How Long Before the Kickstarter Bubble Bursts?

An opinion piece at Gamasutra takes a look at the recent success of Kickstarter campaigns for video game projects — Double Fine's adventure game and a sequel to Wasteland each raised around $3 million. Hundreds of other projects have sprung up, hoping to replicate that success — but will it last? From the article: "I am convinced that Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine know how to deliver a game (mostly) on time and (mostly) on budget. Brian Fargo too. Is that true for all 314 of the current Kickstarter projects? What about the projects which get started but never finished? If publishers like LucasArts can cancel games that are almost finished or like Codemasters can pay for a game it never saw, what certainty do pledgers have that the game that they have paid for will ever see the light of day? We are still in the early days of our Kickstarter relationship, the early days of falling in love. Everything our partner does is wonderful. We gloss over the risks, we ignore the downsides, because the glory of falling in love is everything. I think we have about six months left of that period. Towards the end of this year, some Kickstarter projects are going to start slipping. Some will see their teams collapse amidst bicker recriminations. Some pledgers are going to start getting very angry."

Comments

No bubble.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Might see a drop off, and a leveling off, but a bubble burst?

That implies there's a bubble. Direct financing of projects is the future, not a fad.

Re:No bubble.

[Anubis IV]

Agreed. About the only thing I can see is someone else coming along to steal Kickstarter's thunder, but the idea behind Kickstarter isn't going anywhere in the foreseeable future. It may suffer some setbacks among the people who don't understand the difference between what Kickstarter does and making a pre-order on Amazon if there are higher-profile failures or scams, but there are many people (myself included) who are interested in funding these sorts of projects and understand the risks therein, and we're not going away. If anything, the number of people who "get it" is increasing.

Re:No bubble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much this. "Bubbles" are what happen when too many people start investing in something (homes, dot.coms), then pull out during a panic, causing a spiral of decreasing value and investors losing their shirts.

You can't "pull out" of a Kickstarter for a loss; it's not an investor relationship. Sure, you can decide to pay them, then decide not to pay them (but only if the project is ongoing), but once the Kickstarter ends, it's done: you've paid them, they get your money, and you have to trust them to deliver the goods.

If there's a "panic" and people start pulling out of Kickstarters know what happens? Nobody loses any money because the project doesn't get funded and the creatives just don't do the project. You can't put in $100, then decide later you don't want to do it and only get back $20. Kickstarter is the check and balance system that the dot.com era needed to prevent a bursting bubble.

Re:No bubble.

[nine-times]

Yeah, this premise seems biased and kind of... leading. I've seen lots of posting in the past 6 months that seems to be rooting for people to be disappointed by Kickstarter projects and for the whole Kickstarter system to fall apart. What's the deal here? Is it just someone setting themselves up to say "I told you so!" later, so that they can seem smart? Is it some kind of astroturfing?

We've had investment firms and real-estate agents and game publishers and everyone else scamming our money for years. We keep giving them money. Game publishers put out bad games, and we waste money buying them, but that doesn't make us question whether the retail model "bubble" is going to burst. We don't say, "There are a lot of investors losing money in the stock market, and a lot of investors are getting angry. When is the stock market fad going to end?" The big difference with Kickstarter is that it's not all about giving money and control to people who are already rich and powerful.

There isn't *that much* of a difference if I buy the latest Tim Schafer game from a major publisher and it turns out to stink, or if I fund Tim Schafer's Kickstarter campaign and get the game "for free" and the game turns out to stink. Really, there are 2 differences: (a) if the publisher makes the game first, I can read the review before I buy; and (b) in the kickstarter model, Tim Schafer probably has more creative control. Therefore, the whole thing comes down to the question, "Do I generally trust Tim Schafer to make a good game?"

Re:No bubble.

[RichardJenkins]

Everyone I know buys pet food online, but none of us have pets.

It will probably change, but for the better.

[multiben]

One of the things that makes this sort of funding different is that a vast majority of pledgers are contributing very modest sums of money. Can you really get pissed off if you lose $50 in a venture? For a lot of people this sort of funding gives them the chance to participate in something they would otherwise have never got an opportunity to be involved in. I think that what we will see is a refinement of the system and people maybe being a little more selective and those who are seeking funding becoming more professional. I do believe that in some form or another it is here to stay.

Kickstarter Project to replace Kickstarter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone want to start a Kickstarter project to replace Kickstarter?

Insist on Free Projects Developed in the Open

[zotz]

Insist on Free Projects Developed in the Open

That way, if things don't quite pan out, the assets may still be useful or someone else may be able to finish things up.

all the best,

drew

Can money be returned if a project is unfinished?

[Heliosphere1]

A while ago I started developing an indie Elite-like game (yes, it runs on Linux...). I'm funding it out of my personal savings (scary...) but I've had Kickstarter recommended to me by a number of people as a funding alternative. I know very little about it. The indie oriented spirit of the place looked nice enough. I've seen other projects in the genre I'm developing that aren't as far along as mine raise significant funding on Kickstarter, but I've held off because of a few things that are unclear to me. For one, if I funded the development of my project in this way, what happens if something prevents the project from being completed? The Kickstarter info says there is no guarantee that a finished product will be produced, so nominally "nothing happens", but there are large risks involved with developing an indie game with its own custom engine from scratch. Many start, few succeed. I think I would find it quite ethically difficult to live with if I accepted people's money to make something, and for whatever reason wasn't able to complete the project to my or their satisfaction. Even if it is only a small amount from each person, I'd end up feeling pretty miserable if they paid it expecting a finished project which never came to pass. I was never able to find any info about whether a mechanism exists to return funding if projects cannot be completed.

Ignores why kickstarter...

[blahplusplus]

... projects were successful to begin with. There is a lot of negative gamer sentiment that many beloved older games and genre's stopped being produced by big publishers because the publishers deemed they were 'dead' or they just wouldn't yield the kinds of profits they want to keep shareholders happy.

It doesn't help that many modern games have been butchered (in terms of functionality, LAN, etc) or chained to DRM and always online connections.

Re:Insanity

[multiben]

Some people do not ascribe a monetary value to every action they make. For instance, the other day I gave money to a charity. My ROI is 0%, but I still enjoyed doing it.