[OSButler]

Kickstarter still feels like such a grey area to me. Only a few of the games I've backed ended up in a product that I would've bought, if it was a regular released game. Nowadays, I prefer waiting until the actual release version is available and then decide whether to buy it or not, but I'm not funding any more kickstarter games due to all the bad experiences.

[Semaphor]

FWIW, I've had more successes than problems with games. 11 games I'd have bought anyway [1] (mostly RPGs), 1 failure (The Mandate. Should have known, overly ambitious) 4 that are way overdue but still active (Star Citizen, InSomnia, Popup Dungeon and After Reset), 3 that are still in planned development (Vigilantes, Stygian and D:OS2) and only 2 games I didn't enjoy at all and normally wouldn't have bought (Jagged Alliance: Flashback, Satelite Reign)

[1] Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Pillars of Eternity, Antharion, Balrum, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Balrum, RimWorld, Lords of Xulima, Blackguards, Shadowrun: Hongkong

edit: And 100% sucess rate with tabletop/card games

[on_and_off]

The Mandate by Perihelion Interactive ?

it's dev is still ongoing.

[Semaphor]

Oh wow, they posted an update. It's only kickstarter they are completely ignoring

[on_and_off]

It is very ambitious so I am curious to see if they will be able to pull it off but the development is still ongoing.

[Semaphor]

I honestly have very low hopes with the way they acted. Ignoring KS comments and messages and mails, not even posting updates to KS anymore…

[fapjacks]

No, Star Citizen is not "way overdue". You can login and play it, and you've been able to for years now. That is disingenuous, because it's always been understood that the game would be under development for some time. As a November 2012 High Admiral backer, I think things are going extremely well for Star Citizen. Unlike a lot of other projects on Kickstarter.

[HCIdivision17]

I think if we're going to be fair, it's more accurate to say it's totally, unequivocally overdue. Large chucks are flat out late. But! That is fine. We can forgive a late game if it's good, and it looks to be awesome. Optimism invariably takes over at the start of project, and we all knew it was going to be a long haul.

And I say that as a person with a few ships awaiting release, too. While I really want my Carrack, it's far more important that they make it good. The estimated release times have moved back a few time, but that's the expense of great work in the rest of the game. Backers seem to largely accept this as the cost of buying into an in-progress development: priorities must be fluid, and we have to make do.

The trick to Kickstarter is to only invest what you can lose (like anything!) and then be patient. Starcitizen is stupendously ambitious, and is going to cost a fortune to develop. They successfully made the transistion to being nearly self-sustained, basically using Kickstarter to kickstart their development process.

[fapjacks]

The original goal didn't include any of the massive stretch goals that were added in as funding ballooned. CR has been completely forthright about the schedule as the stretch goals have been designed and built. It's not overdue because nobody is expecting it to be finished right now except Derek Smart, arguably the world's shittiest game designer. Saying it's "totally, unequivocally overdue" because we've passed the original planned release date in November of 2012 on the Kickstarter page is totally, unequivocally disingenuous.

[aluhut]

There was another release date 2016. Passed that too. Now there is this Vulcan thing. Meanwhile the full game universe is nowhere to be seen. They have now given up setting a release date at all.

I don't understand where the community gets all that positive vibes from but I've lost it and yes....I invested too.

[HCIdivision17]

I maintain positivity because it's not vaporware, just in feature hell. There's no silver bullet for that, just metric crap-tonnes of lead bullets, as they say.

And expectations are everything. I had endless hours of fun with Privateer as a kid, and had a blast with Freelancer when I was older. That covers a large chunk of my life, so my patience is tempered, a bit. Eve fills the niche while I wait, and I'm very excited to see my old memories come back in HD in a new universe. What's another 5 years out of 25? (And I'm serious - I had fun with Privateer, and in retrospect it was kinda terrible! Pushing past the uncanny valley of VR sim is effort worth waiting for!)

