4 ms·

From my experience seeing games on kickstarter, this is pretty much what is reasonable to expect. I mean the whole model is 1. Get money from community to fund

by setr 9y ago

From my experience seeing games on kickstarter, this is pretty much what is reasonable to expect. I mean the whole model is 1. Get money from community to fund game development 2. Sell the game again after, for extra profit, because why not And somewhere along the way there's usually a total mis-estimation of funds and resources At least here something was given back to the "community"... The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity; I'm not really sure what people are thinking when they use it. Nothing given back to community, significant risk of failure, no real quality control or even a basic measure to meet, and extremely hype-cycled. Its mostly just a platform to give away your money for empty promises...

majewsky 9y ago
> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity The totality of this statement is what's absurd. There's some good stuff on Kickstarter etc., but Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. Imagine Amazon, but instead of next-day delivery you get next-year delivery and there's a 90% chance your product won't be delivered at all: That's what crowdfunding is. Traditionally, when funding a product, investors got a portion of the earnings to offset their risk. Crowdfunding has managed to eschew that in favor of just getting you to give people money just in case they can come up with a product. If the bet works out, great, you get a product, but so do I, and I didn't give the creators any money in advance. If it fails, you're out your money.
  - ivanbakel 9y ago
    The assumption you make is that the product would necessarily exist otherwise without the crowdfunding, which isn't accurate in my experience. The bet is sometimes between some product and no product.
  - ulkesh 9y ago
    > You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. Anecdotal, of course, but "small chance" for me is that I have received 28 out of 29 projects I've helped fund in roughly the time-frame outlined. Only one project did I simply waste money on (the Lunecase for iPhone). For me, that's a 96.6% success rate of crowdfunded items I've backed. The reason I crowdfund is for the product, sure, but also for the extras that the main product won't have upon release. It's not so much bragging rights, I couldn't care less about that. It's because I feel like I'm getting more for my money, well, because I am. Maybe I'm just lucky.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      Maybe you're just better at due diligence than the average person (who can't really be expected to know how products get launched and what the red flags are).
      - ulkesh 9y ago
        I would love to think so! But sadly I've been burned on some things in the past as well (usually trusting that Amazon ships me the right item, eBay, that one item on Kickstarter, etc). I do my best to check seller reviews/ratings on typical eCommerce sites, but with Kickstarter it's more about experience of previous campaigns (like Cool Mini or Not, I trust them implicitly now). I do agree with you, though, that crowdfunding, as a concept, is a caveat emptor situation. Sadly, as is the case in the United States anyway, caveat emptor seems to be the norm.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    My experience with crowdfunding involves web-comic print runs, where the product already exists (published on the web), and the money is used to print the books, and produce stuff like posters or t-shirts. Since none of these require a huge R&D effort, delivery is pretty much guaranteed (although any number of external factors might cause a delay). So what's the difference to Amazon? Essentially, none of the products involved would be any profitable if produced on an individual basis, and independent creators can't really afford to print a hundred copies of their books in hopes of someone actually buying them. Using crowdfunding, they can gauge demand and then get a volume discount by printing a large number of books at once. It all boils down to what you use crowdfunding for. I would never fund an effort to develop a new widget from scratch, but I might chip in to have a convincingly demonstrated prototype mass-manufactured when the alternative would be to not get it at all.