Kickstarter Game Projects

Obsidian finally made their Kickstarter!!!!

If you don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a platform for announcing and obtaining (all-or-nothing) funding for creative projects. The project creators make a page announcing their project and set a funding goal and a deadline, and then as time passes up until the deadline, people who visit the project page can pledge funds to the project via Amazon Payments, to be collected on the deadline. If the project doesn't meet its funding goal by the deadline, no funds are collected by anyone, and hence it's all-or-nothing volunteer funding.

Technically, it's possible for scams to be set up through this process where a bunch of people end up paying someone to produce nothing or something really stupid, so a lot of the process is dependent on the contributors' faith in the project makers to deliver on their promises. At least for the gaming-related projects (there's a ton of other kinds of projects on the site that I haven't looked at yet), the projects that have come up have been announced by people who have made some great games in the past, so hopefully it'll deliver well.

This year is in particular has been a good year for [hyping about] PC adventure games and western rpgs (the stuff that I obsess over for stories in games nowadays), as a lot of makers of classic games from the 90's/early 00's have been jumping onto Kickstarter.

- Double Fine Adventure
(adventure; from the designer of Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, etc..)
- Wasteland 2
(wrpg; from the founder of Interplay)
- The Banner Saga 
(srpg; ex-Bioware devs)
- Shadowrun Returns
(wrpg)
- Jane Jensen's Moebius and Pinkerton Studio
(adventures; from the creator of Gabriel Knight)
- Tex Murphy - Project Fedora 
(adventure; they've been trying to make this game happen for years)
- Dead State: The Zombie Survival RPG
(wrpg; from the designer of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines)
- Planetary Annihilation
(rts; from the people behind Total Annihilation)
- Broken Sword - The Serpent's Curse Adventure [ongoing]
(adventure; Broken Sword's going back to 2D!)
- Homestuck Adventure Game [ongoing]
(adventure)
- Project Eternity [ongoing]
(wrpg, the new Obsidian project)

A recurring trend behind a lot of these projects showing up on Kickstarter is the limitations of relying on traditional game publishers; the Wasteland 2 video pitch conveys it pretty well (if not a little exaggerated for comedy's sake). A lot of times game designers are prevented from creating the games they actually want to make due to lack of interest or willingness to take the risk by publishers, even if there is fan demand for those games. It gets even more frustrating when legal issues come into play, like losing the rights to make the sequel to a game because of company politics or closures (Wasteland 2; Tex Murphy; Anachronox; and so on)... hence why it's kind of exciting to see all these game developers able to get by publisher issues through crowd funding.

People have actually been waiting for Obsidian to finally do a Kickstarter for a while. Even though they've been pretty active lately (Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol, Neverwinter Nights 2, Star Wars: Knights of Old Republic 2...) and have a good reputation when it comes to game writing, their games are known for being ridiculously buggy, sometimes incomplete, and plagued by other development issues due to time restrictions. Not to mention, for whatever the reason, they seem to always get the short end of the stick in negotiating with publishers - like being only given a year by LucasArts to make Knights of the Old Republic 2, or the New Vegas Metacritic story from earlier this year. So naturally, it leads one to wonder what kind of product they could make if they actually had enough time, money and full creative control over their work for once. Especially after the Wasteland 2 project kicked off successfully (which Obsidian is contributing to), it seemed like only a matter of time for them to do their own project for once - what might end up being the next Planescape: Torment, but better?

One thing I like about this process that's coming about is the increase in transparency between the developers and the fans in the making of these games. In part because fans themselves are directly funding the games and kind of merit it, the developers have been using the Kickstarter platform to provide frequent updates on the current development status, along with documentary-style insight into how these games are being made in the first place at the same time through videos, release of the game design documents, adding other making-of material as bonus gifts, and more. I think the whole phenomenon in general has made me a lot more conscious of the individual people that are involved in the development of games - like who the big movers and shakers are - and also the challenges that they face in trying to release a quality product.

There's still some concerns about the process, though - like for instance, if most of the people who would buy these games in the first place are already contributing to these projects in the development stage (and hence are effectively getting "free" copies), then how will these games make a profit when they come out? And of course, it's possible that some of the games from these projects will just end up being not as great as they've been hyped up to become in the future, and Obsidian could still mess up and deliver a buggy product like much of their past work. If that happens, then it's likely that people will lose faith in the process and not contribute to future projects if they come up. But in the meantime, I'm hopeful.

[Also, I think ex-Humongous devs should get together and do a Kickstarter ala Spy Fox or Pajama Sam or Putt Putt or something similar. But that's just wishful thinking for now. At least they're starting to re-release the old games on mobile platforms.]