Is Kickstarter bad for games?

Not everyone likes kickstarter.  I do...  But then my day job is in financial services, so the complaints about kickstarter are peanuts in comparison.  Rab Florence's great blog THIS FUCKING AMUESMENT ARCADE makes a few points about why kickstarter is bad.  We've taken a look at the good stuff.  Let's look at the bad.

Most of this post was written in the voice of Mike Rugnetta... [insert link to future PBS Idea Channel episode].  There may or may not be a little man crush involved.

Event: Smart Money in Gaming

A current and future look at monetization strategies in Retail, Mobile and Social Gaming

Last night I went over to the Microsoft NERD center (still love that) and hung out with Dave Bisceglia (from Tap Lab) who was a panel member for the event.  It was moderated by Marco Mereu (uCool), and included  Jeff Goodsill (Stomp Games), Chris Rigopolous (Harmonix), and Layne Ainsworth (TapJoy).  As the name implies they talked about making money with games, and I soaked in as much information as possible.  I went with a burning desire to find out if anyone is monetizing HTML5 games on the web or mobile and how they are doing it.

Equity Crowd Funding in 2014?

The game design industry won't see Equity Crowd Funding until 2014...  At the earliest.  Crowdfunding.org projects a best case time frame for the 10 steps between where we are today and active Equity Crowd Funding in the U.S.  This is, however, the federal government we're taking about here.

There is a reason that is good, and a reason that is bad.  On one hand the timing gives another year of practice making, and studying donation based crowd funding.  In general that practice should be very helpful for anyone who wants to be good at Equity Crowd Funding later.

The bad news is that is an awfully long time in the market.  The excitement over crowd funding could be well over by then.  Interest could be less, and dollar amounts could be smaller.  People could be used to being sold idea's instead of products, and maybe even bored with it.

What do you think of Equity Crowd Funding?  Tell me in the comments below.

1 Big red flag that your project won't succeed.

Shadowrun Returns has announced that they are pushing back the release date to expand the scope of the game...  The delay is not the issue. The expanding scope, however, is a big red flag.  Expanding scope is the bane of all projects and the death of first projects.

I still have high hopes for seeing Shadowrun goodness.  These guys are professionals.  However if you are on your first project, don't let the scope creep.  Read more about their development process on their blog.

Kinda regret not getting a Doc Wagon card.

Watch out Sweden, here comes Finland.

Some of the most exciting game development communities are growing in places that are not the U.S.  I'm not aware of the game development community in Stockholm Sweden before Mojang hit the map, but I can definitely see them becoming the center of Swedish gaming in the future.  But watch out Sweden, here comes Finland.  What is the game development environment like in your corner of the world?  Are you getting a chapter of the IGDA?

Start-up Definitions

Your last vocabulary assignment was about Crowd Funding definitions. Now lets discuss a couple commonly misused words from the classic investment world.  And that really means that I've used these words incorrectly.  They means something specific.  By the way, these are not dictionary definitions...  But rather experiential definitions.

A very short post about F2P

Read Daniel Cook's post about the "Free 2 Play" misnomer. My thinking has been along the lines of GAAS, but the question is: will creating the kind of hobby/service Daniel talks about require procedural generated content?   Minecraft is obviously a hobby and a GAAS (with a single payment).  An MMO like World of Warcraft is obviously a service.  However, Mojang got lucky and MMO's are very expensive to make.  What is the minimum viable content volume for GAAS?  And how do small game companies put out the content needed to be a service?

Or is my basic assumption, that GAAS means content updates, faulty?

Can a small company crank out enough, say puzzle games, to form a service?  Would it have to be some kind of open world?  At what point is there a critical mass of games to move from a 'Fremium'/'Free to play' model to a service model?  It would be interesting to find out.

Ownership and investing.

As a complicated person with many ideas, knowledge and experience I have an odd view point on investing in companies.  If we were to sit down and talk one on one about how to go about investing for retirement  for profit, etc. it would quickly become apparent that I am a fan of Jack Bogle.  Keep expenses low, use EFTS, re-balance every year, etc.  Invest in Exchange Traded Funds and understand regression to the mean.

Likewise as a business major I have strong opinions on when, why, and how to take companies public.  You don't.  Companies perform better when they are private organizations.  People take companies public because they think they'll make boatloads of money. Let's relate this to the game industry.  Facebook and Zynga have both had tons of problems after going public.

