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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.
You get nothing, and are owed nothing, from the people you give money to.
That seems like a bummer. I guess to many people feel they are getting ripped off to much to be willing to take a chance.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I have this idea for a super awesome game. It'll be better than Call of Duty XI, better grafx too. Gimme my $10M and I'll make it for you.
seriously, the prototype shows that you have commitment, and are putting your own investment in the game to demonstrate you have adequate ability to pull it off.
You *should* have a working prototype before you expect to get money.
Yes, it's difficult to build a prototype when you don't have funds. Welcome to the Real World, asshole. It's not easy to produce/market a new product. Kickstarter has made it *easier*, but it's not a magic bullet. It briefly *was* a magic bullet before people got smart and realized that giving money away for something that has almost no chance of ever being a real product was silly.
Perhaps people are wise to the Kickstarter business model of "heads we win and take all the profit when we sell out, tails you lose and cover our losses if it flops" and are unwilling to provide handouts for these people to use to run off and make their (in some cases, additional) fortune.
This is how funding works in the 'real world' when start up companies are looking for investors. At every stage of the company, investors expect a nearly finished product. When scientists write grant proposals, they are actually showing they've already done what they are asking for funds to do.
With Double Fine, there's a lot of questions about how the money was spent - many of which have gone unanswered. For instance, Tim Schaefer initially said he would need $400,000 to make a full game. Granted, he arrived at that number using numbers from games he made in the early 90s, but then it spiralled out of control into a $3.3 million project. The numbers he HAS released show that he spent almost the entire initial amount - $400,000 - on "backer rewards".
The $3.3 million barely covered the first half of the game, and that was on top of another few million in crowdfunding that Schaefer did shortly before release date. They still don't have a released date set for the second half, other than "We're working on it and it might be out by the end of the year."
Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous did fine on KickStarter back when they were still using it. Eventually both stopped using KickStarter and started using their own methods.
Back in the early kickstarter days Star Citizen had, at most, some in game footage of a dogfight and some 3D renderings of a couple of ships. I don't know what Elite Dangerous had.
They did not have 50% of their game done... heck SC STILL doesn't have 50% done.
Then again, both heads were fairly well-known in the gaming circles for their past works.
I'm always amused when wanna-be novelists want people to give them $50,000 to write a novel in a year and discover that no one will give them money. The novel must be written first. Kickstarter is useful for getting ~$3,000 to pay for editing and publishing the novel, especially if the writer already have an established fan base.
I guess many people don't recognise anyone's name except for a couple of really high-profile guys like Braben, Molineux or Carmack.
http://rtf.utexas.edu/faculty/...
He's not a complete duffer though, seems he has done stuff. That seems fair enough to me, even though I would like to see credit given for the rest of the team behind those games.
If you aren't a known developer, people want to see some evidence that you have the ability to make good on your plans. Game development isn't simple, and many people are not prepared for what they are going to have to do to bring a successful game to market.
So Doublefine or inXile can get a good bit of funding with nothing but a design doc for a game because people have faith they'll be able to deliver since they are experienced game devs. New crews are going to have to show something to get people to trust them.
Particularly in light of past KS failures in that regard. I've backed a number of games on KS and two of them I knew were fairly high risk: They were being done by an individual who hadn't done a game before, and there wasn't any sort of demo up front, just some basic concepts. I decided to take a risk on it, but fully understood that failure was likely.
Sure enough, both are floundering/failing. One hasn't had any updates in months, the other does update periodically but it is still extremely rudimentary, despite being way past the planned launch date, and it is pretty clear the dev just doesn't have a good idea how to proceed from here.
On the flip side, the games by established studios have either delivered or are well on track (Shadowrun Returns was brilliant, Wasteland 2 ships next Friday, Pillars of Eternity is in beta, etc). Likewise the indy titles that had a demo and were a good bit along with development have delivered, like FTL.
So no surprise many people aren't willing to take the risk. They want a better chance of return so they stick with established devs or with things that have some proof.
Kickstarter barely cares what you try to fund anymore, and the other sites are even worse. It doesn't matter if your project clearly violates copyright laws -- or even the laws of physics -- you can post any project you want. This makes the entire crowdfunding ecosystem look incredibly shady.
