Looks like we can add another to the ‘saw that coming a mile away’ pile. Pathfinder Online joins the growing club of failed crowd-funded games. Members include similar games such as Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. Pathfinder had to lay off all but three (read: all) employees because “funding didn’t come through,” and a bunch of other stuff that simply isn’t important to the average person like you and me. Truth: The game was never going to succeed. Looking at their business model and their game, this was coming.
Right now I have money in one Kickstarter, and I’m pretty sure that one will at least deliver something, but in general I have lost all faith in crowdfunding the development of a product — especially a video game. There’s way too much consumer risk, and I see the idea as a violation of the basic principle that we give something in value in exchange for something of value in return. Giving a developer money this early gives them less to fight for, less to push for, and all the reason to sit back and lay everyone off and say, “We just couldn’t make it work but thanks for the support.”
I’ve sworn off giving a lump sum of money for a product; However, a model I still have a little bit of faith in is the “pay as you go” funding model we see on places like Patreon. I think supporting people who deliver daily, weekly, monthly, etc., content is a nice option. It works great for musicians, comics, youtubers in general, etc. I see this as the same model Twitch uses for subscribers. You like it so you support it, but it’s monthly and you can cancel any time. Fail to see continued value? Then stop paying. ::whispers:: Kinda like MMO subscriptions. SHhhhh.
Crowdfunding a game in 2015 is a poor financial decision for players. Developers can have my money when they bring a game of value to market and show me they now deserve value in return. Not before.
There are risks involved in crowdfunding as with any investment. Here’s the key word : investment. Pledging money on Kickstart or other crowdfunding platforms is NOT consumption spending, it’s an investment and it comes with all associated caveats. Unfortunately, I get the feeling Average Joe fails to see the difference. You need to do your homeworks, work to get the relevant information about the idea, the product and the producers/creators. Risks have to be evaluated, outcome has to be forecasted, each investor has to value how much he’s willing to risk losing in the process.
There are really nice projects on Kickstarter, I’ve spent money here and there on different projects, but I did my homeworks. Crowdfunding a MMO seems silly, there are way too many ways of screwing this up and I’m willing to bet on major cost overruns. Even a simple single video game is a tricky project, it really depends on who is behind it. Not every game will be Pillars of Eternity ! At least with physical products, you can see prototypes and samplers, you get a better sense the creators know what they are doing. I’ve bought two excellent board games, one of them being now highly rated on gameboardgeek (Viticulture).
On Pathfinder itself, I’ve lost 20$ on this one. Even then, I’ve got a couple of minor digital goodies for my efforts, so it’s not all lost. That’s the amount I was willing to lose when I backed their first project which consisted in crowdfunding demo to get institutional funding. Projects seemed nice, I love the Pathfinder settings, that was my tip of the hat to team, encouraging them to work on their projects. Then came the demo and, oh gosh that was horrible. 90’s called and wanted their graphics back. Investors backed off for good reasons, then came a second Kickstarter campaign and people foolishly threw money at the team.
I’ve seen several quality games come from the product of crowd funding. I’m interested to see some statistics on what the success rate is within kick starting within each type of products. Video games, Board games, Art, and so forth.
My question though is, would those games exist without kick starting or would they eventually get built because that is what people want?
Personally I won’t crowd fund games, I’d rather spend my money on a complete game that I’ve missed then fund a hype machine that may or may not produce a game.
I believe the rate of failure is quite high on Kickstarter. Either they don’t meet the goal or they vanish into nothing during production. Pathfinder is a shock though because that is a rather high profile failure.
On Kickstarter being an investment, that is technically true. You are investing in a company in the hopes they will produce something but unlike a normal investment your return is, hopefully, a finished product. Well I can buy a finished product from any store. With a normal investment your return is hopefully a good profit.
Unless the project is completely unique the risk is just not worth it in my mind. I’ll get it when it comes out. Of course as I say that I have backed two Kickstarters that are in development now. Oh and I did get a beta pack for Star Citizen.
Too many think of kick starter as a purchase. I lost out on money on pathfinder, I saw it coming though, unfortunate but that’s life. I have money in a few projects, and I put my money in them because I believe in the vision and ideas behind them, and generally how reliable it is to get made. Shanties, bloodstained and torment are all looking pretty good so far, so time to wait and see.
Often times it is presented as a purchase. Pay $60 and get a copy of the game, access to alpha, this in-game pet, etc. Someone pays $60 expecting to get those things, and the game is never made. Whether or not it was all legally okay, the customer still feels like they made a transaction.
I fully support kickstarter games, just not with my money.
Not worth the risk, although If a game I really liked comes out successful from kickstarter i have bought it almost 100% of the time.
I like the premise, im just not interested in spending my own money for something out of my control.
