Kickstarter's Problem: You Have To Make the Game Before You Ask For Money 215
An anonymous reader writes with this piece about Digital Knights, the studio behind the Kickstarter campaign project Sienna Storm, which was cancelled this week after the team raised only 10% of their $180,000 target, despite a compelling concept (a card based espionage game) and a reputable team including the writer of the original Deus Ex, Sheldon Pacotti.
The team is now seeking alternative funding before reaching out to publishers, but in an interview given this week, Knights CEO Sergei Filipov highlights what he sees as a recent and growing problem with crowdfunding games: an expectation to see a working prototype. "It seems at least 50 or 60 percent of the game needs to be completed before one launches a campaign on Kickstarter," he says. It's a chicken and egg cycle some indie developers will struggle to break out of, and shows just how far we've come since Tim Schafer's Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter burst the doors open two years ago.
Kickstarter's Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
You get nothing, and are owed nothing, from the people you give money to.
Re:Kickstarter's Problem (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. From the KS TOS:
And from the FAQ:
Re:Kickstarter's Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
What kickstarter says and their actions are two different things. I'm having an issue where a company (a somwhat large board game company using kickstarter for preorderes) has not delivered the promised rewards or a refund. I reached out to kickstarter for clarification on these specific terms. After some back and forth where kickstarter kept dodging my questions they finally stated
Kickstarter Support (Kickstarter)
Aug 20 10:37
Alexander,
Thanks for writing in. Unfortunately I'm unable to comment further on our terms, as it is a standalone documentation of our policies.
Regards,
Alfie
I don't even know what that means. Short of it, kickstarter doesn't actually follow through with their terms and are unwilling to clarify any part of them.
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If Kickstarter ignores enough of these kinds of complaints, no one will have to file any lawsuits...because backers will simply stop trusting Kickstarter and they'll be out of business. That will solve every problem except how the former Kickstarter staff are supposed to pay their mortgages this month.
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The whole reason for an FAQ is so you don't have to answer the same question every 5 minutes. I found the answer in 15 seconds with a google search.
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I understand your frustration. But the TOS says you are entitled to a full refund from the creator, and the FAQ states that they are legally obligated to provide it to you. I hope that helps. KS is uninvolved because they have no business with the creator after the campaign ends. At that point, it's all on the creator to deliver. The FAQ suggests that you look carefully at the people behind the campaign before you decide if it's an acceptable risk; even though in the worst-case scenario you are still entitl
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"legally obligated to provide it to you", but isn't that an agreement between you and KS or between KS and fundseeker. There is no "contract" between fundseeker and you. at least that's what i get or don't get.
I am signing on to KS based on their provision that I am able to get refunded, other wise i wouldn't... right I could always just fund the fundseeker without going through KS ( or throw my money out the window as it were)
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You COULD fund the fundseeker without going through KS, but it would be hard to do and incredibly inconvenient for both of you. The contract is this: you exchanged money for goods and services, and is no different than any other purchase you make; a store can't make you pay for something and then go put the item back on the shelf; there is an obligation to deliver. The brokerage introduces an interesting but not novel complexity: KS gets a fee for hosting the exchange, but the money goes to the vendor still
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Its the same reason that when you go to a shopping mall, even though presence in the mall lends an air of "respectability" to the stores within the mall, even if you bought and then used a mall-wide gift card, the property management company isn't under any responsibility to make sure that an individual store ships you your purchases.
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However, both of those agreements explicitly spell out that the person promising to produce owes the investor. You agreed to it, they agreed to it. Both agreements are in agreement that they owe you. What more do you need from kickstarter? You know who owes you, and who is liable to pay you, they agreed to it just like you did. Kickstarter did their part in making sure you both agreed to it.
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If refund isn't defined in kickstarter's ToS to be full monetary, then if you received anything back then you received a refund.
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Bullshit.