That said, this has led to some pretty funny stuff over at Kickfailure.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Do these guys have any experience of game development? Producing a sample level is not so hard. Level design, tuning, bug fixing and all the little bits you need to do to get it ready to actually sell is a lot of work.
Why should people hand over money because you have a "great idea". A track record or a prototype seems a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for - and of course the person paying they money is the one who determines what qualifies as "track record".
Because if you didn't have to show you'd done anything, people would just say "give me a zillion dollars to make something awesome", and then simply not make anything.
It's not charity, it's an investment. And if you have nothing to invest in, you get no money.
Is the expectation people should just get free money from Kick Starter because they can craft a couple of good paragraphs? Because, if so, I know where I'd be heading.
Having a prototype at least (in theory) demonstrates you've actually got something real and the ability to deliver on it.
So, yeah, no prototype == no money sounds reasonable, unless you want to have a separate section for things which are entirely vaporware but otherwise sound cool.
But who the hell is going to hand over huge sums of money to someone who hasn't yet done anything?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
With Kickstarter, you're expected to produce what you get funded to do. Usually, what the backers get in return is a copy of the game, and little else. If the game sucks or doesn't sell, the backers are shit out of luck and the founders get a lot of bad press. That's about it.
Before Kickstarter, you had to seek out investors or venture capitalists. You know what they want in return? A monetary share of the profits with a value somewhat greater than their investment. You drop the ball and you end up in court. They want to see your account books. They want the source code and any assets you produced.
Guess what? Kickstarter's fad phase is over. Now you have to show your work. Too many projects didn't deliver, or didn't deliver on enough. Too many assholes have poisoned the well and people are going to be wary about drinking. I suspect Steam's Greenlight will do the same thing. Too many games get released as "early alpha" and then the devs get the money and stop development or development slows to a crawl. Greenlight now feels like "buy a prototype" and Kickstarter feels like "fund a pipe dream." People don't want dreams and prototypes. They want fully fleshed out games!
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Begging at a street corner might be a more effective way to raise money. Someone did a study in the San Francisco Bay Area that some beggars were making $85 per hour. Now that's serious money.
>compelling concept (a card based espionage game)
Maybe it wasn't compelling enough... apparently the "market" said no.
>recent and growing problem with crowdfunding games: an expectation to see a working prototype
Is that a kickstarter problem, or a "people-whose-money-you-want" problem, or your problem? It is possible that the golden age of easy money kickstarters was/is a short lived, one-time-only thing. Now the excitement has worn off, some people may have gotten nothing for their money (like paying to see a TED talk on how to dry your hands), and people are trying to be careful investors now where they can see value and potential results.
You got $180,000 pledged towards the goal, which isn't nothing. Maybe you're just not sexy enough. Could also be bad luck, poor timing, or lackluster marketing.
Maybe a card-based espionage game isn't as compelling as you think it is. Just sayin'.
As evidenced by this.
I need crowdfunding so I can quit my day job and become a sculptor, but it's a chicken-and-egg problem because no one will chip in until they at least see one of my works. Obviously this is a fundamental problem with crowdfunding!
Indeed. Kickstarter is not the initial funding to turn idea into prototype - that is always personal or corporative debt and always will be.
Kickstarter replaces the VCs as the means by which the prototype can become a marketable and distributable product.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Part of kickstarter should be that you've already taken a substantive risk on your own. Making a game demo with, for example, limited level/playtime is a good mark that you are capable of producing the rest.
Since there is no recourse once the funding takes place for funders, this doesn't seem unreasonable.
Thinking on these two kickstarters
Mighty #9, basically a game similar to Mega Man, it had some basic concept art and rough drawings, but I'd hardly call that anywhere near 50%
SpaceVenture, same deal. Concept art, some rough ideas. Mostly, from guys who are known to produce.
If you don't have a reputation already, and no prototype that's at least semi-functional, then really you've got nothing much to offer other than a promise and a prayer.
You have no way to show whether your idea is feasible. You have no way to know how much work is actually involved. I have no way to know that you won't be taking my money and using it to fund a Caribbean vacation or drug/drinking habit.