Sorry. Crowd funding a game in not an “investment”. Not even close. It’s consumer spending, just in a really bizarre way. Sort of like prepaying a movie you want to see but it might not ever debut. Or it might debut and be horrible.
Not an investment. If the kickstarter entitled me to a share of future profits which might never materialize, that would be an investment.
Yea I would have to agree with Baa Baa, investment assumes a financial return. A consumer item return is just that a pre-purchase. Patreon is a little more forthcoming than Kickstarter or Indiegogo, but these are donations. It is patronage cleverly disguised by capitalism as either an investment or purchase.
That said, there is NOTHING wrong with backing anything that you believe in. Let me emphasize “BELIEVE”, too many people want to throw a bunch of money at devs and want games ready for digital download. They don’t want to be part of the process, they don’t want to donate more money if necessary, they don’t care what the devs are up to, or how the art is coming along, or how the promotions go, directions of design, story, etc… you get the idea. They want the typical consumer capitalism role, I pay money, you give me thing.
So if you want to back something, be sure you want to be there pulling it kicking and screaming from the game development graveyard. Otherwise you might be better off sending that money to charity, at least then you get the tax deduction.
There are a multitude of investment types. Kickstarting is one of those with a fixed potential return. I have no pity for people that spend money they can’t afford to lose on kickstarting anything. The site is pretty clear what it’s all about and there are any number of disclaimers stated in surprisingly clear language to that affect. That said I’ve participated in more than a dozen kickstarted projects and so far only one has actually failed, the Firefox stick thing. That one failed project though has already issued refunds to their backers so in reality I lost out on the interest that my $20 would have earned in the meantime. I suspect that two more of the projects I’ve backed are likely to never produce anything of use, but all the others have either already delivered or look to be shaping up nicely even if some are behind schedule.
Golbinworks has sent a long email to all backers with more information. To put it midly, it’s not looking good. Couple of quotes, from Lisa Stevens acting CEO of Goblinworks and also the CEO of Paizo :
‘[…]we get enough monthly revenue to keep a small core team consisting of CTO Mark Kalmes, Art Director Mike Hines and Designer Bob Settles employed and working on progressing the game.’
‘We would be selling Goblinworks to another publisher who would then take over the running and funding of the game. They would hire the staff to ramp up the development on the game. Goblinworks would cease to exist as a publisher. ‘
‘If half of the current community continues to support Pathfinder Online with their monthly subscription fees, we would be able to keep the servers live indefinitely, but we would not have money to keep our core team employed and continuing the development of the game.’
‘Every time we have lowered the price on Pathfinder Online in the past nine months, we have kept the same number of folks playing the game but brought in less money.’
These mentions are wrapped in a positive vibe most of the time, but it certainly isn’t convincing me. Neither is telling me that White Wolf and WotC almost went under before their mega hit; different times, different type of products.
I think a lot of it is experienced developers- I kickstarted Wasteland 2, Torment, Bard’s Tale IV and Camelot Unchained, and I don’t regret any of those, but I won’t kickstart an unknown. I’m trying to decide if I regret not kickstarting Star Citizen or not, but so far I’m not losing any sleep since it’s awfully ambitious.
(I also kickstarted Order of the Stick, which I deeply regret since Burlew then went all SJW and told everyone he didn’t want fans like me, and now I can’t resell my books for squat)
“There are risks involved in crowdfunding as with any investment. Here’s the key word : investment. Pledging money on Kickstart or other crowdfunding platforms is NOT consumption spending, it’s an investment and it comes with all associated caveats.”
Whether it is consumption spending is arguable as Baa Baa points out, but even if it is treated as an “investment” that doesn’t absolve the business people running the venture of misconduct or even honest incompetence, at least in an ethical sense.
Risks must be realistically evaluated by designers and transparently presented to “investors” to avoid the appearance of a Ponzi scheme.
While someone may be deemed foolish for believing they have made an actual purchase instead of buying what functionally is a lottery ticket with a mediocre payoff, there has to be an underlying trust that those proposing the the venture have a high chance of succeeding lest it mirror philosophy evinced in Keen’s posted comic; I feel for the whole model to work out this basic assumption must be shared by all parties, and having designers go into the venture with a bankruptcy failsafe mindset undermines the entire Kickstarter game design principle.
I’m happy to support Kickstarter games which are of achievable scope and whose producers have history. I’ve backed Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2 and Elite:Dangerous, all of which succeeded. Hex, well, that was a disappointment – they have produced a game successfully, but all of the cool features that attracted me are still absent and I have very little faith of ever seeing them in the form originally envisioned.
But I have never backed a Kickstarter MMO project and never intend to. That’s just not a genre which I think is achievable for beginners.
