Well, at least it's not just PA that suffers from this sort of thing...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Awesomenau...stly_this_game_has_one_of_the_greediest_most/

Games that get funded via Kickstarter shouldn't cost money, apparently.

EDIT: From further down the thread:

People are, in general, quite dumb when it comes to games development.

Just as long as you don't call them "entitled"

You should (well shouldn't actually lol), read the rubbish levelled at star citizen. It's totally irrational, and flies in the face of the information available.

There are still people declaring it's 'vapour ware' and just a scam to line the developers pockets, despite cig using the money to build 4 studios from scratch and employ north of 300 people... I mean if it is an elaborate scam that doesn't strike me as a very well thought out one given the costs associated with paying all those developers to twiddle their thumbs all the time lol.

Sadly the attitude is that kickstarter funding is a form of charity and therefore any studio using it must function in a not for profit way or be deemed greedy and evil. I wonder if these same people would be willing to do their paid job for nothing? Lol.

Yeah sadly this appears to be becoming a more and more common occurrence in the industry, and honestly I am at a loss of words when it comes to thinking about how the gaming community managed to get into this state in the first place.

I can tell you that a lot of kickstarted/community funded games are being subject to this bull. The Universim is another one of the many examples that I can think of (Being subject to unreasonable backlash from the smallest of things because it was funded by the community, although it has not reached the extreme point yet as far as I am aware).

It seems that for many companies in this day and age going through a kickstarter type system for a project is the equivalent to the beginning of a death sentence almost.

EDIT:
I have not read the whole rant as that kind of crap gets on my nerves more than it should.

"This house believes that Kickstarter funded projects provide greater difficulties for game development studios than those funded by conventional publishers"

Discuss.

Agreed

Kickstarter funded games started out on a wave of optimism- and I think we're only now realizing that the optimisms *wasn't just on the consumer side of the fence*. It was uncharted water back with Star Citizen and PA were launching their campaigns. If these developers knew then what they do now would they put themselves through the ordeal again? I have a feeling many developers might now think twice.

(Successfully) Kickstarted projects provide a different set of problems; the difficult isn't necessarily lesser or greater. They are, however, often used by individuals or companies that cannot secure funding in any other way (either by angel investor or publisher-equivalent) which means you get Kickstarter games development projects by people who don't know how to manage a project.

In a publisher-backed scenario, the publisher will (usually) always know how to manage a project. This often means sacrificing X for outcome Y, which is why many game designs are changed in often-substantial ways prior to final release (cue consumer outrage, as they have no idea how to manage a project and don't understand the trade-offs at stake).

It's a can of worms, really. There is no "greater difficulty" presuming you have the ability to lead and manage a team with the effectiveness of a publisher. It all works out the same. However, in reality, very few individual people (or even a small team) can handle the publishing of a game as effectively as a publisher. That's why we have developers and publishers. They are different jobs and different roles, catering to different strengths.

@Gorbles very true. The counter point to this however (and the real reason most kickstarter funded games exist), is in recent years the large publishers have become reluctant to take risks. To try new ip or even fund older successful ip if the genre isn't deemed profitable enough. That's created a vacuum in the market in a whole host of areas, e.g. rts and space sims.

Really there needs to be a middle ground. Maybe a new publisher focusing on smaller genres and titles. I mean PA is too small for the big guys to bother with, but on the other hand it did sell in the region of a million copies. That kind of volume would be huge to many companies- and is certainly enough to make it worthwhile to go and do.

The main problem atm is in a world where the only publishers are big publishers means only equally big projects are getting funded. I mean they didn't have the foresight to support chris Roberts with star citizen even, and that kind of attitude leads to the current situation of battlefield secret ops 34 with knobs on being the main title yet again.

I think Kickstarter has lowered the barrier of entry for new projects, which means lesser experienced people can easily get funding. For a long time, Kickstarter was considered to just be a "future product" shop and people didn't seem to realize they were investing in thing, with all the risks that comes with investments.

Previously distributors were investors who checked if someone could make whatever they claimed they could make before they gave money. With kickstarter, the responsibility falls to whoever joins the site. Furthermore, as with PA, it's clear that the people who put their stuff on kickstarter have no idea what they're actually doing or what they're getting themselves into, which leads to loads of misunderstandings. Not that Uber is wrong for trying kickstarter, but since nobody tried something like that before, it's not like there's an established code or even someone to copy when it comes to managing kickstarter projects.

Not to mention platformers. Yooka-Laylee raking in a LOT of money.

Really, this is supposed to be a good thing. With EA, Capcom, and Konami cutting projects people want, they want desperately, those people should be thankful that this is an avenue in which to get that which was stolen from Westwood Studios, Pandemic, and such...

It isn't a magic well which to get wishes granted simply by asked just because some people made a 5 dollar donation.

I think this is a good point actually- Kickstarter is an avenue for less experienced developers to get a start- but remember *all developers* started out as 'inexperienced' at some point. The attitude of only wanting seasoned veterans doing the work is all well and good, but if new talent isn't being recruited or given a shot at anything more than menial positions who is going to spearhead the next generation of games when the old guard all retire.

I mean the universim is a good example- these guys are a very new team, however what I've seen so far looks good. If they pull the game off even to a moderate level, the *next* project they go into all of a sudden they'll be this experienced team, they could even approach the big publishers for funding next time with a proven track record behind them. The small studio behind 'HM Spiffing' is another example.

I just think people investing in these ideas need to check their expectations a bit. There are no guarantees and I think people have to accept they are making a *donation* rather than acting as a share holder. The studios aren't required to take any input from the community at all if they don't want to, yet the attitude is somehow they are obliged to cater to every whim off the backers.

from what I understand the pain in the asss of not knowing if your project will work at all because you're being forced to make it into a parody by a clown who knows nothing about art or games media is much worse than the pain in the asss of having to deal with a bunch of insatiable goons who whine and whinge on a constant basis.

I'm not sure which truly has the tighter budget because apparently Jon Mavor and Chris Taylor remember dealing with publishers like dealing with consorting wolves that circle and wait and starve you out for ridiculously low deals.

In the end each have a set of problems but I figure that crowds being crowds and by that I mean an ignorant bunch they tend to have more members of the non-ignorant and non-hate-filled sort in the "Kickstarter branch" because at least they're more likely to get the product they'd hoped for whereas editors have a too high tendency to ruin a product to the point everyone unilaterally detests it.

It is. It's just that the average joe misunderstood it as a marketplace, whereas investments are more like gambling. I also think that it suffers from the "lower barrier of entry" effect in that it also means that less skilled people can do stuff, meaning that it also sees more bullshit, scams, and plainly incapable people.

It simply comes at a price - and it's the price part that was misunderstood

I don't think that's true.

In capitalism skilled people aren't necessarily the ones who get the job.

there being and increase in lower quality products is not in correlation with new methods of getting published appearing.

As a matter of fact I personally believe this has caused the opposite effect : higher quality products being released (or at the very least worked on)

I'll take PA as an example of that.

Oh, i agree with that. But whenever something gets more accessible, you get both more higher AND lower quality content. It both both opens up options to people who may have just been below the threshold, and options to people who don't know what the **** they're doing.

Where publishers were a gatekeeper of quality, that's gone now. it means more freedom, but also that the gatekeeper role is now for the public, not kickstarter or a publisher. It seems that said public now finally has started to realize the actual role they have (and the responsibility that comes with it).