KickStarter Kickstarter Watch.

[skuphundaku]

From the makers of Mass Effect and Dragon Age!

Pledge now and receive a custom gender!

That's a stretch goal. "Stretch"...

 

[himmy]

But I love you. [A horrific take on dating sims]

The "bitches be cray" trope aside, didn't Divi-Dead do exactly that blend of horror and dating sim back in 1998?

 

[crufty]

It's not that big a deal. It's a Raspberry Pi with a sexy keyboard and a sexy packaging. They are selling it right though.

this thing is great!!

 

[LESS T_T]

The Diviner looks kinda interesting -- it's basically an illustrated text-based CYOA RPG:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1871839191/the-diviner

Its inspirations seem to be a bit all over the place though, from Wasteland and Fallout New Vegas to Diablo and Pokemon, not to mention Bioware-style romances.

I will wait before add this, by the look of it seems a scam to me or maybe is genuine retardation, let' see if proves to be something feasible.

Project lead vanished with the funds : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1871839191/the-diviner/posts/1097339

What Happened?

As mentioned above, we have run into financial difficulties. When we started the project, we put the funding into an account controlled by our project lead. It was her idea and she originally pulled the team together, so it made sense for her to control the finances. After funding completed, members of the team were partially paid, as according to our payment plans. All of us were told we would be paid a flat amount decided upon when we started working on the project. Around May, several of our writers decided that they didn't like the arrangement, and ceased working. Furthermore, at this time, our project lead became busy and was no longer able to directly contribute to the project. We were still able to contact her, but she could not provide content or any direct management. While I had been coordinating most of the work to this point, it was fully placed on shoulders at the beginning of summer. However, I did not have access to the funding.

When August came around, I requested that our team get paid their second share (again, as planned) and the project leader complied. We also asked for the work from all of our writers, some of whom had been on the project since the beginning and others we picked up in May as we lost others. One of the writers who had been giving us positive status reports did not provide any work for the entirety of the summer, which set us drastically behind.

Since that time, (as has been mentioned in previous updates) the game has been worked on by myself, Mary Sanche (Art) and Stefan Terry (Programming). I have tried to contact the old project leader, who still has access to the funds to be able to produce the physical rewards we offered as well as to pay other costs. After working with a contracted composer for several months, I was not able to get the old project leader to pay her, so I had to pay her out of pocket. While I was happy to do so, and her work was excellent, I can not personally finance the project.

That leads us to today. Not all of the money has been spent, but it is not accessible by anybody still active on the project. We want to complete The Diviner - we still get excited when we put something new into the dropbox to share with each other, but it's coming to the point where it is harder and harder for us to be able to do so.

What Next?

We have a couple options available to us. As mentioned in an earlier paragraph, we have a short survey for you. When we gather the responses, we'll take into account the popularity of each decision as well as the arguments behind them when we make our decision. It will not necessarily reflect the highest voted answer, but we will take every response into account.

One of the options listed is calling the project incomplete. If we did that, we would simply close our doors, apologize, and leave it there. It is possible that we (or somebody else) could pick it up at a later date, but unlikely.

Option two is to call The Diviner incomplete but release all content in a downloadable bundle. It would take several days for us to put everything together into a organized format for you, but not likely more than a week. It would include all completed art, music and writing as well as the rough documentation including outlines, notes, sketches and source code the game could run on.

We can also put the project on hold and re-evaluate in six months. We are currently heavily taxed elsewhere in our lives, but we may have more time later. However, it is also possible that in six months we determine that continuing the project is simply not feasible and end it then.

If there was the interest, we could release Act One. Act one is very short, and is more akin to a tutorial, and doesn't really offer the player the sort of freedom and choices we wanted to offer. You'd be introduced to the world and the story, but you wouldn't get to play a role in it - you'd just ride by.

We can also release Act One and all content. This would better allow you to experience the world. In the case of both this option and the previous, it could still take us a few months to polish the content to the point where we are able to happily release it. Most of the initial writing is done, but there are still many rough edges to smooth out.

