"The structure of crowdfunding encourages overpromising and under-delivering"

That's not the structure of crowdfunding - it's the nature of game development.

The problem is less about over-promising and more about people thinking a promise is actually possible given the nature of game development.

The only way to keep your promises with certainty is to develop Tic-Tac-Toe.

But they still have to sell the idea in a pitch. What's the alternative?

Using words like "we hope" instead of "we intend to"? Would that work better?
 
Its more like nature of Peter Molyneux. Most arent like that, the big name games anyway.
 
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Well I think part of the problem as well is that the funding raised by crowdfunding is an order of magnitude or 2 less than what is actually required to deliver on the goods. Adding Linux support to a PC game I'm sure is usually the kind of thing that probably takes 1 man year of effort (in development, testing, documentation, support) to make happen even if the framework supports it but is an stretch goal of like $10K which is several weeks of payment to a typical developer.

While you and I might agree that $1MM or £500K is a lot of money relative to what we make in a year it is not very much to make a game. And I do know that if you go outside of the US/UK then you can get more value for your money but that has other hidden costs. On top of that developers are nearly universally incapable of properly estimating the effort required so they usually need more time which means more money at the tail end.

If you can keep that in perspective then games like Shadowrun is that much more impressive in what they accomplished. I have no experience with Godus but Fable was sufficient warning to me to stay away from it.
 
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@figment: No Kickstarter is like another so we'd have to look at it on a case by case basis but naturally it is more than obvious in very many cases that the asking sum is often times far from the complete budget. And I'm sure that most devs know it, too, unless they are completely retarded.

The point of the lower-than-full-budget targets in many cases is just to take that money to investors (= usually the bank), show them that there is a viable interest in your product and to obtain further funding.

By the way, I don't think there is much of an excuse for developers "incapable of properly estimating the effort" (and cost) of a project. I have a formal salesman level IT education and one of the first things we learned in school was to always be extremely conservative when calculating costs. Like super-conservative in the purest better-safe-than-sorry kind of way. The rule of thumb was to always assume a worst case scenario.
OK so maybe this is a quirky specialty of our risk-averse German way of doing things but if so then maybe non-German game developers should eat more Schnitzel and Sauerkraut or something like that… :biggrin:
 
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I wont disagree that using kickstarter as marketing instead of actual funding isn't a bad strategy, I'm not sure that its the common case though. In some cases, they are using their own personal saving for it and expecting that actual sales will pay it back when they cross the finish line.

It might actually be the case with Obsidian or Harebrained or inXile but I have my doubts for Double Bear and some of the smaller kickstarters that they have access to the big publisher funds.

Regarding estimates, I've always added a 2-4x multiplier to my own and my developers first estimates but there is a lot of psychology involved. If I let my developers know that I padded the schedule then it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy regardless.

Anyway users do not want to hear 3 years before delivery even though that is likely realistic which is sort of the point of the overpromise premise of the article so tell them it will only take 18 months and then manage expections at a later date.
 
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For xth time, no KS project I've backed disappointed me so far.
You know my drill. I'm not backing phonegames, DLC, MMOs, pay2win and nonbalanced (gambling, luck) stuff.

Didn't back Godus, I don't remember why any more. Figment said "I have no experience with Godus but Fable was sufficient warning to me to stay away from it.", maybe that was the reason, although I doubt it. But I'll add not only Godus, I have no interest in upcoming Fable DX12 game either.

Why would anyone who didn't back Godus, care it didn't deliver? And why would anyone because of it, stop backing projects on Kickstarter?
How about stopping backing just certain projects.
 
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I'll continue backing (backed Underworld Ascension just a few days ago after all), but I doubt I'll pledge $100-$150 as I did for multiple games when this whole fad started. My wistful dreams have long-since been tempered by reality.

I have yet to play a kickstarter that's really knocked my experience out of the park. Ironically, the one that has come closest was probably the Defense Grid expansion project - and that had probably as much to do with the quality of the game (and resulting sequel) as it did the fact that I was pleasantly surprised after only pledging the minimum $15.
 
