I was listening to an old Bombcast it was one from E3 2013 and Ryan said that we need our one big success and our one big failure so that we have our parameters, so have we reached that with half of Broken Age out and it being pretty good and with the yogscast kickstarter catastrophe?

I'm not ready to brand Broken Age a success until the second half of the game is actually released. But Wasteland 2's release is right around the corner, and we've seen other games successfully release after a Kickstarter campaign like Shadowrun Returns.

Shadowrun Returns completely validated kickstarter for me. That's my GOTY so far (well, Dragonfall is, but fuggit).

Would Broken Age be the big success? I haven't really heard too much about it. Maybe I just missed its time in the spotlight, but I don't remember hearing to much when it was released. I'm sure your right about the the failure, but maybe we haven't seen the "big" success yet.

FTL did quite well both critically and in sales. I'd consider that a success.

Maybe when Star Citizen is released, it'll win biggest success through sheer amount of money raised. I'm sure there are bigger failings than the Yogventures thing as well.

@jazz_bcaz: what other big failures?

Broken Age's Kickstarter was what really triggered the video game crowdfunding mania. They asked for a small fraction of what they ended up receiving (roughly four million dollars), and thus were able to make a bigger game because of it. The downside is that they got too ambitious even for this expanded budget and cut the game into two parts, and sales of Part 1 are being used to fund the development of the second part, which still hasn't been released.

Or what about The Banner Saga??? It still irks me that the duders just plainly ignored it and the game has been a huge success in both sales and criticism and also seems they are winning some prizes etc. I really dont see what is wrong with kickstarter , as long as people gets in their thick heads that this is not a pre order scheme but a patronage to see if x or y makes it.

Love kickstarter. I've backed Pillars of Eternity, Tides of Numenera,Grim Dawn, and Witchmarsh. Haven't regretted it once.

Huge critical success is a real stretch, the reviews I saw at the time were mostly positive, but it's not like it's some critical darling or anything. I mean that game is beautiful but it's deeply flawed in a lot of ways, and some reviewers were more willing to overlook its flaws than others.

But as far as Kickstarter goes, I'm glad we live in a time when Kickstarter provides an avenue for a game like Banner Saga to get made. I donated to that game, and even though in the end I was extremely disappointed by the final product, I still think it's really cool that a bunch of people like me contributed to getting a game made that a lot of people really loved. No giant Kickstarter failure in the world is going to negate that.

There are countless other examples. I've backed more than 600 video game Kickstarters and while there have been plenty of successes, there have been a ton of absolute abysmal failures.

There was Takedown, which turned out to be one of the most broken and awful pieces of crap ever made.

There was the game where they paid back pay to their developers, then the developers left to work somewhere else, then the game just sat there because it was written in Google's GO language which they couldn't find anyone to work in. Eventually dumped it into open source and... well, basically paid $25 for a game that usually won't even compile and - at best - is now a free game.

Then there are the several games I have backed (to the tune of $100 for one) where the people just ultimately said "Meh. You know what? This is really hard. I'm out of money and I quit. Sorry".

Then there's Star Command, which is years overdue and has gone through many bouts of ignoring backers and then coming back with stories about "oh, well, we're focusing on the platforms that you did not back right now..." and "erm... so we're going to completely re-do the game from scratch". Still waiting. Latest update was this month. A couple years after the Kickstarter... saying they are now re-working the entire concept from the beginning again.

Then there are a handful of games where the developer has just vanished and won't respond to any updates or contacts or requests. There was a 10,000 Hours project, where the guys were going to start from scratch (they're software guys but not gaming devs) and for your contribution, you would get full documentation and videos and blogs of their entire process for the ten thousand hours of their learning to develop games -- as well as the assets and products they developed. It was planned to take three years or something like that. It has been two years, so far, and last I saw they had less than 500 hours accounted for with no updates or anything in nearly a year -- except for one a very long time ago saying "sorry, things are tough around here and we're working on other business but we hope to get back to this project some day". At this rate, those five years to reach 10,000 hours (the whole Malcom Gladwell thing) will actually take something like 40 years.

