10,000 Games projects have been successfully funded on Kickstarter
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I prefer to back those even if they fail than back mainstream succesful projects that would have been made anyway.
[1] Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Pillars of Eternity, Antharion, Balrum, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Balrum, RimWorld, Lords of Xulima, Blackguards, Shadowrun: Hongkong
edit: And 100% sucess rate with tabletop/card games
it's dev is still ongoing.
And I say that as a person with a few ships awaiting release, too. While I really want my Carrack, it's far more important that they make it good. The estimated release times have moved back a few time, but that's the expense of great work in the rest of the game. Backers seem to largely accept this as the cost of buying into an in-progress development: priorities must be fluid, and we have to make do.
The trick to Kickstarter is to only invest what you can lose (like anything!) and then be patient. Starcitizen is stupendously ambitious, and is going to cost a fortune to develop. They successfully made the transistion to being nearly self-sustained, basically using Kickstarter to kickstart their development process.
I don't understand where the community gets all that positive vibes from but I've lost it and yes....I invested too.
[0] https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/for...
> Please note: Even though we call it the ‘Live’ service, it’s still very much in the Alpha stage of development, and there are tons of features and optimizations to be added. Players on the ‘Live’ service are very much testers, too!
We are talking about 130 million dollar. A hill of mismanagement, ideas stacked on ideas and Spawn offs to keep the hype running. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you are talking about. This game is the peek of that new Alpha Game wave that is flooding steam for example. It's like now everybody wants to be like SZ. Greenlight some rough concepts, ???, profit/cancel.
This game is a terrible example for others.
And expectations are everything. I had endless hours of fun with Privateer as a kid, and had a blast with Freelancer when I was older. That covers a large chunk of my life, so my patience is tempered, a bit. Eve fills the niche while I wait, and I'm very excited to see my old memories come back in HD in a new universe. What's another 5 years out of 25? (And I'm serious - I had fun with Privateer, and in retrospect it was kinda terrible! Pushing past the uncanny valley of VR sim is effort worth waiting for!)
Honestly? Expectations are screwy. Eve has a sophisticated character creation system, and it's essentially to take a 200x200 pixel picture. Just fantastic, and almost as useless. But it really makes the game feel bigger and more real. Eve's taken more than 15 years to get to where it is, and that's sort of where I hold my standard. Time ain't the barrier to me.
What we have with SC now is the shattered result of all those terrible management decisions and a CEO who does not take the critics serious (probably also because of this one popular "critics" criticism). I'm not sure if anything good can grow from this but I'm pretty sure some huge changes in management could help out here to at least get a clear and realistic target.
They owe it to the backers even if the loudest of them don't care. This is a project which will be an example for others. Future will show what kind of example...
My point is that lateness isn't the sin people make it out to be. A well polished and expansive game can come late, and so long as the medium still does it justice it'll be great. All the gnashing of teeth and whining will be forgotten as people play fun. Setting expectations for deliverables is far better than expectation for delivery times, since you can miss deadlines while still delivering (leaving you with a lose-win pattern). And it's better to set expectations realistically rather than disappoint, because then at best you can deliver disappointment on time. SC has some damn good pedigree, so I think it's easy to believe they'll deliver on quality and expectation, and that overrides everything else.
I was thrilled about NMS (and had a blast with it), and I think it panned a bit because it rushed. There was some noise that warped expectations, and yet the game became just what it set out to be. Further updeates made it even more fun to play, and to quote Day9 "I will play the shit out of No Man's Sky 2." Heck, we even have celebrated failures like VoxelQuest, which is one of my favorite KickStarter epics. Obduction was just what I expected from Cyan. And I'm honestly kinda excited to see if Hiveswap manages to deliver despite hype. Broken Age was a bit bizzare, since it actually probably would have been better if it stopped in the middle (but still a lot of fun). We live in such a golden age of choice it's possible that Dual Universe will be good!
Imagine having NMS, SC, and DU all with their own take on a large persistent universe - pick the style you like! I'll happily wait years to see that, and we can usually play them before they're done, which takes the sting out of waiting I think.
i suppose this correlates with the major emotional investment.
I've never backed anything on Kickstarter. But if everything you have backed has delivered something to you, it sounds like you've chosen projects very well!
I don't have any special insight but I get the feeling that this is how very many game development investments pan out. Generally I think it's safe to say that commercial software projects are hyped and oversold.
It becomes most galling with games because they are software that people WANT to engage with, rather than being forced to.
Board games are a totally different story. Kickstarter started the the golden age of board games. Some of the best board games ever made come from there. They're almost always successful projects (not always good games, but they deliver at least). And that's not counting all the cool tabletop stuff like wyrmwood accessories.
So now I only back board games. And I'm super happy with what I'm getting.
The board game was Mottainai. We did play it a few times, but my girlfriend found a strategy that works really well but makes the game boring (always just pray on your turn) on her first try.
Data for video games:
Great: FTL, Torment: Tides of Numenera.
I didn't back the Pen and Paper RPG Numenera which Torment is set in, but it sounds really good.
Good: Chaos Reborn, Sunless Sea, Dreamfall Chapters, Elite Dangerous, Broken Sword, Pillars of Eternity
Bad: Godus. He made several of my favourite ever games, but Peter Molyneux is not getting a pre-order from me again. I can only assume that someone else was the talent at Bullfrog and Lionhead.
