Star Command Dev Reveals Where the Kickstarter Money Went

[dyre]

I suppose those expenses are excusable, but what's really ridiculous is they spent $12000 on shirts and posters and buttons, when they probably only made about that much from people who donated enough for shirts and posters in the first place.

I'm not saying running a business is easy, but I'm sure they could've managed those expenses better :/

I was tempted to lump the poster art amount into the reward costs as well but in reality promotional art is a development cost too. We don't know how many images they commissioned that they now own the rights to.

At least with the 97 odd people who ordered that tier (along with the 2 $1000 backers in the tier above) plus the $15 extra international backers would have had to put in, they were still well in the black afterwards. Not the best result, I agree, but these kinds of things are order of magnitude expensive at low counts like that. 100 t-shirts is astronomically expensive to print compared to the 13 thousand or so Double Fine will be printing. They say in their update they should have pitched that stuff higher. Live and learn.

Hmm, yeah, I shouldn't have assumed the poster art would only be used for the posters they're shipping out.

 

[draythefingerless]

3000 dollars on GOING to Pax East? not worth it. that was poorly spent. lawyerSSSS? with an SSS? half a lawyer should of been enough. hell, copyright law pretty much ensures that youre safe without the need to patent shit. copyright law works automatically. the only thing you need to worry about is trademark, and i dont see how thousands of dollars for lawyers is required to trademark a game name. so pax east n lawyers...

and jeez, 2000 for poster art? im sure i could get you that for under 500.

and then, 6000 on music.....6000 dollars....on music....:/....what, did you hire John Williams to do it?

ok well...live and learn i guess. this is good for new devs to learn how to spend it.

 

[Andronicus]

and then, 6000 on music.....6000 dollars....on music....:/....what, did you hire John Williams to do it?

If that's the case, I may just have to finally go out and buy an iPhone.

 

[Jaeger_CDN]

At least on the Wasteland 2 kickstarter, they put up front for international supporters that to get physical 'goodies' they had to put in an extra $15 for shipping. They also amended the rewards for an all digital reward to bypass the shipping portion all together.

 

[LorienvArden]

These people are artists and game designers, not businessmen. And it's probably better that way anyway.

There is a big difference between the "businessmen" stuck in big corporations like activision or Ubisoft and businessmen in small independent companies like mojang or theGamestation.

You need a certain level of business know-how to pull off a good game or service, and not beeing able to forsee the costs your dealing with is a good way to kickstart a project like Kim jong Un's failed satelite raunch....

 

[rapidoud]

Holy crap, shipping to outside the US is expensive, who would've thought it over there, huh?

Yeah, in excess of $15 per shirt to ship to here, so you already have $3000 wasted on shipping without even getting into the items.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

I'd have more pity for them if they hadn't blown $6000 of their initial $20000 budget on fucking music. 30% of your budget is allocated to -music-? Jesus Christ. Get some open-source shit that you can use for free. Another 10% to poster art? Are you people -drunk-? Get somebody on DeviantArt to do it for $50. Jesus. Bam, now you've got $12000. Oh, and maybe forgo PAX East, now you've got $15000, 75% of your budget left after you pay off your lawyers and the government.

No pity.

 

[Calcium]

Wait, this indie game developer was making a game for the iPad and didn't have ipads in the first place? Also perhaps it would be better going to events like PAX when the game is further developed, meaning you have a product to show. I understand it's networking and all, but I wonder if the people who gave their money knew it would be spent (in part) going to gaming events.