On NDAs and secretivity

[Keyrock]

...continuation from previous post

Defense Grid 2
Hidden Path Entertainment
Raised: $271,726
Release date: Dec 2012

Lots of public updates, which is good to see. And even more impressively, closed beta access keys have begun being sent out. This is of course for the “Containment” version of the game, with the larger game planned to take a lot longer. But it’s looking pretty good for its projected release date.

Shadowrun Online
Cliffhanger Productions
Raised: $558,863
Release date: May 2013

Updates have dried up since September, which is a shame, especially now Jagged Alliance Online is firmly out the door. But those that have appeared have been open, at least. Although the sillybillies have been putting splendid updates directly onto their website, without linking from the KS page everyone knows to go to. Concept art began appearing early this month, making May seem pretty unlikely.



Castle Story
Sauropod Studio
Raised: $702,516
Release date: Oct 2012

They only asked for $80,000! My goodness, imagine how thrilling it would be to watch that total just climb and climb. Personally, I think when an indie raises nine times more than they asked for, they should be able to use at least half of the money to buy themselves a lovely house. They only promised a beta for their release date, and by criminy, they did it. Kind of. A prototype version was released in October, and the team is clearly still overjoyed and overwhelmed by the attention.

Project Giana
Black Forest Games
Raised: $186,158
Release date: Oct 2012

It was clearly ridiculous to put an October release date on a Kickstarter that didn’t finish until the end of August. Er, except it came out in October, and was really good!

SolForge
Gary Games
Raised: $429,715
Release date: Jan 2013

A perfect example of a post-funded Kickstarter. Regular, detailed, open updates on the digital trading card game, pre-order information for those who didn’t pledge, and clear information on their pre-order page that the Jan deadline isn’t going to be met. They’re now predicting “Spring”.

Mercenary Kings
Tribute Games
Raised: $116,064
Release date: May 2013

Only finishing in September, by this point you’d hope projects were at least guessing the middle of 2013. However, only two updates since isn’t great. And worse, the game isn’t even listed on their own site as existing. The last time they mentioned the game was to announce its Kickstarter, other than a quick aside that they’ve hired a programmer.

Planetary Annihilation
Uber Entertainment
Raised: $2,229,344
Release date: Jul 2013

After raising a simply epic amount of money, their decent number of open updates have mostly focused on fulfilling other tier rewards, with little info on game development. There’s nothing more on the game’s main site, either, and the pre-order page doesn’t list a release date at all. So is next July realistic? No way to know.

Broken Sword – The Serpent’s Curse
Revolution Software
Raised: $771,560
Release date: Apr 2013

Lots of open updates, including details of Uncle Charles’ “research trip” (holiday) to the Middle East. But not a lot of info on the game, or its progress. More frustrating is that Revolution’s website has no info on the game whatsoever. April seems incredibly optimistic to me.

Project Eternity
Obsidian Entertainment
Raised: $3,986,929
Release date: Apr 2014

Sound the trumpets! A sensible release date prediction! Clearly an RPG on the scale Obsidian are planning is going to take a heck of a long time. And now they’re equipped with $4m, ambitions will have raised. But most of all, their regular open updates actually detail the progress they’re making on the game. Absolutely perfect. I doubt they’ll be out before Christmas 2014 though…

So what have we learned?

Don’t put a release date you obviously aren’t going to manage. Even my left big toe knows that it takes more than six months to develop a game, and what possible harm could there be in picking a pessimistic date and coming in ahead of schedule?
Be honest about missing release dates. Don’t hide the information two-thirds through a post linked from an update – your Kickstarter is there forever, and the given release date is the thing people are going to read. When that date is in the past, and it’s not clear what the new one is, you look damned dodgy.
Make at least some of your post-campaign updates public. The people who pledged have already given you their money. It’s the attention of the people who didn’t pledge that you rather desperately need now. And hiding info from outsiders just makes your game look like it’s not for them. Sure, there’s backer exclusive content, and you’ll keep some stuff just for them. But radio silence for the rest of your audience is simply bad business.
Keep your own websites up to date! Sure, announcing a game as early as the concept stage is very abnormal in this industry, and keeping people updated about those early stages isn’t normally done. But unfortunately if you Kickstartered, you announced it, and leaving your site fallow for six months makes it look an awful lot like you took the money and ran. You didn’t! So why act like you did?
And put development progress in your updates. Sure, you don’t want to show too much too soon, but just tell us what you’re doing with the money! If your team spent the week coding a robot’s AI, tell us that. It gives a strong sense of progress, that absolutely is not achieved when all your updates are about whether you sent out some stickers yet. You exposed yourself early, and now you’re committed to that.
PS. To be abundantly clear, this is about what information can be learned from visiting the Kickstarter page for a project, and any links immediately from it. Information may be hidden away elsewhere, but that’s hardly relevant to the purpose of this piece. Indeed, as a member of the press I could have contacted developers directly to ask, but again this wouldn’t demonstrate what I consider to be possible poor handling of a post-Kickstarter project.

tl;dr version: FTL, The Banner Saga, Project Giana, Castle Story, Defense Grid 2, SolForge, Project Eternity YAY!

Everybody else BOO!

[hooby]

Interesting read, thanks for the post.

I hope they do an update on that next year!

[matthewfarmery]

yeah PR is very good, another pretty good one is DFA, as they are doing a documentary as well, which is very interesting, not sure on WL2 progress, I think the them gaining paypal backers they moved their updates to another site, but can't remember the link, so progress on that game is unknown

but agree with PA, we should have heard something about the game by now

on WL2

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...teland-2/posts

entered production, update was on the 9th of October, I must have missed that update, but not a bad update really either

[hooby]

I wonder if the Larry team is really down and demotivated.

I mean they went for Kickstarter right after Double Fine Adventure set their record, making almost 3.5 millions. That was at a point in time where no video game on Kickstarter ever had recieved even 100k, and only a small handfull games ever made 50k. Kickstarter suddenly was a viable method of funding games - even such that where not made by a single guy in his bedrom.

And it looked like the Adventure game was back on the map. They surely had hoped they'd do just as good as Double Fine, or at least get close. They surely dreamed of gainig just that same publicity and word of mouth, but they ended up being "just another adventure on kickstarter". They made their 0.5 million goal just at the end of the campaign, with no chance of getting anywhere near Double Fine.

They might feel a bit disappointed and demotivated... that could be a reason why there's no enthusiastic updates about their progress.

[Keyrock]

Originally Posted by hooby

I wonder if the Larry team is really down and demotivated.

I mean they went for Kickstarter right after Double Fine Adventure set their record, making almost 3.5 millions. That was at a point in time where no video game on Kickstarter ever had recieved even 100k, and only a small handfull games ever made 50k. Kickstarter suddenly was a viable method of funding games - even such that where not made by a single guy in his bedrom.

And it looked like the Adventure game was back on the map. They surely had hoped they'd do just as good as Double Fine, or at least get close. They surely dreamed of gainig just that same publicity and word of mouth, but they ended up being "just another adventure on kickstarter". They made their 0.5 million goal just at the end of the campaign, with no chance of getting anywhere near Double Fine.

They might feel a bit disappointed and demotivated... that could be a reason why there's no enthusiastic updates about their progress.

It's possible. I think it has more to do with whatever happened (still don't know what that is) that caused them to switch developers, which threw the whole project into disarray. They are putting out updates every 3 or 4 weeks but the progress is really slow. Hopefully this just means that the game arrives significantly later than originally promised rather than not at all.