Kickstarter do's and don'ts: Pantheon vs. Star Citizen.

[Mouser]

I just happened to to feel like checking out how Pantheon is doing (or not doing) today. It seems to have stalled at under $150k. Much less than Brad was even able to get for the Kickstarter (that 'giving to a doomed project' thing). OTOH, you have Star Citizen, where money is falling like manna from heaven and Roberts has to make up new stretch goals almost as fast as he can think of them. It's no longer Kickstarter, but the hits keep coming...

When you think about Star Citizen: not only is it funded at over 40 million (and still climbing) - that's $40 million Roberts doesn't have to pay back. Most MMO's and game launches worry about how many box sales they'll need to break even - Star Citizen is already there - the first unit sold goes to profit.

Anybody thinking of a commercial launch for a game (Kickstarter, direct, Steam, whatever) would do well to look at those two and see what made one work, and the other not. At least, I think so. Nice side by side case study I'm sure will be in University economics books in a year or two.

 

[Zoltor]

I don't like the kickstarter concept, I consider it a mini scam at best, and a major scam at worst.

It's as crooked as the stockemarket, all it is, is a way to get money, by doing nothing(and a hell of a lot more money then you need), and people who use RM, who try to do that, are even worse, since it takes considerably less money to make high quality games, then it would be using any other development tool.

Just suck it up, and pony up the cash yourself

When the game is finished, and if you want a physical release, then insane amounts of money is needed, but that's what publishers are for(make sure then advertise it too). However even then, the money Isn't coming out of your pocket(the publishers get the money back+more from sales).

Also back to why Kickstarter is a scam, even if people pay, that doesn't mean the game will be made, but hay, you know the saying, there's a new sucker born every minute(and the scammers are well aware of that fact).

 

[Lars Ulrika]

I invite you to look at Seita's post on how he made his kickstarter successful then we'll talk again about how crowdfunding is for lazy asses. Another point : maybe you can finance yourself when living in a developed country but when you're in Indonesia merely getting 200 dollars a month with your job, you're glad to have crowdfunding. It gives the chance to any people to be able to fulfill a great project. You don't want to do it? Fine but don't be insulting towards people using that saying they're all scammers. 

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

I don't like the kickstarter concept, I consider it a mini scam at best, and a major scam at worst.

It's as crooked as the stockemarket, all it is, is a way to get money, by doing nothing(and a hell of a lot more money then you need), and people who use RM, who try to do that, are even worse, since it takes considerably less money to make high quality games, then it would be using any other development tool.

Just suck it up, and pony up the cash yourself

When the game is finished, and if you want a physical release, then insane amounts of money is needed, but that's what publishers are for(make sure then advertise it too). However even then, the money Isn't coming out of your pocket(the publishers get the money back+more from sales).

Also back to why Kickstarter is a scam, even if people pay, that doesn't mean the game will be made, but hay, you know the saying, there's a new sucker born every minute(and the scammers are well aware of that fact).

Like anything in this world, there are abusers.  Do you know why it takes an assload of cash to make a GOOD quality game? (RM titles notwithstanding, but even then)

Say the dev wants a high quality artist. That costs a lot more money than you'd think.

What about environmental mapping? The countless drafts living up to the dev's expectation, which, by the way costs each draft.  If the game features voice talent, don't forget about the VOs.

Also, the music. Sound effects. Usually the dev programs, but then if it's a 3D game, you have your modelers (And sometimes live models! Man, Those are expeeeeeeensive!), set builders, lighting directors, it truly DOES all add up.

A professional musician can cash in at hundreds for the hour. That's just ONE musician! Not to mention studio rentals, equipment, digital mixing by an engineer (MORE money) and such. Same for the voice acting. The animators have to follow the VO's dialogue to match. Even one frame off could spell doom.

Then you have your testers, some which have degrees in Quality Control who test for bugs.

"Just pony up the cash yourself" is rather insensitive, IMO... If they could, they would. 