Then there are some who have just gone fucking nuts. One project has only ever updated with random bullshit. People keep asking for updates; no response. All we get is an occasional weird update that is nothing but a bunch of photos of window ledges. Or a fake hand written letter about soup.

Then there are board game projects that were flat out scams, like the girl who raised a ton for this fantastic game that everyone was excited about. She took the money and ran. She was literally insane. She would write endless diatribes on Kickstarter about how the government was after her and the Sun was scheming against her.

Then there is the project by the guy behind the company that used to make all those Prima guides back in the 80s/90s and who wrote the High Score book about the history of gaming with a lot of inside interviews and great photos and other coverage. He was doing a third edition with the last decade plus of gaming added into it. Raised over $25,000 (including $600 from me -- because it included dinner with Wil Wright and dev couple John and Brenda Romero(Brathwaite). I already knew John, but thought it would be a cool way for my brother who is an indie game dev to meet some people he really admires, so it was for him. Those dinners (and much more with the Romeros, who are unbelievably fucking awesome and gracious and friendly and generous with their time) happened almost two years ago. Unfortunately, almost nothing has happened on the actual book -- which was the whole point of the kickstarter. So I'm still waiting for all my special copies of the book. That isn't to harp on the guy behind the project as he has encountered unexpected hangups, like the industry not being as open to providing interviews and information as they were when he wrote his last book and then assorted health problems (he's an older gentleman).

Oh! Oh, fucking OH! Then there's those fucking twatfaces who scammed AirBNB who ran the fucking Confederate Express project that never panned out and is probably a scam (they since created another kickstarter which Kickstarter banned). (source: http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/24/5933151/notorious-airbnb-squatter-may-be-the-dev-behind-two-flailing)

All in all, I have pledged almost $11,000 to 610 projects and paid about $3,800 to the 250 or so successfully funded projects. Out of those, I have received a bunch of completed products -- many of which are fine and many of which were a total let down in scope and quality. Of those remaining, a lot are still providing lots of regular updates and working toward their goals (Star Citizen, etc)... and a handful remain completely questionable and sketchy.

This was all a giant experiment on my part and so far, but I have mostly stopped backing anything in the last six months. I have reached the conclusion based on my massive documented history of backing video game projects that:

1. You are better off buying a game when it has released than backing it during production. Even if there is zero risk of the project failing, you will probably pay less for the game at launch than you did as a backer. I can't count the number of times I paid $15 for the "get the game" tier only to have it on sale for $10 at launch. Or paid $20 for it to go on sale for $10 at launch. Or $60 for the launch copy tier, only to have it go to Steam Early Access and be on sale for $30 during the Early Access phase (this really sucks, since you don't get to participate, even though you paid twice as much). Generally, the idea has been "get in cheaper now as a bonus for helping us get this off the ground".

2. Even if you've done your homework on a project and developer, back unproven developers very sparingly. Even a known developer is a risk, but the unknowns are a huge risk. They can (and have) simply said "fuck it, I'm out!".

3. Generally avoid backing a project above the "get the game" tier. You'll far less fucked when you're out $10 or $20 when they give up the project than if you've backed for $100 or if you're one of those guys who backed a crazy high tier for thousands of dollars. If you are going to do this, only do so for really big projects that are clearly blowing out their goals and are from fairly reputable developers that are most likely to follow through or find a way to otherwise compensate you if things fall apart.

4. Backing projects that are doing a lot of regular updates and giving you a lot of insight to how things are from their end is good. If I back a project for $15 and the developers run a lot of live streams, in-company videos, blogs, detailed documentation and information on everything about the process as they're making the game with weekly or so updates, you can get a lot of entertainment and value out of the process even if the final game fails. I have backed a number of projects where I felt I got more than enough value just from following along as a backer, even if I were never to get the final game. It's sort of a sad way to hedge your bets, if nothing else.

