I have backed several Board and card games on Kickstarter but never anything else. I saw a video about the video game Starship Simulator and it looks like something I would love and it is currently crowd funding on Kickstarter and I am thinking of backing. I was curious if anyone has had either good or bad experiences funding a video game. Have you been burned or did it work out fine?
Also the game looks really great, kind of what I wanted No Man’s Sky to be.
Have any Kickstarter backed games been successful, either profitable or very popular even if not profitable? If not, I wouldn’t bet money that I can pick the first one. OTOH, I suppose if I liked what was being proposed, and could see signs that the money wouldn’t be wasted, I might toss in a paltry sum simply for encouragement.
Unless it’s a known studio/developer where you know they’re likely to produce, I’d be pretty cautious. I’ve crowdfunded a few games like that – Bard’s Tale, Wasteland 2 – and it went okay aside from a far longer wait than originally expected. I also crowdfunded some little indie Action RPG that failed to get funding and the dev gave away keys to the backers anyway. Which was nice, but the game itself was absolutely terrible. Oh, and another RPG that DID get funded and came out (Legends of Dawn) and was also absolutely terrible.
A common theme on Youtube videos that explore crowd-funded game failures is that novice developers FAR underestimate both how many people it takes and how much money it takes to develop the game they’re showcasing. So they run out of money or get burnt out trying to do it as a one or two man operation and the game either goes dark or else comes out in a broken half-finished state. With a known dev/studio this is less of a problem because they already know what it’ll take and set their goals accordingly. The “Massive Galaxy Wide RPG with Fully Customizable & Destructible Voxel Environment!” with a $25,000 goal is never going to happen.
Pillars of Eternity, Yooka-Layle, Wasteland 2, Shenmue 3, and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night are examples of Kickstarted hits. What they all have in common is that they were made by people with established backgrounds in the industry and not some random dude.
So that would be my primary first question before funding a video game: What else have you done before this?
Not to triple post and get yelled at by Discourse (and there’s the message), but I got around to looking at the Kickstarter page and saw it’s a two person husband/wife team with no gaming industry experience and they were expecting to make/finish this ambitious project for $82k*. That would be a big red flag for me.
Unlike Kickstarter vacuum cleaners, Bluetooth speakers and jet packs, copies of a video game can be rolled out in infinite numbers. I’d personally rather wait and drop $60 at launch for a game I know works and I can see reviews on than $32 on the hope of one day getting a game after umpteen years of status updates. Worst case scenario is that I’m proved wrong when an awesome game releases and totally showed me. Oh no! 
*Edit: To be more accurate, they expect a working Early Access version to get done for the $82k which they would then try to parlay into additional funding. But they also talk about using the money to expand their team which seems a heck of a reach for eighty-two grand.
That’s my attitude. I bought Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder: Kingmaker well after launch and I was perfectly happy with what I got.
I chipped in I think about $80 to Kickstarter to fund Descent: Underground.
The devs got really far along and released a passable beta with spectacular graphics, but then hit legal troubles, which I think are still unresolved.
I still have hopes …
The fact that it’s just them as the development team did concern me but the low funding goal didn’t because that is just how Kickstarter is done. Every board game will have a small funding goal so they can advertise “Funded in five minutes!” It’s dumb and transparent but they all do it. In fact many board games double or triple their funding goal but cancel because they say they didn’t make enough to actually make the game.
I am leaning towards just waiting until it’s released on Steam (if ever) but if they can pull it off this looks like a great game.
Eh, that only works if it works. If you’re asking for $80k and only get $100k then you don’t have nearly enough money to pull it off, the $100k worth of people have to pay in because it was funded and the money is wasted because nothing will ever actually be produced for that little money. “We’re asking for money but only 10% of the money we need so you better hope we break the goal by 10x our asked amount or else you’re never going to get shit.”
It’s a terrible choice for backers because it raises the odds considerably that you’ll be wasting your money. So, as a backer, I would stay away from any video game project asking for far less than it would reasonably take to make the game. Either they have no idea how much it’ll take, they’re trying to jerk you around or (probably) both – they’re trying to game it and still don’t really know how much they need.
My take and experience. Although I rarely try to evaluate the “signs that the money wouldn’t be wasted,” because as mentioned by a lot of posters in this thread, the chances that anything will ever come out of the labor-of-love types approach zero.
But if it’s a cool concept, I may chip in $10 or less because I want to see more of that concept / style / genre get recognition even if that specific iteration is probably doomed.
But if you look at our thread about Free Video Games, there are a substantial number that were being given away for free because the creators burned out / gave up ever reaching a finished status and end up releasing them in a “good enough” version that was far short of their ambitions.
Or similarly, end up releasing something that feels like an extended prologue or intro sequence and tease that with more money they can release the rest, or next “chapter”.
My bigger experience was with things like LFG which ambitiously announced that they would release a (short) motion picture version of their comic with fan-funded monies. The result? Two animated music videos/teasers, which while fun, was NOT the premise. Claims were made for years that they were having developmental and funding issues, none of which were ever resolved before the whole comic going on indefinite hiatus last year.
Another thought on the artificially/intentionally low goal is that more money usually comes with extra promises. So someone asks for $50k and gets $300k. Which might perhaps be enough for the base product but now they’re also supposed to provide seven extra features. Which, for a video game, are often also resource heavy like a multiplayer mode, extra map, customizable weapons/vehicles, etc. So you’re kind of right back where you started in terms of cash needed vs cash gained.
