211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Developer diaries about creating Neverending Nightmares.
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matt
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211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by matt »

While some feel that is the logical conclusion given the failure of some high profile campaigns like The Black Glove and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, I’m not sure I agree. Here's my take!

-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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evilkinggumby
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by evilkinggumby »

HA! love the shirt.

I read through those posts for the curious case of Charles Dexter Ward and it was at first disheartening to see him reach those conclusions (and in looking at other articles, see a few others think that it is a slowly failing method to fundraise).

I'd say it is possibly slowing down for a few reasons.

1: the "new" ness of it is gone and so those who initially backed due to it being exciting, trendy, or cutting edge have gotten it out of their system.
2: Initially people may not have realized how frequently projects would take significantly longer than projected within their KS and so many are still sitting with money invested and no real return to appreciate, and so are disenfranchised.
3: the gobs of people looking at it as a way to pre-order games and then seeing the length of wait (or the fact what they paid was significantly higher than if they waited for it to hit Steam on sale)
4: several lackluster capaigns turning out poor games.
5: the glut of really low level game devs that are looking for funding (essentially making it harder to find worthwhile projects, similar to the pile of greenlit shovelware on steam that saturates their marketspace).
6: the handful of FRAUD or abandoned KS's that burned backers and all the bad press they caused (even though it is not THAT frequent).
7: The fact Matt's shirt from this video wasn't an available tier to buy into for NeN
8: The rising budgets that game dev's are striving for nowadays. Game creation ain't cheap, even for indie games, and it keeps going up as we see more and more ex-employee's from company x and y go indie and try to maintain both their previous level of quality, and their level of salary, with the kickstarter.

That last one, personally, is a growing concern for me and possibly others. I saw a recent update for a project I backed a while ago that is a fairly small group (primarily 1 guy and a handful of hired folk to assist) that broke down just how much 'sweat equity' was being donated to make the game work. I was really blown away by the sacrifice that was being made, and how difficult the process was going to be because of multiple pitfalls that the project hit. But he calculated that if he charged around $25 an hour for his time devoted to the game he would have already accrued over $400k, WELL past the budget he was striving for. This makes me raise an eyebrow and wonder how kickstarters budget their developers salary into the cost and if that is also what is raising the cost for games. I mean why make sacrifices and "donate" when we can just fundraise more and maintain a certain salary level or comfort zone while making the game? I fear if that attitude were to perpetuate, and so game costs via fundraising escalate, how crazy it would get. And at that point, would we begin to see similar situations like we do with the rest of the industry, where budgets go too far beyond what general consumers would consider "reasonable" and so unbalance the process?

Seeing the 2 sides was fascinating. On one hand the guy is effectively paying himself like $3 an hour so that he can see this project come to fruition and release the game he really wants to make. On the other you have industry veterans maintaining their salary levels as sort of an assumed expectation. I saw this a bit with the Black Glove final reports, where they admitted they were kickstarting their goal with the aim to work full time, for the whole group, with a 1 year release schedule to strive for. If they shot for a lesser amount, expecting to have their staffers work half or part time on it, with a 2-3 year release cycle, they likely would have met their initial goal and then surpassed it as time went on. I've seen this on a few campaigns, where the stretch goal was to have the team quite their day jobs, go full time on the game, and so speed up the process.

It seems to me like there is a lot more good will to fund those that want to make the game of their dreams (or similar ideas) than those looking to make a game and continue their career with little more present in their fundraiser. Sort of the:

We want to raise $40,000 so we can make the game we always wanted to be made

vs

We want to raise $400,000 to make a great game you'll love!

Neither concepts are BAD persay, but they each have a different flavor and one's goodwill can vary. On one hand you may see a smaller, less glitzy game because it's done by passionate people that want to do something amazing, and on the other you have a larger, shinier game by professionals that have the skillz, but not necessarily the passion or drive.

Often I look at the game itself, as well as the skills of the team to make my decision, but talking to friends, in many cases if it si a large budget studio, unless it's a game they REALLY want to play, they shoose not to back it because it'll eventually go to steam and be cheaper and easier to get then (and there is a feeling of "they don't need my money".

