All they have to do is stay away from the trash F2P model to make money. Get 100-300k niche crowd and keep a small team to knock out some cool features and updates and you will win in the end.
Chasing the few thousand whales to come and set up a credit card swipe fest on your game is over. The asians are ruling that market now and pooping out a new flavor of the month f2p crap fest every few months for that type of player.
I have to fully disagree with the OP on this topic, maybe he is living in a dream world or wants more F2P crap even faster than a few months. Crowd funding is the new hot shit and F2P is the old crap fest, except it.
While I do think Kickstarter isn't necessarily a bad thing, you will have abusers of the system. Greed Monger, specifically, comes to mind in the MMO realm of kickstarter MMOs.
However, as a whole, there's more outstanding debt owed to backer's than what's been delivered. Not counting cancelled games. Source.
I think we will see a slow down in the coming year or two on how many games get successfully funded through Kickstarter, especially as the previous round of funded games release (or fail to).
While I do think Kickstarter isn't necessarily a bad thing, you will have abusers of the system. Greed Monger, specifically, comes to mind in the MMO realm of kickstarter MMOs.
However, as a whole, there's more outstanding debt owed to backer's than what's been delivered. Not counting cancelled games. Source.
I think we will see a slow down in the coming year or two on how many games get successfully funded through Kickstarter, especially as the previous round of funded games release (or fail to).
Those examples are horrible to use for anything. If people would of done research before they blindly threw money at scam artists they wouldn't have lost it. With KS you have to do your own work to find out about a project, its owners and creators. You can't just throw money and say OH My GAwD KS is evil! It's your own fault if you get beat, that's life. You can't blame other people because you yourself are stupid. (not you just saying in general)
People need to think before they throw money at used car salesman with a good pitch about making a game. Today everyone is always looking to blame someone else for their own stupidity.
While I do think Kickstarter isn't necessarily a bad thing, you will have abusers of the system. Greed Monger, specifically, comes to mind in the MMO realm of kickstarter MMOs.
However, as a whole, there's more outstanding debt owed to backer's than what's been delivered. Not counting cancelled games. Source.
I think we will see a slow down in the coming year or two on how many games get successfully funded through Kickstarter, especially as the previous round of funded games release (or fail to).
WOW, so 70% of those projects in 2011 just ran off with the money.
Un-be-lievable this money pit is allowed to continue.
While I do think Kickstarter isn't necessarily a bad thing, you will have abusers of the system. Greed Monger, specifically, comes to mind in the MMO realm of kickstarter MMOs.
However, as a whole, there's more outstanding debt owed to backer's than what's been delivered. Not counting cancelled games. Source.
I think we will see a slow down in the coming year or two on how many games get successfully funded through Kickstarter, especially as the previous round of funded games release (or fail to).
WOW, so 70% of those projects in 2011 just ran off with the money.
Un-be-lievable this money pit is allowed to continue.
Not necessarily. They just haven't yet delivered their promised games (Note: They also have zero legal obligations to do so, or to stick to their "reported" development times). At least at the time the article was published, which was early 2014.
The numbers found in 2015-2016 will be more telling, because it will have allowed for a full "development" cycle of 3-5 years for most of the games that were successfully funded in that article.
Basically, at the time of the article (2014), 2 of 3 games funded from 2009-2012 still had not delivered their products. However, in 2009, the delivery rate was 60% by 2014. Granted, in 2009, significantly less games were funded. (5 vs 200+; of those 5, only 2 launched)
All they have to do is stay away from the trash F2P model to make money. Get 100-300k niche crowd and keep a small team to knock out some cool features and updates and you will win in the end.
Chasing the few thousand whales to come and set up a credit card swipe fest on your game is over. The asians are ruling that market now and pooping out a new flavor of the month f2p crap fest every few months for that type of player.
I have to fully disagree with the OP on this topic, maybe he is living in a dream world or wants more F2P crap even faster than a few months. Crowd funding is the new hot shit and F2P is the old crap fest, except it.
