Jay G.

I think you're conflating fundraising with budgeting and general project management. If they reach or exceed their fundraising goal, that's a successful fundraiser. If they go over budget on the project, that's a result of poor planning or project management.

I agree that one shouldn't say that a Kickstarter project was successful overall until it actually delivers its rewards, but one can focus on just the fundraising aspect of it and determine whether that was successful based on whether or not it was funded.

Duran

But fundraising goals are artificial. They're whatever they choose them to be. If I set a goal of $10, and raise $150, but new what I was proposing would cost $500, am I a success by any measure?

There have been several kickstarters than have set artificially low fundraising targets in order to maximize fundraising stretch goals. Is that something that should be considered a "success?" See Sedition Wars for boardgaming, or the second attempt by Alpha Colony, which after they missed by a very small amount, came out and said it would have been a struggle at that funding level anyway.

Jay G.

You successfully raised the funds you set out to do, yes. Maybe you already spent $490 of you own money, and thus only needed $10 to finish up (a lot of games like FTL have requested money to help finished a mostly completed self-funded game). Or it could be something like Star Citizen, which was budgeted at $12 million, but was only asking for $2 million from crowdfunding sources, the remaining $10 million coming from angel investors.

Obviously, deliberately misleading backers upfront about the money needed is deceitful, but it's also rare and pretty self defeating. If you don't ask for enough money to make the game, you're not going to be able to make the game. I do think some project creators may be underestimating some costs and how long it make take to create a given project, but again that comes back to planning, budgeting, and overall managing the project, not the fundraising aspect.

I'm not familiar with the Sedition Wars kickstarter, but what about the original goal do you feel was "artificially low"? Did they admit that they wouldn't have been able to release the originally proposed game if they hadn't gotten the additional funding?

From what I can see, the stretch goals were for upgrading game materials (from say paper to plastic for certain items), allowing for alternate designs for certain pieces, and adding more pieces to existing game sets. All pretty standard upgrades that can be done when the ordering scale is increased. So it appears that they had a basic proposed game for the original goal amount, and enhancements if they exceeded it. Nothing underhanded on the surface.

Alpha Colony does seem to be a situation where they may have set the project goal too low in the hopes of reaching stretch goals. However, the postmortem note by the creator isn't clear if he's admitting that they wouldn't have been able to make the proposed basic game for the money they asked for, or if they wouldn't have been able to make a game the creator would've been happy with (since the creator wanted to make more than just the basic proposed game). I would argue that this case was what Andy Schatz was arguing against in the article about him opposing stretch goals; one should set the goal fro what you think you need to make what you feel would be the completed game; instead of hacking off bits to have a smaller goal and then hope you meet stretch goals, or adding unnecessary bits in the hoped of raising more money past your original goal.

It's a bit of a semantics issue, whether you can view a part of a project as successful before the project as a whole is finished. However, I think the article was focusing on just the specific fundraising section of developing a game, and how to succeed at that; it wasn't intended as a guide on how to run a successful game project from beginning to end. So the article is saying asking, assuming given a solid and honest budget and a clear funding target, what methods could help lead one to successfully raising that money?

Groucho

I think the panel was about setting up a Kickstarter that raises the money you set out to raise, which is appropriate. But I get the point others are making: don't break out the champagne until you have a final product on the shelves.

Duran

Agreed, but that circumstance isn't the activity I am referring to.

Understood, I just have real problems disassociating fundraising from the actual goal of the project. And I would think it would be a best practice for project creators to have the same difficulties. You could raise a ton of money by offering a project/stretch goal/whatever wildly out of sync with its cost, but that's not a success. If I start a kickstarter offering custom bars of 24kt gold at a pledge level of $10, I'm sure to rake in millions. Yay fundraising!

See http://www.wired.com/design/2012/06/...s-kickstarter/ (under "Pricing").

If it's not set at a level where the would creator is happy with it from the start, what's the point?