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    I do Kickstarters for several artists I'm a fan of for print runs. Essentially the work is finished, or near finished, and the artist will crowdfund to get prints made to sell, they usually get enough funding to do about three fold what's ordered in the kickstarter. So the KS backers are already taken care of, and the remainder they'll sell at conventions over the next couple of years. And yeah I've backed a couple gadgets too, they never came to market. So? It was like $35 total, and maybe two a year. I think I'll be alright. As with most things, if you can't afford the risk, don't take it.
  - drizzt396 9y ago
    It's actually pretty solid for funding one-off art projects, like albums. But for consumer goods I'm buying what you're selling here.
  - sevensor 9y ago
    It's an interesting comment on crowdfunding that it's now being compared to Amazon. The original buzz around the idea was that it was a way to pay people to do something that might fail. Getting a product was almost beside the point -- you were patronising creative risk-taking. I'm interested in why this idea failed. Was it the scams? The naive people who promised to deliver the impossible?
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      I think the problem is that it's marketed as a purchase too much. Consider the difference between: "I want to do a crazy thing, and it might not even work. However, if you give me money, I have a chance, and I'll give you one of the things if it does end up working." vs: "We're making a crazy thing! Give us money now and we'll send it to you in a month."
  - kristiandupont 9y ago
    Everything I've funded has been realized. Do you have something to back up that 90% figure? But in any case, I don't see any problems with this. The terms are completely clear and I know what I am getting into. I fund projects because I want them to succeed but I am well aware that they might not. As long as I get the impression that it didn't fail because of foul play, I am happy.
  - setr 9y ago
    Its not just that you are a prepaying with high risk, but that what is essentially a charity is somehow treated as a legitimate business enterprise. That the community fully accepts, and even expects the producer to continue selling the product after having the entire thing funded by whatever fans. For a physical good, this can be justified, but for software... The benefit being some 33% proce reduction, or a special in-game kickstarter item, or a forum badge, or a little physical good related to the game and production costs vastly underestimated, or some other nonsense. That people buy into this, I don't like at all. But the arrogance, stupidity and outright malicious of the devs that make use of it is infinitely more offensive. And thats just amongst the once-respectable developers..
  - com2kid 9y ago
    > No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. This depends on the project. Board games, RPG books, and food products ship just fine. Some of the best food I've had has come courtesy of Kickstarter campaigns. Computer games are hit or miss. They all end up late, but I got'em. My glowing plants are apparently never coming (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/whatever-happened-to-the-glowing-plant-kickstarter/523551/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/whatever...), but other than that, and with the exception of some fudge that was quite mediocre, I've been happy with my Kickstarter purchases, and Kickstarter has allowed me access to types of products that otherwise would not have existed.
- mattkevan 9y ago
  My favourite corollary to this is 'At Internet scale, sturgeon's law is six sigma'
mysterydip 9y ago
What funding options would you suggest instead?
jasonlotito 9y ago
> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity; Not sure what you mean by this. Out of the 35 projects I've funded (some of which are games), only 2 have failed to deliver, and I've felt cheated by none. If what you say is true, I'm a better gauge of success than VC's picking startups that will be successful. Maybe the problem isn't crowdfunding, but your expectations of it and how you go about judging whether you should give money or not.

