Kickstarter game project raises $10k, made using a DIY Platformer tutorial.
somethingawful.comWhat is the point of this article? The guy said he'd make a video game, and people pledged money. He's pretty upfront about what he's making on the Kickstarter page. The article author is upset because the fellow is using a tutorial? Who the hell cares? So long as the supporters get their "sidescrolling platformer action/adventure game, reminiscent of console classics like Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog", like he promised them, what's it your business anyway? They paid for a game, and he's developing a game. What's the problem?
I think the problem is something like this.
Vast majority of the people, slog till the calcium in their bones disappear to learn the craft of software. HN'ers are full of Clojure learning, Python beauty appreciating programmers who would happily burn a summer down practicing exercises in Structure and Interpretation of computer programs. They would never hire anybody who doesn't know how to sort a million integers in a million different ways.
And yet after they learning how to do 22nd century algebra using haskell and learning how to bend the skies with macros some one here comes along reads a tutorial and builds an app to sell for a decent amount. This upsets their whole belief systems and makes their expertise seem irrelevant to winning the game.
This is called 'Holier than thou' attitude.
Anybody who doesn't go through the regime of K&R C -> Algorithm book -> DS Book -> Haskell -> Lisp is considered shit.
He is not supposed to win, succeed or do any thing big with software.
This happens all the time. Anybody who doesn't have a CS degree and can't handle the math/Algo quizzes is not supposed to win ever. And if he does, he is considered undeserving, lucky or just evil.
I was tasked with porting Platypus to the Mac, which was probably the most nightmarish code base I've ever seen. The entire code base consisted of hundreds of arrays, and three or four, twenty thousand line long functions. But the game was brilliant.
Anthony Flack, the creator, made a fantastic game. Absolutely brilliant.
I'm not saying you need technical chops to know how to make a game. I'm saying you need to make games to know how to make games! There's not a game developer alive that didn't play around extensively before finishing their first project.
Using a tutorial is a smoking gun that the author has not had this experience. It's literally like someone learning scales on the guitar, trying to write a song.
Except he's taking money on the preorders to that song.
He's not successful because of what he's done, he's successful because of the promises he's made.
If you don't see the problem there, I just don't know what to say.
I got your point.
Lets say you develop a hobby for making furniture. You start developing Tables. You read a DIY book and start making stuff. In the meanwhile, you make mistakes, you don't put as many nails where there are necessary. You put more gum than what is necessary. Your finished product is definitely a table, but you've made is so badly it could hardly last for a couple of years.
A carpenter down the street comes down to you shop and gives a detailed critique of what he thinks is wrong with your table.
Now you both go and try to sell your story, You have a table and he just has a critique. The user comes and sees your table and listens to his critique. He decides something that exists is better that just talk. Remember the user is seeing the table only, he didn't see you making it. He decides to go with your table despite the carpenters critique.
He orders 50 more tables from you to be made based on what you showed it to him.
Now the professional carpenter can argue about how bad and how many technical deficiencies exist in your tables. But you know what, the user won't even understand that language.
Because, Shipping is a feature. And the one's who ship almost always win. Sometimes even if they ship crap. That is what is happening here.
Look, if the guy wasn't taking money for it, I'd be completely supportive. Trying stuff, MVP, and all that. Great angle for a game, great way to get started. Clearly a smart go getter.
But to use your analogy, the man has ordered 50 tables, not knowing they're likely to fall apart. The seller never revealed his lack of experience. At the end of it, we're just going to say caveat emptor?
That just doesn't sit well with me.
And I definitely agree with you that shipping stuff is #1, but I'm not sitting around idly by criticizing the work of makers. Every dollar I've made in the last 8 years has been from games, and only 2% of it or so from contract work. My own attempt at building a community around preorders has been more successful:
http://www.underthegarden.com/
And I'd made 12 commercial games, some that set me up financially for years, before I felt comfortable being in a position to take peoples money before they've played the product.
Well actually I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just trying to show you how the world is. We have to learn to live with this thing. The way programming has evolved in the years is scary to say at the least. And we may see more and more of this kind of stuff.
This is almost the same fury we saw when YC announced they would fund Ideas. Although they are not the same, but YC really was ready to fund stuff which wasn't really into material existence. While many who had working stuff might not have got funded, many of them might have had good enough experience and skill building stuff. At the same time there might have been ideas from non tech founders.
