"Hero-U Adventure Role-Playing Game" second Kickstarter project

[kane_magus]

Here is an unusual thing: a second Kickstarter project for a game that already had a successful Kickstarter project. I suppose it is possible that this sort of thing has happened before, but if it has, I am not aware of it. You might be thinking that I am about to launch into a huge, frothing, enraged rant over this. If it were any other game, I probably would have done so. And I probably should do so for this, even so. I'll say this much: this sets a very, very poor precedent, and it will no doubt start up a vast bandwagon of Kickstarter double-dipping onto which many other less scrupulous devs/pubs will gleefully jump. Essentially, what I am saying here is that you can most likely expect me to come back in a few years and launch into a huge, frothing, enraged rant over this once it becomes standard practice leading to demonstrably inferior products (so, sort of like this other, similar thing I ranted about the other day).

With that said, however, for this particular case... well, I loved the Quest for Glory series (as I've said numerous times before, it's probably tied with Gabriel Knight as my favorite of the old school Sierra On-Line adventure games, made back when Sierra was still its own glorious thing and not one of the zombified arms of Activision Blizzard that it is today), and this looks to be very much the same sort of thing (which is fitting, of course, given that the original creators of the QfG games are behind this new game). As such... I'm actually considering backing this thing again. I haven't decided yet, but I've put a reminder on the new KS project, and I have over a month to decide. But... I'll probably end up doing it, unwise though it may well be.

With that said, however, this is yet another of those little chinks in the armor that has been and is eroding my confidence in Kickstarter as a viable thing, more generally speaking.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

"We have talked to many adventure game developers, and nearly all of their projects went over budget. They have either absorbed the costs themselves or obtained venture capital."

In other words, either:

1. Nobody takes basic budgeting courses in the gaming industry.

2. Everyone underestimates their required funding on purpose to help ensure they meet their initial goal.

3. Nobody understands the problems with feature creep/stretch goals, and essentially fail to make sure the stretch goal is large enough to comfortably absorb the work required for the new goal.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Probably "all of the above," and it definitely applies to all game devs, not just adventure game devs.

Also, I'm sure #1 feeds into #3. They say "oh, we'll make X awesome thing, and then we'll also add Y and Z awesome things if we get an extra amount of money," not realizing at the time that it'll actually most likely take that whole amount or more just to get X done in the first place. But then, they're either committed to making Y and Z even though they already used all of the funds for Y and Z to make X (assuming they even got X completed in the first place) or they have to drop Y and Z even though they met the "stretch goals" to make Y and Z. Either way, they end up pissing off their backers (and others watching from the outside) by having to either ask for more money, such as the above, or by simply not (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/736626.html) including (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/736807.html) promised (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/737711.html) features (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/743004.html), which makes them look incompetent at best or actively duplicitous at the worse.