Welcome to installment 2 of my weekly Kickstarter Video Game report! First up, let’s see how the games we talked about last week have done!
Wasteland 2 is up to about $1.65 million ($900k goal) so they’ve gained about $150k in the last week. The Banner Saga is at about $320k ($100k goal) so they’ve gained around $100k – very nice. ARG Zombies is only at about $6,500 with a goal of $15k due in 2 days so it looks unlikely that they’ll make it unless they have some big surprise spenders. Americana Dawn is up to $4,600 ($2,755 goal) with about a day left. And Auditorium 2 made a surprise comeback and is just over their goal of $60k despite only being a little over half funded a week ago. Awesome!
The Vic Ireland/Monkey Paw Games kickstarter that I mentioned last week has been released and boy, is it a disappointment. There are numerous problems with this kickstarter, foremost being that there’s no way to get a cheap digital copy of the game through (you either pay $59 for a UMD version or $100 for a UMD + download). This kickstarter does so many things wrong that I went ahead and dedicated an entire article to talking about its many mistakes. At only $38k funding after about 42 hours, it seems highly unlikely that it’ll meet its goal (in contrast, The Banner Saga passed $100k in its first 48 hours). From listening to Vic Ireland discuss all the difficulties in doing a kickstarter for an enhanced localization and box sets for a portable game system, it really makes me think that Ken Berry and Jessica Chavez at XSeed Games had the right idea when they said Kickstarter was ill suited for game localizations. Gaijinworks & Monkey Paw Games have made a few improvements to the kickstarter since launch – adding screenshots, adding a digital download of the soundtrack at $20 and a digital download of the game at $100 – so here’s hoping they keep making improvements and are able to salvage this project.
In recent news, Kickstarter released an article where they talked about how big blockbuster kickstarters like the Double Fine Adventure kickstarter have been a tremendous boon to bringing additional attention and money to other projects on the site. There’s talk of using kickstarter to license songs for the Rock Band Network and Grim Dawn, the spiritual sequel to one of my all-time favorite hack & slash RPGs, Titan Quest, will probably get a kickstarter sometime soon.
The kickstarter formerly known as the Crowdsourced Hardcore Tactical Shooter has been revamped and is now called Takedown. I thought it had some problems when it was first released but apparently the creator agreed and is seeking to fix things. It’s up to $121k with 70 hours left to go. Will it manage to make a comeback and successful raise an additional $79k to reach its goal of $200k? It will be interesting to watch.
In current kickstarters that I think look promising, there’s Valdis Story: Abyssal City. It appears to be a Castlevania-esque Action/RPG and has rather nice visuals for an indie project. It’s at $3k+ of its $8k goal and it still has 4 weeks to go so it’s looking good.
That’s it for now! See you again next week! Next week’s report will be early (probably Tuesday or Wednesday) since I’m leaving on Thursday for Boston so we can show off our upcoming game, Penny Arcade’s On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness 3, at PAX East.
So, I actually am a die-hard for this type of game and was initially quite excited to kick in for it (not that it looks like it will succeed right now). However, I noticed something bizarre. the majority of the funding of the kick starter is going toward English VAing with the original Japanese. The type of hardcore fan being targeted by a game like this is generally going to fall into one of two categories: Purists who only want the original Japanese VAing, and Gamists who are just in it for the gameplay and don’t care either way about the VAing as they will likely turn off the sound and listen to something else of their own choosing. Neither group is going to feel particularly enthused about funding English VAing for the game. Further the other item being funded, the premium box set, is almost exclusively going to be desirable to Purists.
They really should have played this smarter. It’s a nich game, OWN THAT. Just remove the VAing entirely by default. It’s targeting the same people who were fans of EO, and that was successful without VAing. Just flat out say “We’re not including a dub to keep down costs but we would like to include the original Japanese VAing, please help fund us so we can purchase the licenses” and do that together with the premium edition, offer a low cost early digital copy and cut back the goal considerably. The gamists will jump at the digital copy, he purists with swarm for higher levels and appreciate a company who gets them. Then if the game is good, the early adopters will spread the word and it will sell well.
That I see as being a successful way to run a Kickstarter like this.
I can honestly say I love limited editions. I own almost all of the ones released by Working Designs. But yeah, I have an issue with them picking a psp game and trying to make me feel guilty about not giving them cash because I am not a handheld gamer. I love jrpg’s, but I don’t love them enough to buy games I can’t play since I don’t own the system, and have no intention of owning the system ever.
Now they mention they are bringing out ps3 games as well if this works…..they should of added a ps3 game to that list as well. That would of sparked my interest. They should of given some bait for those of us who aren’t handheld gamers, but there is none, just a promise that games will come. That just doesn’t cut it.
As for the Takedown one, that kickstarter has a huge issue too. You don’t get anything from it as a guarantee. A fella is wanting to use people like us to fund making an alpha so he can pitch it to professional publishers. I would never back something like that, as it isn’t a gamers place to pay for something like that, because if we were supposed to, we would be out thousands of dollars per year per gamer because for every successful game there are tons that don’t make it past alpha.
I just want to say how much I appreciate these Kickstarter updates. I’ve contributed to several projects and intend to contribute to more in the future, but I find navigating the site itself cumbersome, so it’s really nice to have an aggregated list of the projects I’m most likely to be interested in, along with some information about each. So thanks!
Personally I am very happy to start to see the Fans truly funding development. While publishers have their use and place, these events could signal that publishers are no longer seen as needed or as a hassle. Which means that they might change they way the operate (from thinking they have creative control to seeing themselves as a business partner with a development studio), granted not every publisher is like that.
Another great thing is that the fans are truly influencing how things are made, while still allowing the developers to fully unleash their creative potential.
I am very happy. 🙂