A general video games Kickstarter thread

Agreed, the demand for constant updates really just strikes me as an entitlement issue. You gave money to help fund a project you're interested in seeing come to fruition not to get constant updates about whatever inane activities might be going on related to the project. I've worked on several games and I can say that a period of 9 days without significant news isn't uncommon, it's probably the norm. Also there's a cost to employ someone to update the kickstarter constantly, as an investor would you rather your money go to paying this person or to actual content for the project you're supporting. Ultimately it's your money but you're investing in a product not a marketing campaign.

This isn't SEO nor marketing (per se) for the product, it's a pitch for an investment. I'll agree the pitch should be well done and rofessionally done but once you've decided to put your money in there's no need for them to constantly update unless there's actually something worth updating. Additional updates should be targeted at those who haven't put in their money so if a kickstarter is going well they shouldn't be spending their time and money on posting useless updates.

I can't agree at all. It's great if you found a campaign on day two, pitched in and no longer need any convincing, but what about folks who found the campaign on day five, ten, fifteen or twenty. What if someone came into a project halfway in and only saw one update that entire time? I dunno about you, but if I were them, I'd be disheartened.

And yes it is an offshoot of marketing, as one of the best way to get and retain customers is to consistently engage with them, and that's the point of updates. It's not an entitlement issue, it's a transparency issue, a passion issue and a trust issue. If someone is confident about their product, they'll convey that confidence through updates and other means. Lack of updates, to me, means a lack of confidence in one's project and a lack of trust in one's potential customer base.

And yes it is an offshoot of marketing, as one of the best way to get and retain customers is to consistently engage with them, and that's the point of updates. It's not an entitlement issue, it's a transparency issue, a passion issue and a trust issue. If someone is confident about their product, they'll convey that confidence through updates and other means. Lack of updates, to me, means a lack of confidence in one's project and a lack of trust in one's potential customer base.[/quote]
Why, the content is there and just as relevant on day 1 as it is on day 20. Again I think updates can be useful in attempting to get investment from those who haven't invested yet, no doubt. However once someone has invested what's the point of continuing to send marketing updates about their wonderful investment opportunity that you've already taken them up on. It is marketing but it's marketing the investment, not the product. To a degree I'll agree it's both, but once you've invested you've both bought into the investment and the product so again further marketing isn't necessary.

You interpret a lack of updates to mean a lack of confidence, that's not necessarily the case. Many of these are small companies who aren't interested in paying for marketing at the moment, they're interested in getting funding so they can complete their projects.

You're probably right in that most people don't see this as purely an investment channel or a pre-order system (which is what it really is, only without the guarantee) so catering to those folks that expect constant communication will of course work on them. That however is the entitlement aspect. You expect that communication even though it's not required nor typically advertised. The only thing you're entitled to is the product you've given them money for.

What people interpret it to mean is all that matters.

True, what I'm saying though is that that interpretation isn't the correct one.

I'm not a fan of Kickstarter. I like the idea but it's turned into nothing but a marketing and pre-order medium and not the crowd funding medium it started out as. To that end if a project is getting the funding it needs updates should be irrelevant and viewed as a waste of company time and money. Updates should be used to either attract new funding or to inform investors of major milestones (getting funded, hitting stretch goals, project completion). It's attitudes like Brian's that turned Kickstarter from a micro funding site to a marketing one. I'd rather projects be funded based on their merits not how frequently they sate their investors appetites for meaningless updates.

It has always been about marketing.

But in order to get funded you need to market yourself well. Part of the way to do that is through frequent updates. It seems like many successful Kickstarters have used frequent updates with new or expanded goals as a way to continually market their micro funding opportunity. This is a way to continually get free pushes of information out to people who may not have invested through blogs, message boards and gaming websites. I know many people here have said in this thread when a kickstarter has a new update that adds something they really like, even if they already have pledged.

Yes, ideally, you don't have to babysit your Kickstarter a lot, but if you read some of the postmortems that people have been writing on their own blogs or Gamasutra, frequent updates seem to be one of the keys to help get you to your goal. Not the only thing by far, but they help.

I wouldn't use the word "babysit", but I would use the word "nurture". I think a good Kickstarter needs to needs to be nurtured through constant engagement. :)

I do enjoy that we've already reached the point in Kickstarter's life where people are already pining for "the old days". You know, before money was involved, or something.

The old days? What's that even mean?

Any kind of crowdfunding model requires pitching an idea to the crowd to convince them to put money into an idea. That requires marketing.

Regular updates are a good idea, at the very least because it shows your backers / potential backers that you are paying attention. As Brian points out in his blog, Elite's Kickstarter isn't getting much attention from Braben's team because they are in the middle of launching another game. This pretty much points to an attitude that they thought the money would just roll in based on the Elite name and that they didn't have to work for it.

In the previous years of Kickstarter, you probably could get away with only 1 or 2 updates over the backing period, but now there are something like 300 (or so I've heard) 200 (doing a very quick count that could be wrong) that are all competing for crowd cash. If you aren't out spruiking your Kickstarter, it is going to disappear behind those who do.

I think he's referring to the new trend (particularly in the games category) of established developers using Kickstarter when they arguably don't need it. Otherwise, yeah--marketing has always been a core part of Kickstarter. The whole point of the service is to give people a platform from which to market ideas to potential backers. The idea that marketing shouldn't be a part of the process is sort of odd. A project pitch is, pretty much by definition, marketing.

Even established companies using Kickstarter doesn't bother me much, though. It's not like those projects are replacing the indie crowdfunding ones. There aren't even that many of them, really--it's just that the handful that are out there get a lot of press.

You don't think that they distract people from the indie projects? People are only going to spend so much money.