Sounds strange ain't it? These days you can do a lot of things by just knowing how to discover things and be a little productive.
No wonder yesterday there was thread on software engineers hitting dead ends at 40. There is simply too much competition and tools are reducing the barrier to entry opening a flood gate of people looking to make money here.
I think another problem might be how he claims "the game is designed, programmed, conceived, and produced by me," and then it is revealed that he is doing some pretty shady things with reusing sprites. Plus since he is following a tutorial to make it is likely going to end up with code that is pretty similar to the tutorials code, and that might have interesting implications depending on what the tutorials author said could be done with the code from it.
But this is all hearsay, this might all just be place-holder graphics, he might just be using the tutorial to learn quickly and then remake everything from scratch. We don't know yet. However, if it is place-holder graphics, why remake Waluigi at all instead of just using him completely for testing...
Except he hasn't shipped anything yet.
Two reasons:
1) If the guy's following a tutorial, the game will suck. I made games for years before I made one that didn't suck enough that people paid money for it, and even then, it sucked.
It's equivilant to hiring a guy to make a non trivial Rails app, and he goes out and buys a copy of Ruby for Dummies.
2) This is a great indication that Kickstarter game funding is a bubble right now, and there's going to be a crash. All the projects that people are funding take months or years to make, so the funders don't get disappointed right away. But all of the fluff projects being funded right now that won't go anywhere will come back to bite Kickstarter.
Look, if the guy was upfront that he was learning game development, no problem.
But if he can code, it's equivilant to someone following a Fruity Loops tutorial, saying they're going to make you a song. If he's creative and talented, maybe he's got a chance, after a learning curve.
If he can't, it's like someone learning to play chords on a guitar promising the same. No chance.
People who need to decide whether something is good or bad are his users.
And users don't open up code bases and do code review before buying something.
Just like how you and I, don't tear down washing machines to just check the wiring inside it.
I completely disagree.
You're talking as if the game is already done, it's fun, but is held together with duct tape. I'm questioning whether the game will ever come out at all.
He's painting a picture about what the game will be like; his users aren't savvy enough to know whether he's going to be able to make it a reality.
If something stands out as a red flag, bringing into question whether he's got the ability to produce the project he is taking money for, it's absolutely appropriate to point it out.
I've been in the indie development scene ten years; projects like this are a dime a dozen, and a single digit percentage of them ever get finished.
> I'm questioning whether the game will ever come out at all.
Then why have you not said that anywhere? All you've done is complain about the perceived quality of the result as predicted by you.
I did, several times in the grandparent post:
> But all of the fluff projects being funded right now that won't go anywhere will come back to bite Kickstarter. > But if he can code, it's equivilant [sic] to someone following a Fruity Loops tutorial, saying they're going to make you a song. If he's creative and talented, maybe he's got a chance, after a learning curve. > If he can't, it's like someone learning to play chords on a guitar promising the same. No chance.
The other posts outside of this were made later, and were intended to address a slightly different point. My position could be wrong, but I don't believe I've been inconsistent :)
All the stolen artwork perhaps?
I recognise the origin of all those sprites.
Pick on it because its a poor game, not because of how it is written. It shouldn't matter to the backers if the guy was learning to program (how many experienced programmers would be happy with $10k-expenses for 2 months work?), or what tools he used to get the job done, as long as it does what it says on the proverbial tin.
Actually, don't even pick on it because it's a poor game (and granted, it looks like one whopper of a poor game and I'm as shocked as anyone that this got funded). The magic of crowd funding is that decisions as to quality belong to the backers. They felt it was worthwhile, it's their money, so it's none of our business.
If it's fraud, then sure: Kickstarter would be on the hook for abetting it. If he promised something he didn't deliver, there's a problem. But this doesn't qualify. It's just a dud project. Projects fail regularly, that's why they can't easily raise money from investors.
>If it's fraud, then sure: Kickstarter would be on the hook for abetting it.
I'm not even sure that's the case, is it? They provide a platform, and take a cut, but I'd be a little surprised if that's enough to make them legally liable.
