165 - Why Kickstarters are Late

[matt]

In this developer diary, I talk about why kickstarter projects (and games in general) often don't meet their original deadlines.

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Here's a probably dumb question: why don't more Kickstarter projects under-promise on the release dates, especially the indies? For instance if a team is making a small game and they optimistically expect they can release it by January 2015, why don't they give a release date for June 2015, that way if they actually hit the target the fans will be surprised and happy the game was "early", and everyone will win? As it is, if I back a project now I automatically just add 3-6 months to whatever date is given, and that usually turns out to be a conservative estimate.

Because I'm in your boat Matt, every project I back has had some kind of delay (except Neverending Nightmares, I don't think being delayed a month even counts as a real delay, I actually had forgotten the original date was August until you mentioned it ).

[matt]

Some of the problem is that they do the time estimates based on their budget, and then they get a lot more funding, so they rescope the game, which means they take more time.

I think other developers may just take a pay cut because either they see the potential of improving their game or because their game just plain isn't finished.

For us, I've thought about getting extra funding or delaying, but I don't want to bear any more financial risk than we already have (we self funded up until the kickstarter) given that bet big on Retro/Grade and lost. Also, I worry that if I give myself extra time, I'll just work on a bunch of little polish items that will make the game a bit better but not really get us any more sales.

While I'd love to work on the game until it's perfect, that didn't work well for Retro/Grade, so I'm trying something different. Hopefully it'll work out much better.