The pitfalls of Kickstarters

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starcommand/star-command-sci-fi-meets-gamedev-story-for-ios-an/posts

Fascinating article from a successful Kickstarter campaign. Well, successful in that they almost doubled their initial goal of $20,000 but not so much in how quickly that money disappeared and that they were left with only $6,000 in the end to actually cover development costs.

@Vitor: Wow. That money really disappeared in a hurry. They should have forgone the "rewards" as it seems those are what really killed them.

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Vitor: Wow. That money really disappeared in a hurry. They should have forgone the "rewards" as it seems those are what really killed them.

Yeah, they pretty much say so themselves. Then again, I can understand how stuff like that can spiral without you realising. Definitely a 'learn from your mistakes' sort of experience. They could have budgeted better but I can see why a lot of those costs took them off guard.

That doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Vitor: Wow. That money really disappeared in a hurry. They should have forgone the "rewards" as it seems those are what really killed them.

That's how they got people to donate in the first place.

@Vitor said:

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Vitor: Wow. That money really disappeared in a hurry. They should have forgone the "rewards" as it seems those are what really killed them.

Yeah, they pretty much say so themselves. Then again, I can understand how stuff like that can spiral without you realising. Definitely a 'learn from your mistakes' sort of experience. They could have budgeted better but I can see why a lot of those costs took them off guard.

Sure. Who thinks of shipping costs and printing t-shirts as being a big money sapper?

The community commenting still seems pretty supportive in general though.

@Skald said:

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Vitor: Wow. That money really disappeared in a hurry. They should have forgone the "rewards" as it seems those are what really killed them.

That's how they got people to donate in the first place.

Yup, which is why they couldn't axe the rewards I suppose. Although, maybe if they had explained it the people supporting them would have understood. Probably not..

Did they not price out the costs of the rewards up front? Seems like it's the dev's fault for not preparing enough in advance. Plus, it's only one pitfall, the title promised multiple.

@Ravenlight said:

Did they not price out the costs of the rewards up front? Seems like it's the dev's fault for not preparing enough in advance. Plus, it's only one pitfall, the title promised multiple.

Lawyers. They prepared for the worst case scenario but ended up likely with more safety's/guarantees than a small start up likely needs.

And they probably had a rough budget that didn't actually take into account the full costs of shipping/printing which is totally their fault, but even I'm surprised at how much it costs to ship even small items internationally at times.

The rewards costs don't really bother me, it was their cost to get the funding $10k to satisfy 1,167 people, less than $10 each on average isn't bad.

The other stuff that they spent money on is idiotic, $6,000 for music on a mobile game? Buying fucking ipads? maybe have that stuff before deciding you want to program a game for it. Legal fees...

Going to Pax I could see, but not if it's going to take money out of developing the game.

The whole bit about taxes, what about the apparent $50k in personal funds they have put in, bullshit, nice CPA those guys hired.

@Kidavenger said:

The rewards costs don't really bother me, it was their cost to get the funding $10k to satisfy 1,167 people, less than $10 each on average isn't bad.

The other stuff that they spent money on is idiotic, $6,000 for music on a mobile game? Buying fucking ipads? maybe have that stuff before deciding you want to program a game for it. Legal fees...

Going to Pax I could see, but not if it's going to take money out of developing the game.

The whole bit about taxes, what about the apparent $50k in personal funds they have put in, bullshit, nice CPA those guys hired.

The ipads could just be for testing. You don't need one for general iOS development but, once this thing got real, it's likely they would have required to by multiple devices for QA and bug testing. iOS is less fragmented than Android but there are still differences between all the models. Unless Apple has its own certification system that does all this for them which I doubt. Plus they'd likely have to recreate the errors on site in order to fix a lot of them and that requires hardware.

This isn't a Kickstarter issue insomuch as it's a poor planning issue.

They should have said the Tupac hologram came in and robbed they ass before poofing back to Gangsta heaven. I would have preferred that explanation.
 
Also the main reason behind why I don't want to support a kickstarter project. Who knows when someone is going to do something like that but end up losing all of your money.