. And that's just fine. There is an audience and market for them and they are able to fund it. Good for them and the people who want to play them!
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The thing is, Kickstarter is all about bypassing the system. But, facts is facts, and the system exists because the system is successful.
Even if you don't want to sell your soul to EA or whoever, the process for developing a game is really no different than any other product.
1. Get investors
Sometimes that investor is yourself. Sometimes it's your family, or someone else who would support your dream fairly unconditionally. You use that initial investment to build a prototype. In development, it might be a pr
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But I still don't want to throw away money on a game that won't ever materialize.
Neither do most of us (it is a gamble, no matter how hard we try)... but I tend to stick to the established guys (like Wasteland 2) so I have at least a better than 50/50 shot of getting good stuff.
I also think this is great... :)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cheapassgames/unexploded-cow-from-cheapass-games [kickstarter.com]
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Kickstarter is NOT a pre-ordering method. It's not a way to get early access and perks to a game. It's to fund an idea. If that idea doesn't pan out, that doesn't matter. You funded something you believed in.
Except that in a great many cases it is priced to look exactly like a pre-ordering method. The main "perk" is typically the game itself, and they're typically putting that in the 50-100% retail range, and that's as a digital download with no middlemen taking their cut. Many of these projects will end up getting more from the early backers than from each retail sale.
And that leaves us with a rather unappealing risk/reward ratio. A game should a decent order of magnitude more expensive than "a game... mayb
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.
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InXile: Right, they've made games. But nothing on the scale of Wasteland 2. Could be good. Could be a trainwreck. Demon's Forge has a meta critic of about 60.
Chris roberts is harder to say, Freelancer might have been his game, but I'm not sure how much of the same studio. One person does not a game make. They're using Unreal, which helps tremendously, but they're still hard to know the future on.
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It's already been stated that the new project is more of a starlancer and less of a freelancer.
The two are unfortunately very much mutually exclusive due to freelancer's (one of the) biggest asset being the mouse-controlled flight and heavy optimizations for it which made the game incredibly accessible and fun to play for anyone with first person shooter experience. Starlancer and this new project are apparently doing joystick-controlled flight as the priority and will optimize for that. And that completely
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Not really. Starlancer is about space flight and dogfighting, Freelancer is about trade. They may have mutually exclusive control schemes, but the fun in Freelancer isn't about the control scheme. You could remake Freelancer with a 6 DOF control scheme and it would still be fun. Probably more fun, IMO.
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One of the most important concepts of "fun" is to not have to struggle against the controls. They should be your best ally, not your worst enemy.
If you use the standard mouse+keyboard, starlancer's control scheme is your worst enemy by far.
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Why would you use a standard mouse and keyboard when the joystick is so much better suited for flight games? Using a mouse and keyboard for a space sim is as bad an idea as using a gamepad for an FPS.
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Because you already know how to use mouse efficiently, and want to transition this skill, rather than learning from scratch. There's no requirement that the application of that skill remain uber-efficient - so long as it basically works, it's good enough.
Besides, some of us have learned our space sim skills with the mouse. I remember playing through TIE Fighter several times armed with mouse alone, and it was great fun. I don't think I'd even want to replay it with a joystick now.
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Same reason I would use it for FPS. Full free flow pixel accurate control scheme is far more natural for a human being then zero-line centric "apply force to change" one such as a joystick.
Essentially starlancer was a flight sim with airplane-style control scheme. Freelancer was FPS control model on flight sim. Difference is that former accepts that you cannot control the craft in the similar way to controlling the body. Instead you can only control the forces applied to the direction changes of the aircraf
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Chris roberts is harder to say, Freelancer might have been his game, but I'm not sure how much of the same studio. One person does not a game make. They're using Unreal, which helps tremendously, but they're still hard to know the future on.
They're using the CryEngine3 (as stated on their FAQ [robertsspa...stries.com]). The free version of the engine is a huge PITA due to the fairly obvious bugs and complete lack of documentation, but I guess they'll get some very special treatment by CryTek.
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There's another reason: Star Citizen is different from most Kickstarter projects mentioned here, though. Funding isn't done completely by the crowd, but in this case it's a mixture of traditional VC + crowd-funding. Put (very) simply, Roberts got a deal with investors stating "if I raise (x) money via crowd-funding, you invest (y) money in this game." Lest not forget that he crowd-funded both via Kickstarter and his own web site. You could go so
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A lot of kickstarter (and indiegogo) projects already have funding or development costs raised through other sources, using the kickstarter as publicity as well as extra funds raising. In many cases the games in question are being made anyway, the kickstarter is just security or feature expansion.
