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[guessingo]

I generally don't pay for unfinished games. I think its a bullshit. When there is a finished product I will buy. I won't donate money to your 'kickstarter' which is a handout with no obligations on your part. Its called an 'investment', but a real investment comes with equity so I make money off of what I buy. This is a fancy way of businesses going around with their hands out. Of course this is the preferred way to raise money because it doesn't cost them anything. It is 'alternative' because its a big handout.

In the past businesses had 3 ways to raise funds... put in their own money, get loans, give up a percentage of the company and bring in partners. Thats it. Now they have 'dude, gonna make this killer toy toy, give me money'. Look at it this way they are making a product to sell with your money, then selling it and keeping the profits.

Remember the whole Occulus Right thing? People who 'donated' money and did not have a contract stating they had a say or equity through a tantrum when the company was sold to Facebook. Idiots, you didn't sign anything.

Anyway these are my biggest turnoffs to kickstarters and alphas. Many come from the idiot fanboys.

1. Support the developer: Do I get a handjob for this?
2. It will cost more later: I Have had sales people tell me this in a stores. I tell them to fuck off. It will cost less because I will never give you my money. Seriously 'buy now cause it will cost more later' does not get me interested. It gets me to buy another product.
3. To get it on Steam: So you can sell to more people right and make more money?
4. Other methods are evil: Such as getting loans, getting investors, cause they will force them to make an uncool game. So give me money.
5. Promise to spend all of the next batch of kickstarter money on development if we get to a certain: Can't remember which one said this. It was one that raised over $3.9m. They were about $80k short of that goal. So does that mean your spending the money on porn, hookies, crack, and a BMW? Remember spend on game is relative. They can choose to spend the money by giving themselves a big bonus or getting nicer offices too. That technical is accurate.
6. So we can work on it fulltime: Move into your parents basement, get your spouse to work, turn tricks, join an NIH drug testing experiment, sell crack, or get a job. I have to work.

[LordSlowpoke]

uh

what

okay

so i figured i could start using hitlers as an unit of wealth measurement for the shock value and started looking for the actual worth of a hitler

technically speaking it's 7.4 million (as per epa stats) but! we can go a different way, therefore with the very far reaching assumption that hitler is responsible for every single death during the second world war (85mil, highest estimate - it's on the wiki page), a hitler is $629 trillion

this means that a donation of 30 dollars to a developer that did not deliver would equal 4.769*10^-14 hitlers stolen from you

that's like half a femtohitler

and that is terrible

[Bauglir]

On the other hand, Dwarf Fortress is pretty awesome.

[Sergarr]

uh

what

okay

so i figured i could start using hitlers as an unit of wealth measurement for the shock value and started looking for the actual worth of a hitler

technically speaking it's 7.4 million (as per epa stats) but! we can go a different way, therefore with the very far reaching assumption that hitler is responsible for every single death during the second world war (85mil, highest estimate - it's on the wiki page), a hitler is $629 trillion

this means that a donation of 30 dollars to a developer that did not deliver would equal 4.769*10^-14 hitlers stolen from you

that's like half a femtohitler

and that is terrible

$629 trillion?! Wow.

That's kinda a huge number. It's like total US budget for 10 whole years. Wow.

[Guardian G.I.]

this means that a donation of 30 dollars to a developer that did not deliver would equal 4.769*10^-14 hitlers stolen from you

that's like half a femtohitler

and that is terrible

Sigged.

[Sinistar]

Dunno, personally I did support quite some Kickstarter project and also received back from most of them. Only one of them is currently in "uh, guys, any news?" state, but still not quite dead yet. As for games projects - all of them are either in playable, active-development stage or playable-but-beta-for-those-who-payed-more stage.

I think it really depends... Things are not so bleak. There are cool people out there, people who genuinely care about just making something FUN and KS is just a means for them to achieve that.

But yeah, your mileage may vary.

So, what WOULD make you buy an Alpha Game, guessingo?

[Arcvasti]

Lets just cover each point you've made individually.:

1: Maybe not always, but often indie game devs NEED the money. You're saying that you don't want to donate money to support someone else without a reward. Which makes sense if its a big company. They don't need the money as much. If its a small team of indie developers[Who are usually the type to do Kickstarters in the first place], then supporting the developers is just a charitable thing to do, even if they don't deliver.

2: I have no problem with what you said here.

3: So helping other people make money is bad?

