Kickstarter Games: Where They Are Now

We keep hearing success stories of indie video game projects that found funding through Kickstarter. Some have simply met their goals, while others have far exceeded the money they original asked for. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has provided updates on the progress of a huge list of funded projects. Many projects turned out to have unrealistic release dates. For example, Double Fine Adventure missed its August timeframe because it's getting a new engine. The new Leisure Suit Larry missed its October plans and hasn't been terribly open about a new one. However, most projects are humming along nicely, and some, like FTL: Faster Than Light have been completed and well received. The article exhorts all developers working on these games to make communication a priority, since the users are the ones who put up the cash, and deserve to know what's going on.

Comments

Banner Saga

[Vanderhoth]

I'm beta testing for the Banner Saga game, it's coming along. Also with Leisure suit Larry, because they raised so much in the kickstarter they added extra content to the game, which extended the release date to fit the extra content in. I get regular updates and I'm satisfied that things are moving along.

Re:Banner Saga

[NotQuiteReal]

because they raised so much in the kickstarter they added extra content to the game

But isn't that breaking the promise to the initial support group? Why not say, great! we can finish and add bonus content, later, or a sequel, whatever.

Maybe I am just bitter because I once worked at a start-up in the dot-bomb era when we had a product "ready to go" but got so much extra venture capital money we had to Eff it up to "raise the barriers to entry, for competitors"... and give the "hockey stick" growth-chart some extra "gravitas"...

Long story, short; "If you play with something long enough, you'll break it..."

Re:Banner Saga

[Vanderhoth]

Leisure Suite Larry (LSL) is a remake of a point and click adventure game. The additional content consisted of new areas and additional puzzles that was to be worked into the game itself. I think it would be very difficult to work additional content into the game after the fact. Some other things, like Banner Saga, it could be done after the fact in order to meet deadlines. I'm a software developer and understand the importance of deadlines, but I also understand the concept of scope creep and how that can affect a deadline so I think I'm probably a little more lax then others when it comes to meeting deadlines. If LSL doesn't come out until next October, then I'll be a little peeved.

Not to disparage anyone...

[Sir_Sri]

I'm not trying to bad mouth any particular game developer here,

But this is why you don't want to put a whole lot of money into companies or brands you don't know.

Wasteland 2 sounds great - and it might be, oh how I hope it might be. But when was the last time those guys made anything? I'm willing to gamble a bit, but you have to be prepared to lose.

Obsidian and Project Eternity, well they've been around a while, they've made some good games (that made a lot of money, not necessarily for the studio, but that made a lot of money) so I figure I can risk a bit more on them.

Chris Roberts (Wing commander Fame) and his Star Citizen... again, like wasteland, I can hope, but I figure the odds of losing my money are high on this one too.

And those are just the big ones. People asking for 10 grand, or 50 grand or even less than half a million, I don't have a lot of confidence in their ability to pull it off. 7 or 8 people for a year costs a million bucks and you need a couple of years to make a decent game. You can have some fun games that are faster to make than that, but odds are if you want content it takes time and money, and if you're not asking for that kind of cash your goals are unrealistic at best.

Re:Not to disparage anyone...

[Hatta]

InXile? Last thing they did was Choplifter HD, just this year. Before that, Hunted: Demon's Forge in 2011.

As for Chris Roberts, the last major game he did was Freelancer which was late, but ultimately delivered. I'd expect Star Citizen to be similar.

Re:Not to disparage anyone...

[cbhacking]

Given its popularity, I'm surprised there hasn't been an AC2. The Civ games keep rolling on, and a number of the changes they made in the more recent editions could stand to be added to, or at least adapted into, a new Alpha Centauri game (I'm thinking of things like allies pooling research progress and hexagonal tiles and global happiness in addition to local happiness, here) while a number of the things I loved about AC (customizable units, psi combat, xenofungus starting as a problematic tile-wasting nuisance and become one of the best tile improvements in the course of a long game, etc.) have never brought to the Civ games.

I think that, after the lessons learned (both good and bad) about Civ5 and its expansion, it's high time to make a new AC game that incorporates the best lessons from AC (and its expansion) and the last few Civ releases. Of course, given the popularity of Civ, it doesn't seem likely that this would need to be a kickstarter game, but I'd fund it if I could.

