133 - Kickstarter Signs of Success

[matt]

In this video I talk about how I decide what a good kickstarter project is and what projects seem like they might be in trouble. Mostly I end up talking about warning signs for projects.

[ranger_lennier]

Shadow of the Eternals originally had their own crowdfunding campaign (not on Kickstarter or similar sites), which I didn't feel comfortable donating to. Then they launched a Kickstarter that budgeted for the first episode but included reward tiers for all the episodes, which again I didn't like. But then they finally got it right, from my perspective, with their second Kickstarter. Here, they reworked the game to basically expand the story of the first episode into a small, self-contained game. There was a potential for sequels, but these weren't part of the rewards. I pledged to this one, but they didn't end up raising enough money.

The only time I've been really burned by a Kickstarter was the ZionEyez video recording glasses. While it was a pretty ambitious project, it seemed reasonable. The founders had worked for Flip Camera, and they had a working prototype, even if they still needed to scale it down some to fit into a reasonable glasses frame. They raised far more money than they asked for, but then it just kept getting pushed back, and updates went from sporadic to nonexistant. Does anyone have their own Kickstarter horror stories?

[RightClickSaveAs]

I've had good luck with Kickstarters so far, but I haven't backed a lot of things, and I stick with either proven companies like Double Fine or Red Thread Games (they're making the next Longest Journey) or really impressive small companies that demonstrate they know what they're doing and have a compelling pitch with reasonable reward tiers and ideally a demo, like Darkest Dungeon and Neverending Nightmares!

The only issues I've seen so far are the inevitable delays. Knock-knock was one of the first things I backed, and it was delayed something like a year. It totally wasn't a big deal to me because I'd basically forgotten about it and only backed it for $5, which considering I got the full game at release it feels like I got away with something.

A warning sign for me is lots of physical reward tiers at low prices. If I see $15-20 for a t-shirt or something, it makes me wonder if they realize how much that's going to cost them.

[matt]

Here, they reworked the game to basically expand the story of the first episode into a small, self-contained game.

While I backed the second kickstarter, it seemed a little suspicious that they could do an entire game for LESS than the cost of the first episode. Doing high quality graphics like that is expensive, and the scope still seemed pretty ambitious, so I was a little worried about them delivering a polished experience. Still, I wanted to play it regardless!

While I only backed it for $1 since I just wanted the updates (and wasn't sure I wanted the actual thing), the iControlPad 2 project was a disaster. It seemed like a pretty reasonable project considering they already brought the iControl Pad 1 to market, but unfortunately 2 wasn't in the cards.

I'm not sure hardware projects are more or less difficult to budget than software, but the asking price per backer is often more, so that I guess it burns more when the projects fail.