Never seen an example of a game making less F2P than it made with another model. That's across every genre, not merely MMORPGs (which are among the hugest F2P success stories.)
So your advice to 'just stay away' from the most successful business model seems poorly conceived.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
could it be that kickstarter represents the humanity that uses it? 99% brasspoles. Maybe it is sort of similar to saying that the internet is bad because of pedos/stalkers. They existed before the internet, just as scam artists existed before kickstarter? Who knows. Kickstarter is still young enough that the jury is in deliberations. However, this thread has posted some pretty scary facts.
People just need to realize that they're acting as an investor, and treat the experience that way. You're not simply purchasing a game that's out. You're an investor. You assume all the risk of an investor (though like an investor you can of course still sue people who obviously flaked out and didn't deliver; I'm not sure you're as protected as a typical investor though, because I'm not sure what contracts are involved.)
It's only the people who thought crowdfunding was magically going to be perfectly flawless every time who have this knee-jerk reaction. Everyone else simply invested wisely and enjoyed the consistent and reliable game releases of the games they backed (3 of my 4 games are finished and playable and fun. Two of them lasted far longer than a typical game lasts for me.)
If you invest wisely, you'll back smart well-managed projects run by experienced developers, and you'll end up with a great game which wouldn't have otherwise been made. If you invest poorly, you'll become a statistic.
Investing wisely does including an understanding of how much money it takes to make an MMO, if that's the sort of game you're investing in. If someone is claiming to finish a standard AAA MMO with a $3 million kickstarter, then it's your fault if you buy into that without any assurance that a lot of funding is coming from elsewhere (one MMO I looked up did use the kickstarter as proof of concept and proof of interest for outside investors, so that seemed like a safe choice -- assuming you were into that sort of MMO, which I wasn't.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
While I do think Kickstarter isn't necessarily a bad thing, you will have abusers of the system. Greed Monger, specifically, comes to mind in the MMO realm of kickstarter MMOs.
However, as a whole, there's more outstanding debt owed to backer's than what's been delivered. Not counting cancelled games. Source.
I think we will see a slow down in the coming year or two on how many games get successfully funded through Kickstarter, especially as the previous round of funded games release (or fail to).
Those examples are horrible to use for anything. If people would of done research before they blindly threw money at scam artists they wouldn't have lost it. With KS you have to do your own work to find out about a project, its owners and creators. You can't just throw money and say OH My GAwD KS is evil! It's your own fault if you get beat, that's life. You can't blame other people because you yourself are stupid. (not you just saying in general)
People need to think before they throw money at used car salesman with a good pitch about making a game. Today everyone is always looking to blame someone else for their own stupidity.
Originally posted by spacestarspace could it be that kickstarter represents the humanity that uses it? 99% brasspoles. Maybe it is sort of similar to saying that the internet is bad because of pedos/stalkers. They existed before the internet, just as scam artists existed before kickstarter? Who knows. Kickstarter is still young enough that the jury is in deliberations. However, this thread has posted some pretty scary facts.
KS is giving you opportunity to choose instead of being chosen for by someone else. but that also carries responsibility. Just as those who choose for you bear responsibility for their (investors) money.
If you think success is such a common thing in RL i dare you to look around.
Sorry, but the numbers are BS and posting links from like 2012 to support something is ridiculous. There was a site which was claiming back in 2012 that only 1/3 of games were delivered based on his sampling of 300 or so games. I took his list and MANUALLY, PAINSTAKINGLY reviewed each project mentioned and found that 218 delivered, so that's over 2/3s. of those, 147 were delivered in 2013 or 2014, after the article was written.
So, basically, it's like BREAKING NEWS!!!! GAMES TAKE TIME TO DEVELOP!!!!
