Not me. I failed way too many times with such games. Albion and Crowfall are the worst offenders, but Subnautica was also pre-launch. Not again. Others cursed their lost money over buying full priced games, just to see them go on sale in weeks. I will never-ever be there on launch day, even less before that. I will only start a game, if it’s already established. If it already has substantial playerbase. If I don’t see it collapsing after a few months. If it has a functional competitive scene (hello PUBG)!
I think over-excited players are greatly at fault for the proliferation of crap games. Developers could get money not just for buggy crap, but even for a few sketches and idea videos. That’s called “kickstarting” games. This is insane, me participating included. Games aren’t great future ideas, worth of your support. Even if they are done right, they are for-profit entertainment products. Would you kickstart a new bar? Would you buy tickets for a cinema not yet built. Would you pay to test a new roller-coaster? Then why would you do it for a video game?!
We have to approach games just as cynically as the devs do. They are doing it for the money. We mean nothing to them, just the bottom line. So it’s their job to create and fix the game and then if the player reviews are good (not the “gaming journalism” which is just glorified PR), we’ll play. The games have to prove themselves to us.
If we do that, the crap games will disappear, because the investors will lose money. As long as they are making profit before a single line of code is written, they’ll invest into every possible crap.
I want this change, so I’ll be this change. I won’t buy any more non-established games.
Star Citizen is already at Alpha 3.3 now.
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“We mean nothing to them, just the bottom line.”
Come on, we all know, that everyone does everything for money. Even doctors do their job for the money. But that does not mean that people don’t mean anything to other people, customers as well. Many companies, especially if they are small (a few people) developers care a lot about their customers. Sure, they do get that money, but they are human and care about other people. Don’t oversimplify.
That does not mean you should preorder or kickstart any games, quite the opposite. For example, when you help kickstart a game, you are not buying the game, you are simply giving your money to the interesting idea to maybe (huge maybe) come to fruition (and not expecting a good result either). It’s basically charity (that’s why big companies doing kickstarters are full of shit). I have kickstarted only one specific company (in my town in Russia), mostly because I understand that they make very weird specific games, that don’t sell well. But they feel awfully close to what I am interested in. They even used a lot of their friendly “fans” (I hate this term and yes, I did participate) to produce the trailers for the game, because sure as hell did not have enough money for good production crew or anything. Should I not support those guys? Should they go get another job? Maybe, but I like what they do and some people do as well. Can we not support them? Should we simply buy 20 copies of their games? That seems counter-productive, since that gives a huge chunk of money to marketplace, which I couldn’t give a damn about. Why not simply give them money?
As always, I just hope you wouldn’t be as maximalistic about everything. People and their situation are much more complex. Do not make draconian rules. To every rule, there should be exceptions, otherwise rules won’t change, otherwise we won’t see flexible progress. Rigidity of laws does not induce progress (check USSR for that).
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While generally agree about kickstarter, I think there is one exception: niche games. Those games which would be never published by a big publisher and it’s hard to measure beforehand how many people would be interested in. Of course the ideal course for those is a Patreon style system (for example Dwarf Fortress), but it’s reasonable to try to get some jump-start money for them. But it should not be assumed by the developer that the whole development cost will be payed advanced and of course it should not be assumed by the player that the product will be good (or will be finished).
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@Roman: sure, people can care about other people. But reading gaming journalism shows a growing hostility and contempt towards the gamers. I tend to believe that the developers are despising me and people like me and the only thing stops them from calling me names is that they still want my money. But I do believe that in private they talk about us like Falcon did.
I suggest you to read some Kotaku.
@Cathfaern: I don’t see why an entertainment product is a valid target of charity. An angel investor should be the proper source of funding.
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@Gevlon:
Not charity, but vote with money. Also the alternatives usually are not “funded by players” or “funded by angel investor”. But “funded by players” and “not happens”. I totally understand if someone choose the former for a niche game.
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@Cathfaern: and can you tell me why angel investors don’t help? This is how they make their money!
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@Gevlon:
I’m not that into angel investing so let me know if I misunderstand something. But an angel investor wants to invest to gain profit. Preferably large profit. A niche game will never bring a large profit. That’s why it’s a niche game with small playerbase. Also to determine if the investment worth it they have to evaluate the product. Risk analysis, etc. Again, it’s really hard to do for a niche game. It’s almost like gambling.
So there is a product which will never bring big money by definition and also it’s as risky as gambling. I don’t think it’s the dream of angel investors.
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People who call themselves “gamers” are tiny but loud minority. Developers usually don’t think about them at all. You can’t afford to worry about their opinion if you want to make any money and don’t have external source of money like Kickstarter. There won’t be games for “gamers” without things like Kickstarter. Kickstarter basically allows developer to think about what gamers want and not just ignore them. Difference here is that normal customer don’t care about games too much. He just buy or don’t buy it. Gamers care but don’t understand anything about making games at all. They can’t tell if something on Kickstarter is a real game or scam or how much it’s going to cost. So they easily fall into scams like Start Citizen.
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@Cathfaern: an angel investor is ready to support a long-shot venture, ready to accept that 90% of his investments will fail, and works for the 10%bringing him HUGE profit.
