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[ChairmanPoo]

It's still the corporations deciding (consider that many "famous" KS successes are hosted by those). It just gives from time to time small openings to indies. But the success-to-fail rate with those is so bad that in my experience it's not worth it. I think the trend will be for those to die off anyway, with only corporate-sponsored KS's succeeding, eventually

[Ludorum Rex]

I got the 33% success rate from here: http://gamerant.com/kickstarter-video-game-failure-rate/

Don't get me wrong, I am not on-the-barricades angry at Kickstarter or anything. I disagree with some of their policies, but I still think it's a great platform and I love how they help make a lot of awesome niche projects possible. It's just that I keep seeing these discussions about what crowdfunding is and what to expect. I think that is caused by stuff like passage I quoted and a lack of disclaimers. It would be nice if there was a bigger consensus on what to expect, and Kickstarter can and should do something about that.

Thinking about it, I was wrong to suggest they do better to screening. But they could do better disclaimers, and they could do a better job facilitating communication. Make a framework for financial transparency, give friendly reminders to developers who stop communicating, reach out and avoid stressed project creators hiding from backers, etc. They should help connect backers and creators. That's the vibe I get from their page, but I don't see any evidence they're actually doing much once a project is launched.

As for your last question, when I worked in the games industry, I did see games canned. There is a constant flow of prototypes and pitches at all major studios. Most of these get canned. Others get canned in the early phases, or transformed/merged into something completely different. Projects being canned after significant production has happened is a lot more rare. It's usually better for the publisher to eat a loss than to just write off the entire development. The result of a failed project tends to manifest as studios being shut down or downsized.

[sirvente]

Met in a public place. (for his safety?) Didn't see a build. He's "doing the best that he can"

Yeah. No update. I could have posted literally nothing but that seems even worse.

[jhxmt]

Met in a public place. (for his safety?) Didn't see a build. He's "doing the best that he can"

Yeah. No update. I could have posted literally nothing but that seems even worse.

Context please?

[sirvente]

They're things called quotes, since they're quoting someone talking about software development and having no updates perhaps they are quotes of Fenicks having met with Josh and having no progress to report.

[Karlito]

Yes, exactly that.

[ChairmanPoo]

Met in a public place. (for his safety?) "

Sounds vaguely unhinged to me

[nenjin]

Met in a public place. (for his safety?) "

Sounds vaguely unhinged to me

I read it more as an attempt at humor given how hostile people have been lately.

[JumpingJack]

Met in a public place. (for his safety?) Didn't see a build. He's "doing the best that he can"

Well, it makes sense that he wouldn't see any sort of build in a public place. Still, Josh's comment makes me wonder if there's anything to show at all.

Yeah. No update. I could have posted literally nothing but that seems even worse.

Really? I wonder what gave him that idea.

[Broseph Stalin]

I think the problem is that Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight are a really nice professional places and are obviously managed by sane rational people who are working very hard. That screws up the basic and obvious truth of small scale game development that used to inspire responsible caution: creative bedroom programmers with quirky outside the box ideas about games are a capricious, deranged, and unreliable people. It's like buying magic beans at the mall, sure it's clean and streamlined and professional but you're buying magic beans. There are exceptions, our beloved Toady for one, but by and large "permanent continual indefinite hiatus" is the default state of any indie game that sounds remotely interesting.

It used to be if you went looking for a game like this you'd find some sketchy blog and over time the updates would become more and more cryptic until the apologies for the lack of updates outweighed the updates and then one day the link would go to yellow on black korean text and they would never be seen or heard from again. Nobody was surprised, nobody who gave the guy money felt ripped off because everything about the arrangement advertised that the person was not to be trusted.

After I sank some money into The Dead Linger I recognized the pattern from the good old days and I stopped throwing money at things that I can't currently play. "Development is expensive and not fun" (Yogcast and infinity others) "Someone I trusted took the money and ran away" (Tarol Hunt and infinity +10  others) and "I have gone insane and hate you" (John Campbell) are just things that happen when you deal with the delightful lunatics who still have original ideas.

I've been pumped for that which sleeps for a long time. I'm still pumped, when it finally wakes up I'll shell out some money but not before.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah... sometimes I'm shocked at how consistent and steady work on Dwarf Fortress has been, and how stable Toady seems to be. The indy games scene usually isn't any of those things and a lot of very successful 'indy games' come from previously successful developers who left other companies after shipping multiple games, not first-time dreamers.

[TempAcc]

Ye, toady's kind of an anomaly in that regard, though it starts to make sense when you read up how he got interested in games, dragslay, armok 1 and how DF came to be. Toady is passionate about what he does and it seems to be an important part of his life, to the point he'd prob keep working on it even if he got no donations and had to get a job to support himself and its development. So DF is far from being a first ambitious game project thing.

[nenjin]

Toady just seems to....I dunno, never really express doubt. You can read in the dev logs how he has to work through things like everyone else, it just doesn't seem to phase him.

That said, it's why DF is the way it is, because Toady deals with things that a) he can handle and b) that keep him interested in his project. It's why we don't have graphics or a decent GUI: he's not comfortable working on those things and, perhaps more importantly, I think he finds that kind of work tedious and boring versus actually working on the game.

Indy devs begging for dollars in a traditional game sale transaction don't have the same luxury of doing exactly what they want like he does.

[ndkid]

Toady just seems to....I dunno, never really express doubt. You can read in the dev logs how he has to work through things like everyone else, it just doesn't seem to phase him.

That said, it's why DF is the way it is, because Toady deals with things that a) he can handle and b) that keep him interested in his project. It's why we don't have graphics or a decent GUI: he's not comfortable working on those things and, perhaps, more importantly, I think he finds that kind of work tedious and boring versus actually working on the game.

Indy devs begging for dollars in a traditional game sale transaction don't have the same luxury of doing exactly what they want like he does.

But if we're going to compare and contrast, I think the biggest difference is communication. It used to be daily... Toady would post as he was going to bed (after the sun came up) about what he did that day. It's not about rate of release... I remember when we went more than a year between releases. It's his willingness to take an hour or two, every week, to let people know what's going on. Even when it's boring. Even when there are setbacks. Most people have too much ego and insecurity to do that, especially if there's bad news several weeks in a row.

(Another area where I think Toady does better than the average game dev is breaking up his work incrementally. For someone who doesn't hold to any real SDLC, he does an impressive job of defining a body of work of a scope he considers reasonable, and then implementing that body of work.)

[TempAcc]

Ye, toady seems incredibly capable of managing a schedule that he imposes on himself. He can keep working on and not get distracted with things, and it shows, given the amount of new things we get on new updates nowadays.

But ye, I do agree that one of his most stellar features is that he makes sure to keep in contact with the community pretty much every day, hell, he even actively manages the community with the help of threetoe. I do agree that we're spoiled for having someone like toady working on a game we all love, but the TWS guy just went full radio silence and didn't even come forward with it, to the point other people had to speak in his stead to the community.