Just... PLEASE don't make it Steam exclusive, OK? Distributing on there is fine. Using is as a method for joining games is cool, as long as I can also direct connect. But requiring a moderately resource-hungry and mildly buggy DRM client be running when I want to play the game is not cool, and prohibiting any possibility of gifting or re-selling the game after installing it once (even if I uninstall it) is much less so.

Re:Not to disparage anyone...

[Seumas]

I think of it this way:

I can chip in a few bucks for the chance to have a game that I'm interested in developed down the road, accepting all the risks that come with game development.

Or, I can say I'm only going to pay for finished games that I can definitely get with no risk (except for the risk of buggy stuff that's never fixed or shitty console to PC ports that I regret buying) and, because nobody bother taking a risk on the smaller guy trying something that a niche audience is interested in, it never was able to be made and therefore, it'll never be on any shelf for me to buy. But I can go ahead and spend $65 on the next Bro-Face-Shooter-Dude-Of-Duty-Honor-Medals 14.

I would not advise someone drops their last $15 supporting a crowd-funded project, but if you have some "disposable" income and you care enough to see something created that has an audience, but not a big enough audience to appeal to a publisher who only wants games that'll turn $100 million into half a billion and doesn't give as hit about turning a million into five million, then go for it. It's better than playing the lottery and even if it doesn't ultimately result in a finished product, you often get something out of it.

For example, Project GODUS -- Peter Molyneux is engaging with the community on a nearly daily basis by sharing in brief design discussion sessions and then taking the resulting community commentary into consideration for the next discussion. And others are doing documentaries or constant blogging for their projects. And some offer interesting opportunities to meet people you might not otherwise get to do. Or get collectible things you might not otherwise have a chance to get. Stuff a finished product published by EA on a Walmart shelf won't ever allow you.

The ultimate future of crowd-funding is questionable. We just don't know, yet. But it definitely has potential and while it has a reasonable appeal to some of us, there are also very rational reasons for not wanting to participate. And that's the great thing about the whole crowd-funding thing, potentially: All it should need is enough dedicated fans of a person/product/franchise/genre/whatever to make it a reality. It doesn't have to be a million people. Even if the majority of people hate it, there only need to be enough people who care for it to see it succeed. Direct value-for-value. Directly addressing an audience. A niche. The goal of a smart businessman. There are plenty of things that get produced/funded (both in crowd-funding and in the regular publishing model) that I don't understand or think are total shit. And that's just fine. There is an audience and market for them and they are able to fund it. Good for them and the people who want to play them!

Re:Not to disparage anyone...

[DoofusOfDeath]

For most of the games to which I've pledged, it's been to encourage the development of Linux games. I'm trying to do my small part to stimulate that market, even if it's a bit of a long shot.

For Defense Grid Containment, I figured it was likely to succeed, I love the game, and one of their tiers (not achieved) was Linux support. So it was a no-brainer.

Re:Not to disparage anyone...

[0100010001010011]

I want to see Spaceward Ho! Updated. I see it's on the iTunes store. Some of these turn based stuff would make excellent tablet games.

Star Citizen

[Bodhammer]

I pledged out of nostalgia for Wing Commander, Freespace 2, and Iwar 2. I'm confident he will deliver.

I feel like we should be on that list

[wintersynth]

BlindSide was an early Kickstarter success, raising only 200% of our goal, about $14,000, but we released our beta on time, as promised.

Granted, it was the last day of the month and we stayed up 36 hours straight doing it, but we did it.

Maybe it's time for a little "how to manage slipped release dates" guide. I think it would look like this:
1) Communicate
2) Communicate
3) Communicate
:-)

Re:I feel like we should be on that list

[wintersynth]

Thanks! Yeah, it's a bit of a commitment for people to try the game, seeing as they can't see and monsters are attacking them. It's a little easier on iOS. We finished it and are proud to have been nominated for an IndieCade award and two Brazilian International Game Festival awards :-). And we did have a lot of fun making it!

FTL: Faster Than Light

[RocketScientist]

FTL is an incredibly fun game that they mention shipped pretty close to their timeline. All software timelines are somewhat fungible, and game producer provided timelines even more so. But they got pretty close. And the shipping product is *great* and was on steam sale last weekend. Rounds don't take a stupidly long time, the game's pretty replayable, etc.

Good times.