@kevin_cogneto: I think the only flaw it could have is the lack of height in the stage grids but outside of that I saw no problem D:

Anyway , I still consider games that got made and actually were true to most of their promisses a success. Regardless yeah it is cool that you got to help someone make their game and see to its release.

@hailinel: I know about the project and its impact, but I thought this thread was about the success of the finished product, not the Kickstarter itself.

Wasn't Divinity: Original Sin kickstarted?

Absolutely - I was just going to post this.

This made me laugh...Kickstarter can be so absurd sometimes. Well, all the time.

It is about the success of the finished product. Broken Age isn't finished.

You'd have to define what a failure is in that context. There are plenty of Kickstarters that don't even come close to their goal, but I'm not sure that's quite what we're looking for. Somehow, it feels like it would need to be some crazy disaster or a straight up scam, where people get robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollars. My guess is that's it's not likely to happen.

Even though Broken Age is not entirely out yet, it is the one that started this whole thing, so it definitely deserves the most credit in my opinion. Then there's all the very good games that came out of Kickstarter.

I guess the Ouya sort of came and went without much acclaim, but I'm not sure it's a complete failure, at least financially.

I looked at my spreadsheet and it was a sort of obnoxiously artsy game project called Lioness: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/967459848/lioness

I get the impression they feel that they're being "artsy" and "avante garde" by not keeping their 2,255 backers who funded them $26,735 of their $7,000 goal informed, but there's a place for artsy and there's a place for respecting the people that made your project happen. All of the updates are probably tenuously connected if someone wants to play bullshit "find the clues" with them, but I think people deserve at least an occasional real-life update about how the project is going.

Instead, they provided a couple bullshit updates as soon as the project was funded, then a half dozen bullshit updates this past March and nothing since then. I don't think you have to be a backer to see the updates for yourself:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/967459848/lioness/posts?page=1

The disturbing part, to me, is that even this bullshit has stopped as of the last five months.

Not like the game is overdue or anything, yet, but when you're a fairly unknown indie dev doing sketchy crowd funding for your project, you maybe want to be a little less aloof and obtuse about your shit, lest you rile people up and suspect you're one of the countless other crowd-funding scammers.

There have been countless failures -- where the definition of the failure is "nothing ever game out and they just said they are quitting and sorry about taking your money, have a nice life" -- but most of them are only in the sub $100,000 USD range.

Then there's the Yogsventure. Maybe not a definitive "scam", but you can't be much more of a failure than that and I would posit that positioning yourself as having the capacity to make a fairly involved game when you don't even have the slightest fucking clue and you immediately collapse and take everyone's money with it is still a scam. I mean, if I had full intentions of building a bunch of condos on some property as soon as people gave me enough money to buy the property and hire an architect and a construction company and some lawyers and all the other people needed to do the actual work while my job is to collect the money and then pay it to the people actually doing the work... when I have no experience or knowledge of anything about anything... that's a con job. Pretty much what that was, too.

I'd say the AirBNB douche bags and their scams also count. Unless in some alternate reality they really do some day manage to produce the games people backed... which... honestly... if that happens, my mind will be utterly blown.

Then there's stuff like GODUS. Not a scam, but real iffy. People paid a lot of money for something that was promised to be designed with old school mindset of true god games for PC and accommodated for other platforms and people were going to get to subscribe to an in-studio web-stream going 24x7 at 22Cans and there were going to be very deeply involved updates and blah blah blah.

All this time later and GODUS is maybe half done, is a total bitch to play on PC due to the controls which are super touch-oriented (my hand hurts playing this game) and it has basically become slated as a free-to-play microtransaction-based mobile game. And that office cam? Yeah, that never happened. They've provided lots of updates. I like the dudes involved and they all seem very responsive... But the result so far is really not what most people expected to back or thought they were backing and the sort of "hah, we liked, this is totally a mobile game!" aspect sort of sucks.

