Ah, boardgames are doing fine, but the percentage of successful projects and the average amount raised of video game projects has gone down lately (video games being one of the categories with a lower percentage of successful projects).
Big name projects will always be successful (if well managed), since they can rely on a marketing budget and marketing professional already established at the studios, but small projects are struggling much more than one-two years ago.
In 2012 33% of video game projects were successful, while in 2013 that goes down to 24%. Moreover, total pledge amounts in 2013 are 28% higher than in 2012, but successfully funded projects went up 50%, which means both that a higher percentage of projects are being unsuccessful and that those that are successful are getting less money on average. It’s a typical market saturation example. Big projects with good marketing are getting the money, for sure, but that’s due to a lot of marketing expenses.
First time indie projects, like Proven Lands, that ask for a lot of money now have it much, much rougher than one year ago, since their thunder is stolen by the big guys and the kickstarter community and guerrilla marketing efforts can not deliver over $50k unless you are Project Rain World (the only, small, not heavily marketed nor industry-connected game that has made north of $50k this far into the year).
As malkav11 stated, the reason for this is saturation and exhaustion. More excitement about a project needs to be generated now than a year ago, since it’s not the new thing anymore, and people are burned out.
It doesn’t mean Kickstarter doesn’t work for videogames, quite the contrary (and I’m very happy I took that route), but the boom is definitely over, since numbers are going down.
So amusing.
After i had a been using kickstarter for quite a while, people on this forum suddenly declared kickstarter was the new thing, as if it hadn’t existed before. Then there was a huge boom of people talking about it here. I tried to tell them that kickstarter had already been very active for a long time before they deigned to notice, but of course they were in their own little world.
Now people are telling me kickstarter is dead even though it is still going fine.
Obviously many projects will fail to get funded due to poor campaigns and/or ideas, but that isn’t a bad thing really. Most of these campaigns shouldn’t have been made except for a few very.
Kickstarter will likely never fund AAA games, but that is fine. The games i want (story based rpgs and/or games with interesting mechanics) do not require million dollar graphics.
Pod
2689
Games on kickstarter are very different from other projects, especially the ‘art’ projects, on kickstarter. Did we have to pay to watch those tropes vs feminists videos? No, some people donated towards their creation and then ‘humankind’ (at least those with computers) benefited from them. The same happens all over kickstarter when there’s non-physical goods involved. Why doesn’t it happen with games? Why are games so obsessed with simply being used as a big pre-order scheme with lots of t-shirts and posters thrown in?
I think a lot of it is how games are seen as products that must continue to generate income for their companies, which is something I’m quite “against” and, in my opinion, is the reason most AAA games suck anus. But that’s an essay for another thread. I’m still waiting for someone to kickstarter a game which is free for everyone at the end of it. Why is no one saying “pay me 100k and I’ll make and release an open source game” or something? (Note: This might have already happened and passed under my radar).
Sadly, programmers need to eat too.
That’s what brought me round to supporting a basic income.
(Think about it - it changes the risk models in an awesome way)
Nobody said it is dead (hell I just got a project funded there like 4 days ago, so I won’t be saying that, at least). But it’s true that the boom phase is over and now things are stabilizing in a different (but perfectly sustainable) pattern. One year ago odds of success were way better than now, and budgets and funding goals didn’t need to be so well adjusted.
Off the top of my head, at least ADOM (indiegogo) did something like this. There will be a pay version, but the free version will continue to be developed and updated, and have all of the core features (pay versions only have convenience features added). It’s not open source, but good enough, I think. I’m sure there are more examples.
Pod
2694
I know, I am one! ;) I also know that I could eat very, very heartily with 100k spread over a few years. Once that’s done I’d launch a new kickstarter for my new game ;)
I remember seeing ADOM did a funding campaign but then completely forgot about it! (Mainly because I prefer DCSS ;)). Though this funding for ADOM is a bit different from what I was thinking – it’s got a bazillion free manhours already poured into it and there’s already a great deal of investment in it and it’s, essentially, a very well know and established “IP”. This funding is to “keep” it alive.
If someone were to kickstart a new game they’d be kickstarting the initial creation, and then I guess require donations/more crowdfunding to do any ongoing maintenance/DLC, much like ADOM has going for it. It’s the kind of paid-for work people like Stallman are always rabbiting on about. But there’d still be the “official release date” including the usual frenzy that happens at such a time.
It’s essentially a return to “art patronage” in a way. Maybe I should look into doing it with Patreon and get paid per line of code* or release number increment? :P
*Yes, I know.
mok
2695
People are much more skeptical about computer game releases via KS, and are now more cautious when pledging.
KS is so wonderful for a board game, as it essentially relieves the physical risk of game production. It is free advertising that pays you if successful.
For a computer game outfit, KS can relieve some personal risk of the designer, but it often does not reduce the risk for the consumer by much, so it is not very attractive. This is something that pledgers have come to realize over the past few years as they discover projects they “invested” in are still very high in risk terms of a timely and accurate delivery of what is promised. I think this is why big names might have an easier time with it, as there is a perceived stability and dependability (though this is can often be incorrect).
Another factor is time to deliver even the bare product is too long for the impulsive pledger to bare as well, reducing their number over time as well.