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Yes, unfortunately the term refund only contains "full money" as an option so any sort of payment to you (which need not be monetary) would constitute refund unless the terms by which you agreed to provide payment specifically defined refund as full money returned. Also note that if the terms requiring a refund were between KS and the project I'm not sure if you would have standing for getting your refund. You wouldn't have been party to that contract.
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They might not be able to comment further, but if you put forth your request through legal representation -- maybe a paralegal -- their legal department may be more encouraged to respond in detail.
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That's why I reached out to them for clarification and they responded with "Thanks for writing in. Unfortunately I'm unable to comment further on our terms, as it is a standalone documentation of our policies." It's pretty clear they want you the backer to think that refund means full monetary refund when you glance over the TOS but when push comes to shove ehhhhh we'll just let that be whatever the creator wants it to be.
Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way, but I don't think it's realistic to expect a full refund. Presumably they go through KS to get money to use in the development of the product, so it should be expected that some of that money is used. If the company has to sit on those funds in case the project is abandoned, then funding this way is no use whatsoever.
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I think it is realistic when they forgot a stack of backers and sent the rest of product to retail.
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BTW, I'd like to know what board game company this is. That was a douche move, and I'd like to name and shame. "Sorry, I found a better way to make money of this" is not a frikkin' excuse.
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ok, then Kickstarter's problem is that it doesn't strongly enforce these terms.
If some of the founder projects who basically hopped off with the cash were brought before court and made to explain where all the money was in a fraud case, then we'd probably have a lot more people ready to trust KS. As it is, I don't think anyone has been fully refunded for projects that failed. Maybe KS is expecting the backers to go legal themselves, but I see it as KSs responsibility - they do the leg work (and take the fee
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If I was KS, and I was assuming legal liability for all campaigns I hosted, I'd damn well ask for copyright, trademark, and patent assignments from all campaigns, too. But that's not how it works, currently. KS is a broker for a business transaction between you and the party that established the campaign.
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Yeah yeah, that takes care of the obligatory reminder that funding something on kickstarter isn't the same as buying it at a store..
Maybe some people don't get that, but I for one back projects knowing full well that it's a gamble, and I've been pretty lucky.
Bummer (Score:2)
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That seems like a bummer. I guess to many people feel they are getting ripped off to much to be willing to take a chance.
Too out of three isn't bad.
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There is a very small proportion of ideas for which crowdfunding is a good thing. These are ideas that are really great but have not been able to attract funding because investors (mistakenly) didn't see their potential.
Ideas like that only comprise 1%, at most, of all kickstarter projects. The vast majority are either incredibly dumb or the creators have not made the effort to find funding and just went straight to kickstarter.
As for OP, though, it doesn't matter to me whether 50% or 100% or 0% of the proj
Actually a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
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A lot of the industry wouldn't exist if people didn't take risks. A lot of ideas can be pretty expensive and out of reach for a single person to make possible, even to demo or make a mockup. This risk aversion in t
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So you believe risk should only be on the consumer side? Why aren't the developers risking anything by putting their time in and at least demonstrating some ability to deliver?
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From Google, the definition of "investment" is:
"the action or process of investing money for profit or material result."
With Kickstarter you invest money for a material result (the rewards). Seems like an investment to me.
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Oxford Dictionaries doesn't know what American English is.
The Uk/World version says: "The action or process of investing money for profit:"
Merriam-Webster says:
"the outlay of money usually for income or profit : capital outlay"
Wiktionary get's to the heart of the matter in it's second definition.
"(finance) A placement of capital in expectation of deriving income or profit from its use."
And Dictionary.com probably gives the best explanation:
"the investing of money or capital in order to gain profitable retu
Re:Actually a good thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if you want Kickstarter to be your go-no go decision maker then you can't wait so long you're already pot committed, as they'd say at the poker table. If you're half finished and your Kickstarter fails, what do you do? Throw away all that work and start over on something else? Try to salvage it and publish something, even if it has lackluster appeal? Not to mention then you must go it alone, if you already know you can finish it alone do you really need Kickstarter? My impression is that Kickstarter works best when your "selling points" aren't your product but your reputation and history. I donated fairly big to the Musopen project because there was quite a bit of history to show that yes, they're serious about creating free music but lacked the funds to do it. I'd be very weary of people with just photoshop and powerpoint skills.