If we don't want to end the project, we have two other options. The biggest blocker is currently the writing, so we could ask the backers for help writing. We know that many of you are excited about the project and would be willing to help. The reason we haven't done this before is because of the difficulty of integrating a new member into the world. There is a lot of information in poorly organized documents as well as content from year-old skype conversation and discussion that had no recording. Furthermore, there is a massive amount of writing to be done, and may be more than our volunteers are willing or able to handle. I don't intend to scare you off from this option, but I want to make clear the scope of what needs to be done.

Finally, we could run another funding campaign. We like this option the least, as we don't want to take more money from you. We would take the time to step back, reorganize what we have, and come back with a new writing team and a more streamlined schedule. Of course, we would still face the risks of writers leaving the project, and the project may falter again.

Closing Thoughts

The Diviner has given me more sleepless nights than anything else. A friend recently told me that The Diviner had been plagued by bad luck and that ending the project would be understandable. My gut reaction to that was that we would have had better luck if I was better. I want to be able to provide what I promised to you, even though I don't have the tools to do so at my disposal. I want to be able to offer reliability and some way to reimburse all of you if the game doesn't release. I know some of you personally and others I've talked with since the project began. As always, if you have any comments or questions feel free to respond below (or in the survey). If you'd like to make sure I respond, please email me personally at Jonah.Kellman@gmail.com.

I can not stress enough how much your support and feedback means to me (even the negative comments). So, thank you.

 

[Abu Antar]

Another one: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dischan/dysfunctional-systems

here are two parts to this post. The important stuff and the rest.

The Important Stuff

We are halting full-time development on the Dysfunctional Systems series. We will be offering partial refunds to backers who pledged over $5 and who ask for a refund. Backers in the $5 tier received the product they paid for, so they will not be refunded. If you would like a refund, let us know via Kickstarter. Please be considerate when asking for a refund as most of the money is gone so I will be using my personal funds to make up the difference. Please note that refunds may take some time to arrive, first of all because bulk refunds are difficult on Kickstarter, and secondly because once our current funds run out I will only be able to refund backers as I earn the money to do so.

The Rest

There's a lot to say about this decision, but the short version is just that we made too many mistakes. I'll write a post later analyzing these mistakes, but I don't think I should get into them in this post. For now I'll just answer some of the obvious questions that are sure to be on your mind.

Isn't episode 0 basically finished? Is that going to be released?

Yes, episode 0 is basically finished. It's part of the reason for this decision. To put it simply: it's average. It's not good and it's not bad: it's average. Playing through it makes me feel like releasing the game would only disappoint the people who expect more from us. Therefore, we will not be releasing it.

What's going to happen now?

We're not sure. We may still work on Dysfunctional Systems when we can, but we will definitely not be working on it full time. It's slightly more likely that we'll clean up the prologue to the point where it could be released, but we can't guarantee anything.

We're most likely going to start working on small projects on a volunteer basis. Things we can finish without relying on the support of any third party or requiring months of development time.

I just bought episode 1, can I get a refund?

It's unfortunate, but no. We cannot afford to give refunds to the people who bought episode 1. We have a large enough debt to pay off already.

I'm angry and I want to send you hate mail. Can I?

You can. Please note however that one or more real human beings will read your message and feel like crap.

In closing, we're sorry.

I don't mind failure. I personally believe that if you aren't doing something with a chance of failure then you're not doing anything worth doing. However, in this case what bothers me is that we let so many people who believed in us down. I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies to all of you on behalf of myself, Dischan, and the team.

Thank you for your understanding, and we're sorry we couldn't fulfill our obligations to you.

That's why I rarely support projects from people I know nothing about. The Banner Saga and Shadowrun Returns were the biggest "risks" I took. HBS showed me that they could improve upon SRR with SRDF. That's why they will get my money for their next project.

 

[Executr]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fugitivegames/into-the-stars

A single player open-world journey through a distant solar system. Scavenge resources, manage your ship and lead your crew in combat.

By former DICE leads. Game uses Unreal Engine 4.

 

[LESS T_T]

2014 Kickstarter Year in Review slides: https://www.kickstarter.com/year/2014
Data: https://www.kickstarter.com/year/2014/data

In 2014, 22,252 projects were successfully funded on Kickstarter. That’s more creative projects than ever before.

