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KickStarter Fig - a new equity-based crowdfunding platform - shut down, RIP

Mustawd

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“What I’m trying to figure out is, how could we make something that is more like a Skyrim for PC – forget console for now – with the engine we made in Unity for Eternity? Where we are with our conversation, quest, data editors, and all of that. If we were careful about scope and let Chris Avellone go wild with creating a new world, more of an open world, what could we do?”

Obsidian Skyrim 2 officially will never be as good as it could have been.
 
Self-Ejected

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At the current rate, they'll be funded in eight thousand days. But there'll probably still be a high demand for Diablo clones then.
 

Mustawd

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This is starting to look like a really dumb idea. I just don't see there being enough people willing to back at $1,000+ to handle a 500k funding goal for a fucking F2P Diablo clone. FFS D:OS2 only raised ~40k with tiers of $1,000 or more. For something this unproven? Come back when Obsidian or inXile figstart something.
 

Fairfax

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They gained another $25 in the last 18 hours. Let's hope somebody makes a figtraq site before these amounts become too large to handle.
:lol:

This is starting to look like a really dumb idea. I just don't see there being enough people willing to back at $1,000+ to handle a 500k funding goal for a fucking F2P Diablo clone. FFS D:OS2 only raised ~40k with tiers of $1,000 or more. For something this unproven? Come back when Obsidian or inXile figstart something.
The way I see it, the idea behind Fig was to have investors as an extra, something to get them closer to the $6-10 million range, not the main source of funding. Double Fine, InXile and Obsidian all ran out of money and had to spend some of their own to finish development. In WL2's case, they had to double the game's $3 million budget, so it makes sense that they tried to find a way to bring the usual crowdfunding campaign and money from investors together, as a best of both worlds thing, but it's clearly not as easy as they thought.

Also, I don't think their games were sucessful enough to make it an attractive investment. Maybe if development didn't take as long as it did, but I doubt it's more profitable than the average low-risk investment after 2.5-3 years, and this is a high risk one.

I wouldn't call it a dumb idea, but their approach has been terrible so far. The first Fig campaign was as forgettable as they come, this one is a crowdfunded F2P Diablo clone. Backers are paying for the ability to pay more. I also can't see why they couldn't stick to Kickstarter and still make the same kind of investment available without moving the crowdfunding entirely.
 

Mustawd

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The way I see it, the idea behind Fig was to have investors as an extra, something to get them closer to the $6-10 million range, not the main source of funding.


What do you mean? Investors are obviously the prime target here. How are you reading that they're not? I mean the only reason they set this up in the first place was to take advantage of the crowdfunding rules from the JOBS act which excludes them from registering as a public company. Sure they probably have seed money from VC, Angel Investors, and their own money, but it's quite obvious this is setup as a high tier crowdfunding campaign.

Double Fine, InXile and Obsidian all ran out of money and had to spend some of their own to finish development. In WL2's case, they had to double the game's $3 million budget, so it makes sense that they tried to find a way to bring the usual crowdfunding campaign and money from investors together, as a best of both worlds thing, but it's clearly not as easy as they thought.

This might be a better idea than what they're actually doing. I.e. using investors to bridge a gap in kickstarter funding. Like I already mentioned though, they're treating this thing like a regular kickstarter campaign for people with lots of disposable income and who want to get something back for their money. Which is really a shit idea. I've seen plenty of PE fund investor pitchbooks in my career so far, and the main driving force behind all of them is a clear and rational method to make money. All Fig (and kickstarter really) does is try to build hype. Although you can argue Fig is essentially a VC project, and thus in its infancy, that till doesn't really lend itself to a small donation type of setup.

Also, I don't think their games were sucessful enough to make it an attractive investment. Maybe if development didn't take as long as it did, but I doubt it's more profitable than the average low-risk investment after 2.5-3 years, and this is a high risk one.

Totally agree. Haven't crunched the numbers, but it'd be interesting to know what the risk adjusted return is of the cash flow streams they've been quoting to investors.

I wouldn't call it a dumb idea, but their approach has been terrible so far. The first Fig campaign was as forgettable as they come, this one is a crowdfunded F2P Diablo clone. Backers are paying for the ability to pay more. I also can't see why they couldn't stick to Kickstarter and still make the same kind of investment available without moving the crowdfunding entirely.

Maybe a corporate lawyer can chime in, but I still don't see how a basic royalty program for a backer is any different that what fig does. Except in this case you can give it to any level backer and you're not limited to qualified investors according to the SEC. Yeah, at the lower levels you basically are getting peanuts. But the concept would attract people away from kickstarter, makes it much easier to sign up, and can do the same thing in a much more flexible way than how Fig is currently setup.
 

AwesomeButton

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Fig looks pathetic right now, but what if these two campaigns were just the "soft opening", to test the system, purely in technical terms, as well as build up some publicity?

What if another project, with much stronger expectations for profits, started a campaign there?

A project in a sub-genre of games which has already proven itself capable of turning profit. Like, for example, the second iteration of a very well-received game?

"Lo and behold, the Spiritual Successor of Baldur's Gate II"? My bet is Obsidian will attempt that.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Fig looks pathetic right now, but what if these two campaigns were just the "soft opening", to test the system, purely in technical terms, as well as build up some publicity?


That's what it looks like they're doing. It just doesn't look good when your second project is $400k underfunded. They might have overreached with their second campaign. A smaller project of $100k would have been well within their reach.
 

Starwars

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Yeah, these projects just look weird. Noone gives a shit.