Honestly? Expectations are screwy. Eve has a sophisticated character creation system, and it's essentially to take a 200x200 pixel picture. Just fantastic, and almost as useless. But it really makes the game feel bigger and more real. Eve's taken more than 15 years to get to where it is, and that's sort of where I hold my standard. Time ain't the barrier to me.

[fapjacks]

Do you actually read the emails and participate in testing? I am not even an evocatus tester and I can play in the persistent universe. I think you're thinking about the fact that -- before the final game launches -- there will be a universe reset. But what you've just said here is not true. [0]

[0] https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/for...

[HCIdivision17]

I guess I just don't see the stretch goals as bonus wins. They caused the whole game to be rethought and redesigned. They're integral to what the game is expected to be and have driven the ambition to make the game better. And again, even if we look at the components individually, many are still late from the times they were estimated to be released. And I wasn't being disengenous: I'm talking about simply the Carrack, the part I'm most excited about. But CIG's gotten good about not promising dates anymore, a lesson every Kickstarter and development group should learn!

My point is that lateness isn't the sin people make it out to be. A well polished and expansive game can come late, and so long as the medium still does it justice it'll be great. All the gnashing of teeth and whining will be forgotten as people play fun. Setting expectations for deliverables is far better than expectation for delivery times, since you can miss deadlines while still delivering (leaving you with a lose-win pattern). And it's better to set expectations realistically rather than disappoint, because then at best you can deliver disappointment on time. SC has some damn good pedigree, so I think it's easy to believe they'll deliver on quality and expectation, and that overrides everything else.

I was thrilled about NMS (and had a blast with it), and I think it panned a bit because it rushed. There was some noise that warped expectations, and yet the game became just what it set out to be. Further updeates made it even more fun to play, and to quote Day9 "I will play the shit out of No Man's Sky 2." Heck, we even have celebrated failures like VoxelQuest, which is one of my favorite KickStarter epics. Obduction was just what I expected from Cyan. And I'm honestly kinda excited to see if Hiveswap manages to deliver despite hype. Broken Age was a bit bizzare, since it actually probably would have been better if it stopped in the middle (but still a lot of fun). We live in such a golden age of choice it's possible that Dual Universe will be good!

Imagine having NMS, SC, and DU all with their own take on a large persistent universe - pick the style you like! I'll happily wait years to see that, and we can usually play them before they're done, which takes the sting out of waiting I think.

[anonemouse145]

As an investor in Exxon, I disagree that you should criticize a company when one ship leaks a little oil.

[fapjacks]

What are you even talking about, leaking a little oil? This is exactly what they're supposed to be doing. I'm interested in what about Star Citizen development you think qualifies as "leaking a little oil".

[abiox]

> As a November 2012 High Admiral backer

i suppose this correlates with the major emotional investment.

[LoSboccacc]

I've always been cautious on these sites since failure is always an option. I tend to fund mostly games that have no chance of being made otherwise, for being niche or part of my weird passions (I love logistic survival games, there were none good being produced, backed factorio)

I prefer to back those even if they fail than back mainstream succesful projects that would have been made anyway.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Well, it's not a store. You're funding development of something that may not otherwise exist. They are pitching you their idea, you decide if it's something you're interested in and give them some of your money.

I've never backed anything on Kickstarter. But if everything you have backed has delivered something to you, it sounds like you've chosen projects very well!

[retox]

>Only a few of the games I've backed ended up in a product that I would've bought

I don't have any special insight but I get the feeling that this is how very many game development investments pan out. Generally I think it's safe to say that commercial software projects are hyped and oversold.

It becomes most galling with games because they are software that people WANT to engage with, rather than being forced to.

[Kiro]

You're approaching it the wrong way. When I back I never expect anything and I most often forget about the game when it's actually released. I'm still happy backing and supporting the creators though.

[jedikv]

That's the most pragmatic approach. I don't give money to something untested and with no guarantees of getting a working/high-quality product (which aren't covered by regular consumer rights).