meeper
3947
I don’t think this was mentioned previously, but Shieldwolf Miniatures (not our Shieldwolf) launched their second miniature-related Kickstarter project back in January after concluding delivery of their first Kickstarter project from last winter.
The first project asked for 5k and received 20k despite the campaign being a bit of a mess and essentially requiring an accounting background to figure out the reward tiers. The funding was well below what they had expected, but they trucked through it regardless and ultimately delivered miniatures of reasonable quality.
Fast forward to their latest Kickstarter where they asked for 30k and cancelled the project 9 days later after having received 39k (130% of goal). Clearly they had anticipated substantially more interest and weren’t prepared to spend the effort for such a small return.
The sort of under-pricing of goals has become so common on Kickstarter that I’m beginning to become leery of backing projects.
Another example was the Robotech RPG Tactics miniatures project from Palladium Books back in the spring of 2013. They set a 70k goal and raised 1.4M. Despite this, they’ve only delivered the base promised content and essentially none of the stretch goals. The common belief amongst backers now is that they were counting on substantial retail sales of the game to fund the second half of development/production and that simply didn’t materialize. So another example of setting a goal that is on the order of 2-5% of what appears to have been actually required.
What other projects have we seen that had goals set unrealistically low?
I think pretty much every game project out there now is not 100% financed with KS funds except very, very few exceptions. Most projects I know of are projecting fundings of between 25% to 50% of the project real cost (with the rest of the funds obtained by other means).
That is, in the current KS climate, a project’s value (funds raised) is significantly lower than the production costs. You can get higher returns, but it’s normally by pitching a bigger project, which itself drives costs up again. It seems the consortium devs tried to fully fund it through KS (or the project was very ambitious). You have to be very lucky to afford that nowadays.
Of course that doesn’t excuse projects going in without all the other necessary funds to complete the project when added to the asked for amount. That should be a big no-no.
You can get Consortium for free on GOG for the next 43 hours. Should be a banner near the top of the page to claim your key if you click on my link.
There was a similar giveaway on Steam a few weeks back (maybe when their new kickstarter began).
-Todd
RichVR
3950
Quaro
3952
Sounds like an outside backer might drop 200k on the Kickstarter or something?
The game looks totally great BTW. Really sad that it might not make it. Check it out if you haven’t. Even the voice acting isn’t atrocious especially given their budget.
I don’t think that’s it given that they talk about that scenario being unlikely. But I have no idea what their plan actually is.
That would make little sense. More likely a high (if not enough) raised amount can convince a publisher to support the game even if the KS fails.
Only 12 hours until their mysterious plan is revealed!
I recently jumped into their prior game, Consortium: Not the Tower, and was surprised at how bad the voice acting isn’t. I mean, it’s not Last of Us, but its pretty decent.
-Tom
mono
3956
Give or take a week…
They’re not announcing their mysterious plan yet, if it exists. However the current situation is that the Kickstarter is going to fail. However, they spin it as a campaign ‘intermission’. Basically, they’re opening up a non-Kickstarter campaign in a week or so, once this one is dead. However they’re still incentivising you to pledge to Kickstarter in the last few hours. Even though you won’t have to pay up, as the target isn’t going to be reached. Everyone who donates on KS, and then in a week comes back to the new for-realz campaign and donates again, becomes a ‘super-backer’ and gets free Consortium DLC .
corkeh
3957
Straight from their email:
So, what is our radical plan to save this campaign? Well - we were hoping to completely blow the lid open on the entire plan today, but unfortunately we aren’t allowed to just yet. The official announcement will be coming in a press release next week, but the gist is simple: The moment that the clock runs out here, this crowdfunding campaign will officially enter an intermission period. We have found a way to resume this campaign in just a few weeks’ time outside of Kickstarter or PayPal. You were the first supporters of The Tower, and as a special thank you we’ve got a bit of an extra treat.
Each and every one of you who has pledged at the Consortium Initiate level or higher on Kickstarter will not only be able to keep your pledge and rewards when the intermission period ends, but will eligible to become a SUPER BACKER with us.
What’s a Super Backer? It means that in the future all games released by iDGi in the Consortium Universe will be free for you. Forever. This will apply to all pledges made up until the ending of our Kickstarter campaign, so if you’re sitting at the $5.00 pledge, or on the fence about pledging, you’ve only got a limited time to take advantage of this. There will be some more information next week on how this will work from a technical standpoint.
I think so too?
This is madness and basically kills all possibilities of future crowdfunding for them unless this game is really, really successful.
One of the reasons you crowdfund is to create a base of backers/fans that will be more likely to fund future projects (which is why companies have very high success rate of their second KS, this failure is an outlier). Giving everything future for free kills that option. Forever.
Unless, of course, the game is not that successful and becomes the last game in the IP. But it’s all or nothing if they go forward with this.
The thing is, this project is actually way more successful than the previous (fully funded) Consortium Kickstarter, which closed with ~70k versus The Tower’s 180k at the moment. So they -have- created that base, apparently. It’s just that they asked for more money than that.
I’ll be a super backer, love the idea, hope it works for them.
I’m not saying it’s not going to help this project (quite the opposite), just that it’s going to obliterate that already established base as a revenue stream for now on. That’s extremely risky.
Probably they started this campaign with around $50k in pledges from their previous base (the existing base) plus some more money from non-backer buyers -daily data supports this-. Since crowdfunding is very critical mass based, that early push helped them (along with the project sounding really good, imho) raise the additional cash. But everybody they have reached until now will not be a future client.
Oh, I agree completely. I was just noting that they aren’t an exception to the greater-success-on-second-KS rule.
Atmospheric open-world living-city hand-drawn Victorian Lovecraftian adventure game A Place for the Unwilling is looking for $22k and is about 9k of the way there. $17 for a copy. Looks like it could be neat.
I see the lead dev here and there at local events. He’s a very interesting guy, and definitely passionate about this project. I think it looks good (for the KS making it and for the game being good on release).
Telefrog
3966
Way back at the start of this thread, The Northerner, the Kickstarter for Jeremy Soule’s symphony was posted with an original ship date of September 2013. Obviously, that was optimistic, but the latest post says the release date is slipping to sometime in 2017.
Why? Because Soule is busy with business and music tech projects that have taken precedence.
Over the last year, I’ve had a plethora of irons in the proverbial fire, any and all of which could be considered a 100 percent occupier of someone’s time.
On one hand, I’ve been crafting and creating the Northerner and on another I’ve been helping build and grow the company that will bring the aforementioned music technology and creative capabilities to the world. Dividing time between these and several other projects has been challenging to say the least.
To say that work on the Northerner Sketches and Symphony have stalled completely would not be true. Gated by time, or the lack thereof, certainly. Stalled? Definitely not. So you are still working on the Northerner?
The symphony is absolutely still in progress. I anticipate the Sketches to land late this fall with the full symphony to follow in 2017.
So wait, you took the Kickstarter funds and started a company? Absolutely not, not even a penny. The company is based on an initiative and subsequent joint venture between Roland Corporation and Virtual Sonics.
As with all endeavors that I’m currently driving, everything has it’s own creative, developmental and financial compartment and the only overlap comes in my ability to utilize the outcome of one to multiply the outcome of another.
In this case, the technology and content my company is creating plays to my craftsman’s spirit and composer’s heart enough to warrant some waiting time to allow them to be realized in my compositional process, ultimately enhancing the quality of the finished symphony. Trust me, it’s worth the wait.
Refunds are being offered for backers that don’t want to journey with Soule.
