Kickstarter: call me paranoid

I'll take your word for it I doubt the CoD kiddies will be that easy to please nowadays though

I spoke too soon, seems kickstarter is everywhere now

TAKEDOWN plans a single player campaign, co-op play, and competitive multiplayer. First Person view is planned on PC, with PS3 going Third Person. Xbox 360 view is to be determined based on feedback from the 360 community

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and the site with all info

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/355932838/crowdsourced-hardcore-tactical-shooter?ref=live

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more of a Rainbow 6 type game but with console development planned it won't feature "Doom 1 graphics)

PC will have a DRM free version available.

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Ooh! They speak pc gamer's language

Well, best of luck to them.

Still don't see how you can compete with that kind of money in a genre that seems pretty much driven by flash and eyecandy (but then again I really do not know that crowd or care about those games, barring Stalker ofcourse).

Who knows, maybe there are enough hardcore FPS players out there caring about the gameplay and being able to put up with "something less" than cutting edge tech on their game…

Anyways, I would like to see them succeed. Would make me more hopeful about other more interesting projects being able to succeed with this funding model (If mr Setyanov and co. i.e were willing to take the plunge there is an 150 euros with their names on them in my pocket )

$200,000 is a lot of money, but doesn't seem enough to fully fund the game.

We have investors (not publishers, but VC folks) who are interested but unsure if there is truly a market for real tac shooters. This seed money will be enough to fund startup and show the investors the market is real.

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I don't think the goal for any of these Kickstarter projects is necessarily to bypass publishers altogether.

I imagine the ideal scenario for them would be to raise enough funds to complete their game and then walk it over to a publisher who can finance a proper marketing campaign (obviously with better deal terms than if the publisher had financed development).

As an alternative they might stick with a low profile marketing approach and digital downloads, of course.

Oh yeah, i could totally envision a "kickstarter crash" when the rubber hits the road, and a bunch of these people cannot deliver on the projects and just say fuck it, thanks for the cash but we couldnt make it work. Got a few more bucks?

xSamhainx said:

Oh yeah, i could totally envision a "kickstarter crash" when the rubber hits the road, and a bunch of these people cannot deliver on the projects and just say fuck it, thanks for the cash but we couldnt make it work. Got a few more bucks?

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I agree. Right now it's shiny and new and a lot of people are blinded by nostalgia and promises of bringing back what once was. But some of these projects are destined to under-deliver or maybe they'll deliver but then people will realize that playing one of these games is just not the same as it was back then. Soberness will kick in and a lot of people are going to jump off the bandwagon faster than they jumped on it.

It will be interesting to see how much of this Kickstarter enthusiasm for old school games will still be around in two or three years. I wouldn't give it too much hope.
Aside from an utter fraud scenario that would be the single worst case naturally, it is almost guaranteed that one of the prominent projects is going to go down the gutter, i.e. they'll run out of cash or release an unfinished game that needs a lot of patching and then they won't deliver patches because "hey you paid only for development and not for post-release support".
And once that happens the whole thing runs a serious risk of implosion, especially if people panic and demand their money back on games that are still in development.

There will be blood and tears. The question is not if but only when... and then to what extent it's going to damage ongoing or future developments.
I'd advise people to be only cautiously optimistic - at best. The chances of a rude awakening are extremely high.

Though there will obviously be some disappointment I hardly think it will be a violent as that. I don't really think that most of the known names would find it beneficial to jeopardize their career by doing an outright fraud, and the less known, as you can see, have usually trouble getting even a few thousand, let alone millions. And with so many other projects going on one fraud will be considered an exception and people are likely to have already accepted the risk of that happening.

So I'd say no, one of the prominent projects going down the gutter wont have any serious effect when there are so many going on. People expecting more from these games than they can possibly deliver is a far more likely scenario I think.

Maybe. But that will be poor thinking.

Why stopping at a one experiment shot when the 'scam' can be run a life time?

Taking a look at the publishers funded industry:

Underdelivering games: normalcy It is a buy to see model. No difference here.

Pre ordering games months before release: normalcy (as a side note, it is only just a matter of times before catching up with the train, the 12 month to 18 months delay will be absorbed as soon as the first game is out, after that, you'll get to play games that you funded one or two years ago on a regular basis)

Etc...

The only substantial difference is that the donation might not give a copy of the game with, if you donate $100 plus $60 purchase price, it makes a difference to discover that you buy a half finished game.

So why take the money and put it on a Bahamas account when you can fund your job for at least one decade?

Take the money, release your underdelivering project, make a profit, launch a new project.

I dont expect the number of outright frauds to be large. It was better to follow the path of the 'regular' industry. I expect a much superior numbers of projects that will go to release.

Save the issue of donation vs buying an actual copy (an issue that can be easily solved), there is no fundamental differences between that and the rest of the industry.

ChienAboyeur said:

So why take the money and put it on a Bahamas account when you can fund your job for at least one decade?

Take the money, release your underdelivering project, make a profit, launch a new project.

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Why so gloomy? When you ask someone to build you a new kitchen and give them a 50% deposit, do you automatically assume this is a business model for the lazy and near-fraudulent, because they take money upfront and who knows what they'll deliver?

