Double Fine - Kickstarter - MASSIVE CHALICE

[elmuerte]

 

I'm not bothered in any way by the second DF Kickstarter, but I don't think Kickstarter is going to be a reliable funding model for them or any other medium-sized developer in the long-term. At some point that well of social capital is going to dry up and KS -- at least the model of KS that we currently have -- will no longer be a viable source of financial support.

 

 

 

There is no such thing as reliable funding. Publisher funding hasn't been reliable either. It's difficult to get one party to give a whole lot of money. It's difficult to get a whole lot of people to come up with the same amount of money. I don't think crowdfunding will go away. The high rolers will eventually become smaller as there is little return on investment, that will be a problem for crowdfunding because you will need more people to fund your project. To keep these people around even higher tiers will be introduced that grant you piece of the financial pie. So you might get 10 investors who will fund big chunks with a return on revenue, and 5000-10000 small time players that get a pre-order and some swag. This model isn't really supported by kickstarter or other platforms.

[TheLastBaron]

If on the other hand the majority of people find that A < B (or even that they didn't like the game) then Kickstarter is finished. We'll just have to wait to find out.

 

I think worst case scenario Kickstarter is still viable for small games and just not as popular for $1 mil+ games.  Things like FTL have already been successful.

[Patrick R]

There is no such thing as reliable funding. Publisher funding hasn't been reliable either. It's difficult to get one party to give a whole lot of money. It's difficult to get a whole lot of people to come up with the same amount of money. I don't think crowdfunding will go away. The high rolers will eventually become smaller as there is little return on investment, that will be a problem for crowdfunding because you will need more people to fund your project. To keep these people around even higher tiers will be introduced that grant you piece of the financial pie. So you might get 10 investors who will fund big chunks with a return on revenue, and 5000-10000 small time players that get a pre-order and some swag. This model isn't really supported by kickstarter or other platforms.

That's actually kind of what ended up happening with Zach Braff's film. His Kickstarter gave the project so much press that the traditional funding he claimed to despise came through. And now he has both fundings.

[notmetalenough]

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/blockbuster-effects

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/who-is-kickstarter-for

 

Two big projects brought tons of new people to Kickstarter who went on to back more than 1,000 other projects in the following weeks, pledging more than $1 million.

 

Kickstarter has written about the effect that large projects have on the site, numerous times. In every case the ripple effect is that more projects by smaller teams are funded as a result of high profile Kickstarter campaigns.

[vimes]

I backed it because the idea sounds good, but a couple of things surprised me:

• I was expecting one of the AF 'finalists' to be kickstarted instead of a completely new project... but hopefully that means at least one of them has already been picked up by a traditional publisher/Steven Dengler.
• 750K seems low: Broken Age budget has been immensely underestimated, so I'm surprised they are not targeting a higher amount. It feels like 750K would be really tight and that they're hoping that, once it's reached, people that were sitting on the fence would join in. I might be completely wrong though.

[vimes]

That's actually kind of what ended up happening with Zach Braff's film. His Kickstarter gave the project so much press that the traditional funding he claimed to despise came through. And now he has both fundings.

Braff's answer to this claim:

— The story out there about the movie being fully funded by some financier is wrong. 

I have said on here and in every interview I've done on this project that the film would be fully financed from 3 sources:

• My Kickstarter Backers
• My own money
• Pre-Selling foreign theatrical distribution.

Those three amounts will bring us to a budget of around 5 to 6 million dollars.

 

When you pre-sell foreign distribution, you don't get that money for some time. So you need to go to a company to provide something called "Gap Financing". They are essentially a bank. Loaning us the "gap" between what we've raised together and what we need to actually make the movie. I have no idea where a 10 million dollar number came from but it is wrong and a lie.

[Jake]

It's also a financial issue. With a publisher deal you typically get an advance against royalties, which in a nutshell means that all the money you're "given" to make the game is actually just the publisher giving you all your royalty money up front, which you then have to pay back later out of your sales.

So, if your royalty deal is 25%, then cool, you get 25 cents for every dollar someone pays to buy the game.

Except let's say the game's budget, paid for by the publisher, was $1 million.

That $1 million was fronted to you as an advance out of your royalties, which means that before you see any profit you have to pay the publisher back.

Simple, the game has to sell $1 million in sales because that's the game's budget, right? Not quite. Since in this hypothetical example, your royalties are 25%, that means your cut is only a quarter out of every dollar. That means that the game needs to actually make $4 million before you're paid off. In this hypothetical deal it's not until dollar $4,000,001 that you will see your first 25 cents of profit as a developer.

