Crowdfunded Projects (Kickstarter, Patreon, etc.)

[prophetik music]

I went in at $50, and I'm definitely up for playing with an upstanding gentleman such as yourself

i'll likely start a guild, so i'll ping you when i have more info.

[Cash]

James Portnow of Extra Credits has started a project on RocketHub called Games for Good. As the name suggests, the goal is to advocate for the good that games can accomplish.

I'll quote an excerpt from the description:

It's time we talk about all the things games can do for us as a scientific, cultural, artistic and educational medium instead. It's better for society, it's better for creators and it's better for players.

I recommend checking it out!

[DrumJ8]

I am a backer and would like to spread the word about:

RGB, a wordless graphic novel about life, loss, and love

by Manny Trembley

His previous project was successful to fund the printing of his other book called Martin Monsterman, which I also backed and received and can attest to its awesomeness.

This new book is deeply personal and is inspired by real life events, in that his wife had two miscarriages about 8 months apart. They now have two boys and the book is about life, loss, and how they eventually learned how to love again.

I know he can deliver a great product, so check it out if you like

[SoDoM]

Heroes Of Video Game Music http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1998295508/heroes-of-video-game-music-album-and-dvd

[The Legendary Zoltan]

http://lusipurr.com/2013/06/26/editorial-kickstart-my-early-access/

There is an interesting article about Kickstarter.

[The Legendary Zoltan]

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/07/02/double-fines-broken-age-goes-to-steam-early-access-for-addition/

This article makes me mad. Every time I hear something about Double Fine, I like them a little less.

[Brandon Strader]

Yeah, I didn't pledge to that and I'm glad I didn't.

[Swifthom]

Double Fine... It's an interesting one.

Gut reaction is 'bad news' but the more I look into it the less horrendous this seems. You have to remember what Kickstarter is.

It's an 'investment' that this game will be made.

And thanks to the successful Kickstarter, it will be, and it'll be a lot larger scope than what Tim Schafer envisioned. He is emphatically 'not' asking for more money from current backers and he's 'not' saying the game wont be made.

He is however putting an alpha version on sale, to attract potential new customers, and leveraging all the other assets of Double Fine to ensure they have the money to make the full game. There will be a game, it will be given to backers, and after it's released he will continue working on it to expand into his full vision and there will be NO EXTRA CHARGE for that update.

Essentially it's now an episodic title with 'buy episode 1' and get '2 as a free update' situation.

So, to re-emphasise, no one is loosing out and Double Fine ARE honouring pledges and ARE NOT asking for more money from their current backers.

Sounds bad, isn't as awful as it first appears, may be good in long run if it works

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-03-tim-schafer-needs-more-money-to-finish-broken-age

EDIT: For the record, I didn't back the project. Nearly did, and I wish it luck as it's exactly the kind of game I'll love, but I decided to wait and see what turned out/

[Nabeel Ansari]

I don't see anything wrong with that.

People often forget that Kickstarter isn't a store. You don't pledge money just to get your backer reward, you pledge money solely so that the project can live and breathe, because without your pledge and others, it may not.

If the project creator changes the scope and needs more than his initial goal, that's his decision. It's not a purchase, he doesn't have to meet his Kickstarter goal and immediately turn around give exactly what he said he could give.

If investments worked like that, the world would be a lot easier.

[Frederic Petitpas]

I thought about kickstarter for an album project that's been in the making for many years, for like.. mixing, re-amping, mastering costs and whatnot.. cd prints maybe, but also for things like an instrument, foam stuff for walls and etc lol. Kinda to accelerate things and motivate. I really don't know how it works and if my questioning is realist. And I don't know how much to ask. If you ask for 15 000$ and end up with 2000 do you keep the 2k$ ? I dunno what to offer in exchange.. some kind of merch i dunno, but nobody cares im unkown.. how do you get backers ?

Edited July 6, 2013 by Metal Man

[Swifthom]

I thought about kickstarter for an album project, for like mixing and re-amp costs and whatnot, but also for things like an instrument, foam stuff for walls and etc lol. Kinda to accelerate things and motivate. I really don't know how it works and if my questioning is realist. And I don't know how much to ask. If you ask for 15 000$ and end up with 2000 do you keep the 2k$ ?

For Kickstarter if you miss your goal you don't get a penny.