Not finished yet: Battletech, Maia (early access is available and looks good)
Never made: Unwritten. This was a victim of the US medical system. A refund was offered.
Failed to meet target (therefore payment not taken): Ars Magica Video Game, The Ship: Full Steam Ahead, Nexus 2.
I must say, you took a lot of chances that I decided not to, and most of them turned out pretty well. This reinforces my belief that Kickstarter is really what you make of it.
On the other hand, without Kickstarter a lot of those games would not have been made.
You should look into the career of the Carter brothers (Simon and Dene).
Other than that it was myst in a fps and the game is really good otherwise.
I've never backed a KS board game, but as an outsider/layperson, that category sounds like an unmitigated runaway success with huge-money-campaigns [0] like Kingdom Death ($12M) and Exploding Kittens ($8.7M), and then humble projects that later became huge, such as Cards Against Humanity ($15K) [1].
But I have backed video games and pay more attention to that category in general. So while I'm aware of great successes like FTL, Undertale, Shovel Knight, and Pillars of Eternity, the category of video game projects seems seems to be much more infused with skepticism and even hostility because of high profile failures like Mighty No. 9 and Clang [2]. Hell, one of the earliest high profile KS failure that I remember hearing about was Code Hero back in 2011 [3]
Obviously, selection/survivor bias is in play here. I read tech blogs so I'll hear more about video game controversies than those of board games. But I feel -- as is the case for software development in general -- there are inherent challenges to video game development that make it seem more risky. Yes, board games have to deal with hardware-manufacturing issues, but it's hard to imagine anything like Star Citizen's creep scope happening to a board game campaign (not that SC is a failure, but its development has definitely evoked feelings of cynicism).
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=12...
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maxtemkin/cards-against...
[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang
[3] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/primerist/code-hero-a-g...
As someone with some direct experience with kickstarted board games, a few are smashing successes and quite a lot are, in terms of play, nothing special. I personally wouldn't want to back a campaign, because the odds are overwhelming that the final product wouldn't be something I'd really want to own.
There are enthusiasts who take the opposite approach -- they back everything because sometimes you get a real gem.
But when software delivers a piece of crap, you end up with much less. Some of the successful iOS games I've backed from small devs don't even work anymore because they eventually stop keeping up with changes to iOS.
All that was needed was the manufacturing, and the costs for about 98% of what goes into a board game are fairly well established.
Here's an older list of games that successfully funded but didn't launch: http://kotaku.com/12-successful-kickstarters-that-never-deli...
So successfully funding doesn't mean successful launch.
Off the top of my head, my wife and I enjoy: Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Ascension, Lost Cities, Settlers of Catan, Elder Sign.
Other 2 players we like Patchwork and 7 Tiny Epic Gallaxies
Jaipur is a great made for two players game. I'll also endorse the recs for Elder Sign, seven wonders duel, and Splendor. I love love love Pixel Tactics, though it's a bit too aggressive for my partner...
Or is just spur of the moment where something you really want to support comes up and you do so?
What's the process where you back something with a 'large' amount but then a new project that needs the support more, that you feel more strongly about comes along?
I mostly spend money on projects that I believe would have a lower chance of happening without kickstarter. For patreon, I mostly fund comics and webnovels.
Sidenote, I dislike Patreon. They have a great idea but the interface is really awful and it hasn't improved much. I wish someone more worthy had had that idea first because with the network effect, it would be hard for a competitor to get traction.
The most prominent pledge system is GMT's and it is still thriving. Most non-Hasbro/AEG/Asmodee board game publishers are smaller than GMT.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/maydaygames/created
It's basically the same reason that authors won't read your unpublished book and screenwriters won't read your unpublished screenplay.
The real problem with such a system is really just the vast majority of ideas are crap. But even the good ideas are difficult to execute - i m sure they aren't low on ideas, but execution prowess.
Those games have budgets into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and I'd imagine that kind of money would be very difficult to crowdfund.
When Kickstarter starts taking responsibility for failed projects with at least some funds being returned, especially their 10% fee then I'll perhaps consider it again.
Their logo should be someone shrugging their shoulders - that about their typical response when there's a problem.
With traditional mainstream "AAA" titles coming out in such buggy and disappointing states, this could be a differentiation. The problem is, I think KickStarter-backed game development has been even worse for the most part.
Beside Wasteland 2 and some adventures from former Lucasart developers I don't know any of the KS games.
You haven't heard of Pillars of Eternity?
By not needing a publisher, investors, deadlines, etc. They have been liberated, and it's so exciting to have no idea where the game is going next.
Something about monthly sprints with fixed monthly releases, and completely public bug tracking/standup notes/public discussion forums makes for a really refreshing player experience that goes way beyond the game itself.
Until then, I'll stick to buying things that actually exist.
I guess it's not interesting... Or maybe some game developers would fund such engine?
Without the open world there's DarkPlaces (based on Quake), with games like Xonotic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xonotic
Both are really good considering it's hard to make something like this tbh. Not sure if there's anything good that has all 4 of those things, though ;). People often underestimate just how much work game engines are. And also how useless they are without an actual game on them.
From what I understand there are rumours that multiplayer is something they plan to develop after their 1.0 (feature-parity with the original Morrowind engine). There are already people making patchsets that add some form of multiplayer support.