General discussion

Incredibly informative links Matthew, thanks for collating these.


A candid insight into what it's like to be on the other side of the Kickstarter campaign, and the reality of trying to manage the demands and expectations of backers during the pledge period. I sympathise with these guys (and by extension any developer who is somewhat overwhelmed by the scale of the response to their KS campaign) and it's a lesson for all developers looking to embark on something like this. I can imagine the experience would be less of a surprise for any industry veteran though, who understands how emotive this kind of project can be for backers.


From the perspective of another KS project owner, considering backers as individuals and how meaningful and personal each pledge is to those people:

"Some people believe the average backer is a fellow in his thirties or forties, and just has so much money he can randomly spread it around and pledge for games that won’t be seen for a while. What I learned tells a different story. Every backer can cancel his pledge during the campaign, at any point. And it happens. During our campaign I wanted to know why they did this. I e-mailed every single backer who canceled a pledge. I said, look, you canceled your pledge and that is fine. We just want to know if there was something we did wrong, so that we can consider changing it for the rest of the campaign. Almost everyone answered. I thought I’d share some of those answers with you...

Those conversations have been an eye-opener for me. They brought an understanding that every dollar we got was a dollar earned by someone with hard work and given to us in an incredible act of trust."

It's really encouraging to see this attitude from a campaign owner. I've become cynical of KS campaigns, partly because they increasingly seem to regard backers a means to an end and nothing more.


Lessons learned by the devs behind the KS campaign for Outland 17, which failed to meet its goals. They sought feedback from fans and present the results here.

Here's one part I thought was particularly interesting. Fans were asked about what the KS video should focus on, and an overwhelming 95% said they felt it should focus on the game itself (as opposed to the trailer or the dev team).

"We believe our Kickstarter video needs the most improvement. Our video focused mainly on our team, but an overwhelming majority said they wanted to know more about the game and less about the team, so for the second Kickstarter campaign we want to create a great trailer which lets the game speak. "

There seems to be a real conceit among developers that game backers are going to be interested in the team behind the game. We saw this with 22Cans too - loads of pictures and videos of grinning youths, people having fun, someone baked a cake, someone got their nails done, here's a group shot, here they all are smirking in slick little avatars cuz they're all so modern and cool. Godus even had a team photo inserted in the game (is it still there?) whilst offering a cringeful justification for the 'gem' mechanic. It made sense in so far as Peter Molyneux is well-known and backers might conceivably have had an interest in him, and perhaps there's an element of "supporting a small family business" (which 22Cans isn't, nor is it a particularly small team), but backers rightfully failed to see the relevance of any of this to achieving what they were actually putting money up to support. Such PR is at best a nice-to-have and should never be a substitute for actual game updates.


Another article aimed at people hoping to gain funding through Kickstarter, based on lessons learned through personal experience and watching other projects. It has a particular focus on financials which is where a lot of projects seem to struggle. His business analogy is a little flawed though, when he suggests that completed projects need to earn back the amount of money that was put into them - this is not true. KS is not an investment and the backers don't expect a financial return. You need to ask for enough money to complete your project and fulfil backer rewards and that's it.

He also has a lot so say about reward tiers and how to encourage backers to stump up higher sums, which will be of interest to anyone wanting to raise money through KS. Again, this guy has input on the video: focus on the game, not the team (though he does single out Peter Molyneux as a possible exception to this rule).


Another article aimed at would-be KS drives. Like the above article, it's all business. I find this article (and to a lesser extent the previous one) slightly uncomfortable because we're back in the realm of treating backers like faceless, exploitable ATMs that will spit out more money if you kick them in the right place. It's not a foolish approach to take, because after all, KS is about money. But these campaigns are still asking ordinary consumers to place money and trust in high-risk projects. I would like to see less focus on greed and manipulation and more on values and showing a modicum of actual respect for backers.


Overview of performance of KS campaigns over 2014. It's clear that there is an ever-increasing number of projects looking to fund through Kickstarter, and consequently increasing competition to get hold of cash from backers.


Figures showing that while more money than ever before is being pledged to video game development through KS, this is deceptive. In fact, most of this money is going to a small number of large, highly publicised projects, and smaller indy projects are doing worse than ever. Previously (in 2013) it appeared that the success of large projects fed the success of smaller ones, because it gained them extra publicity. This effect appears to be over.


Very intriguing article, not least because it has a lot to say about 22Cans, Peter Molyneux and the handling of the Godus KS campaign. It goes into detail of KS rewards vs. KS pledges, and the legal position of backers.

I like this analogy: "Few would argue that a farmer who sells wheat still growing in his fields has a legal obligation to deliver the ripened crop to his buyer when ready. In the same way, a software developer promising to deliver a finished product is under a similar obligation. Telling your buyer that you didn’t realize how much work it would take or deciding to develop something else mid-season hardly relieves you of your duty under the law."

Also, regarding false advertising, it has this to say:

"The language that a Kickstarter campaigner chooses to use in their campaign is critical because it is tantamount to advertising communications. While a certain degree of exaggeration is afforded under the law—a legal term called puffery—where specific promises are made and not met, in addition to whatever actions the government decides to bring, campaigners may be opening themselves up to consumer suits for breach of contract, false advertising, and fraudulent or negligent inducement, to name just a few claims...

In the case of GODUS, one might conclude that failing to provide a multiplayer universe the size of Jupiter is mere puffery; whereas failing to provide the game's highly touted multiplayer mode altogether could open the door to a host of legal problems."

Also:

"With Peter Molyneux and GODUS, part of the problem may be history. For years, Molyneux has pitched his game ideas to publishers who are well equipped to determine the limitations of technology and who can readily discern between reality and wishful thinking. Repeatedly, they place informed bets, knowing that a percentage of their projects will fall miserably. They also create contractual provisions to mitigate their risk...

But the enthusiastic and hopeful language used behind closed doors with game publishers and industry insiders might be inappropriate where consumers are concerned. When dealing with consumers, there is a far greater risk that courts will view one man's puffery as intentional or negligent misrepresentation."

I was not a KS backer for Godus, and I am confident that there is no recourse for Early Access customers. However, if I were a backer, I would definitely being investigating legal options.