If you want to start small, then that's fine. But start small and make sure you got your shit together. Either that, or premiere it with some kind mindblowing game with a team that will make everyone cream their pants right away.

Right now it's just pathetic.
 

DeepOcean

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I approve their caution, if they made a high profile F2P grindy action RPG, someone could steal the idea from them. I mean, Tim Schaffer, Brian Fargo and Feargus, look to those guys business history, how can someone not trust them?
 

Telengard

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There is such a thing as philanthropic investment, particularly in the arts and non-profits. Howsoever, getting those kinds of investors lined up and paying what they promised is a hugely harder task than it even sounds. Unless you're hot, that is (and no, I'm not kidding).

I could easily see this group being swayed by people talking about wanting to invest, but having nowhere to do it. That is, to donate to the creative side of computer games, not the big-budget, pre-digested, teenage boy visions of the AAA monsters.
 

Infinitron

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Here are the words of a random SA poster: http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=863#post451756130

Here's the realtalk, no-bullshit, unjokey stone-cold reality of fig: It's not for you. The projects are so few and far between, so heavily curated, and so packaged that there's no real "kickstarter magic" to any of it.

The game has 75 total backers with 82k invested. And all that's from outside investments- I did some envelope math and totalled up the reward tiers claimed, and of the 82, 681 invested 2671 of that has come from traditional crowdfunding. The other 80k is, I assume, entirely from outside investors looking for a cut of the actual profits.

Like, to me, the biggest "appeal" of kickstarter is to visit the site and stumble across some appealing project from a superstar dev, no-name indie, or even a one-man team and to watch it succeed, watch it grow, to feel a part of something "bigger". To help that along, whether that be via visibility or outright monetary investment. I've lost a lot of faith in crowdfunding, especially recently when it feels like it's lost that sort of independent, community-focused edge into yet another monetization platform. But stuff like Undertale has been able to recapture the magic and promise that crowdfunding at its most idealized had (on top of being by-far the best kickstarter success story to date in terms of objective quality).

Fig has none of that. They're not interested in fostering a community, they're not interested in the appeal of ks' "stumbling" and the idea of naturalized growth in a product or building interest organically. Kickstarters form their own narratives organically- think of smashing day-one successes or the slow build to a last-day miracle, or the crushing story of the project that just barely doesn't make its goal. All those things form stories, things that generate interest in them. Fig can't do that because every Fig project has clearly been calculated out weeks and even months beforehand before it's ever presented. It showcases one project and that's it - they are very simply selling you a product.

There's no sense of creativity or that sort of grungy, make-it-up-as-you-go-along organic atmosphere that certain kickstarters have had, because every fig project is perfectly clean and endlessly packaged and repackaged, every word presented and edited to be as neat and appealing as possible. There's never gonna be an "awful Fig thread" because every fig project is a foregone conclusion- they don't care about the public at large's money, they're there for private, profit-sharing investment. If some dudes in the public kick in a couple of grand, well, the money's still green, but that's not the focus.

I doubt that any fig project will ever fail, because the secret is they're guaranteed successes before they even launch- fig more than likely already secured exactly enough funding before the project ever launches for it to work regardless of whatever the public does. Fig is an investment firm with a crowdfunding model attached, just to pick up some extra cash or (more likely) to increase press visibility. And that's, you know, fine - like genuinely, it's a fine thing for them to do - but makes me supremely disinterested in ever backing any project they announce. They'll succeed with or without my money.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Fig is an investment firm with a crowdfunding model attached, just to pick up some extra cash or (more likely) to increase press visibility.

They've said this from day one. He's right, but it's hardly a groundbreaking.
 

Infinitron

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Funny:

Welcome to the world of investing in startups and new properties. The only difference here is that it's out in the open instead of being propositioned behind closed doors and it's being mashed-up with a modern crowdfunding model.

Also the two games that have been shown so far are the opposite of shady when it comes to tech investing. That world is a nightmare.

Nah, if this was like a normal tech startup, it would go like this:

The devs would say they aren't using any monetization model, in order to "focus on the product", and that they'll worry about revenue once they've built their userbase. They would then be showered in millions of dollars of venture funding, while paying their employees entirely in stock options. After spending a year bleeding money, they would run another fig campaign, citing the success of their previous campaign, and in insisting that their game's net worth is now over one billion dollars. They make twice as much in the second campaign, just enough to put them in the black, and are bought out by EA, remaining in development hell forever. The CEO immediately posts a new pitch on fig.

During this time a game may or may not be made.
 
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My take on it is basically they want to get published like normal, but still get some kickstarter money, but not have the incredible embarassment of kickstarting their already publisher-approved ideas only take in 100k or less of money from actual fans.

Unfortunately for them I don't think people are quite so dumb.
 

Roguey

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Didn't Feargus Urquhart say Obsidian would only be using Fig from now on? Guess the novelty of owning their own thing wore off.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Didn't Feargus Urquhart say Obsidian would only be using Fig from now on?

Yeah, I remember he said that in one of the earlier interviews. Didn't last long though. The video interview with Sawyer at Gamescon showed him basically confirming they were going to Kickstart their next game.
 

Infinitron

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Yeah, I remember he said that in one of the earlier interviews. Didn't last long though. The video interview with Sawyer at Gamescon showed him basically confirming they were going to Kickstart their next game.

I'm not sure if that's true. Could be that Adam didn't want to confuse people who think Kickstarter == crowfunding so he just called it a "Kickstarter".
 

StaticSpine

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The most logical thing for them to do was starting this whole platform along with some big project from inXile or Obsidian like W3 or PoE2. But instead they started with some questionable and uninteresting products.
 

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