I don’t think that was the problem, as I was beating the enemy without a problem.
Just got my Zubmariner reward from the Sunless Sea kickstarter so I’m feeling good about KS at the moment - signed up.
Arcen games did a Reddit AMA yesterday. You can find the discussion here:
The numbers for this aren’t looking great, with 20 days left.
Boo!
KS fatigue? They seem to have had coverage from a few places - RPS, et al.
I honestly think the goal is just too ambitious. They want 100% of the dev costs up front for a sequel to their very first game after a series of very public development issues on multiple other projects. I can see why enthusiasm might be muted.
Big names can expect to pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars reliably, but I think the line in this case is obviously closer to $100K. Either the scope needs to be pared back (which is the most likely outcome) or Arcen needs to take on more of the up front financial risk (which I don’t blame them for being reluctant to do given recent history). It’s a disconnect between expectation and reality.
I’m sure that’s a big part of it. The last few Kickstarter campaigns I’ve followed have really struggled to get momentum going, despite looking like (to me) terrific games (Hero’s Song is the other one, that just wrapped up their Indiegogo campaign).
Chris has also talked about how they just don’t have access to a lot of customer information, so they’re having difficulty reaching the ~300,000 owners of the previous game.
I hope they pull this off. It really looks fantastic and everything I’m reading from their Kickstarter updates sounds like it’s heading in the right direction. I just wish they could get some traction.
That could practically be the tagline of Arcen Games at this point.
Well played.
The most recent Three Moves Ahead podcast has Chris Park from Arcen games on for an interview.
I have only listened to the first half, but there were a lot of interesting topics.
- The games market has changed dramatically to the point that indie devs don’t even know what to do anymore.
- Back in 2009/10 an article from Rock Paper Shotgun would drive a ton of traffic and game purchases. Now, it barely moves the needle if anything. A Total Biscuit video has much more impact and is what made The Last Federation their second most successful title and fastest selling title.
- They also timed the release of The Last Federation really well. They released it on the Friday before Easter Sunday when no one else was releasing games (also very few to no new releases the following Tuesday) so they could stay in the Steam top 10 sellers list artificially long to receive more eyeballs. Indie devs now need to game the Steam storefront in ways like this to avoid being kicked off the front page in literal minutes.
- Stars Beyond Reach sounds like it has been in development hell. Chris Park ran out of steam and lost all enthusiasm for the project. The design doc has been scrapped and rewritten multiple times now. Keith Lamoth took over development and states that there is only a 50/50 chance he will maintain enough interest to continue development. The project went from several hundred alpha testers to just 3. Not looking good at all.
- Many other insights.
I too am worried about the Kickstarter. The Kicktraq trending data is not looking good.
As an aside I’ve been teaching myself AI War recently and that game has one of the best tutorials in any strategy game. Really well done and thought out.
Oh, I got this one! They should make a survival game!
Basically this. Sadly. It’s what I said above. On average KS will value your project at about 25-30% of the real budget.
I was hopeful Arcen had a big enough fanbase to offset that, but it doesn’t look likely right know (they are still in play, though, while the success changes have lowered dramatically, they are still not ridiculously low -10% would be a wild guess-).
KS fatigue is a thing, but it has been for at least 18 months to 2 years now. The problem is perception: because the press doesn’t talk about KS anymore unless they are successful, most people only look at success stories and that colors their vision of the platform.
The sad thing is that this is a very well thought out campaign. In my book, they did everything right, and if the goal is too ambitious is because of their production realities (can’t afford to assume a bigger risk) and something you can’t really blame them for…
Or a colorful character-based Hero shooter with design elements borrowed from MOBAs and lots of unlockable loot crates.
This is the first video game KS I have backed since May 2015!
AI Wars seems like a VERY niche game too. It is just very complex.
I liked it but i can easily see why it doesnt have widespread appeal.
Agreed. It’s too bad, because I think this is one of the major things that they are addressing in the sequel.
On the plus side, this thread makes me want to re-install AI wars again.
I’ve been having a great time with it this week.
The podcast I linked above is a fantastic listen. Chris Park is such a transparent, ethical, thoughtful developer who wears his heart on his sleeve.
Arcen Games really needs to continue to be a part of this industry.
I’m thinking of picking up AI War 1 and giving it some time before their Kickstarter is done - based mostly on the impression from the 3MA podcast. If I like it I’d consider backing.