There are tons of good games, too. In the mid-range. Stuff like Shovel Knight, etc. Hell, hardly a week goes buy that the GiantBomb duders don't do a quick-look of a game or even two or three that were crowdfunded (even if they don't know it or mention it).

I'm not aware of a project, so far, that has been in the above a million dollars range that has simply failed (as in not come out), though. I think it is really difficult for someone who has absolutely no credibility or reputation or backing behind their project to get a million dollars in crowdfunding and if they have all of those things, plus the money raised, they are generally in a position to make something happen as a combination of the two.

@hailinel: I agree with that; I actually questioned whether Broken Age was the success in my first post. Guess we're just misunderstanding each other.

In spite of a few notable scams and failures here and there, Kickstarter has in general been pretty damn successful in my eyes. Maybe I'm just saying that because I haven't personally been burned by anything, but it has been totally worth it to get to experience games like Divinity, Shovel Knight, FTL, and Broken Age that otherwise probably wouldn't have been made.

Agreed. It's proven it's worth.

People do need to realize that Kickstarter isn't a store, though, which too many people still treat it as. I've had a fair amount of success with Kickstarters by mostly backing known quantities. I did give a larger sum to a riskier project that has only provided sparse updates, but I accepted the risk on it. I might never see a finished project, but at least I got the sense that the development team was putting in actual effort and not just blowing the whole wad on drugs and hookers.

The only kickstarter thing I've backed and found in any way disappointing thus far was Xenonauts*, but I've also been pretty conservative with my project backing. If I backed some of the more notorious failures (ie Yogventures) I might be less positive about the service as a whole.

*It's not so much that Xenonauts is a bad game so much as it is a disappointingly unambitious one. At this point if I wanted to play UFO Defense, I'd download Open UFO.

Actually, this is somewhat murky.

The thing is, you are obligated to fulfill rewards for backers of your project. Even if your project fails. If you can not, you are obligated to refund them. If you have promised that the reward someone gets for backing your project is a copy of the game, then if you do not successfully complete the project, you can not fulfill the rewards you promised and you are obligated to then provide a refund.

It is extremely disingenuous for projects and Kickstarter to go around claiming they're not a store, while touting all the levels you can support them at for which you will get a copy of the game or other product. And making a big deal in their ToS about how people are obligated to fulfill rewards or give refunds, without appending "but nobody will ever enforce this, so our ToS is shit".

You should be cautious with what you back and to what extent, but let's stop ridiculing backers of failed projects because they "weren't promised anything". They absolutely were. Every step of everything is positioned in such a way that it is exactly what you're doing (and Kickstarter specifically does not allow charities nor charitable donations). Except at the end, when somethings fails. Then, all of a sudden, the con comes out. And then you're the sucker and it was your fault for expecting anything.

Absolving projects and kickstarter of any obligations or expectations is really gross and positioning everything to entice people to participate and then sneer at them if something goes back and they're disappointed is kind of con-man behavior.

As someone who has benefited by getting to play kickstarted games without backing them, I'd say it's been a success for me. So Yes I'd say we have reached the point Ryan Davis was talking about.

I think the verdict is likely somewhere in the middle, kickstarter is a thing which can help things happen but it is no cure-all and it has challenges of it's own. Broken Age being half completed I think is a perfect example of what kickstarter is and isn't.

btw @branthog Good to see you posting again!

Well, speak of the devil.

I previously stated in this thread that I had made one heavy contribution to a video game Kickstarter, Echoes of Eternea. Updates have been fairly sporadic and there hadn't been updates on the Kickstarter page in months. They just updated, and as part of their update they're promising to post monthly updates from here on out regardless of progress, so hopefully they can stick with it.

While it has been disappointing to have been kept out of the loop in such a fashion, I can't say I blame them too much. It sounds like their progress has been hampered by some behind-the-scenes events that may or may not be public business. (Basically, they had to replace the lead programmer entirely.) They also received a Cease and Desist from Mattel at one point because the game's original title, Echoes of Eternia, was an apparent violation of Mattel's Masters of the Universe trademarks.