You should ask for the amount you need to do the project. Ideally the amount to do project on the lowest budget, but it's on your own back to make it possible.

On the other hand if you get over that amount, you keep everything you get.

Also bear in mind tax and Kickstarter commmision costs etc....

If investments worked like that, the world would be a lot easier.

On the other hand a 'little bit' of accountability to ensure that investors WILL see a product is a good thing.

I fully accept, and Kickstarter states themselves, they offer no recompense for failed projects and advise you to only invest in projects which you believe will succeed.

So Kickstarter is an interesting half way point between a purchase and an investment, a little bit of both but not entirely either.

And it's pretty marvelous. Could be better, I admit, but it's allowed so many things to happen that just would never have taken off otherwise. Video games, restaurants, artworks, specialist equipment, comic books... I love it, but I do know about the risks.

[ectogemia]

zircon is doing the music for this game, Dungeonmans, and it looks like potentially the most accessible roguelike ever. It's gonna give FTL a run for its money, that's for sure.

SLAM. JAM. LINK.

[DrumJ8]

zircon is doing the music for this game, Dungeonmans, and it looks like potentially the most accessible roguelike ever. It's gonna give FTL a run for its money, that's for sure.

SLAM. JAM. LINK.

aw deng how have I only heard about this now

[Lyrai]

In the case of doublefine, welcome to being the publisher when making a video game?

This shit happens all the time. Even outside video games. Predictions and numbers are wrong. Someone on the team gets sick. Just simply life happens, and things get thrown out of whack. It is extremely rare for a project of any scope to actually end up budgeted out exactly as planned.

We're just seeing it from a much clearer point of view now. We're seeing it directly. If this was an EA game, they'd already have another kickstarter up, and I'm somewhat relieved Double Fine is handling it the way they are.

tl;dr: welcome to game/movie/etc publishing.

[Nabeel Ansari]

On the other hand a 'little bit' of accountability to ensure that investors WILL see a product is a good thing.

No where does it say that this project did not get enough from the Kickstarter to get the product up.

He got more than enough, and because of that he expanded the scope of the project. I would do that too. If I was making X game and got Y money when I only needed Z (Y >>> Z) I'm going to put that extra money to good use, and if I think of something good that requires more than Y money, what's wrong with trying to get just a bit more?

Kickstarter projects do this all the time. They put their overfunds into new rewards. This is a case where there is a certain reward he wants to add (expand game) and he needs a certain amount of money to do it. I'd say do whatever it takes to get the best freakin' game he can make.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Neblix

[The Legendary Zoltan]

You are all really awesome people and I just don't believe that Tim Schafer deserves to be defended by you. The guy is being absolutely irresponsible and greedy. He comes into kickstarter with no plan, no budget, and no title for his game, asks for $400,000 of people's hard-earned money and their trust that he will make an awesome game, he gets more than 8 times that amount, and now he suddenly doesn't have enough money to make a game. He already has ANOTHER Kickstarter for his game Massive Chalice. He may have made some really great Monkey Island games in the past but I don't think that's a good enough reason for us to trust him with so much money. We don't know if the game actually will come out in the end. This is not what Kickstarter is supposed to be used for. ESTABLISHED companies don't need to kick-start anything. They are just kick-continuing and it's likely sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the crowd-funding arena for the small, one to four person basement projects out there. You know, the ones that are actually trying to kick-START their careers.

I highly doubt that he is really going to use all that money for the game. I just can't recommend supporting any of his projects right now.

[Brandon Strader]

I remember when they went over the amount and their plan was to use extra money to make the documentary behind the game even better! Psh.

What did he do, hire a Kardashian for the documentary? Or just buy a shitload of Taco Bell?

[The Legendary Zoltan]

If he had said, "Thanks for your donations. We used them to buy a shitload of tacos." I would like him more. Hahaha.

Edited July 9, 2013 by The Legendary Zoltan

[The Derrit]

it's pretty hard to go 8 times over budget for a point and click adventure game.

it's not like they're making a proprietary physics engine from scratch, tim schafer is coming up with a story, artists draw stuff, and voice actors act. that's it.

an oversimplification, clearly, but an text-based adventure game does not require a whole lot of stuff.

