American McGee's Spicy Horse Loses $1.7 Million On Akaneiro: Demon Hunters

[Something Amyss]

I am not, but this is hardly a failed Kickstarter, this is more so a failed game.

Two years and it still isn't delivering multiple, promised features of the Kickstarter. That sounds like a failed Kickstarter to me. In any sense that matters, at least.

 

[Andy Chalk]

So sure, it's a good warning to backers that not all projects will pan out. But that's not in any way unique to Kickstarter. No matter what funding model you use not all projects will pan out, and it's always going to be the customers who ultimately pay for that. And it's worth bearing in mind that publishers are full of people whose entire jobs consist of trying to figure out which projects will be worth backing. While warning them can't hurt, expecting the general public to be any better at it would be somewhat optimistic, to put it mildly.

I am not saying Kickstarter is anything other than a caveat emptor, be prepared to get something you didn't expect or even nothing at all type of service. It is 100% that and at this point in time we've had enough examples that backers should be fully aware of that fact.
In this case American McGee completely lied in his Kickstarter and has shown again gamers do not deserve his trust.

People have asked me in the past why I continue to exhort caution at the end of every news post about a Kickstarter project, and this is precisely the reason: Because as much as we're familiar with it now, things still go wrong. In this particular case, I don't think anything short of a built-in mistrust of McGee could have prevented backers from getting involved, because it certainly looked good, he's a "name" developer and the Kickstarter made it clear that the bulk of the work was done and very little could go wrong. As we've learned, those promises were based on assumptions that turned out to be way off-base (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131846-Spicy-Horse-Sheds-Light-On-Akaneiro-Demon-Hunters-Stumble [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131846-Spicy-Horse-Sheds-Light-On-Akaneiro-Demon-Hunters-Stumble]) but that's something that could happen with any Kickstarter that doesn't provide a detailed budgetary breakdown - and how many do?

Too many people fail to grasp, or just refuse to recognize, that Kickstarter is an investment, not a preorder, and investing is risky - and if you invest more than you can comfortably afford to lose, you're setting yourself up for heartache.