Kickstart My Game

[Spigot]

Originally Posted by MagGnome

I really can't see EA or Ubi having much success on Kickstarter. The fury would be great.

They wouldn't do it openly. It would be some kind of sneaky thing that would get exposed (hopefully before the pledges are successful and paid out).

[J Arcane]

Sure, okay, but it's not just big companies that do have those things.

This is a fair point. And to be honest, I'll admit a kind of double standard here.

I don't mind when someone like the Boss Monster guys, or Karak's work, or hell, even what I was fortunate to scrape together for my campaign. You use what you've got, and if I'd had a little more cash to spend up front on the cover piece, I think I could've pulled that last $1500 for H&H.

I just wish they didn't have to. And I wish they didn't have to do so much before hand to have a shot, to take that kind of risk. Avoiding that kind of risk and having to make that kind of blind investment always seemed like exactly what Kickstarter was designed to make possible.

But I think that it's different, a little bit, between folks like them, and folks like Obsidian or Double Fine. For all of both studio's problems, and for all that it's probably true that they couldn't get a regular publisher to sign off on what they wanted to do, it's also true that the opportunity cost of putting together what they've done, and the cost in capital of what they've done, isn't nearly as much of a deal for them as it is for the little guys.

What I've been trying to get across though, is that by people like Obsidian getting involved, it means more of the little guys have to take that risk just to walk in the door.

But it's true, there's probably nothing one can really do about it. The 90s Youtube of creative patronage has become the, well, 00's Youtube of creative patronage. I suppose it was bound to happen.

The best that can really happen is maybe introducing some more transparency and tools for making sure that some of those little guys rise to the top still, even once it's Obsidians and Chris Roberts' and so forth ruling the top percentile.

I guess in the end it's just the age old lament of the hippy tech startup making the big time. :P

[Ravenlock]

Originally Posted by J Arcane

I guess in the end it's just the age old lament of the hippy tech startup making the big time. :P

This I can certainly understand. The tiny, scrappy upstart who manages to pull himself up to the top eventually becomes somebody else's giant overbearing foe. They start earning someone's envy the moment they're any higher up than the bottom rung. Way of the world.

I still think Kickstarter's doing a great thing for a lot of folks, because it's letting me be part of a lot of great things. I suspect it'll continue to do that no matter how many big fish show up in the pool.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by J Arcane

I just wish they didn't have to. And I wish they didn't have to do so much before hand to have a shot, to take that kind of risk. Avoiding that kind of risk and having to make that kind of blind investment always seemed like exactly what Kickstarter was designed to make possible.

They still don't have to. I'm really baffled by this idea that there's some arms race going on with Kickstarter videos, and that if you're not producing movie trailer quality work you're doomed to failure.

This is Sealark. A game that raised over $50k just this month, after asking for only $5k, being made by two people. Their Kickstarter video is 2 minutes of a pixel-animated girl on a fishing boat as the sun sets. They don't even talk about the game in the video, they pitch it almost entirely with text and screenshots.

Here's Timber and Stone. They recently passed their funding goal of $50k, and their video is some dude you don't even see talking over single-cut video of a beta build. Incidentally, the project looked like it was going to fail, but it got a big boost from getting featured on several gaming sites.

I can't imagine either of those videos cost that much to create, but their campaigns were successful because in the end it's the concept of the game and the passion of the developers that sells the product, not an over-produced video. Do you really think that Project Eternity's flashy animated text and high quality cameras mattered that much? People dropped their money on that title because of who was working on it and the promises they were making.

But it's true, there's probably nothing one can really do about it. The 90s Youtube of creative patronage has become the, well, 00's Youtube of creative patronage. I suppose it was bound to happen.

YouTube didn't exist in the 90s. I don't get this statement at all.

The best that can really happen is maybe introducing some more transparency and tools for making sure that some of those little guys rise to the top still, even once it's Obsidians and Chris Roberts' and so forth ruling the top percentile.

"Rise to the top?" What does that mean?

Little projects should be earning millions of dollars? They're making the money they're asking for and in many cases ten times over or more.

Little projects should get attention on the web? They are, and that media attention has resulted in last minute success for projects like Conclave and others, as the community rallies behind a game to push it up the hill.

Little projects should be featured prominently on Kickstarter? They're right there next to the big names when you're browsing the different categories.