[theshaggyfreak]

With only 10 days left to go, we're at 223k for the MTVN Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fredrin/megatokyo-visual-novel-game

Now, this is over 10 times what we originally planned on but a lot of stretch goes have been put in. I'm going to try and do my best to make music as professional as possible. There will probably be a few paid spots to be on the OST aside from vocalists. I'll definitely be coming to the fine folks of OCR on a few instrumental areas. I'm not entirely sure of what my budget is going to be, though.

There's also going to be a bonus DVD data disc for backers that get a physical OST CD. I'm looking at doing something quite similar with the bonus disc in the Balance and Ruin release.

While I know that we already have quite a bit of money in the KS, I really could use the support of OCR being that this is my first major video game(ish) project. If you can't back it with dollars, I'd truly appreciate having the word passed around and such. Even a vote of confidence is helpful. Whether you like or hate Megatokyo as a web comic, this project really means a lot to me.

[Swifthom]

it's pretty hard to go 8 times over budget for a point and click adventure game.

it's not like they're making a proprietary physics engine from scratch, tim schafer is coming up with a story, artists draw stuff, and voice actors act. that's it.

an oversimplification, clearly, but an text-based adventure game does not require a whole lot of stuff.

Point and click adventure games can be 'incredibly' complex, and get exponentially more so with size.

Writing, acting, drawing non linear stories with a thousand variables is a recipe for disaster if done wrong

[prophetik music]

Point and click adventure games can be 'incredibly' complex, and get exponentially more so with size.

Writing, acting, drawing non linear stories with a thousand variables is a recipe for disaster if done wrong

eight times above what was needed for what they originally wanted to do.

he clearly bit off more than he can chew. that's an absurd amount of bloat.

[Lyrai]

He already has ANOTHER Kickstarter for his game Massive Chalice.

Uhhh, it's actually incredibly common for companies to have multiple teams working on multiple projects. Like, that's a no-brainer.

What, was he supposed to take money from Broken Age and drop it into Massive Chalice? That opens a shitload of legal problems - "I gave you money for this product, and you used it for something else." That would actually be a severe issue and could cause a legal quagmire.

I'm not sure why you're acting like Tim kicked your dog or something. I backed it at the lowest "Get the game" Level and I'm satisfied. I get pretty frequent updates, documentaries and everything and he's rather open and transparent about everything.

He is being pretty much the absolute opposite of "totally irresponsable." He's not being like a Denis Dyack or some shit, he's openly going "So the same thing that happens to every project in the history of shit being made ever happened to us, because the numbers of what we got in the first place turned out to be wrong. So instead of pulling a Sullivan's Sluggers, we're going to drop what we can make on Steam Early Access, and then hopefully money from people who were on the fence and didn't kickstart will give us the boost we need to complete the rest of it."

If you want something to be actually angry about kickstarter mismanagement, look up Sullivan's Sluggers. That is legitimate bullshit greed. This is not.

[The Legendary Zoltan]

Uhhh, it's actually incredibly common for companies to have multiple teams working on multiple projects. Like, that's a no-brainer.

Yeah. I know that. That has nothing to do with Kickstarter.

What, was he supposed to take money from Broken Age and drop it into Massive Chalice? That opens a shitload of legal problems - "I gave you money for this product, and you used it for something else." That would actually be a severe issue and could cause a legal quagmire.

I'm not suggesting they do that. I'm suggesting that they deliver on one or more of their previous promises before asking for more money based on literally just more promises.

I'm not sure why you're acting like Tim kicked your dog or something. I backed it at the lowest "Get the game" Level and I'm satisfied. I get pretty frequent updates, documentaries and everything and he's rather open and transparent about everything.

Well, is he being transparent about what exactly all the money is being spent on? If Tim Schafer has announced something along the lines of how much more money he'll need and what he plans to do with the money, I will admit that I am wrong about him on some accounts.

He is being pretty much the absolute opposite of "totally irresponsable." He's not being like a Denis Dyack or some shit, he's openly going "So the same thing that happens to every project in the history of shit being made ever happened to us, because the numbers of what we got in the first place turned out to be wrong. So instead of pulling a Sullivan's Sluggers, we're going to drop what we can make on Steam Early Access, and then hopefully money from people who were on the fence and didn't kickstart will give us the boost we need to complete the rest of it."

