How Game Developers Turn Kickstarter Failure Into Success 30
Nerval's Lobster writes When you ask random strangers on the Internet to give you money, there are no guarantees. That's true in almost any scenario, including when video game developers use Kickstarter to crowdfund the creation of a game. While 3,900 or so games have been funded on Kickstarter, more than 7,200 game projects failed to hit their goal. Within those two numbers are some people who fall into both categories: developers who failed to get funding on their first try, but re-launched campaigns and hit their goals. Jon Brodkin spoke with a handful of those indie game developers who succeeded on their second try; many of them used the momentum (and fans) from the first attempt to get a head start on funding the second, and one even adjusted his entire plan based on community feedback. But succeeding the second time also depended on quite a bit of luck.
Most of the failures never would've made it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the failed gaming kickstarters never would've made it to production anyway. Retsupurae did an excellent series of these titled "Kickstarter Nonstarters", which showcased a bunch of kickstarters that failed to make funding. They included:
- A horrible 3D version of the hentai game Monster Girl Quest (the fact that the subtitle is "Lose and you get raped! should tell you everything you need to know, though it does have a pretty interesting plot).. that is also sanitized of porn. The guy who was proposing it made a video (creepily enough) with his wife and 6 year old son in it.
- A "remake" of Chrono Trigger, made by a guy claiming to be a former Square-Enix employee. Apart from the obvious problem of this guy not owning the rights to Chrono Trigger, there was also the fact that he clearly hadn't worked for Squaresoft in the 1990s because the entire thing was made in RPG Maker.
- A city-builder game made by a guy who had zero credentials and no clear programming expertise. The only thing he had to show off at the time his kickstarter went up were a couple of amateur-quality models he made in Blender.
There are hundreds of these that go up. Even if they made funding, most of them would be slapped down immediately by a C&D letter, and I wouldn't doubt if a large percentage of those failed kickstarters are ones like this.