Playerunknown’s Battleground was a long shot niche game that turned into a multibillion-dollar franchise. Whoever put money behind that game is set for life.
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I think over-excited players are greatly at fault for the proliferation of crap games.
they are hooked and the drug they already use isn’t giving the kick they need … so the users make sure to have the “next thing” in line. It’s like the binge drinker that is looking forward and hyping himself up to drown 500bucks of alcohol in 2 months at some pub. I see the fault at adiction regulations not responding fast enough and society drunk and blind in their bliss for allowing their kids to run unguided into these highly adictive situation.
simple question: “what do western rich litte dickhead kids want?” anything sugar and games (smartphone, console, pc)!
I don’t see any 70’s inspired PSAs warning for “the gateway to addiction hell” like back in the days where they campaigned against Weed.
So we have a majority juiced up idiots that fling any amount of money towards their next best fix.
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Yup. Not paying for an incomplete game experience where the developer might fizzle out without the game being completed. And given the number of games that need to be patched after launch day, I’m pretty sure I can wait a month for that to be sorted too. (With the added benefit of being able to read the steam reviews & guides.)
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I have one word. Hormones.
All the preorder and kickstaring is fancy words for charity and charity is a good feeling. Dont expect huge rationality on feeling business. Profit is made about fancy words what seems to meaningful and colorful, not on rationality. People want to feel important and bound trust. Gamedevs are using and abusing it on their developent cycle.
Serotonin is hormone what makes you proud. One important way how it releases is when other people respect your work. While preordering and kickstarting, you are doing “work” with your money and everytime you notice some info about that game, you get small serotonin kick, i donated, i was important, ive helped. Add here social media, what bombards you with topics and updates of that game and you get a good loopback system. Want more? donate more, get more serotonin! Its not rational, but it works. Hormonal way to make people to team up for some unrational cause, even if it usually wont work, atleast they try.
Oxytocin is other hormone what is in the game here. It releases when trust emerges. It bondages people, so its very scarce in most of the players. Kickstarting is giving out trust. Big companies are not trustworthy, because you have no influence in there, no feedback. In preordering and kickstarting you give your intput and trust to company, that they do well. That results ideas and feedbacks about that game. Gamedevs read and react on it, maybe even implement some of them. That gives the trust, if i say something it will be heard and it can change something.
Thats system works on blogs too. We come here not just to read ideas, we come here to challenge them in comments and we get nice little boost of serotonin and oxytocin when gevlon replies one of our comments. We feel important and we feel trustworthy that we been heard. Its not rational, but good enough hookup that we come here again and again.
Ps, its rational to help those projects what you think are important and there are more way to measure it then profit.
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During the early days of Kickstarter, crowdfunding was a legitimate option to get a game going when the usual investors had told you to f-off. I funded Banner Saga, Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity and Torment:Tides this way, and I definitely got my money’s worth. And the studios were so much boosted by their initial projects, that they went ahead and funded the sequels by themselves.
You know what was the common link of those games: They were all single player, with a limited design focus. They wanted to tell a story in a very specific setting, with AA polish (instead of AAA) and it would be something feasible even with less than a million $ of investment. Especially since that initial batch of devs were veterans that wanted to do their own thing, instead of dancing to the tune of EA and the likes.
The moment studios wanted to fund MMOs, I was out. How on earth they thought they could crowdfund a genre that is notoriously money-hungry and very prone to failure, I could not understand… And you’d see ridiculous statements like “we’ll launch 2-3 years after funding” and you knew this whole thing would be a shitshow.
I admit I also funded Star Citizen back in 2012. At that point, the narrative we were being sold was that Chris Roberts wanted to do a hybrid Wing Commander/Freelancer space sim single-player game, and people like me that were fans of the genre flocked to the project. It wasn’t until later that the focus changed to the ‘online persistent universe’ game that is being sold now, with feature bloat that would make most AAA studios shake their heads in disgust.
A few times I mentioned to random Star Citizen backers that I too went in during the initial funding for 25 euros, and that I was resigned that I’ll never get my promised game: a space sim single player experience with a good narrative, and they seemed bewildered. The typical response was usually “but you are getting so many new modes with that initial purchase! You should feel lucky…” and they fail to realize that it’s been 6 years, there is no game (Alpha is not a product) and it’ll probably never provide the experience that I paid for. It’s been a valuable lessor, for sure.
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Completely agree, man. I’ve been screaming at my idiot friends for years to stop pre-orders and other such garbage. It feels like pissing into the wind but I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks this way.
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To add a bit to tithians argument, board games have been extremely succesful on Kickstarter. The reason is that, unlike for computer games, design for board games is cheap and something most designers do as a hobby. The costs are all in the physical components, again unlike computer games. Kickstarter makes massive sense for board games, and when you add the Cult of New (most boardgamers want to play every game two or three times, then find a new one) and that patching a physical boardgame is impractical, and you see that Kickstarter works very well indeed – for boardgames.
But not for computer games. All the creative and risky work has to be done *after* the Kickstarter, so you have no idea what you’re ending up with.
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