Kadath
2696
I finally got my Doom Came to AC box set btw, the guys who fixed the disaster rule.
I was pleased to note that they put in all the game-related stretch goals as well. I doubt we’ll ever see the pewter figurines or T-shirts that Chevalier had promised, but the game was the main thing. And the plastic figures are pretty high quality anyway.
Nesrie
2698
Yeah, I am no sure I buy this “boom” just because some big names and products received a lot of funding and now there hasn’t been one as large… except there has been, a couple that completed at the end of 2013, and we’ve just begun 2014. I don’t see a boom and bust here, so much as a self-proclaimed rockstar in gaming can’t just jump onto Kickstarter with vague idea and rake in millions with 100% certainty.
Did you read the stats I posted comparing 2012 to 2013? I did that research before deciding on a funding goal, so I tried to be as realistic with the conclusions as possible. The boom was mid - late 2012 (since there were very few projects at the very beginning of 2012, so the numbers are even more skewed than the yearly stats suggest). I’m defining boom as it is normally defined: a period of fast growth. That growth has definitely stopped during 2013 (unless maths lie somehow) in terms of probabilities of success AND average money raised, and numbers are declining/settling in a different pattern. We are talking about statistics distributed along all projects created in each year, so it definitely doesn’t just limit itself to big name projects. there was a period of some months in 2012 during which average success rate for video games approached 50%, which was nuts.
I love Kickstarter, but I fear many devs still think it’s working like that, when the fact is that is has become a rougher market (which, by the way, I’m not even sure it’s bad). All this discussion originates from a valuation of Proven Lands, which is definitely a case of devs with no clear track record overestimating the current fundraising power of Kickstarter, and the need of marketing for projects of this scope.
The project looks really good, and maybe a year or two ago they could have had a chance, now, even projects like Planets3 (with over 5k backers and good marketing) are struggling with those numbers.
Are you sure? I do not get the amazon payments stuff when I opt to support it, I get the “enter your CC info” stuff instead.
mok
2701
While I agree with Juan that things are different than they used to be, there is possibly something else afoot with Proven Lands, I suspect. The lack of comments in their comment section surprises me. The sheer flatness of their graphs. Somehow this is a major turn off for people - or it s the “has no momentum so why bother” issue.
I mean 22 some odd folks over the weekend, seems really, really light.
The Proven Lands demo is not impressive at all. It certainly didn’t fill me with confidence to plunk down $15, and with their unreasonably-high goal, I sincerely doubt that this will be successfully kickstarted. I don’t see the appeal; whereas Don’t Starve has a gothic creepiness to it, PL has a generic SF look that’s hampered by a poor engine.
Nothing in the Proven Lands pitch impressed me, most of the gameplay was simply walking around, some landscapes. The talk about the story engine just sounded like a lot of buzz words with no substance to back it up.
Nesrie
2704
Yeah I did. I don’t consider a one year over one year comparison to be a true reflection of a boom and bust, or even growth. It’s just so short sighted to think a potential business model should somehow be studied and judged in a year. I mean I’ve seen a developer mourn that he asked for too much money because if he had asked for less, at least he would get something. Kickstarter, unfortunately to him, says make your goal or you get nothing. So his solution is to go through another funding source, that let’s him keep the money no matter what. He missed the point of that restriction, and I think some approaches are just not well thought out. I think there was a mad dash to see how much money people can get out out KS while it’s hot. Sometimes the idea is just not work 20 million dollars, that doesn’t mean because some Ouya product coupled with Project Eternity didn’t come out in 2013 it’s a bust. Did you attempt to throw out outliers with your statistics, or normalize the data at all?
What about the ideas, maybe they’re just not that as exciting. It’s like trying to sell a toy. There are no guarantees but that doesn’t mean the next thing won’t be huge.
There were the same number of outliers (at about the same level of funding) each year, so they don’t influence the statistics that much. It’s true that outliers have a slightly higher percentage of the pledges on 2012 than in 2013 (60% vs. 50%), but again, the first two months of 2012 there was almost no funding for game kickstarters, so it’s logical over a shorter period of time outliers would have had stronger influence. Another important piece of data is that these stats only track successfully funded projects (it’s very hard to find data on unsuccessful projects. But if we assume 80% of projects that are not successful don’t even make 30% of their funding, we can extrapolate and find out that funding averages in 2013, taking into account failed projects, are quite lower than in 2012. But this does not affect successful projects, which, taking out outliers, like at around $50k per project both years.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt. My math could pretty well be off.
When you try to get funding/release a project, you need to judge the business model as it is at the time. That doesn’t mean Kickstarter can’t grow again in the coming months/years. Of course it can! It’s actually just going so in the board game category. But in videogames there was a boom, then things have been settling on for a while, and then you can have another boom or whatever comes. One year is ample time to call a pattern in a market. Remember I’m not making predictions (it’s foolish to do so with so little data), but looking at what has happened and where we stood one month ago.
At the time of release you need to consider the immediate context. Academics and historians can afford to judge long term, but if you have 30 days to raise money, that doesn’t help.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that some approaches are not well thought out. That’s the whole point I was making with Proven Lands.
mok
2706
Interesting that Proven Lands got Greenlit early in the KS. Process is still seems arbitrary and shrouded in mystery.
