8 ms·

The Kickstarter Game Successes: Where Are They Now?

123 points by qznc 14y ago

sami36 14y ago
in essence, the crowd-funding model is working just fine. Game publishing will never be the same.
- Devilboy 14y ago
  Only one single game in that list actually got released and half of the rest are way overdue.
  - sami36 14y ago
    the dev cycle for a game is 12~24 months. The first Kickstarter breakthrough was Double Fine Adventure in Feb 2012. It's on track as most are per the article. It's too early to tell but I don't expect a higher failure rate than publisher backed games.I'll concede much, most creators were over-optimistic with their timelines.
    - thristian 14y ago
      Also, a lot of the ship-dates were based on the original funding goals. If you're planning to make a game with budget X, then fans throw budget 3*X at you and demand you produce something more epic in scope, it's only natural the development time becomes more epic to match.
  - belorn 14y ago
    But what does it actually mean compared to other game companies? Looking at valve and blizzard, both has had a long standing style of only releasing a game once its is "done", no matter the years that has passed since the first estimated release date. And maybe this is wrong and the future of game development will shed those tendencies. Looking historically on game development, rushing a product out of the door to meet a release date has rarely produced a good game (anyone heard of E.T?). So the question might be, what alternative do we have between rushing a product for relase date, and waiting until it is "done", which might mean fifteen years to find out that the game is rather crappy (duke nukem forever). We can also look at development processes like Debian, and compare a static release schedule with a dynamic one.
    - ctdonath 14y ago
      waiting until it is "done", which might mean fifteen years to find out that the game is rather crappy (duke nukem forever) DNF wasn't done. IIRC, the developer gave up, sold what they had, which was tidied up and shipped otherwise as-is. It's another example of shipping a product before it's "done". ...and sometimes an idea just doesn't work out, no matter how much effort.
    - intended 14y ago
      Other companies don't pre-sell games or promises before the game is launched, though.
      - belorn 14y ago
        Thats the issue that arrives when return of investment is a copy of a game and not stock options. If one treat kickstarter as an investment, then there is not much of a difference.
      - whatusername 14y ago
        http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111166-10-Year-Old-Duke-Nukem-Forever-Preorder-Honored-With-Swag http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111166-10-Year-Old...
      - hythloday 14y ago
        Not sure what you mean here? Pre-orders are an absolutely critical part of publishers' revenue, which is the cause of the weird structural problems around magazine reviews (where 8/10 means "below-average game").
        jivatmanx 14y ago
        Stock market analysts do the same thing as game critics, and never, ever give sell ratings: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42790061/Stock_Analysts_Too_Scared_of_Sell_Ratings_or_Too_Stupid http://www.cnbc.com/id/42790061/Stock_Analysts_Too_Scared_of... I'm guessing in both cases it's because the best raters get the best access from companies. Same problem probably exists in other industries too.
  - coffeeaddicted 14y ago
    Two games - Faster Than Light and Project Giana. Also I haven't seen too many project in the game industry yet which were right on time, so as long as the guys still work on it that doesn't worry me too much.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  that really is not what I took from it. many (half?) of them are behind on their schedule. 3(?) good ones were released. they were successful for the developers (and only those were selected). for the funders there really is not much closure yet to say anything about the future.
  - pfisch 14y ago
    Most of the other projects have been posting updates so they definitely are working on the products. Unless those devs are really in dire straits it would be kind of silly for them to abandon the games. They already have so much time put into development and the point of a kickstarter for games is not to make a bunch of money on the kickstarter. It is to make a bunch of money on selling the game since a publisher isn't basically taking everything on the actual sales of the game. Then there is more money to be made on actually getting to own the IP because you didn't get gouged by a publisher. If they were going to run off with the money they already should have by now. At this point it is really in their interest to finish the game. It isn't a guarantee of course, but it seems much more likely now then it did when the games were initially funded.
greggman 14y ago
I'm really curious if the people funding these projects have a good idea what they're going to get. I know that creative and inspired teams can do great things but ... for example Wasteland asked for $900k which is barely a budget for a SNES game. What I assume people expect though is a Fallout 3 level game. I'm guessing Fallout 3 cost $10-15 million to make. I don't know what the original Lucas adventure games costs to make in the early 90s. Double Fine asked for $1mill? I suspect that's close to what those original games cost. Things have changed. I'd argue it would be challenging to make those same games but at today's expected quality for the same price. Of course I hope they all do great and the games all rock and there's certainly plenty of smaller awesome games to be made. FTL for example. But, for certain games, sequels, or games that are supposed to be very inspired by older games there are expectations I think the developers will have a hard time meeting.
- mattchew 14y ago
  I backed Wasteland 2, and if I see voice acting with lip-synced animations I'll be disappointed at the waste of resources. Like the other guy said, I'm expecting a play experience similar to Fallout 1/2. However, if I end up getting nothing, that's OK. Backing a project on Kickstarter is a gamble. This is obvious to me but the rest of the world doesn't seem to get it. I can only hope that people adjust their expectations a little after a few spectacular splats, rather than, say, throwing around lawsuits and ruining the whole idea for everyone.
- rrreese 14y ago