Surely they'd have some level of liability. Safe harbor rules from laws like the DCMA certainly wouldn't cover deliberate fraud. There would be enough to file a case, anyway. And if it was filed and not tossed out, they'd probably settle rather than risk all the bad press.
I don't know if they'd be liable, but they could take action that would reduce the possibility of this kind of thing happening.
One very helpful tool would be setting a community expectation of weekly updates from funding time to shipping time. They can't really enforce a rule like that since they have no leverage over the project people once the money is released, but they can certainly set the expectation that frequent updates are the rule, not the exception.
There are some cases where frequent updates may not make sense, but for the vast majority of projects, there's got to be some sort of news to share on a weekly basis. It's surely not too much to ask of project people that they spend a few minutes every week updating those who made their project possible.
If there's literally not any news to share, then maybe that project is in trouble, and that too would be communicated if the standard was for weekly updates and the project wasn't following that guideline.
Setting a standard along those lines is certainly better than the current state of affairs.
Is it a poor game?
Does this author not understand how prototyping games works?
You'd never spend the time drawing the assets and then code up the platformer... first you just grab a bunch of temporary placeholder art, so that you can work on the actual gameplay. This is incredibly common in any project like this.
This particular game might well end up being completely terrible, but the whole post shows a crazy misunderstanding of game development.
I really feel this is getting blown out of proportion. The game wasn't even built yet and all of the assumptions the article makes are based on what they found in open directories on the server.
It might actually be worth blowing this out of proportion to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. I don't really want to support "I am going to paint second Mona Lisa" and end up supporting guy's quest for learning how to squeeze paint from a tube. This is not only misleading, but also damages KicStarter's reputation in general.
I think the outrage should come after people actually see the finished product and _not_ just from some random files that someone pulled off a public server. The project isn't even fully funded.
Also, the outrage should be directed at Kickstarter and _not_ the person doing the project. Directing the outrage to Kickstarter will encourage them to do better vetting. Directing it to the person doing the project will only make other people question if they should do a project.
Don't forget, he'll also spend $3000 to produce and send all the t-shirts and posters promised to the backers.
Has he produced and sent t-shirts before?
At first I thought that failed Kickstarters were a small minority of projects, but I've come to think that failed projects (or at least greatly delayed) are the norm, rather than the exception. Of 4 projects I've funded 1 was delivered as promised and on time, 1 is currently on pace to be delivered only slightly late (~1 month), one is 5 months late and still being designed, and one is mostly content complete but over a year late for physical delivery. People really, really don't seem to realize what they're getting themselves into with these, and drastically underestimate time to completion.
That's why it's important to know that you're founding an idea, not buying a pre-release product.
does Kickstarter post stats on these kind of things? Like what percentage of funded projects are delivered?
if not, why not?
probably because its not beneficial for them to publish these stats, but I would love to see these statistics.
Actually, found the blog article: it's 46% in 2011 (43% in 2010), but whatever: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/2011-the-stats
That's actually just the percentage of projects that hit their funding goal. There is no indication of what percentage delivered.
I suspect someone could figure this out. To my knowledge, all funded projects still have accessible pages. You could go through them all and see which have updates that indicate shipping...
Ahh, I believe you're correct. I optimistically read those stats...
they have a blog posting where they state something like 40% of all funded projects were delivered in 2011.
This is the second article I have seen in similar form criticizing a funded project for being simple/theoretically easy to make or relying on prefab tech.
Every person on KickStarter has a chance to vet projects and decide for themselves. Most of these people are not professionals promising a slick top of the line product. They are just people who want to make something. Sometimes its a team of well qualified professionals but a lot of the times it is people who just have the desire to do it. Why are people bashing them? Sure, the guy didn't throw it out there that he was not experienced but most people wouldn't. He will probably deliver what he promised.
In my early days, I did more than a few tutorials to complete clients objectives.I refined it and refined it before they ever saw it.But at the end of the day, I learned it and made it my own. I think tech-savvy people tend to judge here but a lot of these backers have no clue how to even begin thinking about how to make a game. To them, it may not matter.
Besides who knows, I bet the backers are just aching for a Ron Paul platformer and thats all they heard when they watched the video.
http://nibruki.com/games/rp2012/core/screens/TitleScreen.js now is forbidden!