Obviously this all is my own perceptions, and by no means me claiming this is exactly how everything works.
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matt
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by matt »

I think the answer is clearly #7. Hahha (I think I got it at Target or something last Halloween)

In most cases, I don’t think people are going to be fund raising based on a respectable salary for their team. Perhaps companies like Double Fine or Uber can do that (or at least try to in the case of Human Resources), but I think most of us are putting sweat equity. With Neverending Nightmares, we worked on the game for 9 months on sweat equity and then OUYA doubled out development fees. Even with that, it wasn’t enough to fund the game, so we did a bunch of consulting on the side to devote to Neverending Nightmares.

For the next project, we wouldn’t be kickstarting for the entire budget either – just what we need to finish the game beyond what we’ve raised on the sales of Neverending Nightmares. Since we don’t have the money from OUYA, we’ll probably have to ask for more than on the Neverending Nightmares kickstarter.

Since we’d be doing our second project on kickstarter, it is interesting to see how people will respond to it. We can’t say we are creating he project we always dreamt of making, since we kind of used that before. However, we would be a much less risky project since we’ve already delivered on a kickstarter. Hopefully that combined with our newfound fan base will help us raise more money than on our previous attempt.

It’s hard though! Who knows what kickstarter will be like when launch our next one… :-/
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

evilkinggumby wrote:HA! love the shirt.

I read through those posts for the curious case of Charles Dexter Ward and it was at first disheartening to see him reach those conclusions (and in looking at other articles, see a few others think that it is a slowly failing method to fundraise).
The Tux-T is easily in the running for the best dev diary shirt!

Kickstarters in general definitely seem to be slowing down, but the Dexter Ward creator really seems to be looking for other reasons to blame for not making the goal. I mean he has to know by now that most of the lack of interest for his specific project is based on the fact that the first Kickstarter he did still isn't done, but he doesn't seem willing to accept that, and the whole post mortem has a real sour grapes vibe to it.

For me, I've slowed down my Kickstarter supporting mainly because all the big ones I was really interested in have already happened (i.e. DoubleFine adventure and Dreamfall Chapters), there aren't many big names left to get my attention. Also I haven't seen a lot of indies catch my eye, the really striking ones don't seem to pop up quite as often, and with all the delays and other issues out there I'd rather just wait for what I've already funded to actually finish first. That's where I feel I really lucked out in finding Neverending Nightmares, the whole experience ended up being better than the norm, sadly, as most other projects haven't gone nearly as far in keeping backers up to date and involving them in the process, making me less interested in rolling the dice on others.
evilkinggumby wrote:
Seeing the 2 sides was fascinating. On one hand the guy is effectively paying himself like $3 an hour so that he can see this project come to fruition and release the game he really wants to make. On the other you have industry veterans maintaining their salary levels as sort of an assumed expectation. I saw this a bit with the Black Glove final reports, where they admitted they were kickstarting their goal with the aim to work full time, for the whole group, with a 1 year release schedule to strive for. If they shot for a lesser amount, expecting to have their staffers work half or part time on it, with a 2-3 year release cycle, they likely would have met their initial goal and then surpassed it as time went on. I've seen this on a few campaigns, where the stretch goal was to have the team quite their day jobs, go full time on the game, and so speed up the process.

It seems to me like there is a lot more good will to fund those that want to make the game of their dreams (or similar ideas) than those looking to make a game and continue their career with little more present in their fundraiser.
It's been really eye opening to me learning over the past few years of Kickstarters how much money it takes to make a game, and how little a lot of them, especially the indie developers, end up working for. While I do love the idea of supporting someone making their dream, there is generally a lot more risk in that, so I haven't backed too many of those, on top of getting a little disillusioned as I mentioned by the lack of updates and involvement and serious delays I've seen most projects go through.
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by evilkinggumby »

RightClickSaveAs wrote:It's been really eye opening to me learning over the past few years of Kickstarters how much money it takes to make a game, and how little a lot of them, especially the indie developers, end up working for. While I do love the idea of supporting someone making their dream, there is generally a lot more risk in that, so I haven't backed too many of those, on top of getting a little disillusioned as I mentioned by the lack of updates and involvement and serious delays I've seen most projects go through.
That's a pretty fair assessment actually. The level of risk with smaller indie dev's is great, and even with passion projects, there is a greater degree of failure/abandonment to consider. I know one of the indiegogo campaigns that looks like it was abandoned was like this: passionate and important game concept that the creator felt strongly about ... but.. after a month or so from the end of the campaign.. NADA. Silence. Granted it made nowhere near the amount it wanted, but they had it set to collect any funds donated, even if it didn't hit its stride, so.. oh well.