I understand your point. And believe me, I'm not anti-kickstarter; I've backed over 50 projects. My point is that the assumption in your last sentence is not a good one. How can we assume that, when all the members of this panel can't be sure they had a solid budget at this point? If that assumption is wrong, does it have any bearing on the "fundraising" portion? It has to, if you consider things like stretch goals (that add cost) as a fundraising tool. Unless you're dealing with an end result that has no variable costs, I don't think you can separate fundraising from budgeting/delivery.

Jay G.

If the custom bars of gold are only 2 pennyweights in mass, you can still make a profit.

However, you keep posting extreme examples, with the supposition that the kickstarter creator is knowingly underfunding a project upfront. Nobody would consider those kickstarters a success, since it involves fraud, even if the kickstarter is successfully funded. However, the projects in question could be successfully funded, even if they are fradulent or just eventual failures. All the article was talking about was getting successful funding.

From the article:
"CMON projects start with a small funding goal that supporters can blow through quickly, which builds momentum. Sedition Wars, for instance, posted a goal of only $20,000, even though production costs were easily 10 times that number."

So the minimum Kickstarter goal wouldn't have funded the full cost. However, it doesn't say whether or not CMON would've been able to kick in the additional 90% if only the minimum had been raised. Maybe they figured it like a standard pre-order, and if they got 10% upfront, that would indicated a level of demand that would justify springing for printing the set. Then when the project exceeds the goal, their out-of-pocket decreases, and they can also expand on the set.

There's a difference between using Kickstarter to only provide part of funding for a project, and using Kickstarter to provide all the funding, but not putting a realistic goal.

I recall that Wasteland 2 had an initial budget of $1 million, but they set their goal at $900,000, with Brian Fargo saying he'd chip in $100,000 personally if needed. They exceeded their goal so Fargo didn't have to pony up, but do you feel that InXile had set their goal "artificially low" in that instance?

That's a very good point. Not only should developers set realistic goals, but they should look at making sure that they have enough funding to make a game that they'd be happy with. It's ok to leave some stuff as a stretch goal if it's inessential, but stripping a game to the bare essentials may make a game a developer isn't happy making, let alone one backers will be happy playing.

My point though was that Alpha Colony may not have set a goal lower than what their minimum specs called for, but that those minimum specs may have been too low to begin with.

There's a difference between having a solid budget, and having enough money to finish a game. A budget is a good planning mechanism, but it can't forsee everything. And the budget can, and often is, adjusted over the course of a project.

For example, Double Fine realized in December that for their Kickstarter game, if they continued with the same game scope and development rate, they'd run out of money and time before the game was finished. So they adjusted the budget. They cut the scope, they added some of their own money in, and they were looking at other funding opportunities. They could've gone exclusively with cutting the scope of the game, but they felt that they could put in some of their own money to help keep the game at a level they'd be happy with. This is what I meant by project management and budgeting; constantly adjusting over the course of development to keep the came on track and on budget.

A number of game titles have taken additional "pre-orders" on their sites after the Kickstarters ended, so there's additional money coming in for these titles aside from just the initial Kickstarter amount.

It's not completely separate, and one would certainly want to work out the budget for a new feature before announcing it as a stretch goal, etc. However, saying a project was successfully funded is very different form saying it was successful. One could even say a project had one successful round of fundraising if additional fundraising is needed later (such as with Pathfinder Online successfully funding and completing a tech demo, and then coming back to Kickstarter to help fund the actual game).

Jay G.

New interview with Chris Taylor about the Wildman Kickstarter and the fate of Gas Powered Games:
http://www.pcgamesn.com/indie/wildma...games#comments

The Kickstarter itself is just about 1/3 funded at nearly halfway through.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...ary-action-rpg

pinata242

I got all my Defense Grid swag today. T-shirt, poster, USB drive shaped like a red tower, and a Fletcher Magic 8-Ball button.

georgec

Interesting one called Asylum.

It's a first person horror adventure game right up the alley of people who enjoy games like Amnesia. Check it out!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...art-the-horror

Jay G.

