A general video games Kickstarter thread

I FUCKING TRY MY BEST YOU UNGRATEFUL ASSCLOWN, BUT I'M ONLY ONE GUY! I CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH!

Bitch. ;)

LOL!!!

That's an awesome way to start a new page in a thread. I love it!

Hahahahahaha

Just think about it...anyone who hits page 16 is going to see the words "ungrateful assclown" in big, bold caps! *giggle*

Welcome to the party, pals! ;)

And in completely unrelated news, Peter Molyneux wants to kickstart a Populous remake called Godus for a mere 450,000 English pounds. Good luck with that.

I wish him luck and he'll probably get it. I loved Populous. But Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater hasn't made a game that I didn't consider fundamentally flawed since Syndicate. Considering that I've already been burned buying some of his stuff, I'll wait and see.

You'd think he'd have the money to kickstart this himself.

Yeah seriously.

Maybe he put all his money inside the Curiosity cube.

I love the name Godus. It's like he couldn't even be bothered to be creative with titling anymore.

"We're going to make a new god game, everyone. And we'll call it... err... God... us. Godus. Now get to work."

I like it when the developer is honest about how much money it will really take to make a game. Some Kickstarters seem under-priced for what that are claiming to deliver, and that makes me more nervous than large goals.

Uh:

I don't even know what to say. Somebody subject this jackass to the Total Perspective Vortex before he kickstarts a remake of The Movies. (That is not an endorsement of The Movies; it is a condemnation of any world that would further feed his ego by fully funding a remake of the worst videogame ever made by people who should know better.)

Peter Molyneux tweets about how much his team loves crunching.

So off topic a bit, I wrote to the Kickstarter folks because I thought their search functionality is HORRIBLE. I mean, if I wanna see every video game project, how the hell do I do that? It's not clear on the site at all, and user experience is a big part of what I do professionally.

They wrote back and basically said if you go to your chosen category, like video games (Discover -> Games -> Video Games) and then under "Popular This Week" you click the "See more popular projects" link, continually scrolling down that page will show you everything in that category.

I NEVER would have figured that out unless they told me, honestly. What a mess. I dunno if y'all knew this or not, but I'd figure I'd share it to hopefully make someone's life easier. :)

The winning word in that tweet was "another". So that this isn't the first 36 hour straight crunch they've done.

It's also somethng that acts as a big barrier to getting noticed if you aren't flagged as 'popular'.

I wrote them about exactly the same thing, even though I had already figured that out. Also to say that it is CRAZY that they don't let you sort by "date launched." I come to their site and want to see new projects, but the site doesn't want to let me!

Exactly, it's such a stupid system.

If I were a cynic - which I am - I'd say it is because Kickstarter wants the bigger projects to succeed, so bumps them up the top of the popular list.

That would be extremely shortsighted of them. I suspect there's more to be had in the long tail.

Yes and no. People didn't start taking Kickstarter seriously for video games until it had a US$1m+ project. People only really notice the big successes.

The median figure raised from a Kickstarter is in the US$15k range, but it is the $100k+ (and rising) titles that actually draw the attention to the site.

But they draw attention to the site regardless. It's not like Kickstarter has to game their lists to highlight them. Especially since they have a "staff picks" section that already serves that function, and appears at the top of the page in every category. And, as it happens, it doesn't seem to have a particular focus on big projects. The top of that list is mostly oddball smaller projects right now.

Big projects often end up at the top of the "popular" list because they often are popular. It's as simple as that.

I like this idea and have kickstarted it:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ace-for-re-imagining-video-games?ref=category

...a grab-bag of 30 games, some of them have to turn out to be awesome, don't they?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/failbetter/below-0

Below, a story-fuelled, dungeon-delving digital card game from the creators of Fallen London. I'm usually anti-Kickstarter but I might back this since it seems to be more Fallen London and would be a pretty sure thing. I also might back the sequel to Barkley: Shut up and Jam Gaiden whenever that gets put up.

If you've never played Fallen London, you should. It's a heavily story-based browser card game. It eventually gets kinda grindy, but it's pretty cool.

That definitely seems interesting, although $250,000 seems insanely low to accomplish everything they say they want to do in that video.

It's possible that the money just buys them the building, and then they'll try to do the rest with sweat. How feasible that is I have no idea. OTOH, I'm happy to contribute just for the games; if the gamespace thing gets up too, I'll regard that as a cool bonus.

Does anyone else ever go to these kickstarters, decide to back it, and then realize the level they wanted to back was an early bird limited quantity tier, get annoyed, and then end up not backing it at all?

Or am I the only one who gets that annoyed over $5-10?

I'm pleased to see this announcement from the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter

I've posted before my concern that announcing features publicly so early in the development process could lead to time and money being spent in the wrong place. I'm glad to see these guys have the quality of the overall game as their first priority and not the announced feature list. I hope backers show support for projects that take this approach.

I'm a backer of that one and it felt fine. Like they say, its very much non core.

I tried to re-read this thread to check if someone already posted this... but ehm, maybe I missed it. So here it is (again?):

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/551886203/fist-of-awesome

It's a pixly beat-em up. The tagline being: Ever wanted to punch a bear IN THE MOUTH?
It's a small crappy mobile game. It's for all the lovers of MCPIXEL out there, I suppose. There's not many of them around, seeing as he does hardly have 350 backers.
But if you didn't have a real life this year, you can pledge 30£ and they write you a christmas card, you poor sucker.

It's not sci-fi or fantasy, but it's cheap and... you can punch bears. I know some people liked Organ Trail and McPixel, so have a look at it.

I'm not into beat 'em ups, but Fist of Awesome does indeed look awesome.

This is sort of a rant, but I see posts / stories all the time on various sites, like this one from penny-arcade: http://penny-arcade.com/report/edit...ed-a-developers-dreams-and-shut-down-his-stud

All complaining that their game, which was by their accounts, totally awesome and amazing and should've made them a zillion dollars, didn't make them any money. And you feel somewhat bad, and then you look at the trailer for their game, and the game looks pretty much like every other game out there, maybe with a slight twist, but not much to differentiate it from one of ten thousand other clones. And they only released it on the most crowded platform to exist, the iOS store. Oh, and their PR was mostly non-existent. It's like yeah, what did you expect was going to happen?

Yeah, I hate kicking people when they're down, but when the notable review is "a breath of fresh air in a dried up genre," that's a warning sign, not encouragement. I'm definitely no expert on how the App Store works, but it seems like for a small developer without VC backing, word of mouth is a billion times more valuable than hiring a PR firm. And you're not going to get solid word of mouth when your pitch is "an endless runner but like Ikaruga."

Also: don't quit your day job. Come on, people; it's a cliche for a reason.

Sui Generis has raised $115k of a $150k goal with 49 hours to go. It's getting close. I'm still not a backer, but I'm very close to pulling the trigger. Anyone else looking at this?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1473965863/sui-generis

Oh, and Maia - the other one I mentioned about 4 pages back - got funded the other day.

I am tempted by sui generis, though that is got to be one of the worst names for a game.

How much money is 5,000 "L's"?

I've backed Sui Generis because the insanity of programming the whole game by a single person needs to be supported.

You should back this one, then. ;)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshparnell/limit-theory-an-infinite-procedural-space-game

You won't trick me into supporting a space game, Rubin! *shakes fist*

I did back Elite though