Video Game Kickstarter Contributions Plummet in 2014 - Update

[Olas]

The number of articles that need these sort of "updates" is becoming embarrassing you guys; not to mention all the articles that present factual information without context leading to complete misinterpretation about what they actually mean.

Anyway, call me cynical but I never thought Kickstarter was a good idea, or would lead to anything but abuse and disappointment. The only project I ever backed was the potato salad one, and that was because I really didn't care if actually received anything or not. Trusting a bunch of people I don't know with my money based purely on an idea and a promise of something, eventually, some day, just requires a degree of faith in humanity that I just can't find anymore.

 

[weirdee]

Kind of hard to follow up Star Citizen's success, ain't it?

 

[epicdwarf]

Not surprised.

With failures like Broken Age and some games being developed, the trend has died down. It may kick up again one we see more success stories.

 

[ElMinotoro]

I backed wasteland 2, broken age and awesomenauts: starstorm. It's been a mixed bag.

I tell you this though, Tim Schaeffer will never see another dollar from me for early access or kickstarter.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, the economy might be an issue to. I just don't have a huge amount of money and I have several projects up in the air "Grimoire: Heralds Of The Winged Exemplar" is still being developed even if I haven't heard much from the guy doing it for a while. "Tides Of Numenerra" is just starting development. "Dark Dungeons" and "Starcrawlers" are a long way off and of course then there is a Zombie RPG (the name eludes me) still in development. With all of this money invested and only "Wasteland 2" having paid off so far I'm reluctant to start throwing more money around.

That said while I didn't donate to Tim I think his antics along with those of Richard Garriot have done a lot to sour things as well. Richard's "Shroud Of The Avatar" developed in a sort of virtual real estate scheme where you pay him real money to get a land deed for land to place a house you also pay real money for and then real money to buy tools to work that land, and then of course in-game currency to pay rent through constant grinding or you lose your content and need to pay again for more land (though apparently your house and tools remain, you just can't do a lot with them). That's apparently still going okay though... but I've seen increasing numbers of people upset with it, although there are apparently people handing out tons of money in pre-emptive property and tool purchases.

I'll also say that I think one of the problems is the way Kickstarter charges money, basically if you find a product you want and it has like tons of days level, increasingly people don't want to donate, not because they want a sure thing/deal but because they don't want to be charged weeks later on a credit card or whatever after they forgot they committed that money. Increasingly I've noticed people (me included) wanting to donate at the end to get the charge through quickly, and of course if you show up at the end and it's not close to being funded it's easy to figure "why bother?" or to just forget about it in the meanwhile.

Kickstarter is a good idea, but it has it's problems, as people in this thread have mentioned, as time goes on people want to see the concept evolve to address a lot of those problems. Basically it was easy to tolerate it being messy when it first started, but now that it's out of it's infancy people are expecting more from it.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm too busy backing real projects, like potato salad.

 

[kaizen2468]

i backed a few projects i believed in. im waiting til i see where they go before i invest anymore money in it.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Yeah, I think one of the big problems has been the constant delays. While I don't blame the game makers for needing more time it has made me SUPER hesitant to pledge to any new games when the ones I already backed are taking forever to come out. I mean come on...

I've backed Hyper Light Drifter (June 2014), it's still not out. I backed Pillars of Eternity (April 2014), it's still not out and I backed Torment: Tides of Numenera (December 2014) and while that date hasn't hit yet considering they JUST put out Wasteland 2 I'm not too optimistic about them making that date. So far the only game I've actually seen that I've kickstarted has been Divinity: Original Sin and THAT was also behind schedule.

So far that's still 2 pending games behind schedule and 1 that's likely to be... so when I see these games then I'll considering kicking in for some new ones... but that's likely to be awhile from what I gather.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Many of these kickstarters happened to be scams in disguise, or if they weren't, then the backers aren't really getting what they paid for, except of the barest of bones "product". Take Tim Schafer (sp) and Anita Sarkeesian for example. What the hell did these people do with the excess money? From what I and others have seen, the backers didn't get a whole lot for their money, and I doubt much went into their respective works to begin with.

Don't know about Tim Schafer, but surely Anita Sarkeesian is doing exactly what she promised she'd do? There just was an unexpectedly large amount of people who ended up supporting her.

 

[Amaror]

Many of these kickstarters happened to be scams in disguise, or if they weren't, then the backers aren't really getting what they paid for, except of the barest of bones "product". Take Tim Schafer (sp) and Anita Sarkeesian for example.

Tim Schafer's project grew so large that it wound up costing more then what the Kickstarter earned and was split into two parts to hopefully generate more money, but at least they gave something out of the deal.

Yeah, no. The project didn't grew too large, it grew too extravagant.
I played the first part of Broken Age and while the content that is there is pretty good, there really isn't that much content to be had. The reason the project cost that much money is because tim is horrible with money. Every secondary or tertiary character is voiced by some famous dude even while the character only says about 10 sentences. The amount of stupidity in this production is insane.

 

[Kahani]

I find this entirely unsurprising. There has never been a trend for video games getting lots of money in Kickstarter, there have just been a few big projects - games people have been wanting for years made by well respected people who generated that want in the first place. Star Citizen - creator of one of the biggest space sim franchises making a new game in the genre that has been essentially dead for years. Torment - sequel to one of the best RPGs ever made by some of the people known for making the best RPGs ever. Pillars of Eternity - new Infinity Engine-style RPG made by most of the rest of the people known for making the best RPGs ever. Broken Age - another essentially dead genre being revived by one of the people known for making some of the best games in that genre. Wasteland 2 - creators of the Fallout series going back to the original roots of that series and genre.

But the things is, those games have now been funded and are mostly still being made. There aren't a lot of other big name developers left who aren't already making things, and there aren't a lot of other genres not being catered for. So of course there's not much crowdfunding money being spent now. The people interested in those sort of games or projects by those people are currently waiting for the results, while most other people are already being catered for without needing record breaking Kickstarter projects. There's still plenty of space for lots of smaller and experimental projects, but virtually all of the combinations of well known developers and neglected genres have already been taken.

 

[FightingFurball]

The problem isn't that the backers have massively lost faith but that there were no high profile pojects this year. The amount of projects didn't go down that much. If we had more projects like Wasteland 2 or Pillars of Eternity we would see better yields.

 

[Mausthemighty]

I haven't lost faith in Kickstarter. I'm just very selective with what I back. I backed Tides of Numenera, Dreamfall Chapters, Star Citizen and Divinity Original Sin because I believed in those projects. This year there weren't a lot of interesting titles. In 2014 I backed only the HD remake of Outcast, but that didn't reach its target.