Those numbers are totally hypothetical to make the math easy, and in real life there are way more complicating factors, but it's more than safe to assume that with most traditional game funding deals, the publisher is getting a much larger royalties percentage than the developer, and it's equally safe to assume that the funding model is an advance on royalties deal like this.

That's why it's sweet to be independently funded, via self-fundjng, crowdsourcing, or other less restrictive independent financing. If you own the financing, and you then go and sell your game on Steam or whatever, the money you make is your own from the first dollar.

[thestalkinghead]

I backed it because the idea sounds good, but a couple of things surprised me:

• I was expecting one of the AF 'finalists' to be kickstarted instead of a completely new project... but hopefully that means at least one of them has already been picked up by a traditional publisher/Steven Dengler.
• 750K seems low: Broken Age budget has been immensely underestimated, so I'm surprised they are not targeting a higher amount. It feels like 750K would be really tight and that they're hoping that, once it's reached, people that were sitting on the fence would join in. I might be completely wrong though.

 

i think asking for too much money makes people believe it will never get funded so they don't bother putting their money forward because it seems pointless, and that just turns into a loop of people seeing it is nowhere near being funded so they don't fund it, i think the only reason Godus got funded was because he had a few rich investors to finish the funding, i think asking for $750,000 makes it seem like even if it only gets that amount there will still be a decent playable game but hopefully it will get more and therefore make it better

[ysbreker]

I backed this the second I saw the 'jokestealer trial version' watermark. No matter what the game will be like I know I will get my money's worth with the 2 player productions video updates. That's how I got my money's worth from the DFA kickstarter already!

[pabosher]

The game really does sound genuinely cool, but also the sort of game I can never really get into. I always try and always fail. So this time it's money saved I think.

[osmosisch]

That's interesting.  Double Fine told us nothing except for a genre for their first Kickstarter and that was enough for me.  We've got far more information this time around, but I suspect this just isn't my kind of game.

Adventure games are not as reliant on their mechanics as turn-based strategy. Tim has a proven track record of fun adventures. I don't find the two kickstarters to be equally 'safe bets' if you will.

[Hermie]

I went from "really, another Kickstarter?" to salivating as soon as I read the pitch. This kind of game is exactly up my wheelhouse. I will be backing it as soon as I return from vacation.

[Salacious Snake]

I like that they didn't bother with any reward tiers that don't get you the actual product. Those always seem dumb.

[Twig]

i think asking for too much money makes people believe it will never get funded so they don't bother putting their money forward because it seems pointless

Yeah I think this is a big problem with a lot of pitches from no-name dudes. It's unfortunate.

 

I have one friend who adamantly refuses to back something unless it looks like it's going to succeed, anyway. It's like what the fuck.

[Erkki]

If the payoff B > A the long wait and uncertainty, then Kickstarter will be around for a good while yet. If on the other hand the majority of people find that A < B (or even that they didn't like the game) then Kickstarter is finished. We'll just have to wait to find out.

Yeah, I agree -- it's either going to get even bigger or going to wane and we don't know yet. My bet is that it will get even bigger. I haven't personally been kickstarting anything since DFA and Idle Thumbs, but I might do again at some point. Since I don't have time/interest to consume most of the reward stuff anyway, I just figured I can get those games when they come out, if they already look like they'll have a successful kickstarter.

[Gormongous]

I have one friend who adamantly refuses to back something unless it looks like it's going to succeed, anyway. It's like what the fuck.

 

He knows that you don't get charged any money unless the Kickstarter succeeds, doesn't he?

 

I'm probably going to back this, but I wish more mention had been made of the gameplay mechanics. Even a nod to Crusader Kings II would have reassured me.

[thestalkinghead]

Yeah I think this is a big problem with a lot of pitches from no-name dudes. It's unfortunate.

 

I have one friend who adamantly refuses to back something unless it looks like it's going to succeed, anyway. It's like what the fuck.

 

well it's because even though you don't get the money taken from you you still have to budget for it and commit to that payment so if it doesn't get funded it would feel like something was taken away from you and you got refunded without it being your choice, it would be like if you ordered a meal at a restaurant (budgeting the money in your head) then like 20 minutes later the waiter returns and tells you they won't be making anymore food and sends you home, that would just be annoying even though you never got charged for the food

[BonnieDowling]

First, Brad Muir is great. Awesome guy. Also hot.

