KickStopper

Fengol

Food for thought.

"Of the 357 projects successfully funded on KickStarter between 2009 and 2012; specifically the ones that said they'd be out before 2014. Only 37% have been released. Another 7.6% have delivered partial games and another 5% have cancelled or gone hiatus. Meaning 51% of these games that should be out, aren't. The current total pledges committed to late or undelivered projects is $22 million."

via CheckPoint

rustybroomhandle

Pushing out release dates is not uncommon in development, Many KS projects have ended up with more money than they asked for and have increased scope accordingly.

The 7.6& and 5% figures are more of a concern, but if used as a figure in calculating risk, it's actually quite small. Folks just need to learn to pick their projects better.

Overall, if you ignore where the money comes from, that $22mil is quite insignificant compared to the many AAA titles that die in development hell.

I still think crowdfunding is a good model and the rough edges will get smoothed out over time.

Chippit

I have really mixed feelings about this. While you hear a few horror stories of people squandering the funds or those scammier ones who seemingly pack up and run, I still think Kickstarter and similar initiatives are AWESOME. Especially for videogames, as they were things that were largely blocked by corporate publishers whose interests do not strictly align with the interests of the developers or the players. Kickstarter's turned that on its head by putting the veto rights in the hands of the audience the projects are being created for.

In short, it lets people make the games they want to make, and the games I want to play.

Now, with any investment, there will be risk. It's why I don't back things where I don't trust the team involved. I'm also especially cautious of projects that offer a lot of physical rewards, because these things are EXPENSIVE to manufacture and ship. And there are other problems too. Perhaps some due to Kickstarter not having made it entirely clear (at least in its early days) what people are getting into, or perhaps people have misinterpreted pledging on Kickstarter as a 'preorder'. It is not. It can go wrong. It does go wrong. Games in particular are practically impossible to scope out accurately from the start. People who've been doing it for years still get it wrong. Is that any reason not to trust Kickstarter? I don't think so, but it's definitely reason to employ due caution.

And so that said, I don't really see much of a problem here. Yet. Everyone who backs a project on Kickstarter should know they're not BUYING something, they're merely investing in that due diligence will be applied to provide the project they're investing in. I have backed tons of things on Kickstarter (not all games). Two are complete, one is half delivered, one is being delivered piecemeal, and the others (6 more) are all still in various stages of production. Many are late - in fact, only one was on time. And yet, I don't feel burned. I genuinely feel like I've contributed to something that might not have existed without me or people like me, and that's amazing. If it doesn't work, well, tough. That was a risk I took when I backed these projects.

hermantulleken

If Kickstarter had close to 100% success rate, it would be very significant: either extremely suspicious; or the holy grail of game judging we are all looking for. Most investment aggregates work on the principle that a certain amount fail (sometimes even a high amount), and those that succeed make up for those who don't. (Of course, the way the money flows is a bit different with Kickstarter, but I think the principle stands.) Once the average ROI drops below a certain point, people will stop sponsoring projects. (Or they may not, in which case it works a bit more like a lottery, which is also not necessarily bad, as long as people know the risk).

I do think it's useful when a close eye is kept on the numbers, so that sponsors can know the risk.

EvanGreenwood

I agree with the posters above. From a developer's standpoint and as someone who has backed 20 or so Kickstarter projects.

My thoughts:

37% sounds pretty okay actually (assuming the rest are heading towards completion). As an anecdote: I originally thought Broforce would be finished in 2012.

At least as many games fail outside of Kickstarter than the 12.6% that do on Kickstarter (with 60% of those only partially failing).

And I'd expect 90% of the failing games never looked that trustworthy to begin with. People aren't that great at picking well-developed games even when the games in question are already released, that people are backing a relatively small proportion of dodgy projects isn't surprising.

Many of those projects that failed may have been small projects that were successfully funded due to family members, or backers with vested interests, throwing money at the project.

Even if 100% of the backers of those failed projects blamed Kickstarter itself, and not their own selection skills or the particular game developers, then 12.6% drop off of backers per year is unlikely to be enough to put Kickstarter into decline.

I'd need to see a list of failed or partially failed projects to draw any serious conclusions.

AlphaSheep

To be fair, I think many of those games that said they'd be out by 2014 were just making really optimistic guesses, and will probably be coming out in a couple of years. It's not really fair to label them as failures yet.

Consider large projects (not games) in any industry, regardless of how they were funded. What proportion of these fall significantly behind schedule? Look at any large scale engineering or construction project... It's not abnormal to see them running two or three years behind schedule.

So basically, I'd like to see what percentage of games that said they'd be out before 2012 have been released so far, and I'm willing to bet it's a lot more than that 37%.