Kickstarters: How Publishers Aren’t Complete Evil

Kickstarting is meant to be like a back scratch. Mutually benefical.

Kickstarting is meant to be like a back scratch. Mutually beneficial.

Kickstarter is a nice concept that is firmly rooted in the power of the internet to bring people together and allow them to connect, share and collaborate on information. The primary purpose of Kickstarter, really it’s only purpose, is to link people who want to make products to people who want to fund products and services.

This concept has taken perhaps the greatest meaning in the gaming world, it’s no secret that most Gamers think that the big publishers are quite happy to stick with Call of Duty, Candy Crush and Clash of Clans and to one degree or another that’s true. This focus, for good or ill, has meant many genres haven’t had a triple A treatment in many years.

One of my own favourite genres, Strategy Gaming (Both RTS and 4X) hasn’t really seen a lot of love in a long long time. With the last big budget game being a Starcraft 2 expansion, though for the purposes of this I’m going to ignore a game that exists entirely because of its competitive gaming scene.

Even more specifically, Space gaming is something that hasn’t received much love until the past few years. If you’ve ever read any of my Homeworld reviews you might have noticed that I often talk about going back to the game to re-experience it. While it’s true I still love the game, and it’s graphics are quite nice even now, that’s only half the reason why I kept going back to the game. The other half was it was one of the few games that did Space RTS right and pure space RTS is something that hasn’t been doing since.

Enter Kickstarter, and Planetary Annihilation.

Needless to say, many people such as myself and people like me, jumped on the possibility of giving new life to any game that involved space in a non-trivial way.

Planetary Annihilation: Planet Harder

This is actually a image from a battle I played in the game.

This is actually an image from a battle I played in the game. The enemy is about to have four nuclear warheads dropped on him.

Fast forward the clocks from its Kickstarter just over a year ago and we arrive at today. If you look at the game today, or like me you receive e-mails regarding the progress of the game until completion, then the game will proudly advertise that it is in Gamma (A reference to Alpha and Beta phases of software development) meaning that while being functionally playable to almost the extent of a full game, the game itself is not completed.

The game itself is not complete, missing features and tweaks that would make a game feature complete. However, it can now be bought on store shelves today, as the picture clearly demonstrates. Let that sink in for a minute.

A game, that is not finished, is being sold on store shelves today at about 2/3rds the price.

There are significant issues with this idea,

  1. Early access games are now okay in the physical world, physical copies generally imply that a game is “complete” (or will be, with a patch or three). This is a major issue if you don’t pay attention to the game box. Additionally, the specific wording of this case implies that getting the full game is a perk, rather than an expected part of the package as is traditional in an early access game.
  1. Kickstarter operates under certain rules; some of them are explicit and written into the contract. Others come from generally agreed cultural practice. This concept, that the Kickstarter’s will not be getting the items first, as shipping allows, breaches this unwritten rule which was one of the more interesting perks of Kickstarting something. As mentioned this principle is not exactly firmly rooted in any particular rule but it’s something that people have come to expect, and something that the Kickstarter Producers have done very little in dissuading as a notion. The ultimate point is, is that if Kickstarter supporters keep feeling like their getting screwed (in terms of getting their items first, or getting them at all (See the OUYA), then no-one is going to Kickstart anything.
  1. There’s also an ethical issue with the concept as well, all of the funds from Kickstarter (And the pre-order money) are meant to go towards the funding of the product Uber is meant to make. Though one expects money to go towards adverting and distribution fairly early into a game’s production. The creation of a boxed copy, prior to completion, does raise a few eye-brows. While there’s no reason to suspect foul play, one can’t help but have a sour taste in your mouth as you watch the production of a boxed copy of a game that isn’t finished, and isn’t likely to be finished for many months to go. This leads to the appearance of unethical behaviour which is, in itself, unethical and also creates the precedent for this behaviour in the future.

 

Kickstarter: This time, it’s Personal

Famous, for running out of money despite being above and beyond what they had asked for.

Famous, for running out of money despite being above and beyond what they had asked for.

Planetary Annihilation is going to get a lot of flak for this choice, some of it will be deserved and parts of it will not be. This isn’t the first time however that a Kickstarter has gotten into trouble for doing something that’s dicey. For instance the OUYA got into trouble for giving away free OUYAs at E3 when there were quite a few Kickstarter’s who hadn’t gotten a hold of their own consoles yet.

In fairness to the OUYA people their story was probably true, and ultimately they did ship all of the consoles promised but it does hurt trust when people are left waiting and yet you can buy them in the stores or can give away free consoles at E3.

Another issue that popped up is that even if a Kickstarter is successful, and wildly so, then it can still fall flat on its face and need more money. I am referring to Double Fine’s Broken Age, which reported on July 3rd that it required more money in order to finish Broken Age.

Despite being 8.25 times over what they asked in terms of pledges, the game still requires more money in order to be completed. As a consequence the game was split up into two halves, with the first half being sold immediately at the time and the second half being funded with the money from Early Access programs.

Let me put that in perspective, the game was 8.25 times over what they originally asked for, and they still managed to go over budget to the point by their own projections, they’d have to cut the game down by 75% in order for it to release on time.

Then there’s the issues regarding various other Kickstarter’s such as the now infamous Areal and other such Kickstarter’s like it.

This brings me to my title, at least the second half of it. Kickstarter has demonstrated that Publishers serve a vital purpose in the industry. I have no doubt that while Broken Age would have been much shorter than planned after the influx of cash, it would have been released 2 years ago and we’d probably be waiting for its sequel. The chances are that OUYA would not have been placed into its situation, because there wouldn’t be the underlying sense of betrayal as people other than your Kickstarter’s get consoles first.

We certainly wouldn’t be looking at Early Access games being sold in boxed copies at stores, because they wouldn’t want to spend the additional money until the game was completely finished. I love Kickstarter, I love the concept and the idea of connecting fans of genres that haven’t gotten much love to developers who could make those games. I really do love the whole shebang, and truth be told I’m only mildly annoyed that Planetary Annihilation is releasing a boxed copy.

But when you keep adding stones to a camels load, it will eventually break the camel’s back. If Kickstarter Projects continue to do little annoyances, which will lead to bigger liberties being taken, the whole concept will eventually collapse. And while I think that publishers have their place, I’d much rather have a variety of choices in how to release a game than just the one. Ultimately, I think what this underlines is that Kickstarter is not the be-all, end-all to fix the issues with the industry, and reviving old genres entirely. As much as we would like for developers to have total freedom, someone needs to be there to nail their feet to the ground and most often it falls to the publishers.

 

2 Responses to Kickstarters: How Publishers Aren’t Complete Evil

  1. Devil Mingy says:

    It’s easy to hate the big guys for what they do, but it’s sometimes easy to forget that the little guys can be just as shrewd and questionable.

    A good article.

    • Gmandam says:

      Pretty much, there’s a lot of dodgy things going on right now that threaten the overall trust for kickstarter. Every time you hear about them, it makes you slightly less inclined to spend money on it. Especially damning when you consider that there are so many potential kickstarters now that there’s really not enough money to go round.

      Ultimately, the indies can do the dodgy stuff as well as, if not better than, the mainstream publishers.

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