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By the way, I don't think there is much of an excuse for developers "incapable of properly estimating the effort" (and cost) of a project. I have a formal salesman level IT education and one of the first things we learned in school was to always be extremely conservative when calculating costs. Like super-conservative in the purest better-safe-than-sorry kind of way. The rule of thumb was to always assume a worst case scenario.
OK so maybe this is a quirky specialty of our risk-averse German way of doing things but if so then maybe non-German game developers should eat more Schnitzel and Sauerkraut or something like that…
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Always assuming a worst-case scenario would mean asking for a lot more funds or giving up on a vision.

That's what you're suggesting they all do, really?

So many of these pitches rely on limited budgets - and if there's any kind of innovation involved, there's no worst case scenario to assume, because you don't KNOW the worst case scenario, except that you can't actually do what you want to do - and if you think that's a wise assumption to make just before starting development, you're not what I would call smart.

I mean, it's cool that you learned something in school - but you're completely ignoring reality if you think the unpredictable nature of game development can be safeguarded against, completely, by being conservative.

If you're too conservative, you'll never make anything worth playing.

I agree there are many irresponsible people out there - and there are people without the ability to estimate anything with any kind of precision. But to pretend that by assuming worst case scenarios - all interesting projects would be funded and delivered as promised is ludicrously out of touch with reality.
 
If you back a kickstarter game by Peter Molyneux and you are not expecting it to be a failure, well, you probably deserve losing the money. The man has not been successful in being honest or delivering in a very long time.
 
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GothicGothicness said:
If you back a kickstarter game by Peter Molyneux and you are not expecting it to be a failure, well, you probably deserve losing the money. The man has not been successful in being honest or delivering in a very long time.
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Which means people who're not familiar with his history actually deserve to lose money?

What a harsh position.
 
I actually think Kickstarter (games and otherwise) provides much better transparency to the process than private funding just by its nature.

With *any* project of any sort of scope (and I am thinking about the hundreds of projects I have worked on with the 5 companies I have worked for over the last 25 years), there is an ebb and flow of vision and possibilities and realities and priorities over time. That is just life and reality. Very often no one outside of the company has any idea of anything but the realized output ... but here it is different.
 
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DArtagnan said:
Which means people who're not familiar with his history actually deserve to lose money?

What a harsh position.
Click to expand...

Well, I guess if you are to fund a kickstarter the first thing you'll do is check the history of the guy who you are giving your money to ?
 
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GothicGothicness said:
Well, I guess if you are to fund a kickstarter the first thing you'll do is check the history of the guy who you are giving your money to ?
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You mean by checking a site like metacritic and seeing that many of his past games are considered classics - and most (if not all) have received above average scores?

That sounds like a great idea.
 
GothicGothicness said:
Well, I guess if you are to fund a kickstarter the first thing you'll do is check the history of the guy who you are giving your money to ?
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I agree. Although kickstarter backers are not investors in the traditional sense, they are still making an investment - still making a bet. If you do that without finding out some information, you will probably make some bad choices.

I guess this is where the negativity about kickstarter stems from. People go in with a customer's mentality, rather than an investor's. A platform that allows anyone to float anything is surely going to produce more bad bets than good ones, and it's up to us to be informed and discriminating.
 
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DArtagnan said:
You mean by checking a site like metacritic and seeing that many of his past games are considered classics - and most (if not all) have received above average scores?

That sounds like a great idea.
Click to expand...

Or maybe by googling his name and see the result ?
 
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txa1265 said:
I actually think Kickstarter (games and otherwise) provides much better transparency to the process than private funding just by its nature.

With *any* project of any sort of scope (and I am thinking about the hundreds of projects I have worked on with the 5 companies I have worked for over the last 25 years), there is an ebb and flow of vision and possibilities and realities and priorities over time. That is just life and reality. Very often no one outside of the company has any idea of anything but the realized output … but here it is different.
Click to expand...

I agree there's the transparency potential, but it's not a guarentee. You can twist facts every which way - and it's not hard for a con-artist to make development issues into something that people shouldn't worry about.

Certainly, it's not ideal - but I still think it's a million times better than getting stuck with the suit perception of what the mainstream wants over and over again.

The fact that so many core fans - even around here - have so many negative things to say about this model, just goes to show how people excel at working against their own interests - and at being outright stupid, frankly.
 
GothicGothicness said:
Or maybe by googling his name and see the result ?
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Oh, you mean there's some kind of ultimate truth about Molyneux you'll find by googling his name?

Whatever, GG. You think people backing Molyneux deserve to lose money, and that's your choice.
 
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