That said, some of the low-funding-goals kickstarters are done by 'ramen and coke' developers who want so badly to make their games they are willing to live on breadcrumbs and hope while coding. These are people
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Indeed, Kickstarter is a great way to go to a bank and say 'we got 5 million dollars from people who will essentially buy the game without it being done yet, give us 5 million more and we'll be able to pay you back'.
The guys willing to live on ramen noodles and work in an apartment I appreciate, but that's not a way to get a game done and done well generally.
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For most of the games to which I've pledged, it's been to encourage the development of Linux games. I'm trying to do my small part to stimulate that market, even if it's a bit of a long shot.
For Defense Grid Containment, I figured it was likely to succeed, I love the game, and one of their tiers (not achieved) was Linux support. So it was a no-brainer.
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Star Citizen (Score:4, Informative)
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I feel like we should be on that list (Score:5, Informative)
Granted, it was the last day of the month and we stayed up 36 hours straight doing it, but we did it.
Maybe it's time for a little "how to manage slipped release dates" guide. I think it would look like this:
1) Communicate
2) Communicate
3) Communicate
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Man, this is an amazing project. Congratulations. I will be buying it later tonight.
Still confused about what people want (Score:1)
As an observer, and a sometime backer, I'm still very confused about what people want. Some projects with no gameplay shown get lots of backing (Godus). While others with similar information are slow to takeoff (Thorvalla). I like to see gameplay, but plenty of RPG projects are getting funded with a minimal video pitch and no gameplay. I really want to see gameplay! It sucks but an indie has got to put in the three months or more to get some animated screens up there or else I don't think some games
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The lower backing tiers may be like pre-buying, but the higher ones are not investments nor pre-commands. It's donating money for a cause you believe in.
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The problem is that, as soon as you get into return on investment territory, it would become a legally regulated activity, with all that entails. Meaning that you wouldn't be able to just login using your social network account and plunk down $20 for some project that sounds interesting.
FTL: Faster Than Light (Score:5, Informative)
FTL is an incredibly fun game that they mention shipped pretty close to their timeline. All software timelines are somewhat fungible, and game producer provided timelines even more so. But they got pretty close. And the shipping product is *great* and was on steam sale last weekend. Rounds don't take a stupidly long time, the game's pretty replayable, etc.
Good times.
FTL (Score:3)
FTL & Xenonauts (the 1st alpha at least) are great fun. The only KS alpha that I've tried that I'm not confident about is The Dead Linger.
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:It hasn't been all that long. (Score:5, Informative)
Sure. Here's a google docs spreadsheet of it that I keep fairly up-to-date (maybe not to-the-minute, but I update it maybe weekly or more).
I might write an article some day about it or something, but other than that, I have no particular "claim" to the work, so people are welcome to use it however it may be of interest to them.
http://goo.gl/AiGW2 [goo.gl]
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That is super cool (you releasing your data).
I see you have made a lot of $1-5 pledges, are you pledging just because you are interested in a project and pledging gives you notifications about updates or do you believe that micro-pledging can actually work (get a hundred thousand people pledging $1 instead of 5000 pledging $20)? As I see it you have two categories (correct if I'm wrong) - you have those that you "chip in" in a spirit of support and those you actually want the end-result (pledge is high enou
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In general, I approach crowd-funding as a mix of "damn, I really want this to happen and I really want this thing that is the final product" and a poor man's being a patron-of-the-arts. Not every project catches my personal attention, but they're often still worth kicking a couple bucks in just to show support and encourage the creator of the thing to continue creating. Sure, I'm not some wealthy benefactor, but a buck or five is a buck or five.
I also use a buck as a sort of bookmark. Most crowd-funding pla
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Ring Runner (Score:2)
I found Ring Runner on Kick Starter and those guys have a stable and playable Demo out as well as trying to get it onto Steam with greenlight. For a game made by a couple of brothers they did a fantastic job so far I think. If you like top down fast action space shooters then you should at least give the demo a try and see what you think! It's like Asteroids on Serious Roids!
I have seen 'experienced' programmers do far worse that these unknown guys.
http://ringrunner.net/ [ringrunner.net]
I thought FTL bombed? (Score:2)
Gaygirlie may well be right...
No it did quite well (Score:4, Informative)
Game was released and works fine, and has done decent Steam sales after the release. It's had pretty good reviews by the press too.
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Game was released and works fine, and has done decent Steam sales after the release. It's had pretty good reviews by the press too.