Nine categories had over 1,000 successfully funded projects, with Music, Film, and Publishing topping the charts. Note that Crafts and Journalism were added in June.

$529 million was pledged to Kickstarter projects last year. That's more than $1,000 a minute.

3.3 million people from nearly every country on the planet backed a project last year.

Last year, 2,202,171 people backed a project for the first time.

773,824 people backed more than one project,

71,478 people backed more than 10 projects,

and 1,125 people backed more than 100 projects.

Wednesday was the most popular day for pledges.

Early afternoon was one of the most popular times to pledge.

The hour with the most money pledged in 2014?

March 12, 2014 11 AM-12 PM EST, when backers pledged almost $400,000 in one hour. That's $110 a second. This was in the same 24 hours that Neil Young launched his Pono project.

Here are the year's most-backed projects.

Visit the link if you want to see the list of projects and charts.

 

[JarlFrank]

So, kickstarter fatigue, eh guys?

 

[skuphundaku]

So, kickstarter fatigue, eh guys?

Fatigue? Motherfucking exhaustion!

 

[tuluse]

2013 was 480 million raised for comparison.

 

[LESS T_T]

For fun, I ranked countries by average amount. (Excluded countries that backers are less than 5,000.)

Asians.

(For reference, China is excluded for having 4,766 backers but its average is 330.)

 

[Abu Antar]

For fun, I ranked countries by average amount. (Excluded countries that backers are less than 5,000.)

Asians.

(For reference, China excluded for having 4,766 backers but the average is 330.)

I'm surprised to see mexico up there. I'm not trying to be racist.

 

[LESS T_T]

I got asked about the Kickstarter official numbers for games ($89m in 2014). That concurs with my Oct. projections.

So, yes, 2014 was a good year for games. But 2013 was better, and tabletop games stayed at same level and video games declined in $ pledged

https://twitter.com/icotom/status/552570839816613888
https://twitter.com/icotom/status/552571157811970048

Well, at least we've got some payoffs from 2012 craze, and some promising campaigns are waiting in 2015.

 

[Astral Rag]

Glorious Leader has been canceled:

"As many of you know, over the holidays we were victims of a hack inspired by the attack on Sony. The hackers destroyed data pertaining to Glorious Leader! and other projects we had in development and locked us out of our own computers and wesbite. The timing couldn't have been worse as it hampered our ability to attend to the Kickstarter project. We realize that we also made mistakes in our pledge levels and rewards. It is now evident that our funding goals will not be met, so we are cancelling our Kickstarter campaign.

This is not the first time we have been targeted because of Glorious Leader! Between the hacking and other threats, we think it is time to reevaluate our commitment to Glorious Leader! We thank our fans and supporters, and we are sorry to let you down."

 

[himmy]

>inb4 Kickstarting my new game idea: "Kim Jong-Un vs Muhammad" as a way to see if I get hacked or shot first.

 

[Essegi]

Here it is:
Shadowrun: Hong Kong

 

[Irenaeus]

Wow, I hadn't seen kicktraq since early 2013.

 

[Infinitron]

Ultima Codex Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/ultimacodex

 

[Destroid]

Dang, people really liked Shadowrun it seems.

 

[:Flash:]

Moonman, a procedurally-generated adventure. Although I think that's a misnomer, I still like how it looks. The guy has been working on it alone full-time for two years.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eigenbom/moonman

 

[Jaesun]

Combat, in an adventure game?

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Not only are they not extinct, they're sometimes used for food. Bison meat is harder to find than that of cows, pigs, turkeys and chickens, but you can occasionally find it in grocery stores and restaurants. I've had it before, it's like beef but tangier.

Actually the best Burger I ever had was a Bison Burger in Savannah, GA last February.
Didn't even know such a thing existed before.

 

[Night Goat]

Do you remember where you got it?

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

It was at The Crystal Beer Parlor.
Very much recommended!

 

[Night Goat]

Damn. My parents used to take me there when I was a kid, but I haven't been in many years. Next time I'm with people who are trying to decide where to eat, I'll bring it up.