Kickstarter--from what I gather--is a fundraiser of sorts. No one's making people contribute. They're doing it of their OWN FREE WILL, KNOWING they may not get anything out of it.

I'm sorry you see it as a "scam" Zoltor, but of course you are entitled to your opinion and I won't hold it against ya.

I will agree with people who are making an RM title.... unless they're souping it up with the stuff I just said. There are some pretty impressive titles that are stuffed to the gills with customs and gameplay.

Maybe I helped shed a little light on the subject, maybe not.  Ah well...

 

[StanManX]

I'd like to point out that Kickstarters don't get money for doing nothing -- a whole lot of time and money goes into making the pitch video, the website, the concept art, and the day-to-day efforts to draw attention to the project -- typically beginning months before the Kickstarter goes live. The ones that do nothing in advance don't get funded.

 

[Zoltor]

Yea because as we all know, games require millions of bucks to make.(incase you didn't know, I'm being sarcastic in this line).

Look, no game under any circumstances, inclding hiring a ton of people to do everything from scratch, should take more then a few hundred thousand. You hear companiies spending  millions, but that's only because they are ******* clueless when it comes to handling money(seriously they have the worst book keeping, and marketing departments in the history of commercialism.

Furthermore, if you're actually making a quality game, not some graphics over gameplay POS, It's doubtful you would reququire anywhere near that 300kish price tag(well not from just the development anyway).

In the local setting(as in the RM or other such indie  development scenes), even if you commission a lot of the art(which is easily the most expensive thing to commission), It's extremely doubtful many people ever break the 10k mark.

Most people probally spend around 1k or less give or take(for the development costs anyway), which if you divide that number between the time it takes to create a game, is next to nothing.

People who do a kickstarter, aren't trying to fund a game, they're trying to get paid before the game is even made.

If that wasn't the case, they would ask for a lot less money, and when it hits the price point, it would be taken off kickstarter, instead of letting the unneeded money pile up to the ******* moon.

Hell the OP even offers such a case, a game supposedly got like 40m in the kickstarter lmfao(that's such an extreme case It's hard to believe, granted, but you always hear of games getting hundreds of thousands of bucks, and even breaking the million dollar mark with kickstarter). You couldn't spend 40m to make a game, even if you tried, huge MMOs don't cost anywhere near that to make(even the ones that have been ever growing for the past 12 years didn't add up to that much).

Also I can't fathom why anyone who claims they need hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a game, would be using the RM development tools(even if all the music/art, and scripting were to be custom), because the fact is, if you were spending that kind of money to develop a game, you wouldn't be using RM, due to It's restictions(you would be using C++, for coding instead of RGSS3, you would be using a more customizeable map editor, most likely designed from scratch, to do everything you want, specifically designed for the game you're making. No weird resolution/viewing screen size limits, ect.

Nevermind most of these specialized development tools, just love to use special file types for resources, which can get very annoying(RM is actually probally the best one as far as that goes, because it accepts resources in their standard format for the most part, it doesn't require things to be converted into unique, one of a kind formats. As far as I can tell, the only thing in RM that does that, is the map editor, but for some reason every map editor out there seems to love packing the created maps into unique img files that only that specific map editor, can read)

Needless to say, RM, along with most of the development tool, engine/network combinations are specifically designed for people who don't have mad amounts of money to spend, to still beable to make high quality games.

If people had the money to hire people to do everything for them, and such, there would be no reason for things like, RM, Unity, Byond, Flash(although flash is the most restrictive of them all, so I really wish people would stop making flash games, especially any that use animated actions of any kind, it would be good for text muds, not much else though), ect.

 

[Mouser]

Yea because as we all know, games require millions of bucks to make.(incase you didn't know, I'm being sarcastic in this line).

Look, no game under any circumstances, inclding hiring a ton of people to do everything from scratch, should take more then a few hundred thousand. You hear companiies spending  millions, but that's only because they are ******* clueless when it comes to handling money(seriously they have the worst book keeping, and marketing departments in the history of commercialism.