  I backed Wasteland, and I'm expecting a game similar to Fallout 2 with modern graphics and probably little to no voice acting. They're using unity so they making big savings right away, but are constrained with what that engine can do. And that's fine. I think most people who backed it want a game that's true to its roots rather then has the latest graphics etc. Finally Kickstarter doesn't preclude additional funding sources. $900k might have gotten them half way there with the assumption that they can get additional sources of funding after that point. bear in mind that they will be getting sales to people other then current backers after they release. I think the key thing though is that a small focused team, using an engine like Unity can get a lot done, and the constraints will be excepted by a community who is far more interested in a classic RPG then the latest graphics.
chucknelson 14y ago
Maybe someone can make a similar update list, but for kickstarter electronics (how is that OUYA going?).
julius 14y ago
Lets quickly add that all up. Roughly 24 million dollars in total have been raised for crowdfunded games (just the kickstarter projects mentioned in the article). For how long have we been doing that? Is crowdfunding games a 2012 thing?
- sami36 14y ago
  Things changed dramatically after Tim Schaefer managed to raise 3 Mil $ for double fine adventure in Feb 2012. Since then, many games managed to raise above 1 Mil $, 9 actually per Kickstarter stats. Star Citizen, a flight sim, raised the most , 6 Mil $ just as of two weeks ago. Before that Project eternity was the record holder with 4.2 Mil $. Yeah, it's definitely a 2012 thing & if anything, it's acelerating.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
shardling 14y ago
Oh hey, they mention the one game I backed and have beta access to: Word Realms. (By the Kingdom of Loathing guys.) It's basically a complete game at this point, just polishing and minor bug fixing left. (Well, maybe the devs secretly plan to add additional features, but certainly nothing feels missing.)
- cdmoyer 14y ago
  At least one feature is still locked out in the betas. ;). And it's pretty cool. Zack is going to give me a heart attack with the design though.
- coroxout 14y ago
  I'm glad to hear this is still coming along because I was interested in it and forgot to fund for a very stupid reason (I clicked "Fund" and then forgot to hit "confirm"). I've been sporadically checking the website, which has no news for non-funders, so it's good to know that I may soon be able to give them my money. Kingdom of Loathing + word games = pretty much my dream combination.
adrianhon 14y ago
Zombies, Run! wasn't covered in RPS' roundup, probably because we're smartphone only and were quite early - but we were the biggest videogame project of 2011 with $73k from 3500 backers. Through a pretty herculean effort, we launched on time in February. Since then we've sold almost 250,000 copies across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, and grossed somewhere in the region of $1.5 million. So yeah, I'd say it's working for some people. Did backers know what they were going to get? I don't know, Zombies, Run! is a very original idea so we couldn't just say "It's like X but with Y." But they seem pretty happy as far as we can tell.
- shawnc 14y ago
  I'm someone who didn't back the project (I've just never backed anything on KS - I'd love it if it offered paypal). But I bought it immediately upon release. And you guys fulfilled your promises and you've done a great job releasing more content. Overall - really impressed by your product!
- Tipzntrix 14y ago
  They state they only covered games with over 100k$
  - adrianhon 14y ago
    /me looks again Yes, and just for 2012. Oh well!
    - 7rurl 14y ago
      RPS also only covers games that run on Microsoft Windows (and the occasional board game).
exterm 14y ago
More detailed progress updates for planetary annihilation are posted in their forums: http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=61 http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=61 Look especially for post by project lead Jon Mavor aka neutrino
- funksta 14y ago
  He's also posted some good stuff at http://www.mavorsrants.com/ http://www.mavorsrants.com/. They have been pretty transparent about the dev process, they just haven't used Kickstarter updates as the primary medium for that.
louischatriot 14y ago
tldr: http://tldr.io/tldrs/50b76494ada40f0817000160 http://tldr.io/tldrs/50b76494ada40f0817000160 It seems to me that most of these problems are communication problems. You just got a backing of XXX hundreds of thousands of dollars and don't want to disappoint with some bad news, but that's a poor long term strategy. People are surprisingly forgiving if they feel like you're telling the truth and you're doing your best to make good on your promise.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  That tl;dr is not a representation of the actual content. You reduced it to the last few bullet points.
ajaimk 14y ago
Carmageddon: Reincarnation has already been released on iOS. They just put it as a free game on day 1 on the iOS store as there isn't a simple way to only give backers a game due to Apple's rules. Mac version coming soon maybe. What bothers me reading through this is the rather pessimistic tone vs an objective one
- mikecsh 14y ago
  That's not true. The version released on iOS was a port of Carmageddon 2 and has nothing to do with reincarnation..
bvttf 14y ago
Lost interest the third time they said there were only updates for backers. Yes, they should be providing more updates for the people who might buy it. I think the backer-only updates were listed as features since that was presumably one of the big draws of the doublefine kickstarter success. But RPS: do some journalism and ask someone who did back it? Or email the project? For a story titled "where are they now", having half the entries be "they protected updates so dunno, lol" is annoying.
- JonLim 14y ago
  I came to make a similar comment, and am still reading my way through, but RPS seems to have a bias against updates only for backers. In my opinion, the games that are still far from being released are doing just fine by not marketing themselves a little too early. If I'm not mistaken, games typically ramp up their marketing efforts much closer to actual release dates than during the development process. Kickstarter enables a different method of capitalization, sure, but I think the game development process remains consistent as with other types of funding available to developers.