FTL

[Jaysyn]

FTL & Xenonauts (the 1st alpha at least) are great fun. The only KS alpha that I've tried that I'm not confident about is The Dead Linger.

It hasn't been all that long.

[Seumas]

Let's remember that while games have been funded on Kickstarter for a long time, the current stream of them didn't really start until these past ten months; and only some as far back as that. We're not going to see the results of a lot of these projects until 2013. Even ones that are scheduled to be done by the end of 2012. If EA misses dates with hundred million dollar games, you can expect one or two guy projects with fifty grand or less to slip, too.

I've backed about 350 crowd-funded projects, over the last couple of years. I track them in a giant spreadsheet with as much info on each as I can, including current status (fulfilled, partially fulfilled, overdue, etc). Several have completed. A few have gone beyond the delivery date, but have maintained regular updates and contact with their backers, and most of the rest are still in-progress.

There's not really enough data to figure it out, right now. The real story will start to come together in another year. Having pledged about $7,000 USD and payed about $2,200 USD, I'm not really worried. Many projects will succeed. A few will fail. Most of those will fail, despite the best of intentions and efforts (if it happens in big titles, it'll happen for little indie projects). Maybe one or two will fail due to nefarious reasons. You can nay-say all you want, but the truth is that none of us really know, for sure (which is part of the reason why I back so many projects and track them on a spread-sheet -- I want to actually know the realities of game-related crowd-funding over the long term; not a bunch of anecdotal stuff).

Also, I sent to RockPaperShotgun weeks ago a very lengthy email that contained access to my spreadsheet as well as a long story of my philosophy of backing projects (I think of it as the poor-man's attempt to be a patron-of-the-arts) and a list of things I've learned that crowd-funding project leaders could take a lesson from, over the backing and observation of hundreds of projects. A lot of that seems like it made its way into that article (or that they've made very similar observations over their backing history).

Re:It hasn't been all that long.

[Seumas]

Sure. Here's a google docs spreadsheet of it that I keep fairly up-to-date (maybe not to-the-minute, but I update it maybe weekly or more).

I might write an article some day about it or something, but other than that, I have no particular "claim" to the work, so people are welcome to use it however it may be of interest to them.

http://goo.gl/AiGW2

Re:It hasn't been all that long.

[zyzko]

That is super cool (you releasing your data).

I see you have made a lot of $1-5 pledges, are you pledging just because you are interested in a project and pledging gives you notifications about updates or do you believe that micro-pledging can actually work (get a hundred thousand people pledging $1 instead of 5000 pledging $20)? As I see it you have two categories (correct if I'm wrong) - you have those that you "chip in" in a spirit of support and those you actually want the end-result (pledge is high enough to get at least digital download). I ask because among my friends I see those two categories, there are those who understand that pledging is just a way to support something (and amount spent varies, there are those who pledge $1-5 just to show support and those who pledge $150 just to get a t-shirt) and then there are those who view their pledge as a "pre-order" and the latter group is the one that worries me if in a year or so we see major projects fail and/or expectations on smaller ones are not met. This could really hurt Kickstarter and that's why I seriously hope projects study the pitfalls beforehand and maybe ask advice from people like you...

Re:It hasn't been all that long.

[Seumas]

In general, I approach crowd-funding as a mix of "damn, I really want this to happen and I really want this thing that is the final product" and a poor man's being a patron-of-the-arts. Not every project catches my personal attention, but they're often still worth kicking a couple bucks in just to show support and encourage the creator of the thing to continue creating. Sure, I'm not some wealthy benefactor, but a buck or five is a buck or five.

I also use a buck as a sort of bookmark. Most crowd-funding platforms have a "reminder" type of system, but I figure that if I'm interested enough to bookmark your project, I can man-up and give you a dollar for it, too. (Though there are a few exceptions for things I really don't want to necessarily support, but do want to remember before the fundraising ends). And, in a few cases, I'll kick in a dollar just so I can have access to the comments and updates for projects that I may even *not* like. For instance, there have been a couple projects that I found very questionable. One that I was sure was an outright scam. After doing a lot of research on the people behind it, I pledged a dollar so I could keep getting their updates and comment, if necessary, in the comment page.

