We’ve seen a number of video game kickstarters raise a lot more money than they requested. Inevitably, these projects take this extra money and drastically scale up the ambition of the project with the result that they miss their projected release date by a huge amount.
Like take Double Fine Adventures for example. I was really excited about the project when I thought I was going to get it by the end of 2012. Now it’s March of 2013 and we still don’t have a firm release date for that game. Most of my excitement for that game is gone by now. For that matter, if Double Fine had an option where I could have taken my kickstarter pledge and transformed it into a free copy of The Cave back in January, I would have done that in a second (no need now since I’m getting the game for free via Playstation+ this month).
Some people might argue “But if you raise $3 million dollars, people are going to expect a $3 million project” to which I say hogwash. People donate money for the project that you presented in your kickstarter pitch. Unless you were dishonest or grossly misguided, the project that you pitched should have been one that you could have done if you didn’t receive one cent above your initial goal. If you receive a lot more money than that, that shouldn’t drastically change the scope or timeline of the project. Use that extra money for things that won’t drastically delay the game like paying your contractors for more work or outsourcing a port to a platform that you weren’t planning on supporting before. For that matter, there’s no need to use the extra money at all on this project – save it for your next project (which you can plan to make of a bigger scale to begin with).
I actually think it was the Ouya team who addressed this the most sensibly. Look at how much money they raised, and not a single stretch goal. So far they’ve managed to meet all their deadlines. Not a bad effort considering the scope of what they’re doing.
I think in the grand scheme, I like them using the money to enhance a game, and if its late so be it. I have had enough of rushed games from publishers like EA, Activision, Ubisoft, and so on. Rushed games means games with lots of bugs that need patched out, which means when those games aren’t supported anymore, I end up with a broken product if my system dies. there are plenty of games out there to tide me over till my kickstarted ones come out, so I feel no rush and will be happy as long as I get a almost entirely bug free, solid gaming experience.
I only back a Kickstarter when I know that, no matter how long the game takes, I’m going be thrilled to play it when it comes out. I’ve backed four games which went way over the original funding goals (Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, Torment) and one which didn’t (Dead State). Admittedly, I don’t even remember or pay attention to the estimated delivery times, so the main thrust of your disappointment isn’t really applicable for me; I’m pretty sure that whenever I start getting updates indicating that the game is coming out soon, I’ll start getting excited.
We would be sure to put some leeway into the release date on our kickstarter – better to underpromise and overdeliver than the other way around.
And with the Double Fine game, sure, I expect they’ll release a really high quality game when it’s actually comes out. It’s still very unlikely that I’ll ever back another kickstarter project by them again – I’ll just wait for their games to come out and buy them then.
In principle, I think I usually agree, but only because most Kickstarter game developers aren’t Tim Schafer. If I weren’t 100% confident in the team’s ability to adjust their scope judiciously, I would rather they stick to plan, yes, but again: This is Tim Schafer. As in, one of the best and most experienced game designers ever.
There was some worrying material in some of Double Fine’s updates a few months ago, but after the most recent one I’m very confident. The bottom line for me is that I’m a huge Tim Schafer fan, and I just want Double Fine to make the best damn game they can make. Moreover, I’m completely willing to wait, and I don’t remember them saying anything about when they expected the game to be released during the Kickstarter campaign (someone correct me if I’m wrong). Speaking as an Evangelion fan in particular, even if my excitement for something wanes before it finally comes, it picks up again when the date actually approaches. I mean, this isn’t going to be like Duke Nukem Forever; the game is going to arrive in a reasonable time length for a < $3.5 mil game.
Lastly, Double Fine has been unbelievably transparent about the development process. The game is coming, and it's going to be good.
But yeah, if you're not a living legend, stick to plan.
P.S. Zeboyd, if you can make CSH seriously better by extending your projected release date, PLEASE DO SO. People only remember that games took forever to come out if they're disappointing (The Dig); if they're amazing, people just remember an amazing game (StarCraft 1).
An intelligent and well articulated argument, as typical of the speaker composing it. In my humble opinion, I think that chickens might be getting counted before they hatch, though in a more pessimistic way than the saying’s typically fielded. The proof will be in the pudding, and to my best understanding, none of the “bloated” games that have considerably exceeded their goals have been released. I understand that that’s much of your problem with the practice, but I think that it is premature to assume that the quality of these games will ultimately fail to deliver on the expectations set by their stretches. I’m sure some will, but I think others won’t. If Double Fine Adventure, Reds, fails to recapture your interest when it arrives, then that will be perfectly fine and fair. But I hope that, upon release, it will be judged by the finished product instead of its extended production process. An incomplete attempt cannot be judged a success or a failure while it’s still in progress, and I think that doing otherwise would be disservice to oneself, the project, and the makers.
On a personal note, I think that using excess funds to apply to other projects would be a gross breach of trust with backers unless that plan was clearly stated at the project’s beginning. To my knowledge, no prominent game kickstarter has done so.
See: Cryamore.
See also: Torment.
I just hope they both don’t get super delayed, ala Doublefine.
The problem with Kickstarter is that it seemingly validates scope creep. There are definitely many ways to combat this as mentioned above. Another approach, which is what I am attempting with my Kickstarted project, is to release a beta version of the game with all of the originally planned features and stretch goals are being added in before official release. People get the game as soon as possible (we have still had tons of delays), but we also get the stretch goals into the final release.
I completely agree with Bill that developers need to just be upfront with everything always. It is different from what we are used to, but so is Kickstarter.
