Kickstarter Mishap Cripples Venusian Adventure Game

Karloff

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Oct 19, 2009
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Kickstarter Mishap Cripples Venusian Adventure Game


Warbird Games' new point-and-click is looking for more donations to get Jack Houston to Venus.

Jack Houston's Venus rocket, which was all set for launch, sputtered and crashed back to Earth when Warbird Games' Kickstarter suffered a mishap. Its pulp sci-fi point-and-click Jack Houston and the Necronauts was all set, after a successful Kickstarter campaign put it more than $8,000 over its $56,000 target funding level. Alas, one of its backers got cold feet and, as that backer had pledged $10,000, Warbird Games was short of the necessary funds. As a consequence the developer is now scrambling to get a few more PayPal donations from willing gamers, to launch Jack Houston to the stars.

"After the exhilaration of passing our goal by almost $10k," said Warbird's Stacy Davidson, "I was expecting to spend the next few days getting ready to start production on the project. Instead, I spent them frantically trying to find out what was going on with the donation, whether we'd even get the other funds and glued to email for any news." Davidson is taking this blow in his stride, and offering a string of rewards to those willing to help Warbird over the extra mile. A full list of its reward tiers can be found here [http://www.warbirdgames.com/?p=416]

Kickstarter allows people to donate but doesn't bill them until the crowdfunding campaign completes. Other crowdfunder sites, like IndieGoGo, block the pledged amount on the donor's card as soon as the pledge is made, effectively collecting the money up front. While the IndieGoGo approach may perturb donors it does help avoid problems like this, where the person either had no intention of fulfilling their promise or ducked out at the last minute. Here's hoping Jack Houston gets to Venus after this rocky start!

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5939484/kickstarter-disaster-as-adventure-game-sees-money-disappear]


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Ewyx

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Dec 3, 2008
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Project Update #21: Original $56k goal finally reached with the support of PayPal backers! New stretch goals!

;) Well... the news item is irrelevant now. This was sent earlier today.
 

Fasckira

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Oct 22, 2009
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Didnt realise people could back out after pledging, regardless of not being billed till the close date. Thats pretty shitty tbh, but at least they've managed to make it after all in this instance.
 

batti

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Mar 18, 2009
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Maybe the donor suffered a mishap, and needs those $10K for something like a hospital bill.
 

The Random One

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Fasckira said:
Didnt realise people could back out after pledging, regardless of not being billed till the close date. Thats pretty shitty tbh, but at least they've managed to make it after all in this instance.
That's normal; 5 to 10% of backers, er, back out before the deal is done. But that one failed deal is worth more than 20% of the entire goal!

To have a little fun with math: since they have 1,378 backers and raised $64,256, their average investment was $46,62. If precisely five percent of the backers had canceled a precisely average backing Warbird would have lost only $3216,78! And now keep in mind that just because there was one huge loss it doesn't mean everyone else is honest, so they didn't lose ten grand instead of an expected three, but in addition to it.

More fun with math: if you exclude the failed charge from the totals, the average drops down to $39.40!