I have no idea how good the game will be when it's done (if it's finished), but as probably the riskiest bet I've made on Kickstarter, and for all of the bumps in the road, it's been actually encouraging to see the progroess they've made, and to know that they aren't caving in on themselves like the Yogventures guys.

Yeah that kickstarter has been a clusterfuck.

Yeah, we're getting to the point where coverage of and participation in crowdfunded projects appears much more selective. I think there is a point of equilibrium we're soon to reach (in the next year or two).

I can tell you, after backing many hundreds of projects, it didn't take many to really sour me on it all. No matter what mindset you enter into backing a project with, when you chip in $20 and get Takedown in return, it's disappointing. When you chip in $100 to a guy who got $35,000 for a $5,000 project and after almost two years, he eventually posts an update telling everyone "Doing what I want to do with this project would require an entire rewrite and this is something I can no longer do, so this project is dead. Sorry. You're welcome to ask me for a refund and I'll provide them in the order they were requested, but I am currently working as an in-home care specialist living on less than $15,000/yr, so . . ." (In other words - you can ask for the refunds I'm obligated to provide, but good fucking luck!"

It actually saddens me, because my favorite thing about crowdfunding is not seeing established names in the business make a come back with a thirty year old franchise, but seeing little guys with a great idea and tenacity (like the guy behind Malevolence, the Infinite RPG who blew past his goal and has been toiling away on something pretty fantastic) do something.

Someone needs to start up a funding site where some vetting is done. Maybe you can't offer gaurantees, but to at least know people are who they claim, have the credentials they claim, and whether they are actually a business or not. And whether they've had prior kickstarters fail or not (I have actually seem people who totally scammed their backers come back to Kickstarter all over again with another attempt and Kickstarter gave their pages the go-ahead). When you're dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars in funds (which Kickstarter is - just for gaming) and you get 5-10% of that chunk, I think you can manage to come up with a better vetting process (and your continued business viability depends on it).

As for Broken Age... I think it is actually a fantastic project. They hit hurdles. Completely reasonable. The important thing is they have delivered, constantly updated backers, communicated with them, produced a great documentary, let people find various ways to contribute and participate. Others who have had similar problems and delays to Broken Age have done miserably, because instead of embracing the community and keeping them in the loop, they go silent and vanish, leaving people with the taste of being conned in their mouth.

There were failures and scandals before the yogscast thing. Ouya being a big sore spot for a lot of people- just as an example.

I don't think it matters, though. Whether it be kickstarter, or somewhere else, social fund raising is not going away so I don't really understand the purpose of this thread. So if we did have the big failure and the big success, what then? What are we to understand you are telling us will happen?

Honestly I was hoping to read what the title suggested: a theorem. I was super disappointed this is a one run on sentence OP with little conversation value beyond "remember that one thing Ryan said that one time?"

Just being honest. This thread has little to no value, and I am disappointed by that.

I've backed a lot of kickstarters. Only a couple have actually even released (Wasteland 2 is about to release, Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded released, and Shadow Run Returns released, as well as it's DLC expansion, and all are fantastic games imo).

There's one or two I have little faith in, but they give solid updates so I'm fine. I'm fine anyway. I don't back games on kickstarter with the assumption they'll actually be made. I back them with all my knowledge of how life actually works and hope something cool will come out of it. Mostly I'm just happy to give to the developers I give to because I think they're good people. It's why I haven't backed Night Trap. I'm not sure I really care for what they are doing or even really trust them in the first place to do it.

I'll continue to do the kickstarter thing when I trust the person doing it. I won't back anything remotely suspicious, and I think I'm better at spotting bullshit than 80% of people anywhere.

(awaits the inevitable hate mail to my generalized statements and my complaints about disappointment in the OP)