Kickstarter Project: Planetary Annihilation

[Sea Skimmer]

So all is said and done and they funded every goal they had and then some, 2,229,344$ raised on kickstarter out of 2.1 million desired, and a 900,000 dollar minimal budget. Apparently some 80,000 dollars was also donated via paypal so they've got some slack to work with.

[Dave]

So all is said and done and they funded every goal they had and then some, 2,229,344$ raised on kickstarter out of 2.1 million desired, and a 900,000 dollar minimal budget. Apparently some 80,000 dollars was also donated via paypal so they've got some slack to work with.

Number I saw from PayPal was 101k at close of Kickstarter (from their countdown stream), and they left it open for a bit for people to get in a few more donations/pre-orders/whatever.

I'm looking forward to this game enough to have gotten in on the alpha.

[Tolya]

You can make a good game with just a handful of people, but it won't be a triple-A title. Kickstarter as a method for funding small-team efforts by a few interested fans and developed by passionate developers will work out just fine. I think people will indeed see a bubble burst, since you can't run a whole studio on Kickstarter whims, but I think it's a tad silly to be so pessimistic about what constitutes a good game. People have been making very successful games with 2-3 people. Especially if you define success in either an artistic sense (indie games have been doing this for a while) or in a financial sense (indie game revenue being split 4 ways can be very lucrative even for small sales).

As I've seen the first kickstarter "creation", namely FTL (not the first kickstarter funded project obviously, but the first I actually had a chance to play), I will continue to be pessimistic. People have thrown tons of money at the devs and they just pumped out a generic game. I will eat my hand if FTL guys actually spent more than 20 thousand dollars on the project (because apart from hiring Penumbra writer to do the races, I have no idea what else have they done - oh, there's also a mediocre music guy apparently). And they got 200 thousand bucks.

We will probably see much more examples of overfunded projects in the coming months. I think Kickstarter should implement some kind of mechanic that stops donation after a given point - i.e. 150% of project's original goal.

[Terralthra]

We will probably see much more examples of overfunded projects in the coming months. I think Kickstarter should implement some kind of mechanic that stops donation after a given point - i.e. 150% of project's original goal.

The Reaper kickstarter is a great example of why that might not be a great idea.

[Grumman]

I will eat my hand if FTL guys actually spent more than 20 thousand dollars on the project
...
We will probably see much more examples of overfunded projects in the coming months. I think Kickstarter should implement some kind of mechanic that stops donation after a given point - i.e. 150% of project's original goal.

FTL was not a victim of overfunding. They had no stretch goals, and their chosen project (digitally distributed software) had pretty much zero marginal cost.

They did not allow the game to bloat to consume all available funds, but never claimed they would. If they said they'd make a $10,000 game and ended up making a $20,000 game that's perfectly reasonable, no matter how many preorders they received.

[bilateralrope]

I will eat my hand if FTL guys actually spent more than 20 thousand dollars on the project (because apart from hiring Penumbra writer to do the races, I have no idea what else have they done - oh, there's also a mediocre music guy apparently). And they got 200 thousand bucks.

Three questions:
1 - How many people were working to develop FTL ?
2 - How long did development take ?
3 - What's the typical yearly income (before tax) of a game developer in whichever part of the world they were working in ?

[Vendetta]

Three questions:
1 - How many people were working to develop FTL ?

2 main developers, a music guy, and the extra writer they hired for more fluff text.

2 - How long did development take ?

Couple of years, it seems, but full time (as in the developers quit their day jobs to make their indie studio) probably about a year.

3 - What's the typical yearly income (before tax) of a game developer in whichever part of the world they were working in ?

They appear to be working out of Shanghai, and they appear to have gotten really lucky, because the $10000 they originally asked for probably wouldn't have gone a long way to covering two people's living costs for a year. People on Kickstarter frequently underestimate what game development is going to cost and ask for way too little, especially after Kickstarter, Amazon Pay, and the tax man have had their bites of the pie.

[Stark]

I think kickstarter enthusaists are too foolish to understand a concept like 'profit'. If you can trick nerds into buying literally nothing and then don't deliver on expectations... who cares? These are people who got cross when developers spent kickstarter money buying ipads and going to trade shows.

[phongn]

They appear to be working out of Shanghai, and they appear to have gotten really lucky, because the $10000 they originally asked for probably wouldn't have gone a long way to covering two people's living costs for a year. People on Kickstarter frequently underestimate what game development is going to cost and ask for way too little, especially after Kickstarter, Amazon Pay, and the tax man have had their bites of the pie.

A lot of these projects don't have a good understanding of tax law and what it means when they raise a ton of money near the end of the year and not spend it.

[bilateralrope]

People on Kickstarter frequently underestimate what game development is going to cost and ask for way too little

Hence my questions to Tolya.

I think kickstarter enthusaists are too foolish to understand a concept like 'profit'. If you can trick nerds into buying literally nothing and then don't deliver on expectations... who cares? These are people who got cross when developers spent kickstarter money buying ipads and going to trade shows.

That brings up another question regarding FTL. Did its Kickstarter make any promises that were objectively not delivered ?

[Stark]

To my understanding it doesn't even matter. You can pass your funding mark and get the money delivered and then just walk away if you want. Arguably delivery is only required if you want to do it again, and meeting the made up expectations of people who believe they 'own' your project or company or whatever might be impossible.

[Sea Skimmer]

Actually the terms of service, while a bit vague do claim to be legally binding and require that you complete the project or refund the money. Kickstarter itself though washes its hand of all obligations to oversea any of this. So it looks like if you donated over 20 dollars, you could at least sue in a US civil court.

[thejester]

It looks like another Spore to me: huge amounts of Cool Ideas but not much of a clearly defined game beneath it.

Really? I would have said the exact opposite. It's a remake of a game from 1995 Total Annihilation, but with a slightly bigger battlefield and a super weapon with a slightly bigger boom. If anything, it's the other way around - you're repackaging an existing game (that's already been remade once) and adding one cool idea - a three dimensional battlefield.