But I'm very interested in equity crowd funding.  The JOBS Act signed this past April, although completely up in the air, promises to allow sites like kickstart to do more then just take donations for projects.  Right now you can't buy ownership in a copy.  You pledge funds and if they meet a goal you get swag.  Equity crowd funding means those pledges buy you ownership of the project or company.  Exactly what I would talk you out of as an investor.

This is the central heart of the debate about allowing equity crowd funding.  Being a registered rep and business major there will come a time when I'll someday be involved with asking gamers to help build a game by purchasing ownership in a project or company.  At the moment I'm not sure how to resolve asking for someone to buy equity when I wouldn't advise them to make that purchase if the shoe was on the other foot.

This is all academic moral questioning right now...  But at some point this will have to get sorted out.  Not just by me, but by everyone.

Curiosity killed the Cow.

Peter Molyneux's game(?) app called "Curiosity: What's inside the Cube?" has launched.  And people are clicking on it.  Kind of like Cow Clicker.  But without the satire.  The app itself is free.  And there are in game tools (?) which can be purchased to help the player (?) click more effectively.  These items are purchased with the coins earned for clicking on pixels.

Sorry for all the (?)...  But the very meaning of things like'game' and 'player' are completely open to interpretation in Curiosity.  At this point I've earned around 10,000 coins by clicking for around 10 minutes.  It does start to feel like strategy emerges after a while.  There is emergent gameplay in just about all things, and Curiosity is no exception.

One thought stays in the back of my mind though.  With 68,719,476,736 cubelets is Curiosity the worlds largest progress bar?

Who is Markco Polo Redux?

This deja vu has been brought to you by a glitch in the Matrix.  Actually this post was moved because I was waiting for an affiliate link to go through. This post is still mainly about blogging.  Specifically it's about how to be better at marketing blogs.  Also its about how to be better at buying and selling stuff in games online, but only kinda.  So if you don't care about any of those things I'm giving you an out.  Find out 'Who is Markco Polo?' beneath the cut.

What is the value of a good story?

What makes the D&D brand compelling?  What makes it valuable?  The game is valuable because it is a system of creating emotional meaning to the players (players find it fun and enjoy playing).  The best DM’s are those who can invest meaning in the worlds they create and then use that meaning to emotionally affect the players.  Likewise the best games are those that can invoke an emotional response.  The best way to do that is to create a meaningful game world.  How much is a good story worth in game design?

Thank you

I just wanted to take a minute and say Thank you.  Perhaps I'm starting off the holiday season a little early and thinking about what I'm thankful for.  There have been 30 people subscribed to my feed for quite a number of months now.  At the moment I have no idea who they are, but I appreciate you reading my posts.

I’d love to hear what you appreciate about the blog.  What you don’t like about it.  What do you find useful?  What kinds of articles and links are valuable to you?

Should I call on the monkey to help me?  Ill sic monkey minions on you all!

UK Kickstarter

Kickstarter launched in the UK last week.  There are some amazing looking games starting to filter into the categories. Games like Maia, and Elite: Dangerous.  For Maia in particular, the influences include some of my favorite games.  However other than a few mentions now and then, I'll pretty much be leaving the UK projects alone.  There is too much stuff out there already to be covering projects outside the U.S.

Gambitious, crowd funding games.

Have you heard of Gambitious yet?  After taking a look, it may be worth checking in with every now and again.  It has the look and feel of a kickstarter account, but offers both entrepreneur and 'perks' offerings.  They refer to it as a hybrid model.  Although only EU investors can be equity investors...  At the moment.

If the JOBS ACT opens equity crowd funding up the general public then perhaps they will open up the equity portion to the US...  There are, however, only about 7 games seeking funding on the site.  Not exactly gangbusters.  They have some amazing partnerships though.

Final verdict is a wait and see.  Maybe they will be huge, maybe not.  Good idea though.

The best time to start a company.

Start a company when you are young.  Take chances right out of college.  When you're single and the relative level of requirements on your life are low.  Risk is a young person's game.  So if you think that you might ever want to start a company, take that risk before getting married, having a kid, or buying a house.