4: They ARE getting investors. Give us money and later you will get stuff is kinda what that's about. And if you don't? Investing in a company which later fails is the same thing. So Kickstarter and such is basically investment. But with little tiny upfront prizes because some people won't give money to other people without instant rewards.

5: Yeah, that's a stupid practice. With you on this one.

6: I don't even need to say anything against this point. It speaks for itself.

Incidentally, a shallow learning curve mathematically means that a game is harder, not easier. That sounds like something you'd be interested in.

Hitlers are probably the best unit of economic measurement yet devised. I need to start using those in lieu of more pedestrian terms. Also, this means the U. S. is about a 37th of a hitler in debt. Which is pretty impressive.

[Sappho]

I think this is a pretty balanced analysis of crowdfunding and how it compares to the other alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ljzAi5DuA

Basically, crowdfunding is the only way many games can be made, it opens up possibilities that have never before existed, and the massive potential benefits from this system far outweigh the risks, although of course risks do exist.

Moreover, I'm a bit perplexed about why this thread exists. The only possible outcomes I can imagine the OP striving for are either trying to start a flame war (trolling) by creating a post filled with anger and juvenile insults, or else wanting to hear lots of other people agree with them about how Kickstarter is stupid and developers don't deserve to eat until after they've finished and polished a game using money they don't have. This being Bay12, I hope neither of those things will happen. I'd much rather see a civil, rational discussion about the pros and cons of crowdfunding, although I think there may have already been one or two threads like that in the past.

[TheDarkStar]

Why not measure it in Stalins? Estimates tend to be about 20 million of his own people (possibly more) and then another 30 million in WW2, so he's worth 37 trillion.

Also, your logic is wrong for Hitler, since he didn't kill anyone in the Pacific war with the US, Britain, Australia, China, and Japan. That brings him down to 49 million deaths (36 million died in Asia and the Pacific), making a Stalin worth a bit more (maybe a lot more, since I used a low estimate of how many people Stalin killed; they range up to 60 million).

On-topic:

1. Devs need money from somewhere; if it's a big company, then they have that, but (as Arcvasti said) indie devs don't have those resources.
2. Kickstarters are really donations with benefits for donating. If you don't want to see something succeed that much, just don't give them money.
3. The reason to put it on steam is partly to get more money, but also to raise awareness for the project. Wouldn't you want more people able to see a fun game that they might want to play?
4. Kickstarter is very similar to getting investors, since you get your reward (the project) if you fund it enough. However, you have a lower chance of losing lots of money if it doesn't get funded enough.
5. True; that's why you have to be careful about who you donate to.
6. Development takes a lot of time and effort; most people who don't work with a big company probably don't the resources to drop parts of their life to work on big things. Even ones with a company can use funding, though - look the the Planetary Annihilation kickstarter where they used lots of their own money and still needed money. Additionally, there are costs like equipment that most people need lots of money to get.

[Furtuka]

uh ptw, even though I'll probably regret it. I can't make heads nor tails of what OP is saying in his list to be honest


oh and uh... relevant

http://robotsrule.us/picohitlers.html

[Sergarr]

Why not measure it in Stalins? Estimates tend to be about 20 million of his own people

No, it is about 700 000. Where did you get your 20 million figures?

[TheDarkStar]

Why not measure it in Stalins? Estimates tend to be about 20 million of his own people

No, it is about 700 000. Where did you get your 20 million figures?

You're thinking of the people that he personally ordered executed (and the actual figure is more like 1.5 million). However, the 20 million number includes deaths from gulags, deportations, and similar things.

[Graknorke]

Incidentally, a shallow learning curve mathematically means that a game is harder, not easier. That sounds like something you'd be interested in.

Oh wow so this discussion blew up on the upper boards but I'll have to say you're wrong.
A shallow learning curve means that a game either teaches you things slower or lets you go for longer without learning. While a steep learning curve either enables or enforces learning a lot quickly.

[TheDarkStar]

Incidentally, a shallow learning curve mathematically means that a game is harder, not easier. That sounds like something you'd be interested in.

Oh wow so this discussion blew up on the upper boards but I'll have to say you're wrong.
A shallow learning curve means that a game either teaches you things slower or lets you go for longer without learning. While a steep learning curve either enables or enforces learning a lot quickly.

I agree with Grak - a shallow learning curve means that new things are added slowly, while a steep one means that things are added quickly or together.

I think that this thread has completely derailed twice on the first page.

[Sergarr]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=138478.0

There. 15 pages of learning curve discussion.