The Video Game Industry

Avrage amount of money raised per project is way down◊, as is amount of successful pitches, which is currently lower then half the peak.

Also most game pitch successes now are board games not videogames.

Edited by Imca on Apr 7th 2024 at 5:03:33 PM

Makes sense in a way, there are a number of horror stories with video game kickstarters, but the medium suits board games quite well; a lot of rules development and testing can be done beforehand but a large infusion of cash is probably needed to actually manufacture all the physical copies. Also complete conjecture but I suspect receiving a substantial physical product (that can potentially be resold) probably helps backer satisfaction compared to a digital game key.

Board games are also going through a growth period in popularity and availability right now, so there’s a big market opportunity there.

Such Kickstarters do have issues, including their capture of the You Tube ecosystem and stretch-goal excess around tokens/figurines, but it’s not yet as bad as things got for video games.

The successful video game kickstarters lately seem to mostly come from established creators.

Thing is though, I feel like there was decent amount of successful kicksterters or even failed kickstarters that still released <_< Like enough that it feels bit absurd to me be surprised at kickstarter project being good. There is only couple really high profile failures and the other failures were kidna sus in retrospect

Anyone remember FnF's kickstarter? I'm honestly half convinced that it was an incredibly elaborate con.

How long has it been? 3 years? 5 years? I don't remember. Time flies by when there's nothing to really give a shit about anymore.

Edited by Cordite-455 on Apr 8th 2024 at 2:58:04 AM

Not a scam. More like just another crowdfunding project from people who promised too much without realizing how difficult and time consuming it actually is to make a video game.

It is no The Day Before which was a blatant scam.

Edited by M84 on Apr 8th 2024 at 2:07:04 AM

> Anyone remember Fn F's kickstarter?

Nope,had no idea what you were talking about untill Google told it was a Friday Night Funkin' game, apparently the release date was meant to be 1 November 2020

maybe it should have been April 1st 1 November 2020

From what little we know about it, Friday Night Funkin' is basically a Troubled Production. I think most of the original devs even left the project and they've struggled to come up with replacements.

I don't know if that's true or not, but the devs at least released this video a few weeks ago. So even if it has been almost 3 years since the Kickstarter trailer, they're not entirely gone.

Anyway, the point I've been making is that this is not a deliberate con. It's a bunch of devs overestimating their own abilities and underestimating the difficulties of videogame development.

It's a very common story.

So it's gonna be kind of like OMORI, where everyone forgets it even existed only to come out like 5 years later than it was supposed to?

At least in OMORI most of the original devs hadn't left and came out to a massive applause — I don't think I can see that happening with FNF.

Edited by Cordite-455 on Apr 9th 2024 at 12:00:15 AM

The reality is that videogame development can take a long time even when nothing's going wrong and the game isn't a massive AAA production with super high production values.

And something always goes wrong.

This isn't a con. You want a true videogame con? I pointed out The Day Before.

Edited by M84 on Apr 8th 2024 at 11:04:57 PM

Yeah. When it comes to KS developers doing a magical vanishing trick, it's usually because they overpromised, spent all the money, and realized "aw shit, we're not going to be able to make this happen."

Granted, being willing to admit that is also less common than I'd like. Still, people these days know that when they put money into a Kickstarter, there's a non-negligible chance that they're lighting it on fire with nothing to show for it, which justifiably makes Kickstarter harder on video games (which often have to be Kickstarted at a much earlier phase of development than TRPG or board games). If you have a dream to sell, you'd better have a track record behind you from somewhere.

Seems like Fn F kickstarter page at least got updated in 2024 so they didn't enter zero radio communication mode

I have a question.

How much does it usually cost on average to make character models for games? With and without character design fees.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 8th 2024 at 8:57:49 AM

I gave to the Kickstarter campaign for the Shadowgate remake. The game did release, but I never got my free copy! I had to buy it like everyone else.

I've had a few Kickstarters that I backed just go radio silent, and pretty much all of those Kickstarters were for video games. Which makes sense to me; video games are not easy to develop, so they're more likely to flounder compared to, say, a tabletop RPG zine.

I do understand that backing a Kickstarter always comes with the risk of not getting the product, so I make sure never to contribute an exorbitant amount to a project; I always contribute the minimum needed to actually get the product if the project passes. I also tend to be wary around projects that feel way too ambitious in their project pitches, because my experience tells me those are the projects most likely to run into overconfidence issues.

I've never backed any kickstarters,they usually begin and end before I've heard about it,that said I have brought games when they were in early access

that sounds like you should contact them- wait a sec its released?

I need my key as well xP

Edit: Checking Beyond Shadowgate Kickstarter, that game hasn't released? Because that was sequel and not remake

Edited by SpookyMask on Apr 8th 2024 at 9:21:55 AM

One Kickstarter that I heard about after the funding period ended was That Which Sleeps, and now I'm glad I never got a chance to back it since it's pretty much Vapor Ware at this point. At least there's a similar game, Shadows Of Forbidden Gods, that actually is released.

Thankfully for me, a lot of games on Kickstarter that I'm interested in, whether I backed them or not, did end up getting released; Scarlet Hollow, Darkest Dungeon, Blasphemous, and Cultist Simulator come to mind.

I actually backed that one (developer ended up having some sort of meltdown and cut contact with all his business partners iirc)

But yeah, Undertale and Shovelknight was crowdfunded too. It feels bit weird treating crowdfunding as something to look down upon when its just another way to get funding

It's the opposite of going to a corporate executive for funding any project. Why? Executive Meddling will ensue.

Kickstarter backers can fall into executive meddling, where hype amongst the backer community pushes the creator to include impractical stretch goals out of fear of disappointing backers.

The one Kickstarter I remember that went very, very wrong was Project Phoenix. I'm not sure if even a semblance of a game came out in the end.