At one point it was featured with a huge banner on the main Steam store page, it'd better sell well with that kind of advertising :)
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It has a Metacritic rating of 84. All the reviews I read were quite good. And every PC game has a number of reports of "it won't work".
It was me however that impregnated their dog and murdered their daughter.
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I had zero issues, technical or otherwise, with FTL.
Still dealing with game killing bugs with Mechwarrior Online...
Carmageddon still in production (Score:2)
They're still working on Carmageddon Reincarnation: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stainlessgames/carmageddon-reincarnation [kickstarter.com]
They sent emails with youtube video a few weeks ago with some game play and map information
Wasteland 2 (Score:1)
Wasteland 2 was never meant to be as huge of a project as it has become, and they have been incredibly good about keeping everyone informed and up to date on whats going on. At least once a week on Facebook they are linking to new artwork, music, footage or just letting us know that they are still here and working hard on making the best game possible. I don't think too many of us will be disappointed, they know what the community expects from this release, and they are just as excited as we are to finally
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a $15 pledge gets a lot more expensive if you have to buy a new GPU in order to play.
Yup, which was why I didn't back Star Citizen. After years of "does it run Crysis" as a /. running gag, I was slightly worried about something built using CryEngine but cranking out an unfeasibly high number of polygons and giving massive freedom in camera views in a multi-polygon cockpit with various semi-transparent panels. Then I checked out the "Oculus Rift" that he said it was going to support. Binocular HD with perspective correction for curved views and stuff.
Ummm... that sounds pretty hefty compu
Guilt alleviation & non-game gaming Kickstarte (Score:3)
So so far, no regrets on the game front.
Gaming in general, though, is different. I'll never give a damn cent to anything 2 Player Productions does again because we're STILL WAITING FOR THAT MINECRAFT DOCUMENTARY. Nor the guys from Extra Credits because seriously, guys? All I have to show for it is a sycophantic youtube video, a fuckton of Internet Drama over money that never saw a resolution from either side, and someone trying to sell me life insurance.
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Man, you must be dead inside... :)
Re:Kickstarter is a joke. (Score:5, Interesting)
Your comment is troll-ish and I probably shouldn't bother to reply, but Psychonauts is one of the best games I've ever played. It's so good I replay it every 2-3 years. For some reason, some gems never get the success they deserve, same with Beyond Good and Evil. Anyway if you've never played Psychonauts, give it a try, and prepare to be awed at its sheer inventiveness. Giant world cubes. Godzilla. Lake monsters (called Linda). Milkmen secret agents. Brain removing dentists. Stratetic war games against Napoleon. Mexican cage matches. Corrida. Meat circuses...
Hold on, I think I'll go reinstall it...
Where to promote a Kickstarter project? (Score:1)
Okay, I'm not going to cite the project, because I don't want to look like an astroturfer, but where can one go to promote a Kickstarter project of more-than-niche interest?
I'm a minor backer of an embedded hardware Kickstarter project that doesn't appear to be likely to make its funding goal. I really think that it's a great project and I submitted a Slashdot article with little expectation that it would get picked up, and it didn't. The developer posted about his Kickstarter project to the core chipset
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The idea that gets shouted out is the one that will make it.
From what we know you might be calling for funding for a fish controlled Bill O'Reilly stimulator. You filthy pervert.
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And now plug it wherever you go. Burn some Karma on it.
There also are other nerdling hangouts.
It's only astroturfing when you are a payed shill. I rave about the wonderful idea that is the Ouya wherever I go and I haven't even backed them(but I have preordered).
Also, the Ouya is a quite clever idea. Stock components and an already alive ecosystem.
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I really hope that the more successful projects don't succumb to an overwhelming need to meet the "estimated delivery date" of their crowd-funded project statements. As you mention, Double Fine Adventure was looking for $400k and had estimated it'd take a certain amount of time to make it. They wound up with more than $3.5m. Considerably bigger budget, which means they can do more, which will take more time.
Same with other games that have looked for a few hundred grand or a million -- and gotten several mil
Except that August was never Double Fine's release (Score:2)
Double Fine listed "October 2012" as their release, not August. Granted they've passed that now, but as a commenter before me said: communication is key. Since I see they're honest-to-god working on it, I'm not mad.
Double Fine Adventure was my first video game kickstarter - so I'm sort of using it as a measuring stick before I help fund other games. So far I don't feel burned - and I'm still excited for when it eventually does come out, so I think they're doing something right. It should be possible for thi