If you want something to be actually angry about kickstarter mismanagement, look up Sullivan's Sluggers. That is legitimate bullshit greed. This is not.

underestimating your budget (if he had one) by more than 800% does not happen to every project in the history of shit being made ever. I would guess that the budget being off by 200% is pretty rare. It is his job to have some idea of what will be involved in making the game he wants to make. So I'm not convinced that he is being pretty much the absolute opposite of totally irresponsible.

As for Sullivan's Sluggers. What they did could be a little worse than this or it could be 100 times worse. It does not matter because it does not lessen what Double Fine is doing in any way.

I read the email that Tim Schafer sent to the backers about needing more money and making the game big and all that. Not once does he apologize for not having a plan, a budget in mind, a definite goal, or even delaying the game. It's like none of this stuff that is happening has anything to do with his actions. He is completely free of the responsibility. I have to stand by my claim that he is being totally irresponsible.

[Lyrai]

Yeah. I know that. That has nothing to do with Kickstarter.

I'm not suggesting they do that. I'm suggesting that they deliver on one or more of their previous promises before asking for more money based on literally just more promises.

What I am saying with that is, 100% of Double Fine doesn't need - or probably can't - work on Broken Age. I can't claim to know the inner workings of double fine, or their corporate structure, but I would place bets on people finding themselves with little to do after their section is done, or there being situations were having 12 people on one task would be everyone stepping on everyone else's toes. Is he supposed to fire those people? Pay them to do nothing? Obviously someone in that building had an idea for another game, and they wanted to work on it, and they flat out rejected traditional publishing means.

Which means they needed to kickstarter again. It is entirely logical in a business sense what happened there, and to be angry at it, thinking it's somehow dishonest, or he simply wants to steal more money, is ignorance at best. There were free hands, they wanted to do something, and didn't want normal means of publishing. So they went to Kickstarter.

Well, is he being transparent about what exactly all the money is being spent on? If Tim Schafer has announced something along the lines of how much more money he'll need and what he plans to do with the money, I will admit that I am wrong about him on some accounts.

While he does not give exact numbers, he does deal to quite specific degree what has been completed in the past week, what is being worked on and dealt with, and any problems that have cropped up - at one point, the building lost power for a few weeks due to construction.

So, yes. While he doesn't give an itemized spreadsheet, he does explain specifically what's being worked on, what has no work, what costs more than usual, what problems arise, etc. He also says that backers don't have to pay again - they still get early beta access and still get the game if they pledged on that level. (If you weren't assuming this, I apologize)

underestimating your budget (if he had one) by more than 800% does not happen to every project in the history of shit being made ever. I would guess that the budget being off by 200% is pretty rare. It is his job to have some idea of what will be involved in making the game he wants to make. So I'm not convinced that he is being pretty much the absolute opposite of totally irresponsible.

As for Sullivan's Sluggers. What they did could be a little worse than this or it could be 100 times worse. It does not matter because it does not lessen what Double Fine is doing in any way.

He increased the scope, and misjudged what said scope would cost. It's commonplace, and he admitted several times at the start the entire team was taken aback at the massive increase in funds. Shut Up And Take Our Money, etc. And yes, it's his job to have some idea of what's going on in his game. You said you read the email he sent out, he makes it quite clear he's sunk a shitload of time into planning and number crunching. None of what he's said or done in the documentaries, backer emails, or reports from other people or conventions have given any impression at all that he's irresponsible with this to the degree you keep stressing. A project's scope got inflated, people ran numbers quickly to keep things current, and like every other project that has ever existed, the numbers didn't add up in the end, so they went to try and fix it.

As for Sullivan's Sluggers, I brought it up because they did exactly what you seem to be in a flying rage over - the author of the book essentially got a shitload more money than expected on Kickstarter, shafted the artist, tried to start a second kickstarter for the same product and tried to disguise it as "help me with postage", and then when the kickstarter explicitly said the book and such would be backer only, it came out where all that extra money went, and it was to get more copies of the book printed to sell it over Amazon. The book went up for sale before any backer ever received theirs. And he shafted the artist in the middle of all this.

THAT is irresponsible fuckery with money. Double Fine is not.

And reading the email again, he seems pretty much to be blaming himself for it - he outright says it's his fault because he "designed too much game." I'm not sure where you're getting off that it sounds like he's trying to be blameless and just going "give more money plz"