With less than two days to go Gamestick has posted an updated design of their console:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...r/posts/394710

To get around the "no photorealistic renderings" rule on Kickstarter, they instead posted those images to their Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...3137142&type=1

Trevor

Somehow missed this until now. Read a bunch of their Kickstarter pages but still wondering about the basics of getting Android games onto the device. I have a Kindle Fire and a bunch of games on it, so will I be able to transfer all of them?

Anyone backing this?

Jay G.

The device will have its own game store with games specifically compatible with the Gamestick.

However, they also claim the Gamestick is "completely open," which means you may be able to "sideload," aka install apps from sources other than their own game store. Amazon's Appstore for Android can be downloaded an installed on Android devices, so you should be able to get access to it if they allow sideloading. However, you may not have many games compatible with the Gamestick.

Google Play doesn't look to be pre-installed on the console, which is the only official way to have Google Play on an Android device.

Groucho

I suspect that games and apps designed for touchscreen devices aren't going to work well on these gaming consoles, and you'll want to look for apps specifically designed to be compatible for the best experience. Otherwise, may as well just connect your phone to your TV.

Trevor

^ Thanks guys. I talked myself out of buying in. Maybe after I play at least half of my 2738 unfinished Xbox, PC, and iOS games.

starman9000

I think that's smart. I love the design of it, but I'll wait until something wins this sort of thing (I know that's against the idea of kickstarter, but it just feels like none of these things are quite right yet).

shizawn

Tom Hall put out a new Kickstarter today, something called Worlds of Wander. It's a platform game editor/creator and he'll release it along with a game created from it, Secret Spaceship Club, which is supposed to be a spiritual successor to Commander Keen.

This campaign is put together much better than his previous effort, Shaker. It's from a different company, too, so I wonder if he left Loot Drop after the Shaker campaign failed.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...ship-club-game

Jay G.

New(ish) project:

Game composer Ken Allen, best known for the Sierra games he worked on, is creating a new compilation album of new recordings of some of his classic video game songs:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...a-composer-ke/


For amusing news, Akaneiro reports that Chinese hackers have made a localized version of their game client. This is actually good for them, as their game is F2P and the influx of Chinese-language gamers are apparently making in-game-purchases. The hackers basically saved them the hassle of localizing it themselves:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...4?ref=activity

Jay G.

Oculus has modified their headset so that it comes with three pairs of removable eyecups, allowing for differing degrees of eyesight:
http://penny-arcade.com/report/edito...lf-life-2-supp

superdeluxe

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...ongest-journey

I don't know much about it, but KS was started today and already has 221k funded

make that 228k. 10 minutes later.

Nausicaa

This thing is literally the only gaming hardware I care about at this point. All these tiny underpowered consoles like OUYA playing boring Android or iOS mobile games, or the big three consoles and their control gimmicks can go die.

The Oculus will be the best thing to happen to gaming in years. 3D gaming is already amazing enough, the added immersion of a full FOV and head tracking is going to be incredible. And it isn't going to be insanely expensive either. I seriously cannot wait to get one.

Jay G.

Wildman has gotten interest from a few publishers, who would provide additional funding for the game, provided the Kickstarter is successful. At this point, that doesn't look likely to happen:
http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/10/wild...rter-succeeds/


A campaign for a fake NCAA football game was quickly pulled from Kickstarter a few days ago:
http://hereisthecity.com/2013/02/10/...m-kickstarter/

shizawn

The Wildman kickstarter was canceled today, but from the final update it appears they may have secured funding elsewhere and the company will live on, at least for the time being.

foxdvd

the longest journey is my favorite point-click adventure game of all time...I supported this day one....

georgec

Over 70% funded so far. If you're a fan of Lovecraft, horror, adventure games, point and click, etc. give the page a look. There's even a short demo you can play to get a feel for the game.

Groucho

Good interview with Tim Schafer which includes comments about Kickstarter, the backlash against it, and on why developers should be cautious:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-double-finely