This is exactly the kind of baseless fear-mongering that keeps people like EA, Activision and Ubisoft in their cushy monopoly of delivering un-innovative, DRM riddled, stale, and action-centric crapware (with tens of millions spent on hype-ups). And making their devs work 85 hour weeks, if not shutting them down altogether just to rip profitable IPs out.

I think what you're not taking into account is that on top of kickstarter funding, the devs will also get sales funding. I mean, you can still buy the game post-release if you didn't donate. This is surely the best way to get to the Bahamas - ask the nerds to give you financing, make a good game free of Bobby and Johnny's malign and incompetent orders, sell a million, use the funding to make an even bigger sequel etc. Then sell it all to Bobby or Johnny and go to the Bahamas with a villa, yacht and Aston Martin.

Your argument is almost like saying any business owner who finances his enterprise by bank loan, will probably deliberately do a poor job and siphon off the loan funds so that when the business inevitably folds, he's already feathered his nest. Yes, some people do that, but that doesn't stop banks lending to businesses.

My argument? You repeated the gross of it. To bring it to higher levels.

My question was why put the money right away after raising funds for one game when you can run the operations several times over and over again.

I compared this situation with the publishers funded industry to see if there would be a major difference.

Releasing underdelivering games is the norm. The big difference with a kitchen is that one expects strict functionalities from the kitchen set and when they are not delivered, the carpenter has to come and provide them.

Games are free from these constraints. They are vague promises over this or that. And even when the game clearly does not deliver, it is not redone until delivering. Gamers keep their copy and the developpers move to the next project.

That is the norm of the video game industry.

So why should this sort of developpers funded by donations have to release games that will deliver when the rest of the industry is free of such constraints?

Do you suggest that people will actually keep backing developers that don't deliver?
Why on earth would they do that?

OK maybe people are buying games that don't deliver, but they don't do so without being pressured by publishers that can afford to 'buy' enough hype for their product. And kickstarter is obviously profitable only for people that cannot afford to generate such buzz by themselves.

I love the idea of kickstarters, it allows people to publish games for a niche audience.

I also understand why publishers don't or are unwilling to take the chance on niche games, basically they wouldn't be publishers for long if they took losses.

They're trying to steal our moneys with promises!!!! Those bastards!!!!!

Brian Fargo is probably already looking at homes in the caymans!

holeraw said:

Do you suggest that people will actually keep backing developers that don't deliver?
Why on earth would they do that?

OK maybe people are buying games that don't deliver, but they don't do so without being pressured by publishers that can afford to 'buy' enough hype for their product. And kickstarter is obviously profitable only for people that cannot afford to generate such buzz by themselves.

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Underdelivering.

"Call me paranoid" is an interesting name for a new adventure game, probably horror-themed ?

I don't think kickstarter is best for indies. More like it's best for the old style development houses, those with 5-15 people. Indies are usually more in the 1-3 people, and obviously AAA are more like 50+. The 'middle' companies (between indie and AAA) pretty much died out (or got bought out by the giants and then abandoned) in the last 10 years or so. I think Kickstarter is great for that range.

Indeed. With the knowledge acquired up to now, with some solid technologies going around, the risks of not releasing a project that includes those technologies is virtually nill.

A product will be released, will probably underdeliver as the rest of the industry does but a product will be released.

wolfing said:

The 'middle' companies (between indie and AAA) pretty much died out

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Do you have any hard data on this? Or do you just base it off statements made by AAA developers and a small handful of your favorite developers getting bought and/or going out of business?

Because I'm looking through Steam's "New Releases" and they mostly look like games that are neither "AAA" nor "Indie":

Specifically, I count 6 indie games, 6 casual games, 8 "middle" games and zero AAA games. Now, you might not like any of these games but the fact is that they do exist and apparently constitute the bulk of new releases.

Just because Troika went defunct, Bioware got bought by EA and "AAA" developers like Epic Games claim that mid-sized developers are dead doesn't make it so.

I think this model has amazing potential, personally. Unfortunately, I also think that human nature in a world where money talks is a very bad cocktail. So, I have no doubt we'll find some way to make this system less than it should be.

But, any model that can remove the publisher from the equation is of interest to me.

I also see it as a first step on a road that can only lead to something better, regardless of the twists and turns along the way.

Personally, I think a lot of people have enough money to "risk" this for a few games. I don't see much harm coming from it.

But it will all depend on the ability to deliver - and if there's one thing GOOD about the publisher model, it's that the developers are under pressure to actually finish something.

I'm intimitately familiar with what it's like to NOT be under pressure when developing something, and it really takes a certain amount of willpower or great desire to pull through. I don't see the majority of developers having this trait in abundance - so I fear that too many projects will turn to vaporware and people will soon tire of it.

That's why I'm especially concerned with the explosion happening right now, and more so given the recession. People are in a place right now where they'll do more than they usually would to put food on the table, and as such I can't be too positive about Kickstarter becoming what one might hope.

Ultimately, I guess we just need to wait and see.

What about the pressure of finishing the game before the money runs out and you have to fire everyone?