What exactly do you want to see happening that isn't already happening?

[Ink Asylum]

Also, I welcome EA, Ubisoft, and any company that wants to putting projects on Kickstarter. Openly, even. They're always talking about how they don't want to invest in this type of game or that type of game because their focus groups or marketing departments or whatever don't think it would be profitable.

Well, I'd rather they put their game ideas into the Kickstarter marketplace rather than just kill them at the concept stage. Put up a Mirror's Edge 2 Kickstarter. Pitch Beyond Good & Evil 2. Let gamers who are excited about those ideas prove it, and let risk-averse companies satisfy their nervousness by getting the money to fund development up front.

In the process they'll get even more people to go to the Kickstarter site and see all the other projects they can fund. If Retro City Rampage can exist and succeed on Steam alongside Borderlands 2, then indie titles will continue succeeding on Kickstarter alongside whatever EA or Ubisoft put on there.

[Karak]

Originally Posted by MagGnome

I really can't see EA or Ubi having much success on Kickstarter. The fury would be great.

My original post wasn't just them doing it. It was them having a team on KickStarter without alerting anyone that the team actually worked for them

It happens in the card deck field, in the RPG field, and in the boardgame field already. People proxy, publishers do the same and actually have one of the largest successes right now in the boardgame/RPG field. Right from the spokesmen email to me.

So say a year or 2 down the road. I could see something happening like that. There are almost no rules in KickStarter and already a lot of misuse or...questionable things going on behind the scenes.

[J Arcane]

Ubi and EA and Activision these days have a whole stable of "indie" studios that are really just second-party developers for the company.

All they'd have to do is have the dev post the KS and they're golden.

Wouldn't work for something like Mirror's Edge maybe without a pretty twisted cover story, but one of these "indie" sized studios? No one would look too close.

Look at what's already happening in the "indie bundle" market. You've already got bogus ones out there that are actually publisher-run, selling products and games whose developers don't even exist anymore. Only a matter of time before that shit starts getting into the Kickstarter game.

[Rune_74]

One thing to take in to consideration is that kickstarter website as a whole is a business, and what do businesses like to do?

Make money.

These bigger companies bringing in 4 mil give them(and affiliates) 400k in one month...not a bad salary I would say. I wonder how many employees kickstarter employ. I can't imagine they have a huge staff.

I see a lot of comments now from people saying, "man I so would donate to that project but I gave so much to PE" So at least for the sort term some people are tapped out. Which I understand. I just don't want to see the little guys looking for 15k unable to reach their target.

Which brings me around to Antharion which finally passed 5k and it even has a working prototype. They recently added a tier for 30 that gets you into the beta. I want the pitch to be a success. That project will never get the attention from the multitude of websites that gave Obsidions project massive recognition. I don't think they are on the same level obviously in terms of product, but it's sad if you have to scrape to get noticed.

Another thing, what does it take to get on staff picks on kickstarter, I noticed it ahem looked kinda fishy.

[muddi900]

Originally Posted by Ink Asylum

snip.

Gamers seem to fund more projects than average and spend more money, but there is no actual proof that this audience has grown since Double Fine Adventure. Before it, though, very few gaming project succeeded so you might say Kickstarter never was for the little guy.

But why are you guys opposed to Publishers going the crowd-funding route?

[MagGnome]

Because they are multi-million dollar publicly traded corporations? That doesn't sit well with me at all.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by muddi900

Gamers seem to fund more projects than average and spend more money, but there is no actual proof that this audience has grown since Double Fine Adventure.

Yes there is. The proof is right there on the site. Just take October's funded projects, add them up, and compare it to January 2012. Leave out Project Eternity, even, and it's clear that the audience has grown.

Before it, though, very few gaming project succeeded so you might say Kickstarter never was for the little guy.

Define "very few." Kickstarter games projects were succeeding, but they were games that weren't asking for a lot of money, and they likely failed at similar rates as other projects (film, music, etc). It goes up and down, but around half of Kickstarter projects fail to meet their funding. That was true before 2012, and it probably remains true.

What's changed is that there are now a lot more projects, particularly in the game category. However, there's also now more backers and more money to go around.

[Pale Ale]

Originally Posted by Karak

I think you need to be even crazier.

Is that possible?

I SHALL meet this goal!!!

