It’s Time for Gamers to Say No to Crowdfunding

As Kickstarter failures continue to pile up, it’s time for gamers to vote with their wallets, and say no to crowdfunding.

[randomass171]

I don't want to do that at all because Kickstarter is the reason A Hat In Time and Mighty No. 9 even exist. For every bad Kickstarter failure, there is another great success. You can't automatically assume they are all bad because of a handful of bad eggs. That's just not helping anyone. You just need to be smart about what you back and hope for the best because Kickstarter is not a pre-order service and it is more like an investment. Sometimes those investments can go belly-up but thankfully nothing I've backed has been a failure thus far. Saying no to all Kickstarters denies you the chance to help some good quality developers who can make good use of your funding IMO. Heck, Star Citizen has made more money than its creators ever even thought to ask for and it's one of the industry's most anticipated PC games. That was all through crowdfunding.

[LightDiego]

Have you heard about Lobodestroyo? Looks pretty cool and they want to release it for Wii U. It's a platformer inspired on Rare games of N64.

[Somebody]

It was the media that hyped the huge success of Kickstarter and now the media must own up and help to guide consumers on the good ones instead of trying to kill it. Just like how they hyped the potentials of Early Access and then reviled it while still making "reviews" of them.

Perhaps they should make some sort of monitoring page where approved Kickstarter projects are graded on a weekly or monthly basis so that potential backers can decided whether they want to dive in or not.

[Darkstares]

I agree. It's easy to focus on the games that didn't deliver but I'd rather pay attention to those that did make it and were great games that otherwise may not have been made without it.

[thehobbyist]

*A kickstarter fails*
"DEATH TO CROWDFUNDING!"
Seems like the author backed Yogventures and is just being butthurt.

The failure rate of video game kickstarters is very low. Less than 5% of video game kickstarters end up in failure.
So that in mind. I will be voting with my wallet to say YES to crowdfunding because this article has not convinced me otherwise.

[DigitalRaptor]

Let's abandon Kickstarting games cause of a tiny percentage?

Sorry, but NO. I've backed about 4 games, and the ones that have been funded are all on track and looking good.

[memots]

why restrict ourselves? more option the better. I am more concern over early access stuff, Some of these are beyond pre-alpha and some of these dev can pull out at anytime once they got your money.

Crowd funding is way better imho

[knifefight]

I'm sorry, but if Yu Suzuki puts up a Shenmue 3 kickstarter...
...that thing has my money.

[Seafort]

I will never say NO to crowd-funding. Some of the best games I've ever played came from crowd-funded projects.

Recently I've just got Darkwood and Divinity Original Sin. Both these games were crowd-funded and would have never been made otherwise.

I have Wasteland 2, Planetary Annihilation, Pillar of Eternity, Darkest Dungeon, The Long Dark, Night in the Woods and Kingdom Come - Deliverance as well as Star Citizen all coming in the near future.

Most of these games are PC exclusives.

The more games made with crowd-funding the better.

The publishers have got way too much control over how, what and where we play our games. The gamers and developers are in control of what games we play for once not the "suits".

[Fationably Late]

2 things jump out at me while reading this rant.

His first line says Kickstarter failures are piling up, but never offers any proof to the matter. He only ever talks about ONE project he backed.

The second this is: why would anyone back a game being managed by YouTube personalities? They clearly don't know the first thing about game development. Why would anyone back a game that is not being developed by the people running the Kickstarter project? Red flag, anyone?

That project was doomed to fail before it started.
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How did this article get approved?

[TH3BR3W]

Think of Kickstarter we like this: how many times have you played games you wish would have had more time in development?

Kickstarter is great for this as it allows most of the time for a developer to have the funding to complete the game instead of only having so much of a budget then putting out a half made game I.e. watchdogs etc. This though all depends on how much support the developer gets. A game like star citizen is getting huge amounts of cash to be able to take their time and make a game that puts 90% of the titles available to shame. It also helps give them time to be a creative developer as well. Creativity is dying in video games because of the yearly installments method being used so frequently amongst the top tier developers.

I'll never stop supporting crowd funding because albeit some of it can be coal but some are huge diamonds that never would exist without it.

[Godmars290]

Its been time to say no to Kickstarter.

I mean Star Citizen. Does the game have a release date? I've heard that people are already buying ships for this game they can't play, and then buying newer versions. That just makes no sense.

[Stapleface]

Some of those ships can be used in the combat simulator. Also, if you buy a ship package, it includes the ship, beta access, and a copy of the game when it releases. So your getting more than just a ship you can't use in the game right now if you buy one. Sure you can buy extra ships, but that's purely for if you want to fund the game further. It makes sense to the people who want this game to be everything that it can be. It's not like the people working on this have never put out a game. The detail in what is available now certainly didn't happen over night. They are putting work into this thing. $40 million worth of work? We will have to wait for the actual game to see. But at this point it's the most ambitious game out there right now, and it doesn't have a publishers deadline hanging over their head to push it out unfinished like most games. Nor do they have to ship a product that wasn't their full vision. It's a long wait. Backers know this before going in if they did their research. They also know if they reach their full vision, it's going to take a beefy pc to run the game at high settings. So upgrades will be needed for many people. The backers understand all of this. It's not for people who haven't sent in a penny to understand.

[KentBlake]

Shovel Knight, Broken Age, Shadowrun Returns and Divinity Original Sin beg to differ.

[s45gr32]

After reading the article, I still say yes to crowdfunding for it is through crowdfunding that games that publishers would not publish get made like Among the Sleep, Consortium, Wasteland 2, FTL,etc. Mainstream game developers are playing it too safe

[renerak]

Maybe in console land. But for us pc gamers kickstarter is a god sent. And divinity original sin says otherwise to your opinionistic theory.

[memots]

agreed dude.

This opens up some studio to get the funding to work on something that Publisher would never approve or want their money in.
Its a great thing