The biggest problem I see with crowdfunding right now is ignorance. Specifically, someone backing a project looking for $10,000 to make an MMO, or something absurd (Sorry Shards ). There are exceptions, like Shards Online, but those people will generally have a great deal of the game done, and are simply looking for PR and money for polish and additional features. You can definitely tell the two apart. So it definitely requires some education on the subject, too, and I think that people are becoming more reserved with what they back, which can only be a good thing. It means that only realistic projects will get funded, so I'm hoping that number of successes will rise.
The biggest problem I see with crowdfunding right now is ignorance. Specifically, someone backing a project looking for $10,000 to make an MMO, or something absurd (Sorry Shards ). There are exceptions, like Shards Online, but those people will generally have a great deal of the game done, and are simply looking for PR and money for polish and additional features. You can definitely tell the two apart. So it definitely requires some education on the subject, too, and I think that people are becoming more reserved with what they back, which can only be a good thing. It means that only realistic projects will get funded, so I'm hoping that number of successes will rise.
Well said.
I agree people will get more savvy with their KS donations, and bogus projects will have a harder time in future.
I don't think it's too much to expect projects to have something to show before they want to cash in.
If you can't manage to pre-finance some basic things to showcase before the crowdfunding push or fail to understand that going public means you have entered the marketing phase and thus should have a consistent visual style already established then you are out of your depth for developing a quality MMO anyway. Fortunately these things are easy to spot.
I would assume that once someone had been well and truly burned by a failed Kickstarter they won't be back.. but the timespans are so long that you can back a lot of projects before deciding that one has burned you.
If FFXIV would have been crowdfunded, we won't have that awesome game today, it would have died after the initial launch and flop.
I believe crowdfunding is just a fad. If you don't have the money to make a MMO, you surely won't have the money to fix what's wrong after launch. It's gonna probably mean more messy releases of second hand products (just to say that they "delivered") - aren't you tired of these? - and then we'll have the "devs" begging for more money to fix the mess.
Some say that no crowdfunding, no more MMO's, as no one takes the risk anymore? So what, there's thousands of them, a large percent being terrible products. Maybe the market needs a change. Maybe a break is needed so that someone just comes with a great idea and serious financial backup and just grabs everyone, just like WoW did ten years ago.
Crowdfunding, is a gamble, at least on the part of those 'investing' their cash in them. All you can do is be sure to research the game and the people behind it as thoroughly as possible, and accept that even then, its still going to be a gamble. Trouble is, you can't rely on 'famous' names so much any more, to prove that a kickstarter is even viable, and here i am thinking of the more recent Molyneux debacles
When it comes to kickstarters, you have to accept that regardless of any claims to the contrary, any money you put into it, there is still the risk that you will get nothing in return for it, or it might be released later than projected and the game may not be as was initially invisaged due to either resource or other constraints that make implementing them either too difficult, or just plain impossible.
I think it's honestly a better way to make a game. Without the unneeded tinkering from the suits.
Yes there have been some epic failures, Yes there have been delays, but i think we WILL see the games come out and be at least ok. It's like any other investment, you have to weight each one on it's own merrits. Sure there's are some Godus's floatig around, but kick start also brought us Divinity: OS, Broken Age, Darkest Dungeon.... ect.
Yes MMO's are always delayed..... but MMO"s are always delayed regardless, and all the ones that weren't should have been. I think my late next year, as we near the finish line for some of the bigger KS mmo's we'll really see it's validity as a funding method.
Comments
All they have to do is stay away from the trash F2P model to make money. Get 100-300k niche crowd and keep a small team to knock out some cool features and updates and you will win in the end.
Chasing the few thousand whales to come and set up a credit card swipe fest on your game is over. The asians are ruling that market now and pooping out a new flavor of the month f2p crap fest every few months for that type of player.
I have to fully disagree with the OP on this topic, maybe he is living in a dream world or wants more F2P crap even faster than a few months. Crowd funding is the new hot shit and F2P is the old crap fest, except it.
While I do think Kickstarter isn't necessarily a bad thing, you will have abusers of the system. Greed Monger, specifically, comes to mind in the MMO realm of kickstarter MMOs.