123 points by qznc 14y ago

sami36 14y ago

in essence, the crowd-funding model is working just fine. Game publishing will never be the same.

Devilboy 14y ago
Only one single game in that list actually got released and half of the rest are way overdue.
- sami36 14y ago
  the dev cycle for a game is 12~24 months. The first Kickstarter breakthrough was Double Fine Adventure in Feb 2012. It's on track as most are per the article. It's too early to tell but I don't expect a higher failure rate than publisher backed games.I'll concede much, most creators were over-optimistic with their timelines.
  - thristian 14y ago
    Also, a lot of the ship-dates were based on the original funding goals. If you're planning to make a game with budget X, then fans throw budget 3*X at you and demand you produce something more epic in scope, it's only natural the development time becomes more epic to match.
- belorn 14y ago
  But what does it actually mean compared to other game companies? Looking at valve and blizzard, both has had a long standing style of only releasing a game once its is "done", no matter the years that has passed since the first estimated release date. And maybe this is wrong and the future of game development will shed those tendencies. Looking historically on game development, rushing a product out of the door to meet a release date has rarely produced a good game (anyone heard of E.T?). So the question might be, what alternative do we have between rushing a product for relase date, and waiting until it is "done", which might mean fifteen years to find out that the game is rather crappy (duke nukem forever). We can also look at development processes like Debian, and compare a static release schedule with a dynamic one.
  - ctdonath 14y ago
    waiting until it is "done", which might mean fifteen years to find out that the game is rather crappy (duke nukem forever) DNF wasn't done. IIRC, the developer gave up, sold what they had, which was tidied up and shipped otherwise as-is. It's another example of shipping a product before it's "done". ...and sometimes an idea just doesn't work out, no matter how much effort.
  - intended 14y ago
    Other companies don't pre-sell games or promises before the game is launched, though.
    - belorn 14y ago
      Thats the issue that arrives when return of investment is a copy of a game and not stock options. If one treat kickstarter as an investment, then there is not much of a difference.
    - whatusername 14y ago
      http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111166-10-Year-Old-Duke-Nukem-Forever-Preorder-Honored-With-Swag http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111166-10-Year-Old...
    - hythloday 14y ago
      Not sure what you mean here? Pre-orders are an absolutely critical part of publishers' revenue, which is the cause of the weird structural problems around magazine reviews (where 8/10 means "below-average game").
      - jivatmanx 14y ago
        Stock market analysts do the same thing as game critics, and never, ever give sell ratings: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42790061/Stock_Analysts_Too_Scared_of_Sell_Ratings_or_Too_Stupid http://www.cnbc.com/id/42790061/Stock_Analysts_Too_Scared_of... I'm guessing in both cases it's because the best raters get the best access from companies. Same problem probably exists in other industries too.
- coffeeaddicted 14y ago
  Two games - Faster Than Light and Project Giana. Also I haven't seen too many project in the game industry yet which were right on time, so as long as the guys still work on it that doesn't worry me too much.
aw3c2 14y ago
that really is not what I took from it. many (half?) of them are behind on their schedule. 3(?) good ones were released. they were successful for the developers (and only those were selected). for the funders there really is not much closure yet to say anything about the future.
- pfisch 14y ago
  Most of the other projects have been posting updates so they definitely are working on the products. Unless those devs are really in dire straits it would be kind of silly for them to abandon the games. They already have so much time put into development and the point of a kickstarter for games is not to make a bunch of money on the kickstarter. It is to make a bunch of money on selling the game since a publisher isn't basically taking everything on the actual sales of the game. Then there is more money to be made on actually getting to own the IP because you didn't get gouged by a publisher. If they were going to run off with the money they already should have by now. At this point it is really in their interest to finish the game. It isn't a guarantee of course, but it seems much more likely now then it did when the games were initially funded.