I'd be interesting if you could actually invest in Kickstarter projects and not just give away money.
I thought so, at first, but I don't believe that anymore.
I think it's plausable that small projects with shareholders who want a profit may actually be less stable than projects by independent groups who have funding without oversight.
I'm happy to give money to projects I believe in. I spend a lot of money on Kickstarter, and I'm happy to see projects succeed. Yeah, I hope I get a cool wristwatch out of that one project, but mostly it's about living vicerally through the experience of artists and designers and engineers being given the opportunity to really realize their own vision. That's worth a lot to me, and I'm willing to spend money on it, with no guarantee that I'll get mailed a toy at the end.
Have these types of things happened on Kickstarter before (or has anyone attempted to just completely game the system?) What types of recourse do investors have? Any?
They are not investing, they are buying.
There is no guarantee that any kickstarter project will ever get finished.
It's up to the backers to decide if they think the project owner is capable of finishing the project.
it isn't investing /or/ buying; you're literally just giving money
> Have these types of things happened on Kickstarter before
What exactly do you mean "these types of things"? People using free tools to create something other people find valuable?
Here's some snake oil for $270,000:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1047510073/remee-the-rem...
Kickstarter isn't particularly thorough about vetting technical projects.
Kickstarter doesn't vet projects at all:
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project#Wh...
They also don't do any checking to validate that the person behind a project is who they claim to be:
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project#Ho...
Their entire fraud prevention program can be summed up in two words: caveat emptor.
There are a lot of lucid dreaming devices, and people report varying degrees of success with them, but I've never heard that any of them are completely worthless. Is there any particular reason why Remee wouldn't work?
> Is there any particular reason why Remee wouldn't work?
There is no reason it wouldn't work in the same way that there is no reason that there couldn't be a giant teacup orbiting the Earth.
The point is-there are lucid dreaming devices that work, at least partially. Remee seems to be based on similar principles. In theory Remee is an improvement on those devices, addressing a lot of the common complains about existing lucid dreaming technology. But unless I'm missing something (which is why I asked) it seems really odd to claim that an invention that's supposedly an improvement on existing, (partially) functional devices is "snake oil."
So let me rephrase my question. Given that there are existing, functional devices, based on a similar mechanism, and Remee seems to be an improvement on those devices, why exactly does it qualify as snake oil? Which of my assumptions is wrong?
Lucid dreaming is possible, but not everyone can do it. Of the times I have personally done it, it has been awesome! I achieved it with the reality check method, but I think a device would make it a lot easier..
There is an interesting new iOs app called Dream:on (it's free too) that uses the accelerometer to determine when you are in likely in a REM state, and then it plays audio cues to help get you into a lucid state, instead of flashing lights like the remee.
I haven't had the bed to myself to try it out yet - my wife is a very light sleeper - but in theory both of these devices could work, but don't expect it to happen immediately or every night.. and you may need to incorporate a reality check method too, the device cue would just make it easier to do.
Ok so you're a realist, fine. But I'm curious, do you not think lucid dreaming is real? Or do you just not think it can be triggered with flashing lights?
I've had many lucid dreams, non of them involved flashing lights in my face. More importantly of all the methods to induce lucid dreams, flashing lights in your eyes isn't among the practices normally used in scientific studies. If it were actually reliably effective, it is highly likely it would be used in studies as a reliable method of initiating lucid dreams.
It has been used in some small studies, like this one: http://www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/laberge5-3.htm
But as far as I know, lucid dreaming in general is not something that is being studied by a very large number of scientists, so we're not likely to find a whole ton of studies like this regardless of how effective it is.
There does seem to be some evidence that this isn't just snake oil:
http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/dreaming/Lucidity%20Institut...
I remain skeptical, but it's certainly plausible. More than most ACM flim flam.
hey wait isn't that my site?
huh
well, thanks for linking me
Yeah, kickstarter just says it's up to the backers to do their own research into the project owners.
I've heard of non-delivered projects. So far, I don't know of any big money high profile ones, but I'm sure there will be one sooner or later.
Like the other guy said, you're not investing, you're buying. Or maybe donating.
I don't think there's any recourse for a failed project, and I don't think there should be one. If you're thinking about contributing to a Kickstarter project, understand that there are no guarantees and moderate your contribution accordingly.