You could also just use the extra money to “kick it forward” and fund other gaming projects. I doubt the people pledging are going to complain about that as long as they got what they pledged for.
Also: Swag. With Make That Thing ( http://makethatthing.com/who-we-are/ ) you can give everyone T-shirts, stickers, dice, whatever. 🙂
There’s lots of way to spend that money that will please fans but don’t require you making it take longer for the game to come out.
-Kirt
Also, here is another helpful tip to game creators: Use the extra money to buy more Hardware to test the game on! Make sure you have an nVidia, and ATI and an Intel Integrated Graphics to test on. Get a Macbook and run Bootcamp. Test on the Mobile Graphics chips. Make sure to test on Vista, 7 and 8.
Working on Android? Get one of those shitty 600 MHz Android 2.3 phones because not everyone has a shiny Galaxy SIII or Nexus 4. Get a Tablet, because I expect stuff to work on my Nexus 7. Get some old iPhones or iPod Touches on eBay for your iOS port since I expect the iPod Touch 4 to be baseline and I expect iOS 5 to still work since Apple has androided the iPad 1 by not offering iOS 6.
And if you do a Linux port… Good luck.
What always amazes me is where these stretch goals come from. In my naive mind the process should go like this: Design a game. Estimate how much it costs. Too much? Cut content to make it fit, but don’t leave loose ends. Not enough budget for 2 characters? Combine them into 1, but properly, completely writing out the second character. I expect that the game I get for the Kickstarter goal is complete, well thought out.
Then the games raise more money and all of a sudden there is a bunch of extra content. Why wasn’t that content in the original estimate? Is the game not complete with it? If you can make a complete game for the money requested, then what is the point of the stretch goal content? Is it just tacked on? If the game was complete without it, does it mean that it just adds length but no depth? If you had all this extra content planned, why wasn’t it in the game, and why should it be now when it wasn’t important enough and thus cut?
Using extra money for localization, voice acting and a bit more polish is what I’d expect. Extra platforms – sure, whatever, but the primary platform should be released ASAP, then ports that weren’t in the original proposal can come.
I expect a game to be good, complete, polished and fun. Scope creeping the hell out of it usually clashes with all four of those goals. And keep in mind that Games you sell don’t just need to recoup their own budget – they need to make money to fund the next game, especially if you don’t expect AAA-type sales numbers after the Kickstarter.
In case of DFA it was at least interesting to see the behind the scenes footage which makes me even more enthusiastic about it, because they just went overboard with the production rather than the content it seems. We’ll see, but I’m optimistic.
Everyone wants to give back to the people who give them the means to work on great projects, but you have a really good point on production bloat. Our approach at Joe Got Game with our stretch goals is to support our audience first and foremost for supporting our game, Shackleton Crater. Our stretch goals include bonus copies (to support multiplayer), full-moon modeling and potentially open-sourcing our entire project. Two of these goals present zero bonus features but still give back to the community.
As Author X mentioned, one of the better uses of the extra money is contracting/outsourcing which allows extra work to be completed in parallel with the primary development track. The explanation done for Skullgirls about what it takes to make a character is one of the more accessible explanations about why development bloat can be a bad thing.
I agree with this post. Personally I find most stretch goals to be tedious attempts to grab more money. Porting to new platforms or providing post-launch DLC might make sense, but everything else seems silly. I agree with you that developers should make what they promised originally at the goal and not explode the feature set for all the new income. Like you said, much better to just invest that in the next game and (eventually) not need to ask the community for money for every project you want to start.
I think that if you end up with a bunch more money than you planned, and you say (or don’t) that the extra money goes to things outside the project, you’re going to find that you have a lot of extremely angry backers on your hands. Personally, I would feel a bit put out, but probably nowhere near the rage that you’ll end up seeing. Doing a port is a good idea, (though if you don’t do it yourself you may have a quality control issue) but really, I think developers have the right idea right now, even though that means delays, if only because the other options are worse.
A real issue is that if the game you want to make is 1.5 million, asking for that on kickstarter likely means that people won’t fund because they don’t think you’ll get funded. If you ask for 800k, then people will, and you’ll end up with 2 million. However, you have to scale your initial pitch back a bit, and introduce stretch goals to get back where you want to be. This is the paradox developers on kickstarter (I’d imagine, as I’m not one) are running into, aim low, and hit high, but you’ll be delayed and have to introduce stretch goals, or aim for a realistic pitch, and run into the high probability that you won’t get funded at all.
Yes, thank you. Stretch goals can be fun and all, but the more Kickstarter projects I see delayed or run out of money despite their funding, the more I think that extra funding might be better used as a buffer against unforeseen costs or events, or as you say, improving the product with contractors or outsourcing rather than adding features.
I don’t know if that’s true for a lot of the post doublefine kickstarters. I think wasteland 2 and eternity both did much better than they would have otherwise because of their strong focus on the “stretch goal”. It was integrated into their plans from the beginning. Now both of those games are going to miss their stated dates by miles I’m pretty sure, but the pitch for either of them was essentially: “Help us make the biggest game we can!”
And while you might be peeved right now over the doublefine delays, if the game comes out and is good you’ll be happy you got it.
The only potential caveat to not going nuts with over-funded goals is if the developer posted a lot of info on stretch goals, or info on how they plan to handle the game if it is funded at certain levels exceeding the baseline.
Essentially, kickstarter projects and their developers just need to tell everyone what will happen, up front, as best they can, at various levels of funding, especially if they have bigger plans at higher funding levels (stretch goals).