MacLeod wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 14:52:

Beelzebud wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 14:43:
No sympathy for that team that blew 3 grand on a trip to Pax East instead of putting in to development costs of their game. Trade shows are not essential to development at all.

Yea, if I'd donated, I'd be a bit ticked at the PAX and iPad thing. (which they bought for PAX because they realized they didn't want to demo the game on their personal phones there.)

What I want to know is who has the SSI / Avalon Hill property rights to Star Command and when are they going to come out and demand a name change?

Wikipedia's description of SSI's Star Command sounds a lot like this new Star Command game:

"The player creates a crew of eight characters. The crew completes missions from Star Command to earn credits and train personnel. The crew can explore planets to obtain valuable elements, and can board intact enemy ships to fight their foes man-to-man and commandeer the enemy ship"

Creston wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 14:01:

ASeven wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 13:17:
I sure hope so and I am well aware that without rewards many kickstarters wouldn't be kickstarted successfully in the first place. I'm just a bit worried with overhead after reading this article here, that's all. I sure as hell don't want awesome projects like this to fail for any reason, including overhead.

To be honest, that article is not indicative of how most Kickstarters work.

Let me just quote a particular section that really actually kind of irked me:

After that, we had $22,000 remaining. From there:

Music - $6,000
Attorneys, startup fees, CPA - $4000
Poster art - $2000
iPads - $1000
PAX East - $3000

TOTAL: $16,000

Now, I don't know what these guys promised, but paying for their attorneys, iPads and a fucking trip to PAX East out of their kickstarter funds?? I'd be ROYALLY pissed if that's what they spent my donated money on.

Fargo and Weisman have both said they will use their funds solely and alone on the game. Every dollar goes into the game. (Though Weisman has said that if they get enough money, they may buy some new computers for their office. That would benefit game design, so okay.)

If some dev said "Yeah, I'll use this funds to pay for my rent, and my laundry, and my lunches, and my attorney fees, and taking my girlfriend to see a musical", I wouldn't give him a dime.

Again, I don't know what these guys promised in their kickstarter, but they seem like a completely new dev that still had to start an actual company, and they are spending the donated money on absolute bullshit stuff. Both Fargo and Weisman have established companies and have pledged to use the donated money to make a better game.

I think it's kinda apples and oranges, to be honest, and it's typical Kotaku BS to pretend that every Kickstarter only gets 16-17% of the funds to spend on the actual game.

Creston

Beelzebud wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 14:43:
No sympathy for that team that blew 3 grand on a trip to Pax East instead of putting in to development costs of their game. Trade shows are not essential to development at all.

ASeven wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 13:17:
I sure hope so and I am well aware that without rewards many kickstarters wouldn't be kickstarted successfully in the first place. I'm just a bit worried with overhead after reading this article here, that's all. I sure as hell don't want awesome projects like this to fail for any reason, including overhead.

After that, we had $22,000 remaining. From there:

Music - $6,000
Attorneys, startup fees, CPA - $4000
Poster art - $2000
iPads - $1000
PAX East - $3000

TOTAL: $16,000

nin wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 10:19:
Woot WOOT!

Very exciting! Was hoping this one would do well, but I didn't expect it to hit 3 million.

Creston wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 11:20:

Kickstarters really have to cut on rewards. Rewards create such a huge overhead that it can jeopardize any project, even those that gain a lot of money like this. Do digital rewards like wallpapers or cosmetic stuff for backers that at least don't cost as much as physical rewards like shirts and boxed editions and all that. This is the first big problem that is now facing kickstarters and it must be resolved fast, rewards are eating away at too much of the money they earn.

I think the big cost of the rewards is shipping. Mass producing a bunch of t-shirts, boxes and other paraphernalia only costs a few bucks per item. Add around 5 bucks in postage, and you're done.

And sure, that 10 or 15 bucks per person for the rewards is all coming out of the 3 million pot, but the idea that they need to "cut back" on those rewards to save their pot is incredibly short-sighted. Without those rewards, few people would bother putting in more than $15, so their pot would have been maybe 1 million instead of 3 million then. If someone pledges 50 bucks, that's 35 bucks extra over the minimum, and they can afford to spend 15 bucks on goodies if someone just gave 35 extra dollars.

They're in fine shape.

Elf Shot The Food wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 11:00:
I read somewhere that lots of these Kickstarters are just being done to fund demos to show to publishers.

wtf_man wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 10:26:
15% of that is gone off the top (Kickstarter, Amazon, and Kicked Forward). Then you got whatever Pay Pal takes, the cost of the backer "Rewards", and then the government puts it's hand out as well.

The just might get 900k after all... maybe.

Kickstarters really have to cut on rewards. Rewards create such a huge overhead that it can jeopardize any project, even those that gain a lot of money like this. Do digital rewards like wallpapers or cosmetic stuff for backers that at least don't cost as much as physical rewards like shirts and boxed editions and all that. This is the first big problem that is now facing kickstarters and it must be resolved fast, rewards are eating away at too much of the money they earn.

Elf Shot The Food wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 11:00:
I read somewhere that lots of these Kickstarters are just being done to fund demos to show to publishers.

Any developer that puts the KickingItForward.org URL on their Kickstarter project page is agreeing that they will put 5% of their finished product profits back into other Kickstarter projects. To be abundantly clear, this is only money that the developer earns as profit AFTER the project ships and AFTER they have paid their expenses. This is NOT a suggestion to invest money they received from people who invested into their project via Kickstarter.

http://kickingitforward.org/