Kickstarter budgets & Shadowrun Returns

[Roq]

The Shadowrun release is particularly interesting, because it gives some paradoxical insights into making games on Kickstarter budgets. What most surprised me about the release is just how little they managed to get out of the budget of $2m. John Ree's Liege Kickstarter has just finished and he made just over $80k and is very pleased with that. But, although that is a tiny fraction of SRR's total, it was actually 5x what he was asking for. So will Liege and many other smaller kickstarters, if they ever see the light of day, have 20x fewer features (whatever that may mean) than SRR?

We haven't seen much quality from Kickstarter yet, but other games such as Operations Conquistador (whether you like it or not, it's not really my cup of tea as is) and some promising betas (Eisenwald, Xenonauts etc.), suggest that it's possible to do a lot more with much less money than projects such as Shadowrun achieve. There is a curious stepping in the games industry whereby as companies get bigger they need larger and larger budgets, but they are able to achieve exponentially less with them.

 

[DArtagnan]

KS teams should most definitely stay as small as possible - as paychecks tend to be EXTREMELY expensive.

It's the ideal model for small teams - because you're not obligated to provide endless "experience" content, like cut scenes and voice acting.

So, I'm still wondering what 30 people were doing on a game like Shadowrun Returns - because there's nothing to indicate it would have required that amount of people.

 

[Nameless one]

The Shadowrun release is particularly interesting, because it gives some paradoxical insights into making games on Kickstarter budgets. What most surprised me about the release is just how little they managed to get out of the budget of $2m. John Ree's Liege Kickstarter has just finished and he made just over $80k and is very pleased with that. But, although that is a tiny fraction of SRR's total it was actually 5x what he was asking for. So will Liege and many other smaller kickstarters, if they ever see the light of day, have 20x fewer features (whatever that may mean) than SRR?

We haven't seen much quality from Kickstarter yet, but other games such as Operations Conquistador (whether you like it or not, it's not really my cup of tea as is) and some promising betas (Eisenwald, Xenonauts etc.), suggest that it's possible to do a lot more with much less money than projects such as Shadowrun achieve. There is a curious stepping in the games industry whereby as companies get larger and larger budgets they are able to achieve exponentially less with them.

One of problems that Shdowrun returns had is that they had to give lot of money for licences it was around 600k IIRC.Second they don't sound like very skilled team since they couldn't get looting form corpses and save anywhere to work.Also they had only concept while most other KS have already started projects.
Overall I think shadowrun return isn't very well managed,team of 30 people with good budget(for this kind of game) made 10 hours game that lacks any complexity and even couldn't managed to implement systems they wanted(like those that I mentioned)

Also I would disagree that we haven't seen quality projects from KS, I think Expeditions conquistador is quality game, Giana sisters is at top of it's genre in both visuals and gameplay, FTL and Ringrunner are also very good little indie games.

 

[JDR13]

I think Shadowrun is a quality project. It's just not overly impressive.

I agree that it seems like 30 people is an excessive number for such a game. I stated that before in another thread where I compared it to Legend of Grimrock. LoG was made by four people in a similar time frame. Now that's impressive.

 

[Roq]

@Dart - Yes. I don't think anyone would have been over impressed if SRR was the product of a 2 man indie team (compare Underail). And I'll bet it wouldn't have got such good reviews, if that was the case; they'd have a got a slating for not including save/inventory etc. - but, perhaps I'm being over cynical here?

@Nameless - I said "much quality". I agree that there are a few good small scale releases, but few (EC is an exception) of the more ambitious projects with low budgets have been released and it's going to be interesting to see what happens with them.

Also I don't reckon they can have paid $600k for the licence up front. since their original goal was $400k. Expect they will paying for the licence a % of profits of the released game.

 

[DArtagnan]

I think Shadowrun is a quality project. It's just not overly impressive.

I agree that it seems like 30 people is an excessive number for such a game. I stated that before in another thread where I compared it to Legend of Grimrock. LoG was made by four people in a similar time frame. Now that's impressive.

Quality?

If by quality you mean pretty and/or functional - then I guess we can agree.

If by quality you're talking about a game that's (significantly) above average in terms of gameplay - then we most certainly don't agree.

But that's ok

 

[Gloo]

…I compared it to Legend of Grimrock. LoG was made by four people in a similar time frame. Now that's impressive.

Legend of Grimrock should serve as a standard meter for such indie projects, that's for sure a very good reference !

 

[DArtagnan]

@Dart - Yes. I don't think anyone would have been over impressed if SRR was the product of a 2 man indie team (compare Underail). And I'll bet it wouldn't have got such good reviews, if that was the case; they'd have a got a slating for not including save/inventory etc. - but, perhaps I'm being over cynical here?

Underrail is certainly one of the most impressive indies I've seen - given how it's by a single person (IIRC).

Since I'm making my own game - I have some idea of the level of complexity that goes into such a fully featured game.

Now THAT is an impressive game.

Apart from the visuals (and the OK story) - Shadowrun Returns is like a trivial toy in comparison.

 

[JDR13]

Quality?

If by quality you mean pretty and/or functional - then I guess we can agree.

If by quality you're talking about a game that's (significantly) above average in terms of gameplay - then we most certainly don't agree.

But that's ok

I thought it should seem obvious how I meant it.

It's quality for a $20 game. In other words, I find it acceptable.

I'd be pretty pissed off had I paid $50 for it.