[Ravenlock]

Rune_74, can I ask why you're so worried about Antharion?

I mean, thank you for posting my concerns over there, which they have pointedly not addressed - in fact, someone else then also asked about non-combat gameplay and they've basically avoided saying anything at all (they "plan to have" crafting, they've said nothing about dialogue choices or plot branching), even though they've posted numerous comments, which makes me even less inclined to give them my dollars.

But they're doing fine without me. Five days into a 30 day campaign, they're 1/3 of the way to their goal.

This is a success in progress, and you're talking like it's not going well. I don't get it.

[boratika]

So here's a pretty cool non-game IGG: No Spill Kangaroo Cup

Which probably deserves mentioning anyway, but I'm actually bringing it up, because it has one of the best pitch videos I've seen, despite the video itself clearly being having a budget of around zero:



So, yeah, it possibly has the unfair advantage of having a young girl in it. But then, part of what's being sold here is the father showing his daughter - and other people's children - that they can make their idea a reality. Sooo... that maybe cancels out

Here's a few things to note about the video:

-It's shot with a not particularly good video camera. I'm guessing it was probably a phone
-Persistent ambient hum during the couch bit
-The spoken part only comes through on the right speaker, but the music is on both
-the audio jumps quite a lot in volume at one point
-It looks to have been put together with free movie making software
-It's editing could have been tighter

Which is to say, it's not very well made technically. But the content is great and that's what matters.

Broken down it goes something like this:
-15 second elevator pitch
-about a minute of general sort of who/what/where/when/why type stuff
-brief history/story of the cup (human brains are basically wired for narrative, so this is a good thing to have in there.)

It's concise and short and you aren't likely get bored halfway through. Personally, if there was something I would have changed, I would have her introduce the final design just before the dad sits on the couch; the final design and its features aren't shown until almost the end of the video and you might lose people by then. On the other hand, since it isn't shown until the end, it shows the video could have been used if they were only at the needing to build a prototype phase (albeit with a slightly different history section.) But any quibbles I might have, it still succeeds in spite of.

Anyway, I thought is was a pretty good case study pitch video. You may not. Either way, hopefully it gets funded.

[Karak]

That...was too painful to even get through the first 17 seconds jezuz.
I will just believe you that it was worth watching.

[Pale Ale]

If only she had an airsoft mask on huh? :P

[Karak]

Originally Posted by Pale Ale

If only she had an airsoft mask on huh? :P

You complete me.

[Karak]

Originally Posted by Rune_74

Another thing, what does it take to get on staff picks on kickstarter, I noticed it ahem looked kinda fishy.

No matter what anyone here posts as facts, no one knows half this stuff so I don't stress it as much anymore.

But the Staff Picks thing...they need to be far more transparent when you start a project how you get on it. Even if it is just their explanations when you start a project.

Something IS fishy about staff picks or at the very least very foggy. Including the expected time-frame for ALL projects to get there yet 4 major company projects showed up well within 7-10 minutes of starting versus 12-24 hours(expected time frame I was told when I emailed and asked). Additionally Staff Picks, from what they told me, were to change occasionally. Yet many KickStarter leads were emailing KickStarter asking why some the Staff Pick hadn't changed for 11 days. It was explained that it was supposed to change and be reviewed daily but when a project closes and another project goes up as a Staff pick instantly that has been running for 11 days...it makes you wonder why it wasn't up there before that. Was it just...not as good? Possible, but that has happened now over a dozen times in the last 3 months.
That could be just their definition of how they choose, why they choose, when they post, and how long they can keep the choice up.

I asked them for clarity but as with most other people who email them, you get electronic style answers back.

[crazyD]

Its a staff pick. The staff picks what they want to support. There's no need for transparency here, because it's all just preferential based on what a member of their staff likes. Do you go to Barnes and Noble and ask how to get on the employee pick shelf?

[Karak]

Originally Posted by crazyD

Its a staff pick. The staff picks what they want to support. There's no need for transparency here, because it's all just preferential based on what a member of their staff likes. Do you go to Barnes and Noble and ask how to get on the employee pick shelf?

Obviously there is need. As many people are asking them for it and it is unclear. So not sure what your really talking about with Barnes and Noble. I was discussing KickStarter's rules as they state them, somewhat vaguely, in both KickStarter school and to project leads, and in emails requesting data.