Editorial Swen Vincke on Kickstarter

I'll say it again - everybody's worrying about what'll happen if a Kickstarter project fails, but they fail to take into account the effect of the projects that succeed! It only takes one success to prove that, yes, it is possible for Kickstarter to create great games.

So, will the failures overshadow the successes or vice versa?

No problem of the platform becoming oversaturated - you can see how Kickstarter is dying down now. The main gaming websites just aren't interested it any more. They really got behind Double Fine Adventure and Wasteland 2, and Shadowrun to some degree, but they barely covered Tex Murphy and Dead State at all. Those games really didn't get much money at all. I hope he's wrong about flops being inevitable, but you have to wonder how Tex and Dead State can be made for so little money.

Considering Dead State was being created for NO money up till now...

Interesting to hear more about LMK. Found an old interview about it (on ign of all places): http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/interviews/lmk.shtml

I'm guessing Original Sin will have a lot of what they intended to do with LMK.

They only managed to create the : "I could get burned with it ." effect. It wasn't a good thing for those that don't have big names behind them , like Avellone , Fargo and others .

It's now a brand that just waits for the first sabotage act or simply "accidental" fail that will provoke people to think : "Indies, pfft the last time I supported them, - that didn't went well."

In a ideal case it would be far away from any "brand," with just a company or game name that receives the money and support.
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"High-profile" failures is a meaningless statement. What does that? Games like Mass Effect 3 or Dragon Age 2? The developer would lose some good will, but I don't see people blaming kickstarter anymore than they would blame pre-orders or alpha funding. There would probably be a certain number of people saying "I'm not going to kickstart something again" the way there are a number that said they wouldn't pre-order again after major disappointments, but that hardly constitutes a backlash.

What about games that never come out? Well, that really depends on the game then, no? I think if one of the big ones (Double Fine, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, etc.) never released anything that'd probably sour a lot of people, but I don't see that happening. If games like Hardcore Tactical Shooter or Republique don't release anything, well, that shouldn't be surprising. The kickstarter for both of those were a mess, and both said that they needed outside money to make a game.

One caveat being the awful game media. They hyped games like Republique and Hardcore Tactical Shooter, and if those games fail I'm sure they'd be quicker to blame kickstarter than taking responsibility. And lots of gamers read such sites (this is why we can't have good things), and might well jump on the meme wagon. That wouldn't stop kickstarter, though, it'd just push the games made through more toward the indie games asking for less cash - which would probably be a good thing.

Eh, not really. They were pretty skeptical about it actually. Notch ended up saving it, or so the story goes (it may have just been the inevitable last minute surge)

Well, I know RPS had three articles on it. Maybe not hyped, but certainly more than it deserves considering other games that don't get mentioned.

I'm sick of shitty video game projects flooding kickstarter because there used to be some interesting hard goods concepts on there but good luck finding them amidst the indie inclusion festival.

The Hardcore Tactical Shooter had great timing, benefiting from getting onto KS just after Doublefine's success hit the news, thereby getting a lot of undeserved attention. They rushed in with a half-assed pitch, and as such they got in ahead of the wave of more serious projects who were actually making some effort to prepare for their kickstarter.

What would happen if some big companies created their own ultimately promising kickstarters under a different name, just to have them fail and spread distrust among the pledgers? Would that be enough to kill the "new model" and have all the customers return to the "good old trustworthy" companies? Or does it go too deep, making it a risk for a huge PR fiasco?

/cospiracytheorist

It's probably easier and more profitable for them to just use kickstarter...

Kickstarters don't really compete with AAA stuff yet for that kind of venture to be worth the risk at all.

How about companies that already have the money to complete their game, ie their game is fully funded and will be completed, no matter what, and decide to get some free Kickstarter cash? It is free money, right?

/cospiracytheoristX2

No need for /cospiracytheorist

I think that's already happening in one way or another and the biggest weakness of kickstarter besides typical frauds.

Yes, this is what I believe too. But that "yet" is that gets me thinking.
It is more like some future idea where more people are starting to be fed-up with all the DRM and non-delivered promises and turn to kickstarter-like models. I'm not talking about destruction of AAA companies and some kind of real competition of course, but we could see some kind of sales decrease, something our corporate masters cannot accept. Another idea I had is that instead of risking through Kickstarter to undermine the "competition", they could use their online magazine slaves to illuminate the failures of the new model.
Anyway, I probably give it too much thought.

I don't see any real difference from typical pre-ordering, since the people giving the money, will also receive the product. They would earn that money even if they had their game made without kickstarter(aka pre-ordering in this case), through retail and online distribution. It is somewhat dishonest but in the end the customer receives the product. And this is what matters the most.

That's true if you only back as much as you would be willing to pay for the normal product and receive the product for that money.

But it wouldn't be "somewhat dishonest", it would be a blatant lie because they have to say for what they need to raise the money. It's a bit hard if it's already completely funded. In the end it would come down to hold back keyfeatures/content like in day-1 dlcs aka lying to squeeze more cash. Maybe even implying "when you don't spend now in advance, the game will not be as good as it could be - and it's your own fault!".

I like the possibilities kickstarter provides. It's a fantastic tool. But it relies completely on trust.

And you think that's not happening in some way? I understand there are plenty of sites/magazines that have gone "WE WON"T WRITE ABOUT ANY KICKSTARTAR ANYMORE EVER". Now, why would they do that?

"Somewhat dishonest" I meant the blatant lie, still less dishonest than not receiving the product at all.
But lets not argue about semantics since I believe we agree on that part.
I do agree with you it is much different from pre-ordering as far as ethics go. But when I wrote about real differences, I meant from a financial viewpoint, the only thing that really matters to a corporation. And from a financial point of view, I don't believe there will be any real difference in profit.

You give your money and create the product(having no profits by now), then you cash through kickstarter VS You cash from kickstarter and you make the game

I do. But I'm thinking of something more extreme like actively defaming Kickstarter by pointing out the failures a little more.

I hate this fucking profit-growth-based system. Day by day, more and more of the things we love lose their soul.

A possibility other than collusion, they see Kickstarter as some kind of a hula hoop fad, that most people have already lost interest in.

Anyway from what I've read on an indie developer forum I used to frequent, they don't think getting mentions or reviews from online mags, is that helpful in getting sales for their games, so they rely almost exclusively on advertising. Now if the big game websites were turning down advertising money, that would be stronger evidence of collusion.