Both the pathfinder games, kingmaker and wrath of the righteous. Very happy with both.
Echoing the general sentiment that if it’s a well-known studio, you’re probably safe backing it. If it’s not well known, pay close attention and do your research.
I’ve backed many games on Kickstarter/FIG/etc. I’ve had pretty good luck with indie devs I’ve backed, but every one of them went past the expected delivery date (to be fair, pretty much every major studio project also misses the deadlines, just generally by a considerably smaller window).
Christopher Bischoff, who did Stasis for example, went way beyond his expected release date for that game, but he did release it, and it was a good game which also got decent reviews when released to general public. He also did a sequel and an unrelated game based on South African mythology called “Beautiful Desolation”. Every one of them ran into scheduling issues, but all got released and were full games.
BT4 was done by inXile (founded by Brian Fargo, the original founder and former CEO of Interplay) and while it was released, was a bit less than promised, a fairly buggy mess, and overall a disappointment particularly when compared against Wasteland 2 (Kickstarter) and Wasteland 3 (FIG) which were done by them as well and were far more polished. (They are now owned by Microsoft.)
Pillars of Eternity (nee Project Eternity on Kickstarter) and PoE 2: Deadfire (FIG) both by Obsidian (founded by the team behind Fallout 2 who also bolted from Interplay) were polished and what were expected. (They are now owned by Microsoft.)
(On a side note, with Microsoft now owning the studios that spun off from Interplay as well as Bethesda it’ll be interesting if they somehow merge Fallout and Wasteland into each other, since Fallout came into being because EA owned the Wasteland name and wouldn’t release it to Interplay for a reasonable sum at the time. Brian Fargo would later snatch it up as CEO of inXile after EA let the rights expire.)
Divinity: Original Sin 2 by Larian Studios was successful. Larian which had made Divine Divinity and the first Divinity: Original Sin decided they wanted to make D:OS 2 a more ambitious effort so that’s why they crowdfunded it. (Baldur’s Gate 3 was not crowdfunded, incidentally.)
The remake of System Shock was also successfully crowdfunded and released.
I have a slightly different take. I have never backed a video game in Kickstarter, but I’ve backed things not because i thought i would get a good deal, but because i think it’s a neat thing and hope to help it exist. I have a really cool and unique puzzle that would never have been made on any other platform. I’ve also backed some dogs.
That being said, if there are red flags suggesting they won’t succeed in doing the thing, it’s a waste of money to back them.
I also backed Wrath of the Righteous, although it helped that Kingmaker had already been established, so it wasn’t a question of some new company promising something it might not be able to deliver.
For that matter, I also backed the Kingmaker boardgame remake (no relation to the Pathfinder game) on KS, without a problem. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen any boardgames crash and burn on Kickstarter; the Valley Games attempt to remake Avalon Hill’s Up Front game, where the company lost pretty much all of the KS money in an unrelated lawsuit - and Valley was rather established at the time.
I have backed two video games in Kickstarter. Both MMORPGs.
The first one was put together by some folks with game development experience but not a lot of funding outside of the crowd funding. And nobody on that project came from any well-known studios. The project isn’t dead but it has been very slow and I’m not completely convinced that it will ever get released. I hope it does. They’re all volunteers and the project is a work of love for those involved. It has been over a decade now and it’s still going but…
The second game I supported is much further along. I participated in some testing of the game and while it was still early it was fun. I have much more confidence that this will get released. The studio has actual employees rather than volunteers, people who worked on some of the biggest MMORPGs in the past, and the project was started by a guy who was already very financially successful and put a lot of his own money into getting it made. Later this year I should be able to do more testing and I think in a couple of years it might release. I’m very excited about this one. It also has been slow, and it has been in development for 7 years since I funded it, which even for an MMORPG is a long time. But it looks amazing and as I said, even the extremely early playtesting I did was very enjoyable. I expect it to be a real blast in the next test.
I backed Terra Invicta. It was made by a group that made a popular XCOM mod, but Terra Invicta isn’t a lot like XCOM. The game released but the gameplay sorta disappointed me. It’s a lot more espionage and operations. I think I need to push through the early parts of Terra Invicta to see if it gets better, the 3D starship combat is what appealed to me but it looks like it takes a while and lot of spying/operations/diplomacy to get there.
And just yesterday I backed Starship Simulator. Don’t know if will ever get finished, but there is a free demo out now, the funding has reached the levels where they will do planetary landings, and the author’s vision and attitude really resonates with me. The big studios aren’t making many things like this. I figure my $60 will help get Starship Simulator made and save me from buying it later. $60 also gets me access to development builds so I can test it out now and then.
I also bought Star Citizen for $40 years ago, which is slowly getting more and more playable. And I’m set for if/when it fully releases.
I have a crapload of Early Access games, but no Kickstarter video games. Early Access involves a game that actually exists (in however primitive a state), so I have more confidence in it. Even games that are in early access forever (7 Days to Die I’m hairy eyeballing you right now) have enough gameplay that I can get my money’s worth. Kickstarter games? It’s tossing a Grant in a well and making a wish.
Well I did it. I backed Starship Simulator. We will see if I just threw some money down a rat hole or not.
Funny I should see this right now… I literally just downloaded the first and only video game I’ve ever backed on Kickstarter. Turbo Kid- based on the movie. I backed it YEARS ago now and although I remember getting invited to beta test awhile back, I just didn’t do it.
Excited to give it a play.