P.S. A business where the successful outcome is the principals end up in personal debt is neither a business nor successful.
As a gamer, I completely agree with you here. The entitlement has grown rapidly over the past 2-3 years, and in my opinion is only hurting those in the industry looking to be adventurous.
Something like Minecraft might be the exception, but look at the shenanigans surrounding the Mass Effect 3 ending (which was not as bad as some would have you believe)—BioWare is releasing DLC to re-work something that was just a clash between (entitled) gamers who interpreted advertising in their own way, and the artistic direction of those who made the game. Considering the backlash, do these gamers think a studio like BioWare (or publisher like EA) will risk a game that isn't just a Call of Duty sequel again? Sure, but the chances are less, and the resultant game is going to tread a significantly less-risky path.
The comments regarding the $1000 (nothing!) spent on iPad hardware are just inane.
On top of being shit, it was not at all what was described by the project leads in interviews or in advertising. Game consumers are "entitled" to receive what is advertised – return policies don't let them vote with their dollars once a deception is unmasked.
You sound like you're parroting the narrative of an industry-captured press, rather than detailing first-hand knowledge of the situation.
I have no idea what the meat of the argument was over, but it seems like the fans complained about the ending taking it too safe. I don't see how that supports your argument.
The implication is that only $4000 (post tax) was spent on the game and that's an outright lie. They spent 6k on music, 5k on marketing (poster + pax), and 1k to development/demo hardware. That's not necessarily ideal but it's not entirely unreasonable either. You can argue the marketing/hardware issue perhaps, but 6k went directly into the game in the form of music.
The real lesson to take away from Star Command is their under-estimation of time and money required to create, package, and ship backer rewards. That's the real danger that other projects should be wary of.
Sounds like they didn't do their sums. Also how did they spend so much money on incorporation, costs about £25 ($40) over here.
Spending $6000 on music counts 100% as "to development" and is perfectly reasonable. For PAX if anything they should have spent more money to create a bigger presence.
You can do it pretty cheaply over here too... but it's a good idea to get a lawyer involved, and you get what you pay for.
That makes me droll. Costs around $500~1k here.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starcommand/star-command...
Some of these Kickstarter numbers look more game-changing than they really are.
But whatever, I'm not a games industry person; I'm really just here to chime my recurring bell about "don't put your company together on a napkin, get the LLC done; it doesn't have to be expensive and it will help you down the road."
The lesson to be learnt here? Very carefully consider your bonus goods. Will making and shipping them cost more than the extra profit they make over the base price? Price 'em out beforehand. And build in a healthy margin of error in case you are wrong.
To me, it just indicates a lack of creativity. There are so many ways to reward people when making a game, such as allowing funders to name in-game characters or locations, or to have a say in some of the game design. Posters and t-shirts seem like very lazy rewards. And costly of course.
When you win Kickstarter and get 20-30k as an indie dev, that money is yours. It's in the bank. You're expected to spend it to make sure the game is as good as it can possibly be, sure, but it's now your money to _risk_.
I balk at spending 6K on music, because to me that sound like taking 6k out of my family's bank account, going down to the casino and betting it all on black.
But in reality, that's what I do every day. I sit down at my computer and I bet 1 days salary I can earn it back selling my game directly to players.
My games only have a budget of around 100k each. Most of that my salary. Would 6k on music make 6k more over the life of the game? I don't know? Perhaps. Perhaps I should grow some balls and spend and extra 6K of my family's money on music for my next game as see what happens.
Those risks, those bets, are a lot easier to make when they are somebody else's money. When you have an investor willing to share risks, or a publisher who will own the game when it's done anyhow.
I think the tiered award thing hurts a lot of projects by distracting from the basic fact that what you're really contributing to is making the project real.
That's just bad accounting. Making a game costs more than $35k. There should be nothing left to tax.
Kickstarter funds have not been earned until the product is delivered
I really do think that folks should create the LLC first, get that setup and a copy of Quickbooks or what ever and "practice" running a company first. Seriously, go out and create an LLC right now. Not only will you learn a lot but the cost is moderate. Read the nolo press books, etc.
Do that and the rest is much easier.
Had they received only the 20k that they asked for, they would now (adjusting for less money necessary for rewards etc.) be left with almost no money at all. That's simply not good business calculation.
And for the record, I looked forward to this game in particular, even tried to donate money to them outside of kickstarter...
But please don't get me started on YogVentures (ugh)... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterkewlgames/yogventu...