You just lost all credibility with that statement. Do you really think corporations get to the point of having millions of dollars of cash reserves by being clueless? Maybe, just maybe they know what they're doing, they understand the risks of what they're doing, and they understand the very real costs of what they're doing.

Did you know that until very recently, the only way you could license the Unreal Engine was to pony up in excess of half a million dollars? (They still have those licensing options available, btw - and serious companies do still buy them for the support Epic provides). They wouldn't even talk to you unless you had a solid, successful released title under your belt.

I know you like to think in absolutes, Zoltar - but there's a lot you don't know. Opening your mind up won't hurt (too much). Don't let yourself get stuck as a Sophomore.

Yes, games can and do cost millions of dollars to produce. Take a good read through the 'stretch goals' listed for Star Citizen and see what some that money went for: Facilities, recording equipment and sound studios. Video recording studios. Once you have facilities you're paying rent every day, whether anything gets done or not. Electric, water, utililties. Taxes. People draw salaries or wages. Consultants need to be paid. Software needs to be licensed (Maya ain't cheap, neither is ProTools for that matter). At some point you need to hire accountants and lawyers, payroll management.  You have costs 'indie' developers don't have to worry about.

 

[Sharm]

The more you talk Zoltor, the more I think you must be at least mildly autistic. You have the same way of dealing with the outside world as every autistic person I know. You have a tendency to talk as though your opinions are fact, as if your experience and conception is the only truth and have a huge gap in your ability to empathize with people who are not like you. The world is a much bigger place than any one person can know, just because you can't think of a reason for something doesn't mean that reason doesn't exist. Not everything in the world can be divided into fact and falsehood, most of the time someone disagreeing with you just means that they have a valid but different opinion. That doesn't make your opinion invalid but it does mean you should try to figure out why their opinion might also be true. Don't attack someone just because they don't see the world your way.


Kickstarter is obviously not a good option for you. You haven't seen an end result of a Kickstarter that was anything other than a money grab and you have no need to make a game that costs more than you can personally fund. On the other hand, I have funded kickstarters and have gotten exactly what I paid for (and it was better quality than expected). The things I received were a good and fair price and the people running the Kickstarters used the money almost entirely to fund the cost of production. I have never funded anything that was a scam or made me feel in any way that I didn't get at least as much as what I paid for. I know people who have a proven track record of making good quality things but use Kickstarter and services like it to pay for their living while they put all of their time into making those products, something they wouldn't have the time to do while working a normal job at the same time. I know people who use Kickstarter to pay production companies to manufacture what they're selling. I can think of many, many reasons why a person would not be able to invest in themselves to get where they need to be to sell a product. These reasons are why Kickstarter exists. Before kickstarter these people had to go to major corporations or rich people and try to get investors the old fashioned way. Kickstarter is just a different way of doing the same thing that has been done for a very long time.


Do the scams exist? Yes, and they're usually very easy to spot. Scammers are generally lazy folk and don't usually have good presentations. Do some of the people that use Kickstarter ask way too much money for what they're trying to do? Yep, and those Kickstarters don't get funded. Do people start Kickstarters with every intention of making something awesome but have no clue what they're doing? Of course, they're the majority of people who use kickstarter, but once again, like the scammers they are pretty easy to spot for nearly the same reasons. They also tend to not get funded. There are rare exceptions to all these things, but they are not the rule. Kickstarter does work, and it is a valid option for many people.

 

[Zoltor]

You just lost all credibility with that statement. Do you really think corporations get to the point of having millions of dollars of cash reserves by being clueless? Maybe, just maybe they know what they're doing, they understand the risks of what they're doing, and they understand the very real costs of what they're doing.