There is a kickstarter for a game (Echos of Eternia) where the creators are making the game using RPG Maker (a free tool anyone can use). They raised over $26k.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1465600975/echoes-of-ete...
A lot of great games have been made on RPG Maker. To The Moon is the most recent example I can think of. You wouldn't say that a program is worth less because it's written in c, a free language anyone can use.
Where do you draw the line about where you believe people shouldn't raise funds? Are they allowed to use a toolkit like RPG Maker or GameMaker? Are they allowed to use game engines?
The point of making successful games isn't about doing everything from scratch, it's about making something that people want to play.
Even with the OP if (perhaps because of head trauma) people feel they want to play the Ron Paul platformer, they should be free to throw money at it. If the project delivers what it promised and it's not actually infringing on others work, then where's the problem?
> a free tool anyone can use
So, no more gcc, clang, Eclipse, Blender, nasm, or GIMP. Anything built with free tools is not worth supporting. Do you want to let the entire Fortune 500 know they need to close up shop now, or should I?
I don't mind them using RPG Maker... but I don't understand how they have any investors considering how cliche the project sounds and how terrible their presentation skills are. Possibly the worst pitch I've seen.
Here's one funded almost 2 years ago: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schuyler/lockpicks-by-op...
Don't know about this project, but the problem with kickstarter is that once you back a project is no longer your money, and there's nothing you can do about it.
It's right there on their TOS: they are not responsible for the project, nor to provide ways to keep the project's creators from running away with the backers' money.
This "give money and something MAY happen, eventually" model is going to collapse on itself.
I actually think that this is Kickstarter's saving grace: if I give money to somebody, I know it's a gamble. I'm not a venture capitalist looking for a guaranteed return, I'm not going to pressure anyone to have a "exit strategy", and I'm not a shopper who can demand my money back. I'm taking a risk with a small, disposable amount my money - usually less than the cost of going out to dinner at a nice restaurant, and I get to help give someone the gift of working on a project they believe in, that I think the world would be better off having. And sometimes - usually, even! - they give me a gift in return.
I find this to be way more optimistic and healthy than the traditional investment model, where the VC are pushing you to sell your baby for parts so they can get even richer.
Since when is getting what you were promised the same than a VC ROI model? VCs expect as much as possible, they want to hit jackpot. I give $100 for a watch so I expect said watch, not a Rolex!
And getting jack shit is the exact opposite of what kickstarter says it does, you could just press the donate button of any harebrained scheme on the internet and get jack shit, you don't need kickstarter for that.
> This "give money and something MAY happen, eventually" model is going to collapse on itself.
I'm not so sure, crowdfunding is certainly very attractive for people that have a track record of delivering but a consumer base that is to small for traditional publishing/production processes. Think Double Fine [1], Harebrained Schemes [2], Order of the Stick [3]. The people behind these projects have a clear, public track record of delivery and the projects wouldn't have happened without Kickstarter's crowdfunding.
There is, of course, also Kickstarter original/official goal which is funding art, but here the same principles apply. With the exception that maybe art backers are a little more accepting of late/disappointing rewards at the end.
The only real question is, is there a sufficient number of such proven projects to make Kickstarter sustainable? I'm not sure, but given the size of the internet and the available talent I would suspect so?
[1] - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adv...
[2] - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-ret...
[3] - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-t...
Naming the best possible cases is not a good defense, I could cite how much money bankers made with CDOs and yet that didn't stop the economy from collapsing.
All those cases could have been just as successful in any other platform, or even raising the money by themselves, because they have a huge fan base.
What I'm talking about is the other 99% of projects at kickstarters, the ones that weren't created by star-devs with decades of experience in the industry. Of this 99% the majority is made by anything from people without enough experience to complete idiots who only know how to make a good presentation. These projects will get the money and deliver nothing, the backers wont get their money back, further undermining the crowdfunding model.
Eventually one of the "big ones" will underdeliver too (like diaspora) and after that NOBODY will trust this system.
Does this sound like groupon for the funded-but-sometimes-a-bit-crazy-yet-awesome-business? if I were in risk assessment I'd assess the risks before gambling.
Considering what it costs to produce a new title, is it any surprise?
Fake it 'til you make it, kid