I have a suspicion that developing an open-world game not based on voxels is a very challenging thing, but then I don't work in game dev.
edit: should've read the full description.
Are the interpolated lines also used for collision/physics?
I've developed with voxels for over 10 years...Marching cubes is nothing new (in fact, I "invented" it on my own without knowing that the algorithm existed) - and how they model the world is the least of their concerns. Making an open world game of any sort is very challenging, and no one has done it that successfully to date (even Minecraft is still more of just a sandbox than a game, although I respect it nonetheless). Not that I would recommend against developing this type of game, it just probably not the first type of thing you want to tackle without sufficient experience (I should know, I've scrapped over 8 engines working on open world games).
Again, I have nothing against the YogCast people, but if they fail miserably it makes raising money for other Kickstarter projects more difficult.
The technique used to achieve a smooth voxel world is called Marching Cubes. Although the voxels are cube in nature, the marching cubes algorithm smooths out the appearance of these cubes depending on their proximity to other cubes. This allows for a smooth world, while allowing for dynamic manipulation of the environment.
Hint: Pebble have $117 each to get it done.
I see a lot of projects on Kickstarter where I find myself immediately questioning the numbers. Having the scars to prove that I've run a business or two I generally have a good sense for costs, process and other elements of typical projects. In so many cases on Kickstarter the numbers are so awfully low that you have to wonder what will happen if the project reaches the stated goal and is funded.
It is very easy to end-up working weeks-upon-weeks for $0.75 per hour and have nothing to show for it but a huge loss at the end of the process.
My recommendation: If you are thinking about posting a project to Kickstarter and don't know much about business (profit, loss, fixed costs, variable costs, development costs, tooling costs, regulatory requirements, etc.) spend a few hundred bucks to get advise from someone who does. I would run your numbers by a CPA and some of the other stuff by, perhaps, an attorney with experience in the field. If it is manufacturing related, there might be regulatory issues (UL, CSA, TUV, CE) that an experienced manufacturing engineer might be able to help you with. Be careful, regulatory testing alone can easily get into the tens of thousands of dollars.
In general, don't post a project to a site like Kickstarter unless and until you have had the financial model for your project verified by those best-qualified to do so.
"Hire extra talent for things like music, sound effects and additional platform development like Android
Promote and market to help sell the game and fund future expansions and possible sequels
Localize the game to other regions like Europe and Asia"
Several of the things they spent money on have nothing to do with any of those and thus the money they spent on them should not come from the money they raised on Kickstarter. IMO.
Funding the game in development may have been more prudent.
6K for music should be 1-2k at most!
Poster Art - What's wrong with those awesome sprites that Kotaku used. Should be 0.
IPads? More that one?
PAX East? - That's a holiday not a legitimate business expense.
This is why they say so many people don't make their money back in the App Store any more. You can't spend indie money like you work for a AAA studio.
Perhaps they want to make a big budget game with really great music from their favorite artist, really awesome posters, and I know of course that each dev should have an iPad. You might even need all the different kinds.
For good music? For music that you don't want to turn off the second time you play it? Don't undervalue good production values.
For a game developer? No, it's a fantastic way to raise the profile of your game. You get the most avid gamers interested in your game (who will spread the word if they like the game) and you get press coverage too. For an exhibitor PAX isn't a 3 day vacation, it's 5 or 6 days of working 12+ hours days, most of them staying chained to their booth in their expo hall.
A better question might be, "iPads? Why are these people soliciting money from people to make an iPad game when they don't have any experience developing for the iPad?"
Best advice ever.
They've done iPhone development?
I have money.
I give it to you for a product you have promised me, according to certain specifications we have agreed upon.
Here you go.
I am now entitled to the product as described for that money. Mass Effect's epic conclusion was hyped for five years. It was the central selling point of the series. A version of Excel that doesn't calculate things correctly is broken. Similarly, an interactive story that fails to deliver on the promise of complexity and interactivity in its most glorified and advertised of moments is also broken.
Films and books don't belong in this discussion – they are not interactive media. They stand no valuable comparison. This situation is more like a piece of software that ships broken and needs a patch to sort things out. That happens so often as to be unremarkable.
Games are not exempt from consumer law that requires retailers to give a refund if a product is not as described. Retailers may claim that "their policy" doesn't include that, but the law is superiour to that.
However "not as described" almost certainly does not cover an unappeal ending to an artistic product. It's not the same thing.
