Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’m not concerned at all, Cyan has a good record for getting things out the door. I just hope it’s better than Obduction.

Expected release late spring of 2023,no need to be concerned.

UruBoo - 02 February 2023 10:03 AM

As one the bakers, I am very concern that Firmament will ever be release. What you think about it.

I’m also a backer and I’m not at all concerned. You can trust Cyan to release Firmament in a couple of months. Count yourself lucky that you didn’t back games like Asylum or Council of Crows, like I did more than ten (10!) years ago.

My financial advisor always reminds me of risk/reward when I suggest an investment. I’ve been lucky. The number of investments that have succeeded is far greater than the number that, while not considered failures, did not perform as expected. So I’m ahead of the game.

Not so with Kickstarter. The number of games I’ve invested in that were actually released on time, in playable form is probably less than 20%. Probably far less.

What to do?

Me? I’ve stopped funding games via Kickstarter. I know that will deprive worthy games of revenue. But as one marketing executive once said “I don’t know you. I don’t know your company. I don’t know your reputation. Now what was it that you wanted to sell me?”

I’ll run the risk that others will risk their money. And, ten years down the road, the measly interest I’ve earned in today’s economy will be enough to buy a retail version, should that ever happen.

GateKeeper - 03 February 2023 09:23 AM

Me too, I have stopped almost entirely.

I have made a couple of exceptions though, like two adventure games which coincidentally were both Swedish productions, and both failed to reach their target unfortunately.

At some point I got so disappointed that I swore I would never back another project unless Jordan Mechner wanted money to make a sequel to The Last Express. (No, I don’t think that will ever happen.) But I later made exceptions for Bob Bates’ Thaumistry and for Cyan’s Firmament.

This thread prompted me to go check my kickstarter page, I haven’t been to it in years. Out of 6 projects that actually got funded, three never appeared (one wasn’t a game). I guess 50% isn’t bad…

Some of the questions, as well as some of the related experiences make me wonder why there isn’t some legal or financial recourse for those instances where a finished product was never delivered. It would be one thing if a game was delivered on time with no bugs, but it turned out to be just a “bad game” that you didn’t like. That’s quite different than a game that was either never delivered or was delivered, in a form that was unplayable.

It’s hard for me to even think of a non-kickstarter-type example, because a company’s reputation would be on the line. Quality control departments would never knowingly let a defective product leave the factory. 1 can only think of one example in recent memory, that being the Volkswagon emission control scandal. And the company paid a huge price for it. Both in terms of reputation and financially in terms of government fines and rebates to customers.

What price does a game developer pay when it fails to deliver a useable product?

what you’re asking for is consumer rights for investors.

crowdfunding is a trick. it’s free real estate for the people who invested in the “service” itself - the venture capitalists and “angel investors” (yes that is a legal term/euphimism).

for users of the service, both sides use this service to enter pretty vaguely defined contracts and investments schemes. If you were a backer or pledger or whatever, you got into a contract of sorts.

i doubt the standard contracts used by kickstarter are that sound: it’s not a legal service. it also doesn’t provide you with any promises re: your money; not a financial service either. not a consumer organization, or a publisher, or an online store. it just has a couple of facades to obscure the economic function (or lack thereof).

so.. if you backed/pledged based on contracts you knew and understood, you might be able to get yourself and some schmucks in a lot of hassle. You can try and get it from kickstarter or a couple of other “services” took a cut from the money that came in for these projects, but i doubt that money’s going anywhere.

I fully understand the terminology re: Risk/Reward. (See my first post on this thread.)

But it would seem that we’re in a kind of grey zone here. Is this an investment in the development of a product? Or is this a way of purchasing a product in advance of its availability? (Think of the people who put down $Thousands in advance of the first delivery of a Tesla automobile.)

If the former, it’s potentially the perfect vehicle for a con. Present a concept. Present “investment levels that are low enough as to not raise suspicion. Then sit back and do nothing except publish vague updates such as “First draft of completed design document completed.”

Since so many people, including myself, have posted their lower than acceptable success rates regarding their Kickstarter game investments. My rates, less than 20%, seem to be regarded as a success. If I had that success rate in “real life” financial investments, I would be in a bad place.

As far as your comparison of Kickstarter investors to Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley and Angels on Broadway, I think it’s fair to say that succeeding 20% of the time is not a winning strategy. Those entities also have an advantage we don’t have with Kickstarter campaigns. The VCs will insist on seats on the BoD where they can monitor the direction the company is taking. (And influence change, if necessary.) And the Angels have the benefit of the “minor leagues” aka off-Broadway, where plays/musicals are developed. Only if they show promise there, do the investments appear. (That’s not to say investors wont put money into a reprisal of a past hit. The revival of Music Man, which is close to 50 years old, shows that good things can happen.)

Heck! Given the right production team, I would probably invest in a GK3 overhaul. But I would not invest if I didn’t know who was running the show.