 

Second, that beard. What. Shut up.

 

Third. It's a public company or it's not. Dunno what level economics i am, but this is robbing someone to pay someone else. This is everyone trying to be Robin Hood. Everyone can't be Robin Hood. 

[sclpls]

I think crowd funding is still in the early stages of development. In a couple of years you won't see people pitching ideas on kickstarter necessarily, but different sorts of fundraising sites with different sorts of models of operations. You already see that to a certain extent with websites like indiegogo, etc. but I think it's something that's going to become more diversified, and specialized (where certain websites are better places to make a pitch if you're a filmmaker, others are better for musicians, game makers, etc.)

 

What I'm not looking forward to is the endless forum debates about every single production that's funded this way because there are so many weird hangups socially with asking for money, and different things are worth different things to different people yet somehow people will think it's idiotic to give your money towards a project that they don't personally see the value in or aren't convinced by the particular pitch or whatever.

[Twig]

well it's because even though you don't get the money taken from you you still have to budget for it and commit to that payment so if it doesn't get funded it would feel like something was taken away from you and you got refunded without it being your choice, it would be like if you ordered a meal at a restaurant (budgeting the money in your head) then like 20 minutes later the waiter returns and tells you they won't be making anymore food and sends you home, that would just be annoying even though you never got charged for the food

He has money to spare, and backs Kickstarters more frequently than I do. Eh.

[thestalkinghead]

He has money to spare, and backs Kickstarters more frequently than I do. Eh.

it's not necessarily about the amount of money it's the psychological commitment to something that may not happen, so the more likely it is to actually happen the easier it is to commit to it

[Gormongous]

it's not necessarily about the amount of money it's the psychological commitment to something that may not happen, so the more likely it is to actually happen the easier it is to commit to it

 

Yeah, but thousands of people have made the plunge already, why not him? Not that I know Twig's friend, but I feel like it's more about not wanting to risk even symbolic failure with the things one likes, which kind of defeats the point of crowd-funding.

[thestalkinghead]

Yeah, but thousands of people have made the plunge already, why not him? Not that I know Twig's friend, but I feel like it's more about not wanting to risk even symbolic failure with the things one likes, which kind of defeats the point of crowd-funding.

well i wouldn't back something i didn't think would get funded, i think this whole crowd funding thing is still in it's infancy, the kickstarter model is a good one but the time limit and the hard line of successful funding (reaching the goal) are problems, you could have different models like where you set a really high goal and if it doesn't match the goal in time you make the product a lower budget product, or for some things you could just have no time limit and no hard goals.

 

i think crowdfunding is the future and more businesses will be making things on demand rather than making the thing then creating the demand, all we need next are replicators then nothing will ever be made that isn't already paid for

[tberton]

My stance with Kickstarter has actually changed so that I won't back something unless it looks like it might have trouble getting funded. This comes from the fact that even though I don't regret backing any of the Kickstarters I've backed, the one I'm happiest about is the SPORTSFRIENDS Kickstarter, since it came very close to not getting funded. If I hadn't helped, it may not have happened. To me, that's what crowdfunding is about.

 

The funny thing is that the increasing prevalence of crowdfunding is changing the paradigm of what sorts of projects are "likely to happen." If you had asked me two years ago whether there was any chance of a Veronica Mars movie getting made, I would have said "no way." Obviously, that's no longer the case. And even though I backed Veronica Mars and was happy to (I never bought the DVDs or anything, so I'm fine just thinking of my pledge as belated payment for the enjoyment the series brought me), it's clear that the movie did not need my help. There were more than enough people ready to contribute.

 

I think the case will be the same with MASSIVE CHALICE. If it isn't, I'll consider backing it. Otherwise, I'm happy to let others incur the risks and wait to buy the game at release.

[Zeusthecat]

Personally, I think Kickstarter is a beautiful thing. In a world run by multi-million (or billion) dollar corporations that turn everything into a formula and tend to force the same tropes down our throats over and over it is refreshing to see that there is a model that actually puts the power into the hands of the consumer.

 

Sure there are downsides and it isn't always rainbows and butterflies but I really appreciate that there is an avenue for the customers to determine what type of higher budget (not AAA obviously) games get funding. Depending on how things continue to go with Kickstarter, some of the big publishers may hopefully feel more inclined to branch out with more new IPs and fresh game concepts.