Oh, I can assure you, in this case it does.
Casey Hudson, the creator and director of the series, said explicitly, emphatically, multiple times to the press: "The ending will not be as simple as A, B, or C."
The ending is literally as simple as picking A, B, or C. If that isn't a misrepresentation of a product, nothing is.
Totally agree. There are many examples of developers who seriously underestimated the costs for a full game. With the influx of projects, I believe some kind of vetoing will have to be implemented for projects >50k.
$50k is actually a good amount for an independent project...if the team could demonstrate that they can make sufficient progress with that type of funding, it could open the doors to more. Although, since Kickstarter takes 5 percent it wants as much funding to come in as possible.
For not-very-well known composers, I've been quoted in the range of $150-250/minute for music. I assume that if I went a bit higher up the chain (small-time, but established) that the price would rise.
Edit: I know that film isn't the same as game development, but I feel that the multidisciplinary aspect of game creation incurs costs in a far wider arena than traditional software development.
You raise another good point though, not only is it 3k, but its 5-6 days at 12+ hours. A whole week of dev time lost to the event.
Events are great fun, but if you don't have money you don't know what to do with, I don't think they are a very good investment. Not much bang for the buck I don't think.
Do you have any metrics you can share about how an appearance at a show relate to final game sales? Or even press coverage?
For example, if they were to spend that money on banner advertising they could generate say 6-10k clicks through to their website.
$3k is a lot of ad impressions.
This is largely a function of the unit economics of indie games being terrible compared to e.g. the unit economics of a free to play MMORPG.
I don't really have any customer data I can share with you, the sort of selling points generally used are more vague - such as "The average spend per visitor at last year's event on products sourced at the show was £767, a total audience spend of £79.8m" (taken from the sales pitch of a 2012 event). The overall focus of selling - though I'm not actually in sales so this isn't my direct area - is about the size of the audience, and what sort of demographic they are.
I don't know if events are a good use of your money when it's as tight as that, i.e. if you can chose between $3k on an event or $3k on a PR company, but only one, as I can't think of any exhibitor I've ever had that paid that little, or that was small enough not to have marketing budget around it.
The single biggest argument I can give, I think, is that if you go to PAX you're going to get more people looking at your game than you'd get clicks for $3k online - and when it comes down to it, are you going to sell your game better by having somebody look at your website, or stand in front of you try out your game?
Incidentally, what adverts are giving you that click-rate, and do you have any calculated CPA figures?
edit: I just want to note that like I said above, my experience comes more from big budget companies like big studio publishers rather than indies, so I can't necessarily say events are or aren't a great idea for people like you, just that they do offer bang for buck.
This is even more important for smaller indie teams where the developers are the ones manning the booths. I'd be way more interested in discussing the product if I knew I were talking to one of the developers. I found this reflected in my behavior at the vendor booths at pycon this year. When a booth was manned by salespeople, I'd just go take their free shirt and if I was interested in the product I'd only ask a few brief questions and leave with a brochure. When the booth was manned by the founders and three-quarters of the dev team, I was more apt to discuss further, asking about their software stack, or their thoughts on competing products, or the future roadmap of the product. This type of perspective a salesperson doesn't have and usually can't officially speak about.
I have heard anecdotally that a click in a mobile game costs a lot less.
Fully agree that spending a small percentage of your marketing budget on shows is great. And as I said before, they are heaps of fun and a great holiday for the team. You get to rub shoulders with the press and meet other devs.
But, I think somebody else mentioned these guys aren't even paying themselves a salary yet.
Anyone who exhibits at an event for fun is a fool, as is anyone who exhibits at an event but doesn't find it fun. In my experience - and maybe this differs in other industries or indeed other parts of the games industry - events couldn't be further from holidays, most event organisers and exhibitors I know, myself included, would tell you they are the most tiring and most stressful times of the year. But for some of us, that's what makes them enjoyable.
Of course there's fun to mix in and around them in ways that being away from the normality of office life let's you have, but it's generally a case of lletting off steam while working crazily hard, not of enjoying a break from working. My last event consisted of 10 days without a break, 10-12 hours minimum, or 15+ during the 4 days of set-up / pack down, but it was still the most fun I've had recently.
Haha, my conversion ratio is not quite there yet, that's why I'm not yet retired.
Once my 50c click pays 55c in sales I'll roll every sale into more ads and be as big as Zynga in no time.
I'm not crazy far off though, last time I had a run at it I made about 85c to the dollar.