Did you know that until very recently, the only way you could license the Unreal Engine was to pony up in excess of half a million dollars? (They still have those licensing options available, btw - and serious companies do still buy them for the support Epic provides). They wouldn't even talk to you unless you had a solid, successful released title under your belt.

I know you like to think in absolutes, Zoltar - but there's a lot you don't know. Opening your mind up won't hurt (too much). Don't let yourself get stuck as a Sophomore.

Yes, games can and do cost millions of dollars to produce. Take a good read through the 'stretch goals' listed for Star Citizen and see what some that money went for: Facilities, recording equipment and sound studios. Video recording studios. Once you have facilities you're paying rent every day, whether anything gets done or not. Electric, water, utililties. Taxes. People draw salaries or wages. Consultants need to be paid. Software needs to be licensed (Maya ain't cheap, neither is ProTools for that matter). At some point you need to hire accountants and lawyers, payroll management.  You have costs 'indie' developers don't have to worry about.

You're a moron if you think those companies know how to handle money.

There's a reason why every one of those overblown ego company are constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, if they have less then half a billion in the bank.

It doesn't even require 1% of the money they spend, to make the games they spend such money making.

The unreal egine is a overrated POS, I['m sick of people treating it like the ******* be all, end all, must have game engines.

You can ask whatever the **** you want for a engine you made, that doesn't make it a smart/decent deal.

Ever since ebay promoted the use of bin only options on their site(worst thing to ever happen to ebay), people have been asking rediculous prices hor stuff, does that make it a smart purchase, no it doesn't.

Anyone, under any circumstances, spend over a few hundred thousand to make a game(and that if they have to hire an entire team, and "everything" is being made from scratch), they are effectively "burning" money.

"Produce" is the key word, production is on the publishing side of things though(and even then,only if a physical version is made), not during development.

Furthermore in 95% of cases, publishing costs don't even come out of the developer's pockets.

 

[AstoXx]

So much to get through, so little time. At least you keep me working.
 

You're a moron if you think those companies know how to handle money.

Thus implying you know how to handle money better than every gaming company ever, who have an entire workforce dedicated to their accounting? Then, please... create a topic or something to show us the way.
 

There's a reason why every one of those overblown ego company are constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, if they have less then half a billion in the bank.

Except a vast majority of the decent, well-known companies are actually on solid ground right now. Also, quite a lot of bankruptcies aren't a fault on the company mishandling money, which is often the case when that company is a subsidiary of another company. 
 

It doesn't even require 1% of the money they spend, to make the games they spend such money making.

How much does it take? If it's so cheap, why aren't you rich? Why haven't you made your own company yet? With these bombs you're dropping you could revolutionise the industry!
 

The unreal egine is a overrated POS, I['m sick of people treating it like the ******* be all, end all, must have game engines.

It's overrated, sure, but it's not a piece of ****. There IS a reason why it's so widely used. But that is beside the point, since more and more, developers are creating in-house engines to use for their games.
 

You can ask whatever the **** you want for a engine you made, that doesn't make it a smart/decent deal.

No, but then shouldn't we have some faith in people that they wouldn't buy junk for an inflated price? If they've been in the industry this long and managed to survive, they clearly know how to make smart purchases and know the value of engines.

Ever since ebay promoted the use of bin only options on their site(worst thing to ever happen to ebay), people have been asking rediculous prices hor stuff, does that make it a smart purchase, no it doesn't.

Admittedly, I steer clear of eBay, so I will admit to not knowing enough to make a substantial comment here.
 

Anyone, under any circumstances, spend over a few hundred thousand to make a game(and that if they have to hire an entire team, and "everything" is being made from scratch), they are effectively "burning" money.

And now you're deciding to essentially crap all over the indie industry, too. It's a well-known fact that more and more, creating games is getting hella expensive to the point where the AVERAGE game has the budget of a AAA movie title. Claiming you can do the same quality job for cheaper is big talk and again leads me to question why you aren't out putting it into practice and getting rich.
 