Re:Actually a good thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Where it can fill in the gaps is when you have a product (say a game, since that's what I'm usually most interested in) and are nearing production and suddenly you need:
a) Hosting services for downloadables.
b) Production services if you plan to make hard copies of the game, merchandise to go with it, etc.
c) Possibly most important: Visibility.
It can also help if you're a good designer but perhaps a crappy artist. You can build your game with clip art and cube models or whatever and then try to get the funds to hire a proper artist to flesh the game out as you're nearing completion.
There's plenty of points during a game's development cycle where a sudden (comparatively) large influx of cash can push it past a milestone that the developer wouldn't have been able to manage on their own (or would have taken them significantly longer to do so.)
Not to mention KS's for silly things like a nifty T-Shirt design or whatever where the idea actually is pretty much 100% of the project -- its not hard to get silkscreening done if you've got a picture and a few hundred/thousand dollars.
As for what the devs do if the KS fails.. depends on the dev. If they're mostly business people they may cut their losses and try something new. If they're creating a labor of love they'll probably try and push through it on their own. In both cases they may try to find other sources of income if they really believe in their idea and think that KS is just stupid for not trusting them. Everyone's reaction to a failed KS will be different I'm sure.
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you need to use tags like br / and p & /p
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All projects involve risk. Nobody owes you success just because you put work into an idea. Kickstarter has become worse than that - it's a begging corner for people who don't even want to put in the sweat equity to show that they have the basis of a viable product or service. If you're not ready to find ways to put in the time and energy (and if that means taking on a second job to do your pet project's initial funding, well, that's life) why should anyone else take any risk.
Second, if you get it half
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Apparently even though he was promising the impossible (including something crazy like 3000% back on your contribution) yet KS did not take down the project.
That is what bothers me here, they allow all sorts of projects run that have no prototype or work done on them, but they kick a few randomly for no apparent reason.
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A debatable thing. Here's why:
Say some dude has a game idea. It's a fairly complex space-based strategy MMO. The dude starts working on a design plan, because he's good at that. He lays in the design foundation of the game: all items, all ships, all celestials, game mechanics, skill tree, interactions, timers, formulas, everything design-related. He even builds a database and generates the "universe" in which the game takes place. That's a few hundred work hours right there.
But the dude has no development s
Re:Actually a good thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are ways out of this. The first is to find one or more partners who have the necessary skills to develop the prototype with him, in return for equity. Not willing to give up equity? Then too bad? Can't convince devs that your idea is not that great/unique/compelling (because we've ALL heard variants of this "my idea is SO great - all you have to do is code it and we'll be rich" bullsh*t)? Again, too bad.
The real "way out of this" is to realize that, since he doesn't have the necessary skills, he either has to acquire them or give up. Not willing to take the years necessary to acquire them? Like the old saying goes, "The will to succeed isn't as important as the will to plan to succeed." Not having a plan that takes the obvious potential obstacles such as the ones you cited into account is a pretty good indicator that you're not the one to invest in. After all, ultimately, people invest in people, not products. The product won't complete itself. You can't hold an incomplete product accountable. You hold the people behind it accountable.
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What would be the alternative? is there a way out of this?
But the dude has no development skills
Well there you go. Do something about that and just try to prototype it. Not the whole complex strategy MMO thing, of course, just plain old offline strategy with bare minimum of spacecraft/planets/mechanics/skills to be semi-unique/interesting/challenging, saving the rest of the content for the full game / expansion / sequel.
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Horrible example. If the person has no experience in game development or even software development then he doesn't deserve to get funded. He would have no clue as to what is a reasonable expectation of the cost and time that would be needed to go into the game's development. I would be entirely wary of his ability to also properly vet the developers he hopes to hire to create such a game.