However, as a whole, there's more outstanding debt owed to backer's than what's been delivered. Not counting cancelled games. Source.
I think we will see a slow down in the coming year or two on how many games get successfully funded through Kickstarter, especially as the previous round of funded games release (or fail to).
Those examples are horrible to use for anything. If people would of done research before they blindly threw money at scam artists they wouldn't have lost it. With KS you have to do your own work to find out about a project, its owners and creators. You can't just throw money and say OH My GAwD KS is evil! It's your own fault if you get beat, that's life. You can't blame other people because you yourself are stupid. (not you just saying in general)
People need to think before they throw money at used car salesman with a good pitch about making a game. Today everyone is always looking to blame someone else for their own stupidity.
WOW, so 70% of those projects in 2011 just ran off with the money.
Un-be-lievable this money pit is allowed to continue.
Not necessarily. They just haven't yet delivered their promised games (Note: They also have zero legal obligations to do so, or to stick to their "reported" development times). At least at the time the article was published, which was early 2014.
The numbers found in 2015-2016 will be more telling, because it will have allowed for a full "development" cycle of 3-5 years for most of the games that were successfully funded in that article.
Basically, at the time of the article (2014), 2 of 3 games funded from 2009-2012 still had not delivered their products. However, in 2009, the delivery rate was 60% by 2014. Granted, in 2009, significantly less games were funded. (5 vs 200+; of those 5, only 2 launched)
Never seen an example of a game making less F2P than it made with another model. That's across every genre, not merely MMORPGs (which are among the hugest F2P success stories.)
So your advice to 'just stay away' from the most successful business model seems poorly conceived.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Crowdfunding is fine.
People just need to realize that they're acting as an investor, and treat the experience that way. You're not simply purchasing a game that's out. You're an investor. You assume all the risk of an investor (though like an investor you can of course still sue people who obviously flaked out and didn't deliver; I'm not sure you're as protected as a typical investor though, because I'm not sure what contracts are involved.)
It's only the people who thought crowdfunding was magically going to be perfectly flawless every time who have this knee-jerk reaction. Everyone else simply invested wisely and enjoyed the consistent and reliable game releases of the games they backed (3 of my 4 games are finished and playable and fun. Two of them lasted far longer than a typical game lasts for me.)
If you invest wisely, you'll back smart well-managed projects run by experienced developers, and you'll end up with a great game which wouldn't have otherwise been made. If you invest poorly, you'll become a statistic.
Investing wisely does including an understanding of how much money it takes to make an MMO, if that's the sort of game you're investing in. If someone is claiming to finish a standard AAA MMO with a $3 million kickstarter, then it's your fault if you buy into that without any assurance that a lot of funding is coming from elsewhere (one MMO I looked up did use the kickstarter as proof of concept and proof of interest for outside investors, so that seemed like a safe choice -- assuming you were into that sort of MMO, which I wasn't.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The only people who really benefit big time from KS are those who already have a proven track record.
Until we see one of the big games fail to meet a major deadline or flop, KS won't be going away.
Once they know the loopholes, BIG business can reap investment capital without any risk.
Spot on OP
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
Yup, people responsible for their own actions
I know, its only a dream, and someone elses fault
OMG they HAVE TO protect us from OURSELVES!
KS is giving you opportunity to choose instead of being chosen for by someone else. but that also carries responsibility. Just as those who choose for you bear responsibility for their (investors) money.
If you think success is such a common thing in RL i dare you to look around.
And how are publishers doing with timelines and deliverables and how should THEIR investors take it. But theyre still doing fine.
but its so cool to spit on publishers for "rushing games" (that were already late for over a year) and investors.
but now that YOU take a role of investor and deal with developer themselves you can get a taste of how it REALLY is.