 

[DArtagnan]

I thought it should seem obvious how I meant it.

Not at all, since you didn't give any details.

It's quality for a $20 game. In other words, I find it acceptable.

I'd be pretty pissed off had I paid $50 for it.

Oh, you're one of those people who thinks games get better the cheaper they are

Fair enough

Since I'm not, I think we might agree.

 

[JDR13]

Not sure how you came to that conclusion, but ok.

If you can understand what I'm saying by now then I won't bother trying to explain any further. It's possibly just a different understanding from where we're from.

 

[DArtagnan]

Not sure how you came to that conclusion, but ok.

If you can understand what I'm saying by now then I won't bother trying to explain any further.

I don't know if I understand what you're saying - but I don't think it's worth going into detail about. There are other people here, as we sometimes forget

I wouldn't have paid 1$ for it - if I had known what it was.

But I'm not sad I paid 15-20 Euro for it on Steam (I forget the number). Money isn't that big a deal - and I knew it was a risk.

I should have just pirated it, really.

 

[JDR13]

Money isn't an issue at all for me, but that doesn't stop me from having different expectations based on price.

I got something along the lines of what I would expect for a $20 game. Not completely terrible but certainly not impressive. Just average - for the price.

 

[DArtagnan]

So, your idea of quality is as a reflection of your expectations?

Does that mean that if you play a game you've never heard about - it's likely to get a higher rating, as you can hardly expect anything from it?

Is the price supposed to accurately reflect the entertainment value you're expecting?

So, Shadowrun Returns would have been of much higher quality as a free game?

 

[greywolf00]

I've mentioned some of this stuff in other threads but this is probably a better place for it.

They had slightly less than $1.2m to work with after deducting fees for Kickstarter, Amazon, physical rewards, and the Shadowrun license. They also still had to pay taxes, moved into a new office, and had to pay for power etc.

Yes other teams do more with less and I think this is why, the biggest expenses in business are wages and overhead. Going from 8 to 30 members (had 8 when they pitched) required a new office, and probably more equipment, while also chewing through the $1.2m much faster. I understand the math, 5x the funding = 5 times the staff, but 5x the staff =/= 5x faster or better development. Obviously, the work load expected when they pitched 400k was much less than when stretch goals and extra funding kicked in. I think their increased staff size ate into their budget faster than it improved the game. Had they kept a staff of maybe between 14-18, maybe the end product might have a bit more content & depth.

On a side note, does anyone remember how big inXile's team is? I want to say 20-24 plus a "half-team" for preproduction. I doubt they massively scaled their team to match the increased funding for either project.

 

[JDR13]

No, I still wouldn't have been impressed even if it were free, but that's beside the point. There are still going to be certain expectations based on price just like for any other consumer product.

 

[DArtagnan]

No, I still wouldn't have been impressed even if it were free, but that's beside the point. There are still going to be certain expectations based on price just like for any other consumer product.

I'm not talking about your expectations - but about the quality of the game.

But that's ok, as I said - it's hardly worth going into detail about here.

 

[JDR13]

I'm not talking about your expectations - but about the quality of the game.

But that's ok, as I said - it's hardly worth going into detail about here.

If you can't see the connection then I'm at a loss.

I agree though, it's not worth the effort at this point.

 

[Roq]

I've mentioned some of this stuff in other threads but this is probably a better place for it.

They had slightly less than $1.2m to work with after deducting fees for Kickstarter, Amazon, physical rewards, and the Shadowrun license. They also still had to pay taxes, moved into a new office, and had to pay for power etc.

Yes other teams do more with less and I think this is why, the biggest expenses in business are wages and overhead. Going from 8 to 30 members (had 8 when they pitched) required a new office, and probably more equipment, while also chewing through the $1.2m much faster. I understand the math, 5x the funding = 5 times the staff, but 5x the staff =/= 5x faster or better development. Obviously, the work load expected when they pitched 400k was much less than when stretch goals and extra funding kicked in. I think their increased staff size ate into their budget faster than it improved the game. Had they kept a staff of maybe between 14-18, maybe the end product might have a bit more content & depth.

On a side note, does anyone remember how big inXile's team is? I want to say 20-24 plus a "half-team" for preproduction. I doubt they massively scaled their team to match the increased funding for either project.

But something doesn't add up here - if they had got their original $400k they'd be net -200k at least after buying the licence.

There's an interesting parallel with Chris Taylor's project Wildman. CT thought he needed $10m to make a full scale RTS game (Kings & castles) and so concocted a make work project, Wildman, to try and keep Gas Powered Games afloat. On the other hand Planetary Annihilation (Uber) asked for $900k (the same budget as Wildman) to make a full scale RTS and ended up with over $2m. That's still just 1/5 of CT's projected budget...

 

[Maylander]

Teams tend to grow exponentially once you demand a certain level of production values. That's why some can get a lot out of a little - it's almost all programming with only one or two artists doing the graphics. Once you decide to get decent quality graphics and sounds, the scenario changes considerably,as it takes an artist quite some time to create a single, high quality model.

It's one of the reasons I first doubted Kickstarter. Creating full blown games with decent production values for $1M is very challenging. Luckily, the bigger projects (Torment, PE, etc) got 4x that amount so they might actually be able to pull it off.

We've already seen a few KS projects run out of money even though they had medium sized budgets, and we're going to see a lot more. I just hope none of the major ones crash or the whole trend will go down the drain pretty fast.