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Too much a coward to post with a s/n.
Yeah, so? (Score:5, Insightful)
You *should* have a working prototype before you expect to get money.
Yes, it's difficult to build a prototype when you don't have funds. Welcome to the Real World, asshole. It's not easy to produce/market a new product. Kickstarter has made it *easier*, but it's not a magic bullet. It briefly *was* a magic bullet before people got smart and realized that giving money away for something that has almost no chance of ever being a real product was silly.
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And honestly, complaints like this one show a poor knowledge of how long software actually takes to develop. A vertical slice of a game good enough to base a trailer on is much much closer to 10 or 20% than 50% or 60% of the total effort.
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Okay sure, but the summary addressed video games, so it's topical.
And as to your second statement, I agree, that's exactly what I was trying to say.
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No, it's not a "card game". It's a video game that uses a card game inside the video game for certain things.
Re:Yeah, so? (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with you. And given that they're making a card game all they need for a working prototype is a printer. I don't see what the problem is. In fact, there are plenty of websites you can go to and have professional cards/boards, etc made...
One example I've used: https://www.thegamecrafter.com... [thegamecrafter.com]
If you don't have any sort of demo, you haven't put in enough work to get my money.
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It's not a card game. It's a video game with a card game inside it.
Calling this a "card game" would mean that Final Fantasi IX was a card game because of Tetra Master.
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I'm starting to see why they didn't meet their kickstarter goals... lol
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It's a bit of a mix of both, but primarily a video game with trading card like features. (It sounded pretty lame to me)
http://www.redbull.com/en/game... [redbull.com].
Yeah, so? (Score:2)
Indeed. Kickstarter is not the initial funding to turn idea into prototype - that is always personal or corporative debt and always will be.
Kickstarter replaces the VCs as the means by which the prototype can become a marketable and distributable product.
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"asshole"?
People with great ideas but lacking funding are now assholes? Wow.
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and optimism, don't forget that. Pessimists would just give up instead of trying to find funding.
How about you risk your own money instead... (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps people are wise to the Kickstarter business model of "heads we win and take all the profit when we sell out, tails you lose and cover our losses if it flops" and are unwilling to provide handouts for these people to use to run off and make their (in some cases, additional) fortune.
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This is pretty much why I've never supported a KS campaign. I give you money to make you rich, and I get is the product that made you rich. I get no stake in your company or product. For games it's, "oh look, I got a shiny space ship that will never get destroyed completely." Yay... It's great and all, if the product never really takes off, but I get no proportional reward for when it's a wild success. A success which I contributed to.
The exception to this are the KS campaigns that are purely for say a non-
Double Fine is a bad example. (Score:5, Informative)
With Double Fine, there's a lot of questions about how the money was spent - many of which have gone unanswered. For instance, Tim Schaefer initially said he would need $400,000 to make a full game. Granted, he arrived at that number using numbers from games he made in the early 90s, but then it spiralled out of control into a $3.3 million project. The numbers he HAS released show that he spent almost the entire initial amount - $400,000 - on "backer rewards".
The $3.3 million barely covered the first half of the game, and that was on top of another few million in crowdfunding that Schaefer did shortly before release date. They still don't have a released date set for the second half, other than "We're working on it and it might be out by the end of the year."
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Well after the influx of money the scope of the project spiraled out of control. I think the Double Fine situation is indicative of how having your budget increased 10 fold doesn't negate the need for a quality project manager.
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People always forget that Double Fine kickstarted a Documentary about game development. The main pitch was to see everything behind the scenes about game dev that you never hear about otherwise. They didn't even have an idea for what the game was really going to be when they started, just that it would be an old school adventure. They explicitly said it may fail horribly or be a shitty game, but at least you'll be able to see how it happened.
So sure, "$400k" might have been enough to fund the documentary an
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The question is do you treat Kickstarter as just a pre-pre-pre-order for a game you want, or do you treat it as investing in a product? For Double Fine I think many of those backers were indeed investing in the game: they wanted this sort of game to make a revival. Any investor in software knows the risks of costs spiraling out of control.