Seriously, for a computer game come up with an intro video that shows you can make it look good, and a few rough gameplay concepts that show you can make it *run*. You still have: level design, art design, storyboard design, voice acting as needed, sound production, etc etc. You're not even close to 50% at that point, but at least you can show that you can make *something*.
But, without reputation, you have to either have a great idea that's unique and desirable, *really* good marketing, or something tangible. Notwithstanding the dude that kickstarted potato salad, that's just weird...
As far as i'm concerned, any project I back on Kickstarter is an investment. While I would love to see a return on investment (and believe me, some of the projects I have back have gone on to do great things), its not always possible. There are far too many people out there backing projects that expect a 100% ROI every time. This is simply not possible.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
It's a GOOD problem for people to have to actually put some work into a project on their end before coming to the community and asking for money.
Like has been said better by others above, ideas are a dime a dozen. People who have put forth a great deal of up-front effort on their own to get their idea to at least a presentable stage, even if it presently looks like crap, should have a better time getting funded. It shows that they are serious, at least basically capable, and can actually produce /something/.
Anybody who pays someone on KS, IGG, or any other crowdfunding project based solely on an idea pitch is pissing their money away in the vast majority of cases.
I have some plans to do crowdfunded projects in the near future, but I am not even looking into it seriously until I have something at least marginably playable so people to be able to get some idea of what is being done and where I want to take it. It also helps me get a basic idea of what kind of effort it is going to take to get the project realized and what it may cost.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
And even if they manage to complete the game, there is still the possibility the payer won't like the final product. A preview/prototype helps you decide whether you will like the game or not.
"We couldn't find somebody with deep pockets that we could sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hconvince that we had a 'great idea', so we tried crowd-funding, and we couldn't find a 1000 idiots we could sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hconvince to part with their money. Life is so unfair."
Look, buddy, the bottom line is "great ideas" are a dime a dozen. As a professional programmer who made a career out of slinging code, I've lost track of the number of "great ideas" people had that they wanted me to develop. They all claimed we'd be "rich", if only I would do all the work for them for free.
Without a demo, you're not showing you have what it takes to do the job. Even with the demo, you're not showing you have what it takes to handle the business side of things.
I mean, seriously, you want "angel investor" money for the "payout" of a "free copy of the game when it comes out?"
How many decades did people wait for the last "Duke Nukem", and that was from a reputable publisher who knew what they were doing!?
Why would anyone with a functioning brain cell trust your "great idea" to ever deliver?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I funded DCS: WWII and the third party developer folded. It's only by the good graces of Eagle Dynamics that any of us are seeing anything for our money. The DCS: MiG-21 by another third party on Indiegogo had some other nonsense where someone backed out and only thanks to a group within who didn't see any of the money from Indiegogo are they getting anything for their money. (I did not back this one and am not up on the full story). Also backed Torment: Tides of Numenera. Original date was December 2014. Now they're saying December 2015. I have my doubts that I'll even see it then. Also, after being screwed first hand twice and seeing another one in the same gaming community I'm done with kickstarting video games. I've gotten physical stuff (wallet, pressy) relatively close to promised dates. Yet video games are folding and delaying like nobodies business. There have also been other big failures in the news where people ended up with jack and squat. So, basically I blame this on the groups that had no hope of producing anything and still took peoples money. This is why people are weary.
most kickstarters that I've seen get big money, like the iPod dock & blender/boombox/coolerwere recursive projects...the 'thank you' gift is the product that the company you're supporting is trying to make
it's silly...but i'm glad kickstarter and the like exist...they should just adapt their message & rules just a bit to make this weird moebius strip of commerce and charity unnecessary
as far as gaming, if people want to donate money to an idea, screenshot, and prayer then I think they should be able to...
fyi, that ipod dock kickstarter i linked to above is an insane roller coaster & exhibit A of how kickstarter can be good and bad...the guy ended up barely breaking even after a new ipod design came out right during his production and he had to do several recalls...it was a disaster...
IMHO the Elevation Dock is an example of...something...i'm not hating but it's obvious most of these kickstarter millionaires have no clue what they are doing & spend more time on pictures and the video than product design at times...but that's my jealousy. If people want to throw money away for questionable 'innovations' then that's their choice...the system exists, not all kickstarter products will be crap
Thank you Dave Raggett
Yes, nobody will fund their game.
