A new year often brings reflection and during this introspection, the teams behind two previously successfully funded Kickstarter projects apparently found that they're incapable of finishing their respective games.
The first one, The Diviner promised to be a text-based single-player roleplaying game, in the vain of the original Wasteland, paired with a strong focus on story. It reached $18,658 of its $10,000 goal on December 21, 2013, but development was soon troubled with a lack of communication as updates grew few and far between. The launch, original slated for June 2014, was repeatedly delayed.
And now, in a post detailing what went wrong, they disclosed that the whole game may be not released at all. In a short survey, they're giving their backers several options on what they should do: abandon the game, release all content, wait for six months to re-evaluate the situation then, bring in volunteering backers as writers or run another crowdfunding campaign. Of course, none of them are ideal.
The second failed project is Dysfunctional Systems, a Ren'Py based visual novel series about student "mediators" travelling between different worlds. The first part of the series, Learning to Manage Chaos was already available both on their own website and on Steam prior to the Kickstarter campaign, so with no surprise they got $67,450 of their $49,000 goal. Development seemed to chuck along swimmingly, as the updates detailed their progress frequently.
Unfortunately, they kept a lot of the problems behind the curtain under wraps and have to call it quits now, completely halting production.
A personal pondering on the problems behind the failures
As can be read in their updates, both projects are plagued by similar issues: mismanagement and underestimation of the work, especially for extended scope due to stretch goals. Both teams were inexperienced in how to manage the development of a game on a non-volunteer basis. People have been overpaid or even paid while not working on the game, there were no binding contracts and insufficient schedules. Money that seemed a lot at first quickly drained. When the work before you appears insurmountable, pressure builds up and the team loses all your motivation. In the case of The Diviner, the project lead even vanished with the funds!
All that is very unfortunate and could probably have been avoided if a person with management experience had been in the team. Strict schedules need to be created and contracts drawn up so that team members are only paid for services rendered. The money needs to be properly budgeted before any of the works starts. Yes, sure, you may lose some of that friendly, volunteering atmosphere, but you are essentially working for that Kickstarter money now.
Another thing that I find very important: communication. If you have troubles, tell you backers. Give frequent updates on your progress, roadblocks you hit, systems you implemented. Even if the update is just a collection of "we're still doing X, waiting on Y, haven't yet fixed Z". Keep the people who gave their money to you in the loop of development process. While both of these projects weren't the worst offenders here, I have seen better examples as well.
Despite my harsh words, I do not bear any of the people involved in these teams any ill will. Fail early, fail often is a good maxim for learning, and I do hope they learn from their failure. And likewise, that their public failure provides an insight for other people thinking about starting a crowdfunding campaign, preventing them from making the same mistakes. In either case, I wish all of the people involved good luck in the future.
Disclaimer: I backed The Diviner at the $10 level. I don't intend to ask for a refund, but I personally would very much appreciate if maybe the game and all its resources were released under free software / free culture licenses, to give it a chance as a community-driven FLOSS project. I did not back Dysfunctional Systems, but I did buy and play the first episode on Steam.
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Looks like "many who got no idea about what your really do when you donate/support a kickstarter" are screwed ;-)
just block this anoying page not avaible... ;)
or use menu -> devoloper -> insector and delete the node.
+1 realese contends under gpl
- The people working on the project weren't competent enough
- Some of the people behind the project just took their share of the money and go away
And they all have one thing in common, problems were never mentioned before the final update (if there is a final update, sometime it's the absence of updates for a long time that give away the fact that the project is dead).
It's most of the time hard to predict if a project will fail, my advice is that unless you can be 100% sure that the project will succeed be always aware that the project can fail and so never put too much money on it.
Also when a project fail, ask for a refund if you want one because if you don't ask you have zero chance of having one.
But I am quite offended by a lack of communication. The reason I back a project is because I am hyped about the project's idea. I want to know about your progress, I want to know where the roadblocks are and how you're going about resolving them. I want to see how the sausage is made, even in detail if possible!
If I weren't that interested, I wouldn't have backed the campaign in the first place. I would have just waited it out and bought the finished thing after release.
"vain" - typo, should be "vein"?
While there is always risk in crowdfunding, it is quite annoying and disappointing to have a project flop on you when you place your trust in the people executing them.