If there were more than a tiny handful of them, maybe. Professional companies using Kickstarter to fund projects get a lot of press (and, often, money), but don't represent a significant percentage of the projects on Kickstarter. At any given time in the Games category, there might be a couple of active "pro" Kickstarter projects, to 100+ indie projects. And at any rate, they don't compete for people's money any more than they would if they were developed and published through normal channels. People that fund indie games through Kickstarter already have a vast array of professionally published games that they can spend their money on, and yet choose to back indie efforts nonetheless. I don't think they are going to suddenly stop doing that just because a handful of pro projects are now on Kickstarter.

Established companies using it is definitely something I think is against the spirit of Kickstarter and is part of what essentially makes it a pre-order and hype medium. Those sorts of projects are likely to be completed and don't need this sort of funding to come to fruition.

I'm not arguing against marketing though, I'm saying that the marketing should be targeted at people who haven't backed the project yet and not to appease those who already have who demand constant information. I'm really specifically talking about updates and that the frequency of them shouldn't be a significant metric in deciding whether to back it or not.

My goal is to get games I want to play, not conduct an affirmative action program on behalf of independent developers. I'm happy to back them when their ideas interest me and (in many cases) when their pitch meets enough of the criteria that Brian outlined. If I'm sufficiently interested in an idea, sometimes I'll accept a lesser pitch, but a stronger pitch will surely put me over the top for ideas that I have mixed feelings about.
Appropriate levels of updates (not the same as constant, necessarily) are important and not about entitlement. If you choose to take the Kickstarter route, then you need to be cognizant and up-front about the degree to which you are going to share the experience with your backers. I suppose some traditional gamers still want everything to happen behind a Cleve-esque miasma of bullshit, but if you don't want to see them you don't have to read them.

How do you even say these things without your head exploding from cognitive dissonance? It's not correct for you, but people are telling you directly it's a problem for them, and they are people who actually are investing in kickstarters rather than yearning for some golden age of crowdsourced projects that communicated their merits through telepathy.

Well, it's still something with business aspects, and you need really strong results and track records to justify being opaque. Even then, there is no downside to transparency unless your project is badly run. Now, there's no universal formula for update appropriateness, but I think it's fair to say that a rationale accompanying a clear indication of what your approach to communication is going to be is ideal if you're not going to tend towards regular updates.

I'd agree that this is true, for those projects*. I disagree with your implication that Kickstarter has, in general, because a vehicle for this sort of thing. For example, how many "pro" projects are active in the Games category right now? I count three--and that's including both board and electronic games--among hundreds of indie projects. Saying that "it's turned into nothing but a marketing and pre-order medium" is a dramatically hyperbolic stretch. It hasn't.

Also, this.


*(though we could probably argue about "This would have been funded anyway" on a case-by-case basis, even when it comes to established developers. Do you honestly believe that there are publishers out there that would jump at the chance to fund Jane Jensen adventure games? Because as far as I can tell, there really aren't.)

I honestly don't mind established companies using KS to fund something they love without dealing with publishers and their requirements, especially if it's presented that way. The Project Eternity and Double Fine projects, I believe, excelled at getting this across, to their benefit.

I'd agree with that, Project Eternity and Double fine Adventure game were never going to get funded by publishers. I don't care for adventure, but definitely backed Eternity because I WANTED that game to get made. Same for the other stuff I backed - Xenonauts, Deadstate, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, Banner Saga, I want them all to exist. I figure at least one, probably two of those are not going to make it.

Braben should have had my money from day one, I loved Elite back in the C64 days. But he put in even LESS work in telling me what game he wanted to make than the "old skool RPG" people, if that is even possible.

Shadowrun, Wasteland, Project Eternity - it was clear from day 1 what they wanted to make, and it only got MORE clearer and specific as the kick starters went on.

Exactly, their goals and tiers were very clear, they were transparent, passionate and excited and shared that with us in their pitch and regular updates. Their excitement was just evident, and ultimately contagious.

Definitely. Quite a few of the projects from established developers are in niche genres that most publishers won't touch today. If having big developers on Kickstarter means a resurgence in adventure games, old-school RPGs, space sims, and turn-based strategy games, then I'm all for it.

Here here! *clink*

Where?

Have you dudes seen this thing? He's got a heck of a tagline: Dungeon Keeper meets Dwarf Fortress on a primordial alien world.

On the other hand, apparently the engine provides "stunning visuals". Welp. :P



Looks like he has a few videos up, including the DK-esque first person mode.

In space every room has it's own fog machine.

Thorvalla, an RPG by Guido Henkel (Realms of Arkania, Planescape: Torment). Very little information, very ambitious funding ($1 million)... probably no chance.

It's a conspiracy backed by the fluorescent floor-and-wall-light industrial complex!

Why on earth didn't he figure out more clearly what he wanted before making a pitch? What a shame.

Wow, that pitch for Thorvalla is almost as bad as the Elite: Dangerous pitch.

*ahem*

Check out my post from 2 pages back. As I said a couple of weeks ago, the tagline is fine, but the very little we see of the gameplay looks like just another tower defense game. So far he hasn't provided any real evidence to back up his gameplay statements and that gives me pause.

I'm more tempted to back Sui Generis - they've put some nice updates on their kickstarter page - but they've got a long way to go in just 9 days.

I did say almost. ;)

Whatevs man. Take your phonics or whatever and get the heck out.

Oh yeah? What is it? M.O.R.E.? SkyJacker? Divine Space? C'mon man, hit me.

Since Brian convinced me to fork over $90 for Distant Worlds, a game tha went on sale two days after I bought it and I've still only played for about 15 hours, all I can say is...

MAKE HIM SUFFER A LOT!!!

HAY, I CAN'T TELL WHEN THEIR SALES ARE, FUCKER.

HAY, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT SPACE GAMES! IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!


FUCKER ;)