What did you imagine the game would be during the kickstart

Something important to note about Kickstarter is that its not necessarily "the end" of funding.
The name implies as much, it 'kickstarts' development. It shows the world that there is interest enough in the concept that people are willing to pay for it.

Subsequent funding can come from numerous sources. Generally most companies will generate revenue through sales.
Just look around at other examples:
- Star Citizen
- Pillars of Eternity (formerly Project Eternity)
- Wasteland 2
- Torment: Tides of Numenera
And numerous other crowdfunded titles acquired funding either by going into Steam Early Access or by selling access on their own sites.

Kickstarter by no means has to be the *END* of funding. It does however set the original scope of the project.
It denotes the concept or plan - barring future adjustments or changes required by problems encountered.

Folk Tale for example changed its scope by going down a fully-fledged sandbox mode after the requests of their supporters.
Other SEA titles have altered or adjusted their scope in similar fashions.
Starbound has had various adjustments made based on popular requests and once it went into early access even based on the modding community.
Minecraft similarly has had popular mod-features integrated into the base game (features that might or might not have been planned previously, we'll have no way of confirming or denying this...)


What I mean to say is that £500k was never supposed to have been the "end" of funding.
Something that some people seem to think.... "Oh but this game acquired so much more than the original funding goal and now X happens."
Key to a successfull kickstarter is to anticipate breaking the funding goal, your initial funding generally isn't enough to fund your entire game.
Especially when you're working with a studio. When working with a studio the size of 22cans this problem gets amplified as the costs grow exponentially.
And unless you're tremendously successfull (Star Citizen...) in continued funding, you will not be able to cover these costs.

As such I'd read Qetesh her question as "Your dream game within the confines of this development." when in relation to 22cans.
The unspoken addition of the question being posed in relation to the current project. Not "If you had unlimited funding and resources."



Now do I believe that 22cans would've been possible to achieve much (not all...) of what they originally had planned? I definitely think so.
With the exception of cross-platform multiplayer and the Jupiter-sized world, I think most features could've been achieved in some fashion.
Especially when taking into account subsequent funding through sales. And thats where things went wrong.

I don't know if they originally planned it to go like this. Whether the emphasis on mobile was within the original plan or whether that became their primary goal after the SEA failed launch.
I definitely believe that the decision to take the 9 month kickstarter period untill 'launch' as a bare-boned tech-demo or alpha was a gigantic mistake.
Much like mobile players generally do not look outside their platform, neither do a lot of steam players.
And buying Godus after seeing it on the front page left a lot of buyers wondering. The subsequent poor treatment and long stretches of silence and eventually the abandonment of the PC platform in favor of PC in all but the most technical of senses don't help to improve.

Yes... A business needs to make money to be able to sustain itself. Yet you're not able to make money if you stab your very target audience in the back repeatedly.
All we can hope for now is that 22cans gets enough time to stretch out their mobile development and perhaps throws the PC platform a bone by allowing self-management. (Frankly I don't believe we'll get anything better than that.) Any content from this point on will be mobile focused.