by setr 9y ago

majewsky 9y ago

> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity The totality of this statement is what's absurd. There's some good stuff on Kickstarter etc., but Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.

StavrosK 9y ago
No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. Imagine Amazon, but instead of next-day delivery you get next-year delivery and there's a 90% chance your product won't be delivered at all: That's what crowdfunding is. Traditionally, when funding a product, investors got a portion of the earnings to offset their risk. Crowdfunding has managed to eschew that in favor of just getting you to give people money just in case they can come up with a product. If the bet works out, great, you get a product, but so do I, and I didn't give the creators any money in advance. If it fails, you're out your money.
- ivanbakel 9y ago
  The assumption you make is that the product would necessarily exist otherwise without the crowdfunding, which isn't accurate in my experience. The bet is sometimes between some product and no product.
- ulkesh 9y ago
  > You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. Anecdotal, of course, but "small chance" for me is that I have received 28 out of 29 projects I've helped fund in roughly the time-frame outlined. Only one project did I simply waste money on (the Lunecase for iPhone). For me, that's a 96.6% success rate of crowdfunded items I've backed. The reason I crowdfund is for the product, sure, but also for the extras that the main product won't have upon release. It's not so much bragging rights, I couldn't care less about that. It's because I feel like I'm getting more for my money, well, because I am. Maybe I'm just lucky.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    Maybe you're just better at due diligence than the average person (who can't really be expected to know how products get launched and what the red flags are).
    - ulkesh 9y ago
      I would love to think so! But sadly I've been burned on some things in the past as well (usually trusting that Amazon ships me the right item, eBay, that one item on Kickstarter, etc). I do my best to check seller reviews/ratings on typical eCommerce sites, but with Kickstarter it's more about experience of previous campaigns (like Cool Mini or Not, I trust them implicitly now). I do agree with you, though, that crowdfunding, as a concept, is a caveat emptor situation. Sadly, as is the case in the United States anyway, caveat emptor seems to be the norm.
- yorwba 9y ago
  My experience with crowdfunding involves web-comic print runs, where the product already exists (published on the web), and the money is used to print the books, and produce stuff like posters or t-shirts. Since none of these require a huge R&D effort, delivery is pretty much guaranteed (although any number of external factors might cause a delay). So what's the difference to Amazon? Essentially, none of the products involved would be any profitable if produced on an individual basis, and independent creators can't really afford to print a hundred copies of their books in hopes of someone actually buying them. Using crowdfunding, they can gauge demand and then get a volume discount by printing a large number of books at once. It all boils down to what you use crowdfunding for. I would never fund an effort to develop a new widget from scratch, but I might chip in to have a convincingly demonstrated prototype mass-manufactured when the alternative would be to not get it at all.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  I do Kickstarters for several artists I'm a fan of for print runs. Essentially the work is finished, or near finished, and the artist will crowdfund to get prints made to sell, they usually get enough funding to do about three fold what's ordered in the kickstarter. So the KS backers are already taken care of, and the remainder they'll sell at conventions over the next couple of years. And yeah I've backed a couple gadgets too, they never came to market. So? It was like $35 total, and maybe two a year. I think I'll be alright. As with most things, if you can't afford the risk, don't take it.
- drizzt396 9y ago
  It's actually pretty solid for funding one-off art projects, like albums. But for consumer goods I'm buying what you're selling here.
- sevensor 9y ago
  It's an interesting comment on crowdfunding that it's now being compared to Amazon. The original buzz around the idea was that it was a way to pay people to do something that might fail. Getting a product was almost beside the point -- you were patronising creative risk-taking. I'm interested in why this idea failed. Was it the scams? The naive people who promised to deliver the impossible?
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    I think the problem is that it's marketed as a purchase too much. Consider the difference between: "I want to do a crazy thing, and it might not even work. However, if you give me money, I have a chance, and I'll give you one of the things if it does end up working." vs: "We're making a crazy thing! Give us money now and we'll send it to you in a month."
- kristiandupont 9y ago
  Everything I've funded has been realized. Do you have something to back up that 90% figure? But in any case, I don't see any problems with this. The terms are completely clear and I know what I am getting into. I fund projects because I want them to succeed but I am well aware that they might not. As long as I get the impression that it didn't fail because of foul play, I am happy.
- setr 9y ago
  Its not just that you are a prepaying with high risk, but that what is essentially a charity is somehow treated as a legitimate business enterprise. That the community fully accepts, and even expects the producer to continue selling the product after having the entire thing funded by whatever fans. For a physical good, this can be justified, but for software... The benefit being some 33% proce reduction, or a special in-game kickstarter item, or a forum badge, or a little physical good related to the game and production costs vastly underestimated, or some other nonsense. That people buy into this, I don't like at all. But the arrogance, stupidity and outright malicious of the devs that make use of it is infinitely more offensive. And thats just amongst the once-respectable developers..
- com2kid 9y ago
  > No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. This depends on the project. Board games, RPG books, and food products ship just fine. Some of the best food I've had has come courtesy of Kickstarter campaigns. Computer games are hit or miss. They all end up late, but I got'em. My glowing plants are apparently never coming (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/whatever-happened-to-the-glowing-plant-kickstarter/523551/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/whatever...), but other than that, and with the exception of some fudge that was quite mediocre, I've been happy with my Kickstarter purchases, and Kickstarter has allowed me access to types of products that otherwise would not have existed.
mattkevan 9y ago
My favourite corollary to this is 'At Internet scale, sturgeon's law is six sigma'

mysterydip 9y ago

What funding options would you suggest instead?

jasonlotito 9y ago

> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity; Not sure what you mean by this. Out of the 35 projects I've funded (some of which are games), only 2 have failed to deliver, and I've felt cheated by none. If what you say is true, I'm a better gauge of success than VC's picking startups that will be successful. Maybe the problem isn't crowdfunding, but your expectations of it and how you go about judging whether you should give money or not.