Kickstarter's Problem: You Have To Make the Game Before You Ask For Money

An anonymous reader writes with this piece about Digital Knights, the studio behind the Kickstarter campaign project Sienna Storm, which was cancelled this week after the team raised only 10% of their $180,000 target, despite a compelling concept (a card based espionage game) and a reputable team including the writer of the original Deus Ex, Sheldon Pacotti. The team is now seeking alternative funding before reaching out to publishers, but in an interview given this week, Knights CEO Sergei Filipov highlights what he sees as a recent and growing problem with crowdfunding games: an expectation to see a working prototype. "It seems at least 50 or 60 percent of the game needs to be completed before one launches a campaign on Kickstarter," he says. It's a chicken and egg cycle some indie developers will struggle to break out of, and shows just how far we've come since Tim Schafer's Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter burst the doors open two years ago.

Comments

Actually a good thing.

[BarbaraHudson]

This requires would-be developers to have significant skin already in the game (pardon the pun) in terms of time and resources invested. Better than "I have an idea, now give me money and I'll eventually build it for ya." Or all those similar-talking losers on Shark Tank and Dragons Den who think and idea with nothing else is worth big bucks.