greggman 14y ago

I'm really curious if the people funding these projects have a good idea what they're going to get. I know that creative and inspired teams can do great things but ... for example Wasteland asked for $900k which is barely a budget for a SNES game. What I assume people expect though is a Fallout 3 level game. I'm guessing Fallout 3 cost $10-15 million to make. I don't know what the original Lucas adventure games costs to make in the early 90s. Double Fine asked for $1mill? I suspect that's close to what those original games cost. Things have changed. I'd argue it would be challenging to make those same games but at today's expected quality for the same price. Of course I hope they all do great and the games all rock and there's certainly plenty of smaller awesome games to be made. FTL for example. But, for certain games, sequels, or games that are supposed to be very inspired by older games there are expectations I think the developers will have a hard time meeting.

mattchew 14y ago
I backed Wasteland 2, and if I see voice acting with lip-synced animations I'll be disappointed at the waste of resources. Like the other guy said, I'm expecting a play experience similar to Fallout 1/2. However, if I end up getting nothing, that's OK. Backing a project on Kickstarter is a gamble. This is obvious to me but the rest of the world doesn't seem to get it. I can only hope that people adjust their expectations a little after a few spectacular splats, rather than, say, throwing around lawsuits and ruining the whole idea for everyone.
rrreese 14y ago
I backed Wasteland, and I'm expecting a game similar to Fallout 2 with modern graphics and probably little to no voice acting. They're using unity so they making big savings right away, but are constrained with what that engine can do. And that's fine. I think most people who backed it want a game that's true to its roots rather then has the latest graphics etc. Finally Kickstarter doesn't preclude additional funding sources. $900k might have gotten them half way there with the assumption that they can get additional sources of funding after that point. bear in mind that they will be getting sales to people other then current backers after they release. I think the key thing though is that a small focused team, using an engine like Unity can get a lot done, and the constraints will be excepted by a community who is far more interested in a classic RPG then the latest graphics.

chucknelson 14y ago

Maybe someone can make a similar update list, but for kickstarter electronics (how is that OUYA going?).

julius 14y ago

Lets quickly add that all up. Roughly 24 million dollars in total have been raised for crowdfunded games (just the kickstarter projects mentioned in the article). For how long have we been doing that? Is crowdfunding games a 2012 thing?

