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| [Jan 25, 2013, 10:08 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments |
The Kickstarter for Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption has a new update on progress on this upcoming adventure/RPG from the designers of the original Quest for Glory (thanks nin). They show the latest stuff they are working on, and go on to outline some "new challenges" they are facing, in part due to being another Kickstarter that did not anticipate the costs of fulfilling their backer rewards: Two of our team members have decided to reduce their involvement in the project for personal and financial reasons. Because we barely scraped by with $9,000 over our minimum goal, we were not able to pay for full-time work to any of our contractors. In fact, my current projections show Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption running at a $50,000 loss, mostly because I underestimated the cost of fulfilling all of the premiums. This includes the art time needed to customize Yearbook pictures, paintings, and statues, so that's good for the artists. But we also need to get all the game art assets, so the premium reward art is an additional expense to the project as a whole.
As a result, all of our team members are working on other projects simultaneously with Hero-U. Andrew Goulding and Eriq Chang have full-time commitments on other projects, and decided that 60-hour weeks before we even start Crunch Mode are more than they can handle. They will continue to work on specific pieces of Hero-U, but will not take part in the main development effort. Andrew is graciously allowing us to continue using his MacGuffin's Curse engine under the Hero-U code, so we still have that strong head start on development.
Lori and I are "more than full time", but of course taking only a cost-of-living salary. Lori is focusing on the story design and working with the art team. Currently, I am spending much of my time on reward fulfillment and other tasks needed to keep the project running. I'm beginning to feel a bit like Mortimer Terk, the overworked school administrator at Hero-U
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Re: Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption Challenges |
Jan 25, 2013, 13:12 |
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Protip (and most of this is general for ALL kickstarters): Make sure to get good estimates of physical rewards FIRST, before doing a kickstarter. And price the tiers with physical rewards high enough that they cover that. And the shipping. And some extra. Yes, I can understand pricing everything at cost to get a project off the ground since any future non kickstarter sales are mostly profit, but the danger of doing that is that any unforeseen expenses means you are taking a LOSS at doing the project. And make sure the minimum goal is what you can actually deliver the project for. Don't make the goal $50,000 knowing that you can't really do the game unless its $100k and saying "well surely we will get $500k since people will line up to get our game". If you can't really do the game unless its $100k, then make the goal $100k.
And make sure to add some reserve to cover things like this. If $20k out of $400k is enough to make you run at a loss (getting specific to using the numbers for this project), you didn't price things out very well. Thats only 5%, and 5% would be a reasonable reserve to budget for. Edit: Somehow I read $20k, when it says $50k. Doesn't change my point, if they had a 5% reserve, they could have mitigated a large chunk of that.
This comment was edited on Jan 25, 2013, 13:55. |
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