You shoudn't need a prototype, that's not what Kickstarter is about. So what if no one wanted Sienna Storm, that doesn't point to a problem with Kickstarter but just sa
Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous did fine (Score:2)
Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous did fine on KickStarter back when they were still using it. Eventually both stopped using KickStarter and started using their own methods.
Back in the early kickstarter days Star Citizen had, at most, some in game footage of a dogfight and some 3D renderings of a couple of ships. I don't know what Elite Dangerous had.
They did not have 50% of their game done... heck SC STILL doesn't have 50% done.
Then again, both heads were fairly well-known in the gaming circles for their p
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Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous did fine on KickStarter back when they were still using it. Eventually both stopped using KickStarter and started using their own methods.
Well kickstarter campaigns are limited length, so it's natural that after a successful campaign a group would switch to their own methods of taking preorders.
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Star Citizen had a couple things going for it:
1) It was meeting a need felt by anyone that loved Wing Commander: Privateer.
2) They didn't give monthly or weekly updates, but DAILY updates. Backers know exactly what the state of it is.
3) The Chris Roberts name was big, but not as big as #1 and #2.
Unsung Story: Tales of the Guardians is the exact opposite. It was also a speculative KS campaign with both #1 and #3 going for it; it promised to be the second coming of Final Fantasy: Tactics. Completed Funding in
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Update early, update often. Backers will forgive delays if they know what's going on.
This. So much this. Especially if you're on a fairly large project with a large number of people involved. Putting out a weekly status update shouldn't be that much of a burden. I'll give a bit of extra leeway if its a small project with only 1-2 people who have to deal with the updates, emails, etc in addition to doing the actual work but even then at least once a month to say "hi, we're still alive!" is so very important.
Also, post updates to the damned KS page. I have no time nor desire to go searching through 85 different individual project sites because they don't like the KS posting software or they can't be bothered cross-posting or whatever. KS might suck as a portal but its the ONLY one that provides me quick access to all of the projects I'm backing.
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Star Citizen started elsewhere then did a Kickstarter, they had a nice very CGI trailer for the game.
IIRC Elite basically had some concept art and not too much else
Try Kickstarting A Novel (Score:3)
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So pretty much like any other publisher then? Unless you're already a known name you generally need to provide at least a first draft for them to read over before they'll give you the time of day never mind a year's salary (and almost certainly not all up front if they do!)
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I'm not sure I see the point in paying any significant amount of money for eBook cover art, but to each his own. The average cover art for an eBook is going to be shown Icon Size on an eReader menu. No?
I agree editing is key and being able to pay editors frees an author to do other things. But wouldn't high editor fees equate to the equivalent of the "unpolished/lousy prototype" type project that this thread is saying shouldn't go through KS anyway?
My KS pet peeve is seeing typographic errors in proj
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Sell the novel to a publisher, you're lucky to get 25% of the sales. That's the downside of being a traditional author.
Publish the novel as an ebook, you can keep 70% of the sales. That's the upside of being an indie author.
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Taking into account, of course, the fact that you have to do all of your own marketing. You have to make your novel stand out among zillions of other indie ebooks, all of which have the same low barrier to entry.
Just having a major publisher's name on it is pretty substantial marketing. Even more so if they go to the expense to print out a physical book, which is a large sunk cost up front. That tells readers that somebody believes in the book, to the tune of a few tens of thousands of dollars. And that pub
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Unless you're picked as the new Anointed One by Big Puiblisher, you also have to do your own marketing; the only 'marketing' they'll give most writers is putting your book on a book store shelf, if you're lucky enough to get a print run and they don't go straight to ebooks. And few people look for a publisher's logo on a book before they buy it.