One of their examples shows a motorcycle chase. But the user's option is to select straight ahead or turn right and follow. They're trying to do a canned cut-scene adventure. Those went out with Space Ace.
It's not unreasonable to see a prototype, or some work in the direction of the idea you're proposing. It's not unreasonable for people to expect some form of tangible proof that you can do what you claim you can do. This idea that it should be acceptable to place all of the risk on to the customer is ridiculous.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
A lot of it is risk vs reward. A game with a good portion of it done shows that their is a lot less risk. Not only on the game getting completed and released, but also on if you may or may not like the finished result. So more people are going to be willing to shell out. The reward for a kickstarter is often just the finished product and possibly some extra swag if you want to pay more. If all you have is some concept art, the risk is a lot higher that you may not like the finished product. It could be a fine and successful product, but maybe not something that you may like or disappointed they went a different direction than you expected. A traditional investor on the other-hand, doesn't have to worry on if 'they' will like the end product. Just that it sells well enough to get their money and hopefully a profit on return back.
There is nothing that is actually free. Yeah, a lot of people are going to have to show how serious they are by investing their own time and money into it first.
You can't get it risk free by doing kick starter and expect everyone else will absorb the risk.
I think the idea for kick starter is that you come up with something fantastic, you then start working on it.
You got this cool prototype that has a lot of potential, but you want to make it soar. To do that, you'll need funding for wages, to pay for your
expenses while you devote time to it, for licenses, for materials if it's not digital, for equipment to make it. Then you hit up kick starters.
If your ideas were fantastic enough to have absolutely nothing but an idea written on paper that will get you funding, you'd hit up a developer / corporation
who is willing to fund you.
Also, maybe a lot of people didn't think the concept was as good as you thought it was, and that people wanted to take that chance on it.
Yes they need a working prototype. Even if it's printed crap from inkjets. These guys are whiny that they cant run their scam.
tons of other groups have funded their board games and card games via kickstarter and they had most of it prototyped and demonstrated before they ran the kickstarter.
This is how it is supposed to work.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why? It's never stopped Peter Molyneux before...
Worst. Signature. Ever.
I was telling my daughter about Populus, a game I played on my friend's Amiga back in the day. With the craze for remakes, I had a quick search and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a Kick-starter project called "Godus". Then I read the contributor feedback. My god, they screwed the pooch on that one.
Retro Game Crunch: http://retrogamecrunch.com/abo...
Sure, not as big-budget, but quite ambitious for a small team. And they delivered.
Try Kickstarting A Novel
You mean like this ?
This proves it possible although (as in the case of Star Citizen, and the likes) it got successfully funded because the book has big names behind it: Zach Wiener and Boulet.
I'm always amused when wanna-be novelists want people to give them $50,000 to write a novel in a year and discover that no one will give them money. The novel must be written first.
The book COULD be not finished yet: ...if it comes from a known guy. Popular author which has already shown able to produce good work. Can have successful kick-starter (I have this great idea that I want to write about, but my current publisher considers it a bit riské and doesn't want to shell out all the money for it). ...if it again follows the "prototype" rule. Wannabe authors writes "Chapter 1" on his free time and decides that he want to get paid to make the rest instead of having a main job and doing the book on the side. Wannabe authors makes chapter 1 available. Interested reader notice that current work is better quality than the crappy fan-fic which pollute the interweb and that the wannabe authors shows promising qualities. Book might get funded.
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Basically, any idea proposed by Terry Pratchet would get insta-funded, no matter how weird the premises.
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- slight variation of the above: a blogger who has shown very good and promising writing ability. Nothing from the book exist yet, the authors hasn't written a book before either, but has repeatedly shown to be able to output massive amount of written material with a good sense of humour.
Notice that, both situation could also work with a publisher. The only reason to go for Kickstarter is if for some reason no publisher is interested in the material it self (the project is REALLY weird, or the main theme is controversial, etc.)
The main difficulties won't be finding potential funds for Kickstart (as in fact, the main difficulty won't be finding a publisher neither, if the project isn't too much weird).
The main difficulty would be the lack of experience in handling a publishing project.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]