"Produce" is the key word, production is on the publishing side of things though(and even then,only if a physical version is made), not during development.

I think you're confused as to what the word "produce" means.
"produce"
verb
1. to make or manufacture from components or raw materials
This, oddly enough, happens to be synonymous with "develop" in this form of context. Why the hell is something related to actually making a product not being handled by the team that, I don't know... makes the product? Oh wait, it is.

Furthermore in 95% of cases, publishing costs don't even come out of the developer's pockets.

Statistics, pl0x

 

[Mouser]

Zoltor, I think I see part of what you're missing. You're focusing on the 'tangible' parts of production - making boxes, burning DVD's etc...

Let me put some real numbers down for you. Let's say you're assembling a team to build a game. You want 20 developers (not a large team by any stretch - and I'm not going to count artists, writers, and voice actors, so just go with 20). Each of them draws a salary of $50k (I'm picking easy numbers here, some will cost more). That's $1,000,000 (one million dollars) in development costs a year right there. Games take more than a year to develop.

If you don't license an engine (which costs money), you have to build your own, which takes time - which as you can see from above, costs money. If you takes you six months to build your engine, that's half a million dollars.

Think about that a bit before you say things like nothing should cost more than a few hundred thousand.

 

[Zoltor]

Besides the fact 50k would be a dream come true for anyone(no one gets paid so well these days), It's not smart to pay full time work, when most positions wouldn't be needed for such.

People should be paid based on completed work(aka for example you pay a artists on their completed work, not the time it took them to get it right).

The only person you would really need full time, is a coder(if you didn't know how to code your self), while technically you can partitian coding in rare cases, It's really a one person job(for multiple reasons)

20 people while not considered a big team, when you compare it to the teams the bloated company's have, It's really more then you need.

Having multiple people write a story=bad, having multiple people having a say in the design of the game, is very bad(compramising leads to crappy, watered down games), and having multiple people code, is more likely to slow progress, then to help it

Multiple mappers is a good thing, and multiple artists is also good(if they both can do the same style of art), that's really it though, many positions are really one person jobs, if a company wants to hire 20 peraple to do what only one person is needed for, that's their problem.

By all means look at the development times made by the overbloated development teams, they don't develop a game any faster then a company using a team only a fraction of the size of the monstor corporation.. 

Speaking of which, coporations don't have to pay for anything, It's all evil stock marcket BS. When you don't make the money your self, such companies loose touch with reality, and you know what looks good on paper, "BIG NUMBERS", It's a damn pissing contest between the bigger companies(who can claim they spent more money on making a game), quality, work, time, effort, resources, ect has nothing to do with the insane amounts of money these bigger companies spend(every year they spend more, yet the content, and overall quality of the games get worse, and worse, doesn't make sense, does it)

 

[Sharm]

The only person you would really need full time, is a coder . . .

I personally am working full time on a graphics pack for RPG Maker, something that is taking months to complete, and I know for a fact that I am not the only one. Even if we limit the discussion to only what you'd need to make a commercial RPG Maker game, what you're saying is factually untrue. If you have a company that makes multiple games then it is even more important to have at the very least one full time artist. It is very clear that you've never worked in the industry in your life and have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[Lars Ulrika]

Go ahead, you seem to think you're so outsmarting everybody in gaming industry go ahead, found the next Capcom or Namco making ps4 games with 300k budget. And don't forget to make them Nintendo hard with few save points because according to you, screw the player's wishes.

I can already see the success story from here....ah nah can't see it because it would be an epic fail.

 

[AstoXx]

...I think I'm going to suffer from bloodloss from all this headdesking.

 

[Mouser]

The only person you would really need full time, is a coder(if you didn't know how to code your self), while technically you can partitian coding in rare cases, It's really a one person job(for multiple reasons)

I just picking this sentence because it shows two things very clearly:

1) You put no value on your time. Even if you do all the coding yourself, you still have to eat - which means you need a salary (If Obama has his way minimum wage will be over 20k soon). If you're doing the coding 'on the side', that still costs: you could have been flipping burgers or pumping gas - and it means it will take you a lot longer to finish the project. The nice thing about salaried employees is you get to push them to work as many hours as you want without having to pay them any more (the rules are slightly different in California).