Overall, I guess it falls into the following categories:

* I really want this thing to happen!
* Huh. That's sort of interesting. I guess I'll support that and get the thing when it's done.
* Doesn't really appeal to me, but here's a few bucks, because we need more people making more neat stuff to balance out all the AAA-Bro-Dude-Face-Shooter billion dollar games/movies/whatever.
* I don't really want to part with much money for this, but here's a buck to show my support. And/Or: This is worth bookmarking, so I'll man-up and give you a buck, too (in some cases this also means I'm unsure of the support I want to ultimately offer and may go back by the end of the fundraising and pledge more).
* I want to keep an eye on this, even if it's shady or dumb, so here's a buck so I can participate. (This isn't something I would otherwise be doing, if I weren't also gaining knowledge/experience of crowd-funding in general, to help other people. If I were only funding stuff entirely as an "end-user/buyer", these are things I would just skip over entirely and never think about again).

I think most crowd-funding is positioned very much in a "you're pre-ordering this thing!" sort of way, so it's reasonable for people to approach backing them as such. They just need to recognize that there is an assumed risk, here. If you must have a guarantee, then only buy finished products on shelves (which sometimes end up sucking, anyway). Though not the case with all crowd-funding projects, I see backing many of them as saying "If people don't support this, it won't ever BE a finished product on shelves that you can buy. Your risk and "investment" is in making sure this thing has a shot at actually ever EXISTING, because publishers aren't going to make a hundred million bucks off of it and wont' show any interest."

I wouldn't advise people chip $15 into a project if that $15 is precious to them. If times are tight, spend that $15 toward a solid game that exists now and that you can get entertainment and pleasure out of.

Of course, there are other things you can get in return, from these projects. For example, I got to spend a bunch of time with John Romero and, separately, Will Wright. Under no other condition would I have had that opportunity. Even if the project that was for fails, I still got something pretty sweet out of it.

No it did quite well

[Sycraft-fu]

Game was released and works fine, and has done decent Steam sales after the release. It's had pretty good reviews by the press too.

Re:I thought FTL bombed?

[Enderandrew]

It has a Metacritic rating of 84. All the reviews I read were quite good. And every PC game has a number of reports of "it won't work".

It was me however that impregnated their dog and murdered their daughter.

Guilt alleviation & non-game gaming Kickstarte

[The Archon V2.0]

Seeing as three of the four video game Kickstarters I gave money to were small amounts ($10-$20) mostly to assuage my guilt for pirating from the devs as a kid, I'm not entirely heartbroken if I don't see anything from them. The fourth was mostly because it looked awesome and they had a playable demo that convinced me to part with bigger chunk of change just because they looked like they could actually deliver, and I'm enjoying playing it right now (Project Giana).

So so far, no regrets on the game front.

Gaming in general, though, is different. I'll never give a damn cent to anything 2 Player Productions does again because we're STILL WAITING FOR THAT MINECRAFT DOCUMENTARY. Nor the guys from Extra Credits because seriously, guys? All I have to show for it is a sycophantic youtube video, a fuckton of Internet Drama over money that never saw a resolution from either side, and someone trying to sell me life insurance.

Re:Kickstarter is a joke.

[BlueBlade]

Your comment is troll-ish and I probably shouldn't bother to reply, but Psychonauts is one of the best games I've ever played. It's so good I replay it every 2-3 years. For some reason, some gems never get the success they deserve, same with Beyond Good and Evil. Anyway if you've never played Psychonauts, give it a try, and prepare to be awed at its sheer inventiveness. Giant world cubes. Godzilla. Lake monsters (called Linda). Milkmen secret agents. Brain removing dentists. Stratetic war games against Napoleon. Mexican cage matches. Corrida. Meat circuses...

Hold on, I think I'll go reinstall it...

Except that August was never Double Fine's release

[boondaburrah]

Double Fine listed "October 2012" as their release, not August. Granted they've passed that now, but as a commenter before me said: communication is key. Since I see they're honest-to-god working on it, I'm not mad.

Double Fine Adventure was my first video game kickstarter - so I'm sort of using it as a measuring stick before I help fund other games. So far I don't feel burned - and I'm still excited for when it eventually does come out, so I think they're doing something right. It should be possible for things like this to pick up in the future.

I mostly just like the idea that the companies get funded without someone coming in and saying "hurr, we need to add more guns to this game for it to sell." "But it's a puzzle game!" "LOL Do it anyway! People Like Call of Duty!"