Pathfinder Online is a bit of a weird one for me, I’m a big fan of the D&D and Pathfinder RPGs, so they should of had my backing for sure. Then they announced (way back) that the game would be a PVP sandbox-y settlement game. That just doesn’t fit the D&D/Pathfinder licence at all in my mind, PVP and tabletop RPGs lead to fallings-out and the death of campaigns. Sure it means “players are content” but then why bother with the Pathfinder license in the first place?
Still really early to jump boat on crowd funding. Lots of games are viable and working well with crowd funding. Also if i am not mistaken Pantheon was unable to make the fund. This would speak more towards support of crowd funding in filtering games.
Whats gonna happen with crowd funding is going to be the same things that happens with all trends. Get over used, have a bunch of people declare there dead, and then settle into an actually realistic position among-st game funding options. Nothing new in this sht, just people being people.
Anyone thinking of Kickstarter as a purchase platform just has the wrong perspective. Your DONATION might get you a gift of the game or other stuff at a later date, but it’s still a donation.
Calling it an investment is also off in the traditional sense; you aren’t buying X% of any potential future success. At best, again, your donation will result in receiving a gift of game X or trinket Y, and with gaming, your donation has a rather slim chance of actually working out exactly as you imagine when you first hear the sales pitch. Assuming otherwise is on you, not the platform. Know what you are getting into before spending your money, and if you didn’t, don’t blame anyone but yourself.
That misunderstanding aside, Kickstarter is one of the best things to happen to gaming in years, because it makes the ‘wallet vote’ of gamers crystal clear. When something like Pantheon fails to fund, its a very clear message about that style of MMO and the person behind it. When SC, Crowfall, or CU blow the doors off their Kickstarters, that’s a very strong wallet-vote for that type of MMO and the people behind it. Money talks louder than anything else, and Kickstarter gives gamers a voice they didn’t have before.
And when titles like Pillars get made because of Kickstarter, and then go on to be huge hits, everyone behind not just that particular game, but that entire genre/style, greatly benefits. We are going to see PoE ‘clones’ soon, and while most will likely be terrible, perhaps we do get a few more gems, Without Kickstarter, none of that happens, and instead we keep seeing little but CoD/BF and Madden Current Year.
I’ve only had 2 issues with not getting my product on Kickstarter out of 75 projects. I tend to avoid video games because I don’t care what promises the page makes you aren’t buying a product, you are investing in a chance for that game to get made. Kickstarter was a lot better to me prior to bigger companies showing up basically using it as a pre-order system, now far too many people are treating it that way when it isn’t what the site was designed for really.
I am happy I backed Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity and FTL but I am very picky about my projects.
I was very grateful for all the posts that understood my point and agreed with me. However, there was one I feel the need to respond to. Just because I can afford throwing my money away on one of these, and I can, still doesn’t make it an investment.
I have kickstarted a few games never had any problems most notable being Wasteland 2. I pretty ok with that sort of funding I Do realize that its no guarantee of something but I dont really care I also realize that its not investment it pretty much says that on there somewhere .
As For Patreon thats awesome I fund 2 cartoon creators IllWillPress and Sandra and Woo plus one Youtuber Iamchiib i think that is money well spent.
Plus the Kickstarter campaign that IllWillpress puts out every year for a DVD copy of their last season.
Investment might not be the right word, I’ll give everyone that. I still believe however a Kickstarter pledge is not regular consumption spending. Asking investmest type of questions is a good way to approach the situation, it gives some guidelines to make a better decision. Donation might not be the right word either. There are many situations where a donation is made without any background checks. I mean, at least in my part of the world, a donation will often lead to a tax credit even for individuals, an incentive in itself for the donation.
I tend to look at Kickstarter projects as being more form of quasi venture capital than anything else. If I toss money at something it’s to hopefully get it completed and I can get the thing when it’s done, but not first and foremost buying something. This isn’t Steam or GoG where I’m usually buying an actual, finished product (with the exception of stuff like Early Access). There’s still that risk of the project failing.
Pretty sad. People are so desperate for an MMO they will pay for the illusion/dream of an MMO.
There were some elements we hadn’t planned on when we ran our Kickstarter. But it is important to note that despite that, we still reached over $400,000 in pledges — something very few others can claim. This is how we had to view it at that point. It was clear the interest was there so we weren’t about to stop. And, since then, we have had success from other funding initiatives.
Brad – just looked at your website & as a layman, your game looks dead to me. Front page full of 2014 content. Suggest if you want to attract people such as myself (been in mmo’s 15 years) an update would not go astray
The game has not failed yet, it is currently getting purchased by another company who will take it over by march 2016 and fully fund and support it, though i see no reason why as the game is utter garbage.