That is where research and your gut can help, but ultimately erring on the side of caution and waiting means you can't really "lose". If the campaign fails because too many people are sheepish, thats a big red flag to the dev team they need to fix some things or step up their game if they want to make it work. If the game releases and stinks, you lose no money. Worst case the game is amazing, the release cost is higher than if you backed it, and limited goodies are missed out on, but really, that's not a HUGE deal for a lot fo folk I am sure.

I missed the campaign for Wasteland 2 and I regret not knowing about it in time, as it is a game I bought upon release and would have loved to have a kickstarter edition with some nice goodies. Still, life goes on. I backed Obduction up to the physical edition because it felt like a possible bit of video game history in the making: the creators of Myst, a revolutionary game that is revered the world over, are back to try it again. Heck yeah i wanted a piece of memorabilia.

A lot of the time I try and get physical copies, but only if the cost is reasonable, the game looks REALLY groundbreaking or momentous, and I feel extremely confident the project won't fizzle out and die.
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matt
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by matt »

Backing projects is tough! It is a challenge to know what projects will work and what might fall through.

I usually look to see if the experience of the team matches the scope of the project and if the budget seems reasonable for the scope of the project. Often I see an awesome project with amazing graphics and an epic scope with a budget like $30k. While it's possible the team is planning to work on a dollar a day, it is often the case that they are just trying to raise some money/buzz without thinking through how they are going to finish and ship the project. It is REALLY tough to plan a reasonable ship date and stick to it. It was a real challenge to get Neverending Nightmares out on time, and it's something we totally failed to do on Retro/Grade. In hindsight, we probably should have cancelled Retro/Grade, but had we taken kickstarter money, that would have been really challenging.

To some extent, I like the idea of pitching the next game really early on kickstarter with concepts and a description (like some campaigns do), but I think that's a bad thing for me and the backers. If I haven't proved to myself that the game mechanics and ideas will work, then it seems unfair to try to get people to put up money for it. In addition, if you don't know what your core game mechanics, it is going to be difficult to budget and scope the project.

We'll probably do a demo again because I think that was super helpful, but it takes a lot of time to put together a good demo.
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
Harry Sunderland
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by Harry Sunderland »

I think from here on I'm done backing software (except Infinitap, obviously). The market is FLOODED with all these indie devs trying to pitch their game. It's exhausting. I don't have time to play all these damn games, why would I back them!

I'm still waiting for Lobodestroyo, Super World Karts, and all the other games I backed last year!!
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by ranger_lennier »

Well, Super World Karts only had a successful Kickstarter in September 2014.
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matt
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by matt »

Harry, thanks for your support! It is weird how many games are soooo late, but then again, Retro/Grade took 4 years, so I can certainly understand how difficult it is to deliver something on time - especially if you are overfunded. Had we say doubled our kickstarter fee, I might have been inclined to spend another 6 months working on the game. Perhaps the extra time would have been helpful since the main complaint was that the game was too short, but it's possible we would have spent too much time polishing (like I did on Retro/Grade). We couldn't really afford to delay Neverending Nightmares, which is why we stuck pretty closely to our original schedule. Technically we were originally planning for the beginning of August (11 months of development), but since we weren't working on the game during the campaign, we were at about 12 since we released in the end of September (paid for by consulting).
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
Harry Sunderland
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Re: 211 - Is Kickstarter Dead?

Post by Harry Sunderland »

ranger_lennier wrote:Well, Super World Karts only had a successful Kickstarter in September 2014.
That's a good point. For some reason I had a brain fart and forgot that while I backed SWK last year, it failed the first time and didn't actually pass until this time.

This just proves my point that I've backed too many games, I can't even keep track of what got funded when!

But I still want to back the next Infinitap game.
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