Now deadlines are pinted out, feasibility fo project, opportunity cost mentioned
And if someone is deluded that investors get their money back if game fails - lol
Sorry, but the numbers are BS and posting links from like 2012 to support something is ridiculous. There was a site which was claiming back in 2012 that only 1/3 of games were delivered based on his sampling of 300 or so games. I took his list and MANUALLY, PAINSTAKINGLY reviewed each project mentioned and found that 218 delivered, so that's over 2/3s. of those, 147 were delivered in 2013 or 2014, after the article was written.
So, basically, it's like BREAKING NEWS!!!! GAMES TAKE TIME TO DEVELOP!!!!
The biggest problem I see with crowdfunding right now is ignorance. Specifically, someone backing a project looking for $10,000 to make an MMO, or something absurd (Sorry Shards
). There are exceptions, like Shards Online, but those people will generally have a great deal of the game done, and are simply looking for PR and money for polish and additional features. You can definitely tell the two apart. So it definitely requires some education on the subject, too, and I think that people are becoming more reserved with what they back, which can only be a good thing. It means that only realistic projects will get funded, so I'm hoping that number of successes will rise.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
Well said.
I agree people will get more savvy with their KS donations, and bogus projects will have a harder time in future.
I don't think it's too much to expect projects to have something to show before they want to cash in.
If you can't manage to pre-finance some basic things to showcase before the crowdfunding push or fail to understand that going public means you have entered the marketing phase and thus should have a consistent visual style already established then you are out of your depth for developing a quality MMO anyway. Fortunately these things are easy to spot.
It's not even about kickstarter. The reality is not many investor willing to take chance on making mmorpg.
Even Blizzard and Eve pulled out their latest mmorpg in development.
And some people actually have money, they just don't want to gamble their own money so they ask for free money if they can.
I believe crowdfunding is just a fad. If you don't have the money to make a MMO, you surely won't have the money to fix what's wrong after launch. It's gonna probably mean more messy releases of second hand products (just to say that they "delivered") - aren't you tired of these? - and then we'll have the "devs" begging for more money to fix the mess.
Some say that no crowdfunding, no more MMO's, as no one takes the risk anymore? So what, there's thousands of them, a large percent being terrible products. Maybe the market needs a change. Maybe a break is needed so that someone just comes with a great idea and serious financial backup and just grabs everyone, just like WoW did ten years ago.
Crowdfunding, is a gamble, at least on the part of those 'investing' their cash in them. All you can do is be sure to research the game and the people behind it as thoroughly as possible, and accept that even then, its still going to be a gamble. Trouble is, you can't rely on 'famous' names so much any more, to prove that a kickstarter is even viable, and here i am thinking of the more recent Molyneux debacles
When it comes to kickstarters, you have to accept that regardless of any claims to the contrary, any money you put into it, there is still the risk that you will get nothing in return for it, or it might be released later than projected and the game may not be as was initially invisaged due to either resource or other constraints that make implementing them either too difficult, or just plain impossible.
so, you think 80 million aren't enough to start a game for real?
yea, maybe he needs more money, surely won't work with that little
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I think it's honestly a better way to make a game. Without the unneeded tinkering from the suits.
Yes there have been some epic failures, Yes there have been delays, but i think we WILL see the games come out and be at least ok. It's like any other investment, you have to weight each one on it's own merrits. Sure there's are some Godus's floatig around, but kick start also brought us Divinity: OS, Broken Age, Darkest Dungeon.... ect.
Yes MMO's are always delayed..... but MMO"s are always delayed regardless, and all the ones that weren't should have been. I think my late next year, as we near the finish line for some of the bigger KS mmo's we'll really see it's validity as a funding method.
a AAA game costs about twice that.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
so how much money is needed to make a indie MMO without crowdfunding?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
It's not about money, you could make a small scale 2D MMO
the projects fail because they don't have any control, ppl run off with the cash, most good developers aren't on kickstarter, etc
making a successful game takes MORE than just money, it takes things like oversight and professionalism, neither of which can be found at kickstarter
besides, there are enough MMO to choose form, I don't know why people waste their money on kickstarter just to play an unfinished MMO
for every 1 succesful Kickstarter project, there are 1000 like these: