Monaco Creator: Kickstarter Stretch Goals are "Bullsh*t"

[Andy Chalk]

Monaco Creator: Kickstarter Stretch Goals are "Bullsh*t"

The creator of the award-winning indie game Monaco says Kickstarter stretch goals hand too much creative control to the crowd.

"Stretch goals," for those unfamiliar with the term, are a rather simple Kickstarter phenomenon in which a project creator promises to add more stuff if you give him more money. With Project Eternity [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity?ref=live], for instance, Obsidian added new factions, races, translations into non-English languages and other features as the funding kept piling higher. It's a very common way for Kickstarter creators to encourage funding for their projects, but Monaco designer Andy Schatz takes a different and somewhat dimmer view of the practice than most.

"I have a little bit of an unpopular opinion of Kickstarter," he told the Penny Arcade Report. "I really like the idea of free money, but I'm of the opinion that designing a game around a variable budget is a terrible way to design a game. To be frank, I think that stretch goals are total bullshit."

"When you're designing a game, the way I think you should do it... you figure out what the game is, you figure out what the game needs, and you should make that," he explained. "If you are adding in some optional thing to incentivize people to give you money... there's a difference between allowing your fans to have an extreme amount of input on the game, which I do, the beta testers have an incredible influence on the game, but letting them design the game in the sense of, 'If the budget is this, then I'll do this, and if the budget is that, then I'll do that,' that to me sounds like the perfect way to make a game that's insufficiently complete or bloated."

Indie Fund [http://www.pocketwatchgames.com/Monaco/], which has previously funded games including Dear Esther, Q.U.B.E. and Antichamber. Unlike money raised through Kickstarter and other crowdfunding efforts, the Indie Fund is an advance on sales of the game and also claims a portion of the profits.

Schatz acknowledged that his position is "idealistic" and said that he might actually try a Kickstarter himself one day, but for now he remains skeptical. "I don't like what it does to design," he added.

Source: Penny Arcade Report [http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/monaco-creator-discusses-kickstarter-design-implications-explains-why-stret]


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[deathbydeath]

Yeah, I can understand where this guy's coming on this. If I ever did a Kickstarter, extra money would probably just go to QA testing and marketing.

 

[Azuaron]

Right. Because working with a publisher, the developer always gets to decide the exact budget and features.

OH WAIT

 

[UNHchabo]

It depends. If a stretch goal involves something that would directly cost money, instead of time, then I think it's perfectly justified. Localization and orchestral music are two things unlikely to be done in-house by the average indie developer. Extra cash can be used to directly pay for these services.

If your stretch rewards will require extra time and effort from your core development team, that can lead to feature bloat if you're not careful.

 

[Baldr]

I don't care what other game devs say, there always stuff on the cutting block you wish was in your game due to time and budget constraints.

If wa more money, which usually creates more time, then you would want to add it back in.

The fact is that the more money you ask for in a kickstarter, the more likely it is to fail. Kickstarter is not some magic money giving machine. It requires a lot to have a successful campaign. So if you create a base budget for a good game. Although it not an exact science, you have a pretty good idea on what exactly needed in the game, and what is optional.

I don't think there something out there as "exactly" bloated game, in fact more often than not, games have lack of features and options.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

I don't really see a problem with this. I mean, yeah, if you cut or don't include stuff that your game needs because you didn't get enough funding, then yeah your game will suck. But if you get a bunch of extra money and can then afford to throw in more optional sidequests and endgame content, then I don't see how any of this is a bad thing.

It's like an expansion or DLC for an indie game. Not inherently bad, and sometimes awesome.

 

[Therumancer]

Stretch Goals seem to mostly be a marketing gimmick. Having watched the pattern for Kickstarters the basic formula seems to be a slow start, followed by progressively greater speed, the more people that donate, the more donations come in. Once a product is funded, it all becomes about the benefits, people view it kind of like a pre-order at that point (albiet one without a guarantee, and people will be burned). "Stretch Goals" seem to mostly be companies promising relatively trivial stuff, or things that would likely have been in the game anyway, as a motivation for donating more and more money.

It can depend on the kickstarter, but in some cases it's like "If we reach this goal we'll add dwarves to our party based fantasy RPG". While that might make sense in some contexts, in many cases it comes accros like "WTF" to an educated eye because it seems unlikely they would have made something of that sort without the dwarves.

I tend to be wary of stretch goals myself, since in general if they represent something trivial (like sending people posters) or a bit of coding that doesn't strike me as being that big a deal if they were doing everything else the product promises, I tend to become wary of the company. In many cases it seems like "Hey, we raised a million dollars to make our game, now give us more money so the project heads can all go out and buy new Ferraris, and we'll toss a few grand of it to a bulk printing service to make you posters!"

I like the idea of Kickstarter, and believe a lot of good has come from it, but every time I think about it I can almost hear a ticking, some epic explosions seem to be inevitable. I'm just waiting for some dude collecting money for an indie game to show up at con driving a really fancy factory-new sports car, and hilarity to ensure when he's caught. You know "if you have that much money why were you begging for donations" and "sure, you are making the game, but did ALL the money you were sent go into that game, HTF does a guy begging for handouts spend $100k on a car in the middle of the dev process?".

 

[CJ1145]

Stretch goals aren't always game features. The horrifyingly successful Homestuck Kickstarter used the Stretch goals to give people various bits of limited edition merch. Posters, clothes, decks of custom tarot cards, little pins. I think that's a very good use of stretch goals. It gives you something you can say is genuinely unique and interesting that not a lot of people possess, and links you to the fandom, but it doesn't bog down the product itself.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well I would expect a developer to know what "feature creep" means but hey he is only one game into the business and even that is not done so let's just call it mild ignorance.

In case people do not realize, near all games no matter how big came out with less then what the devs envisioned it to be, because there is always a budget and time constraint, if you extend the budget then they can obviously go further.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

It's not like stretch goals are thought up on the spot. And some of the best games ever were evolved from radically different concepts.

For example; if Borderlands 1 stuck to it's realistic graphics style, it wouldn't have been nearly as charming.

 

[lacktheknack]

When you use Kickstarter, you're making a product for the masses. End of story. If it happens to be your dream project, then that's great.

If you're terrified of handing over creative control to the people that you're selling to, then you shouldn't be using Kickstarter in the first place.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well, duh. *reads article*

Kickstarter stretch goals hand too much creative control to the crowd.

Okay, that sounds kind of stupid. Complaining about control when you're going to that same crowd to give you money?

And even more to the point:

He does realize that the developer is the one who decides what those stretch goals are.

What he said. Where is the control loss, exactly?

 

[sid]

Thank you! I've been saying this for months now, and on top of that people seem to not even notice that games like Star Citizen have taken it to the next level and made the game pretty much Pay to Win before there's a game to win at all. Kickstarter is an excellent idea on paper, but according to the way some companies have been using it, it can and is definitely being used for evil.

E: Actually, this article seems to be complaining more about how it gives more of a creative say for the userbase, which I'm not at all opposed to. There should really be some more exposure on how the kickstarter project can be downright awful though.

 

[JarinArenos]

Right. Because working with a publisher, the developer always gets to decide the exact budget and features.

OH WAIT

QFT.

Seriously, this goes beyond idealism. I almost suspect "taking cheap shots for publicity". At the very least, I'd say it highlights inexperience in the field. He's developed one game on an indie grant.

Edit: Okay, on re-read, I sound rather arrogant, considering that he's developing one more game than I am/have. Still, looking at how other developers are handling it, I really think he's missing the point entirely.