2) You've never been associated with any serious software development project in your life. There are these people called project managers whose purpose in life is to keep the workflow going and to make sure the various developers (and artists, and writers, and designers, and tech writers, and ...) aren't stepping on each others toes. Even with smaller, 'nimble' teams, one lead dev can break things up for several junior developers with no problems.

Care to take a guess at how many lines of code a serious game has?

Just handing that off to a typist to copy would take a long time to get through - but it wasn't just typed, it was designed, coded, tested, recoded, tested, reworked, 'released', tested, and coded some more.

I suppose you think Adobe would have been better off having one person do all the coding for Photoshop and their Creative Suite...

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

...I think I'm going to suffer from bloodloss from all this headdesking.

Duude. It's not worth it.

 

[Kes]

The OP posed an interesting question: why did this game succeed in getting funding and that game fail.

I think this would be an interesting and informative discussion which has, unfortunately, been derailed.

Could we get back on topic and ignore any digressions?

 

[Sharm]

Well, the easiest thing to do is compare the differences for the Kickstarter pages themselves.


Funding goal:

Spoiler

Pantheon had an original goal of 800k which was 300k more than Star Citizen's. Pantheon very nearly made 500k, and probably would have if the goal had been set there. Kickstarter is kind of funny that way, people tend to fund things that have already been funded, but even if they like something aren't as likely to give money to something that looks like it won't make it. There were probably differences in back end costs somewhere in there but people tend to balk at a big price tag and you have to talk them into believing that it will benefit them personally if they are willing to pay that cost. The thing to keep in mind is that you want the original funding goal as low as you can manage while still being able to produce the product. You're actually increasing the total amount of money you're likely to receive this way.

Promo video:

Spoiler

The start of Pantheon's video had a few creators talking as though they were customer reviews. This was an immediate turn off for me, I felt like they were trying to fool me. The rest was five whole minutes of buzzwords and people repeating themselves, there wasn't a lot about it that they actually explained. The demo footage looked exactly like every fantasy MMO out there. After watching the video I still had no clear concept of what I'd be getting if I funded it and nothing that actually was explained sounded particularly interesting.
Star Citizen grabbed my attention right away with a narrative. It kept my attention by following it with nice in engine grapics. Then the creator came on and convinced me very quickly that this wasn't just another game, it was him following his passion and sharing it with us. Then he started explaining what the game actually was very succinctly and then went into greater detail as the video went on. He related it to his other games and then told us how it would be better than playing those games. At the end of the video knowing exactly what type of game I'd get and I knew it would be a fun one. I am actually now excited for this game and may have actually pledged if I had known about it before now.


There's a huge difference in marketing quality in these videos. Pantheon's team never makes it personal to you or them, and it just feels like they're selling you something. Star Citizen's video is interesting before you get anything about the game and it just builds on it. It's not only personal to the creator but gives the viewer a good many reasons to care personally about this game's success. Pantheon kept you feeling like an outsider while Star Citizen invited you to become a part of something big and awesome.

I was going to go through the whole page and compare and contrast but I'm tired so I'm going to stop for now, maybe pick this up again tomorrow.

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

$40 million? Are you sure we're talking about the same project here? I mean, $2 million is a lot still, but... Dang.

These guys seemed to have put their all into this.

Looks to me like Pantheon tried TOO hard.... they stuck the potential backers with too many boring details nobody cares about. That's MY opinion.

These guys... not so much.

Now, consider this project by one-man team Disastercake.   He put his ALL into it. He was honest with his backers and showed them like it is. Needless to say he succeed and THEN some.

Look at his stretch goal board! It even tells you how much what costs!