sami36 14y ago
Things changed dramatically after Tim Schaefer managed to raise 3 Mil $ for double fine adventure in Feb 2012. Since then, many games managed to raise above 1 Mil $, 9 actually per Kickstarter stats. Star Citizen, a flight sim, raised the most , 6 Mil $ just as of two weeks ago. Before that Project eternity was the record holder with 4.2 Mil $. Yeah, it's definitely a 2012 thing & if anything, it's acelerating.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

shardling 14y ago

Oh hey, they mention the one game I backed and have beta access to: Word Realms. (By the Kingdom of Loathing guys.) It's basically a complete game at this point, just polishing and minor bug fixing left. (Well, maybe the devs secretly plan to add additional features, but certainly nothing feels missing.)

cdmoyer 14y ago
At least one feature is still locked out in the betas. ;). And it's pretty cool. Zack is going to give me a heart attack with the design though.
coroxout 14y ago
I'm glad to hear this is still coming along because I was interested in it and forgot to fund for a very stupid reason (I clicked "Fund" and then forgot to hit "confirm"). I've been sporadically checking the website, which has no news for non-funders, so it's good to know that I may soon be able to give them my money. Kingdom of Loathing + word games = pretty much my dream combination.

adrianhon 14y ago

Zombies, Run! wasn't covered in RPS' roundup, probably because we're smartphone only and were quite early - but we were the biggest videogame project of 2011 with $73k from 3500 backers. Through a pretty herculean effort, we launched on time in February. Since then we've sold almost 250,000 copies across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, and grossed somewhere in the region of $1.5 million. So yeah, I'd say it's working for some people. Did backers know what they were going to get? I don't know, Zombies, Run! is a very original idea so we couldn't just say "It's like X but with Y." But they seem pretty happy as far as we can tell.

shawnc 14y ago
I'm someone who didn't back the project (I've just never backed anything on KS - I'd love it if it offered paypal). But I bought it immediately upon release. And you guys fulfilled your promises and you've done a great job releasing more content. Overall - really impressed by your product!
Tipzntrix 14y ago
They state they only covered games with over 100k$
- adrianhon 14y ago
  /me looks again Yes, and just for 2012. Oh well!
  - 7rurl 14y ago
    RPS also only covers games that run on Microsoft Windows (and the occasional board game).

exterm 14y ago

More detailed progress updates for planetary annihilation are posted in their forums: http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=61 http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=61 Look especially for post by project lead Jon Mavor aka neutrino

funksta 14y ago
He's also posted some good stuff at http://www.mavorsrants.com/ http://www.mavorsrants.com/. They have been pretty transparent about the dev process, they just haven't used Kickstarter updates as the primary medium for that.

louischatriot 14y ago

tldr: http://tldr.io/tldrs/50b76494ada40f0817000160 http://tldr.io/tldrs/50b76494ada40f0817000160 It seems to me that most of these problems are communication problems. You just got a backing of XXX hundreds of thousands of dollars and don't want to disappoint with some bad news, but that's a poor long term strategy. People are surprisingly forgiving if they feel like you're telling the truth and you're doing your best to make good on your promise.

aw3c2 14y ago
That tl;dr is not a representation of the actual content. You reduced it to the last few bullet points.

ajaimk 14y ago

Carmageddon: Reincarnation has already been released on iOS. They just put it as a free game on day 1 on the iOS store as there isn't a simple way to only give backers a game due to Apple's rules. Mac version coming soon maybe. What bothers me reading through this is the rather pessimistic tone vs an objective one

mikecsh 14y ago
That's not true. The version released on iOS was a port of Carmageddon 2 and has nothing to do with reincarnation..

bvttf 14y ago

Lost interest the third time they said there were only updates for backers. Yes, they should be providing more updates for the people who might buy it. I think the backer-only updates were listed as features since that was presumably one of the big draws of the doublefine kickstarter success. But RPS: do some journalism and ask someone who did back it? Or email the project? For a story titled "where are they now", having half the entries be "they protected updates so dunno, lol" is annoying.

JonLim 14y ago
I came to make a similar comment, and am still reading my way through, but RPS seems to have a bias against updates only for backers. In my opinion, the games that are still far from being released are doing just fine by not marketing themselves a little too early. If I'm not mistaken, games typically ramp up their marketing efforts much closer to actual release dates than during the development process. Kickstarter enables a different method of capitalization, sure, but I think the game development process remains consistent as with other types of funding available to developers.