Some genres have almost entirely gone self-published these days. Romance used to be one of the few genres where publishers actually had a valuable brand, but today m
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The way I see it... if you can get a publisher interested, you probably should, at least until you have a large fan base of your own. It's the easiest way to that fan base. Building it up yourself is difficult. Not impossible, and possibly no harder than getting a publisher to take an interest in you. But if I had a publisher on the hook, I'd keep it.
I'll let the fans of my short story ebooks -- and the bank -- know that I'm doing it wrong. ;)
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Good for you, man. I'm glad to see it happening. I don't like having publishers as arbiters of public taste any more than you do. I just think it's important to recognize that the vast majority of self-published ebooks aren't very successful, and it's not just the bad ones.
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Ya well (Score:4, Insightful)
If you aren't a known developer, people want to see some evidence that you have the ability to make good on your plans. Game development isn't simple, and many people are not prepared for what they are going to have to do to bring a successful game to market.
So Doublefine or inXile can get a good bit of funding with nothing but a design doc for a game because people have faith they'll be able to deliver since they are experienced game devs. New crews are going to have to show something to get people to trust them.
Particularly in light of past KS failures in that regard. I've backed a number of games on KS and two of them I knew were fairly high risk: They were being done by an individual who hadn't done a game before, and there wasn't any sort of demo up front, just some basic concepts. I decided to take a risk on it, but fully understood that failure was likely.
Sure enough, both are floundering/failing. One hasn't had any updates in months, the other does update periodically but it is still extremely rudimentary, despite being way past the planned launch date, and it is pretty clear the dev just doesn't have a good idea how to proceed from here.
On the flip side, the games by established studios have either delivered or are well on track (Shadowrun Returns was brilliant, Wasteland 2 ships next Friday, Pillars of Eternity is in beta, etc). Likewise the indy titles that had a demo and were a good bit along with development have delivered, like FTL.
So no surprise many people aren't willing to take the risk. They want a better chance of return so they stick with established devs or with things that have some proof.
Crowdfunding has jumped the shark (Score:4, Interesting)
Kickstarter barely cares what you try to fund anymore, and the other sites are even worse. It doesn't matter if your project clearly violates copyright laws -- or even the laws of physics -- you can post any project you want. This makes the entire crowdfunding ecosystem look incredibly shady.
That said, this has led to some pretty funny stuff over at Kickfailure. [kickfailure.com]
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Curse you. You have just destroyed my afternoon free time :)
Obviously, and that's a good thing. (Score:2)
Why should people hand over money because you have a "great idea". A track record or a prototype seems a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for - and of course the person paying they money is the one who determines what qualifies as "track record".
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Amazing, when you are competing with thousands of other projects for people's money you actually have to let people know you exist before you'll get any of that money.
Who would have thunk it!
Well, not surprising ... (Score:2)
Because if you didn't have to show you'd done anything, people would just say "give me a zillion dollars to make something awesome", and then simply not make anything.
It's not charity, it's an investment. And if you have nothing to invest in, you get no money.
Is the expectation people should just get free money from Kick Starter because they can craft a couple of good paragraphs? Because, if so, I know where I'd be heading.
Having a prototype at least (in theory) demonstrates you've actually got something
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No, it is not an investment. No kickstarter project is offering any sort of return on your contribution.
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OK, fair enough ... it's not charity though, and it's not an investment.
It's, what ... a no-strings attached one time gift with no expectation of return other than you'd like to see the idea come to fruition?
It has to be something more than "give me some free money". Yes, you may not make an ROI on it. But there has to be some controls on it.
Because other wise it would become a cesspool of people with stupid ideas they'll never implement to see if some idiot will throw money their way.
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That's fine; I just have a peeve about the misuse of the word invest to rationalize putting money into things that are clearly not actual investments.
Cry me a river. (Score:2)
With Kickstarter, you're expected to produce what you get funded to do. Usually, what the backers get in return is a copy of the game, and little else. If the game sucks or doesn't sell, the backers are shit out of luck and the founders get a lot of bad press. That's about it.