You might feel pressure when young from debt.  You may feel that a stable job somewhere makes sense to pay those bills.  But the requirement of stability from debt is nothing compared to being married, having a kid or creating a home.  Add another person or two into the mix, and it becomes very easy to do the stable thing, and very hard to do the risky thing.  Even if that risky thing is your dream.

Stability is a trap.  A very comfortable trap and it's oh so easy to get into.  A great skill to learn early is being comfortable with instability.  Not many people are good a thriving on random events.  Fewer still are good at capitalizing on them.

Tonight (this is being written 11/1/2012) a friend asked me to be a co-founder of his company.  This is a roll of the dice, dream opportunity.  But I can't accept.  My life demands the stable job.  It makes me wonder if I'll have these kinds of chances again.  The Zen answer is yes.  But that is little consolation tonight.

[update] Actually I am co founding that company, despite my busy schedule...  Don't tell my wife.

Lessons from failed Kickstarters

You may have noticed a number of kickstarters showcased here recently.  Mostly just mentions of successful and failed projects, and some notes that they would be discussed later.  Now is the time to take a look at an old idea in a new light.  The success of a kickstarter does not mean a game will be made.

Why do so many games go to Kickstarter?

The real brilliance of Kickstarter for game designers is the reversal of quality assurance.  Instead of paying people to debug a game, through kickstarter you can offer 'exclusive' access to Tester Only sections of the forum, and charge more for it.

It sounds snarky to say the really great thing about kickstarter is profiting from QA....  But I seriously considered paying Timber and Stone $50 to get that tier of reward.  For tiny indie game developers this is actually a really great QA solution.  However, if the AAA companies start doing it, that might not be so good.

Dishonored; Looks Boring.

I have not been playing it, but I did watch Dave Bagnall's Dishonored Let's Play.  It has something to do with what seems like a lack of peril.  Xcom can go so very badly wrong sometimes that it really makes you feel something: Tense.

Perhaps the lack of emotional connection is due to watching a Let's Play instead of playing the game...  But usually watching Let's Plays inspire me to want the game.  Dishonored looks a little flat, emotionally.

[Update 11/28/2012]
Nope...  It's just me.  Dishonored has far exceeded sales expectations.  It's headed into franchise territory.

Crowdfunding Definitions

Anyone else notice that I'm very interested in crowd funding games lately?  Yeah.  Fortunately I'm not hooked on spending money I don't have funding them.  Some people have problems.  Over the next few weeks that should shift towards the funding on game companies.  Lets go over some terms, as I use them, to clarify things.

IndieGogo
One of the two big crowd funding websites.  Notable because they allow some projects to complete without reaching a set goal.  Also they have fewer game design projects, and many more art projects.  Still a viable place to fund indie game development.

Kickstarter
One of the two big crowd funding websites, notable because of the pass/fail programs.  Campaigns cannot chose an option that allows them to get whatever funds are completed, the campaigns must reach their goal.  This site is more popular among the indie and some mainstream game developers.

Open Crowd funding
A project which independently creates and runs it's own crowd funding campaign, without using a service like Indiegogo or Kickstarter.  This is a rising trend among AAA game developers.

Equity Crowdfunding
The really neat kind of crowd funding, promised in the JOBS ACT.  Also called Accredited Crowd Funding because Accredited Investors will be able to provide money to start up companies, in exchange for ownership of the company.  They most likely will not get swag as well...  But we shall see.

Iterations on Crowd Funding.

Star Citizen is taking an 'Open Crowd funding' approach.  Looking up Neal Stephenson's CLANG for a friend reminded me that Star Citizen and Mechwarrior Online are not the originators of this tactic.  You can still contribute to CLANG even though the kickstarter successfully completed four months ago.

Leaving contributions open after a kickstarter campaign is a great idea.  Open crowd funding before running a kickstarter seems to be putting the cart before the horse.  If a successful kickstarter can keep funding going after it closes, what about a non successful one?  Can you reach you're goal even after the kickstarter has failed?  And what about a Flexible Funding program that only reaches half the goal?

What is a kickstarter that is not a kickstarter? Successful, apparently.

There are a couple big name game titles, from big players in the industry, who are using the Kickstarter idea.  But without using the Kickstarter website itself.  This is an interesting concept and although successful in a couple big cases is a terribly risky proposition.  The internet is all about removing the middleman.  But where does this trend lead?  Will this be the end of Kickstarter and Indiegogo as everyone does their own thing?