Adventure Gamers - Forums

Not long ago you could read some comments her on the forum praising kickstarter, hoping that kickstarter could be a kick-start not only for individual games but also for the whole genre.

But i have noticed that recently an alarming number of AG have failed both on Kickstarter an Indiegogo. Just within the last month no less then 4 projects i personally supported have failed, some of them even asking for ridiculous small amounts like 30,000$, and that is just the ones i personally supported.

Why is this happening?

Is it because only the big old names like Tim Schafer, Ragnar Tørnquist, Al Love, Jane Jensen etc. can attract enough backers, and younger lesser know names really haven’t got a fair chance, no matter how good their project is, or how well planned and professional their campaign has been?

Is it just a case of Kickstarter fatigue, after first some big kickstarters and then recently Dreamfall Chapters?

Is it simply a coincidence where each campaign failed for various different reasons, like The Realm’s problem with American payments, and they just all happened to fail at the same time.

Or is this really already the end of the Kickstarter Era for adventure games?
Was Kickstarter just a short lived boost for AG and not what some of us hoped it would be?

Personally I haven’t got the slightest clue, but i really hope it is just a coincidence or a case of fatigue, but what do you think?

I think it may have something to do with that there’s maybe not really that many true adventure gamers out there, you know, people who have been playing adventure games all along, even through the “dark” decade, people who plays adventure games regularly today. But there’s probably tons of people who played games like Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle back in the day, who remember those games, but haven’t seen or heard (or maybe even cared) anything about them since then, until now, with Tim Schafers “reintroduction” of the genre through Kickstarter. I think it’s possible that a majority of the DFA and “Sierra”-backer’s consists of people like that (forgive my political incorrectness, but I don’t know how to better phrase it).

For now, I think the majority of the backers of smaller AG Kickstarters are the kind of people who are actively seeking out adventure games, people who are enthustiastic about the genre, people who’s motivation for backing a project is about more than just getting a copy of the game or T-shirts, but also about helping to rebuild or improve the whole adventure game scene. I think the DFA, being the Kickstarted adventure game’s posterchild, needs to become a considerable success in order for a new generation of backers of (small) kickstarter AG projects to spawn.

This is just my personal (and probably naive) theory, and I don’t claim any of the above sentences to be true

Well it’s most of those reasons. If it’s not a big name, it wont attract attention so much so it needs to be at least that much more interesting to succeed. I don’t have money to pledge to every nice looking project, so some of these countless games will have to manage without my money. And being busy and already a pledger for so many games, I don’t really even follow KS that much now, only through other channels: forums, recommendations from friends etc.

I surely hope AGs in KS aren’t dead yet and I don’t think they are. After this initial excitement pretty much gone now, people just have to be really smart about this. All these projects popping up like mushrooms in the rain - they can’t all succeed. It’s about the idea, the presentation and the timing.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over 50% of all Kickstarter projects fail. Some of the reasons I’d pin for reasons: failure to get publicity, poor management, unappealing concept, believing that opening KS/IndieGoGo page is enough, no clear vision, failure to communicate with potential audience, unrealistic funding goals, poor incentives (rewards).

Some of those can be overcome if you have people in your team with pull, some of you can’t.

Here’s a link to Kickstarter own statistics: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

tomimt - 25 May 2013 05:03 PM

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over 50% of all Kickstarter projects fail. Some of the reasons I’d pin for reasons: failure to get publicity, poor management, unappealing concept, believing that opening KS/IndieGoGo page is enough, no clear vision, failure to communicate with potential audience, unrealistic funding goals, poor incentives (rewards).

Well yes i did know that far from every project succeeds, though i didn’t know the actual numbers.

Obviously i don’t believe the projects i backed had an unappealing concept, no clear vision, unrealistic funding goals or poor incentives. If they had, then i wouldn’t had backed them in the first place. Nor do i believe that they believed that opening KS/IndieGoGo page is enough, if that was the case then i would never had heard of them, and at least some of them did get a fair amount of publicity.

In fact the reason i wrote this, was that i had expected that some of them would had reached their goal without any problems, and it came as a complete surprise to me when they first struggled and then failed.

Quest1 - 25 May 2013 05:33 PM

The premise/implication that AG KS projects fail at a higher rate than other kinds of games is wrong.

A couple of Kickstarters don’t get funded, and suddenly it’s cause for alarm? Seems silly to me.

If you look at it over a long term, perhaps, but as far as i can tell the recent projects has had close to a 100% failure rate, and if that trend continues, then it is cause for alarm.

Now as i also wrote in my post, then it might just be a coincidence, and there is no cause for alarm at all, but i wanted to get others input on this.

Iznogood - 25 May 2013 02:57 PM

Why is this happening?

Is it because only the big old names like Tim Schafer, Ragnar Tørnquist, Al Love, Jane Jensen etc. can attract enough backers, and younger lesser know names really haven’t got a fair chance, no matter how good their project is, or how well planned and professional their campaign has been?

Personally I haven’t got the slightest clue, but i really hope it is just a coincidence or a case of fatigue, but what do you think?

I don’t know the answer either, but I have some thoughts.

First, an obscene amount of money was raised by a relatively small number of big-name designers. It doesn’t deny their capabilities, but let’s go left to right. $8MM for an un-named adventure gaming project that has yet to see the light of day. Great designer and co-designer that are doing a remake of a 1987 “classic”. Great designer of a pair of games that half the audience loves and the other half hates. Great designer of Sierra mystic/detective AGs that hasn’t really reported any progress on the funded game for several months…but it is scheduled for a 2013 rlease.

The above represent a conservative $13MM US in KS funding. Is there any wonder that there isn’t much left over? Yet the magnitude of the funding could not help but invite others hoping to partake of the ever-open wallet.

My wallet is closed. The average buy-in/pre-order price of a KS game is $15. Replay has already priced the retail version of LSL Reloaded at $19.99. By and large I can just wait for the game and pay list price rather than leave my money in limbo.

I think those that are waiting for the money to flow in “just because” are out of luck.

When people see the success of Daedalic, which seems to manage quite well without external finacing, I think I see the end of the KS model. And as far as the “big four” quoted in Izengood’s posting…I would hold my breath as far as any of them getting funding again.

Generic ideas and they ask for too much while offering too little. Big turn off.

I’m upset that Ecco the Dolphin Kickstarter failed though. Would have been awesome.

Draco2.5 - 25 May 2013 09:17 PM

I haven’t really followed the adventure games Kickstarter scene, what notable projects failed?

Well whether or not they were notable is a matter of opinion, some of the ones i backed was rather small projects. More importantly the thread is not about the individual projects, and i don’t want this thread to turn into a discussion of pro and con about each project, so all i will say is that a lot of recent projects have failed.

According to KS stats, there has been 5409 game projects. Out of those projects 1745 have succeeded, which is about 30% success rate. So that in mind every game project is more likely to fail than succeed in KS, not just adventure games in general.