Before Kickstarter, you had to seek out investors or venture capitalists. You know what they want in return? A monetary share of the profits with a value somewhat greater than their investment. You drop the ball and you end up in
Or it could be... (Score:2)
Maybe a card-based espionage game isn't as compelling as you think it is. Just sayin'.
An excellent prototype is all that is needed... (Score:3)
I don't see this as a problem (Score:2)
Part of kickstarter should be that you've already taken a substantive risk on your own. Making a game demo with, for example, limited level/playtime is a good mark that you are capable of producing the rest.
Since there is no recourse once the funding takes place for funders, this doesn't seem unreasonable.
It's not Kickstarter's problem.. (Score:2)
It's a GOOD problem for people to have to actually put some work into a project on their end before coming to the community and asking for money.
Like has been said better by others above, ideas are a dime a dozen. People who have put forth a great deal of up-front effort on their own to get their idea to at least a presentable stage, even if it presently looks like crap, should have a better time getting funded. It shows that they are serious, at least basically capable, and can actually produce /something/
Wah. (Score:2)
"We couldn't find somebody with deep pockets that we could sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hconvince that we had a 'great idea', so we tried crowd-funding, and we couldn't find a 1000 idiots we could sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hconvince to part with their money. Life is so unfair."
Look, buddy, the bottom line is "great ideas" are a dime a dozen. As a professional programmer who made a career out of slinging code, I've lost track of the number of "great ideas" people had that they wanted me to develop. They all claimed we'd be
Never again (Score:2)
thank you gift is product (Score:3)
most kickstarters that I've seen get big money, like the iPod dock [kickstarter.com] & blender/boombox/cooler [kickstarter.com]were recursive projects...the 'thank you' gift is the product that the company you're supporting is trying to make
it's silly...but i'm glad kickstarter and the like exist...they should just adapt their message & rules just a bit to make this weird moebius strip of commerce and charity unnecessary
as far as gaming, if people want to donate money to an idea, screenshot, and prayer then I think they should be able to...
fyi, that ipod dock kickstarter i linked to above is an insane roller coaster & exhibit A of how kickstarter can be good and bad...the guy ended up barely breaking even after a new ipod design came out right during his production [zdnet.com] and he had to do several recalls...it was a disaster...
IMHO the Elevation Dock is an example of...something...i'm not hating but it's obvious most of these kickstarter millionaires have no clue what they are doing & spend more time on pictures and the video than product design at times...but that's my jealousy. If people want to throw money away for questionable 'innovations' then that's their choice...the system exists, not all kickstarter products will be crap
It's their problem, not Kickstarter's (Score:2)
Yes, nobody will fund their game.
One of their examples shows a motorcycle chase. But the user's option is to select straight ahead or turn right and follow. They're trying to do a canned cut-scene adventure. Those went out with Space Ace.
Not unreasonable. (Score:2)
It's not unreasonable to see a prototype, or some work in the direction of the idea you're proposing. It's not unreasonable for people to expect some form of tangible proof that you can do what you claim you can do. This idea that it should be acceptable to place all of the risk on to the customer is ridiculous.
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I guess many people don't recognise anyone's name except for a couple of really high-profile guys like Braben, Molineux or Carmack.
http://rtf.utexas.edu/faculty/... [utexas.edu]
He's not a complete duffer though, seems he has done stuff. That seems fair enough to me, even though I would like to see credit given for the rest of the team behind those games.
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When scientists write grant proposals, they are actually showing they've already done what they are asking for funds to do.
Not quite (though maybe that's more common now than a decade ago). If the work is already done, you can be sure it's being prepared for publication, since published work is even more valuable than grant money (because it gets you more, possibly bigger grants, plus tenure). What usually goes into a typical grant proposal are the obvious next steps following up on recently published work (used to illustrate why awarding the grant money is a good risk). Work that hasn't been done yet, but is likely to be su
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And even if they manage to complete the game, there is still the possibility the payer won't like the final product. A preview/prototype helps you decide whether you will like the game or not.