Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

kickstarter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 392 posts

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#161

Post by EdiX »

w0utert wrote: post #93
dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

>> .. or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one and increase the unit" Reading this made my day, it's the exact same rule I try to apply to my own effort estimate, to the letter. I was 100% convinced I came up with it myself, but now I'm starting to think I may have (unconsciously) picked it up from someone else at some point ;-)

It's from Murphy's Law.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#163

Post by markus2012 »

dudul wrote: post #129
micampe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says that people don't understand what Kickstarter is: you are investing in a project, not buying a product. Investments carry risk.

True, but seriously the "we have everything ready in our basement but you can't get it cause we can't buy stamps" is f-ing lame. And as the previous poster mentioned, how do you not put this money aside to reward people who gave you money?

I don't think it's lame.

It sounds like they are living through a train-wreck moving in slow motion that will last a few months - and perhaps much longer.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#164

Post by IkmoIkmo »

brudgers wrote: post #71

It's great to see people admitting their mistakes. On the other hand, the project was doomed from the start $50,000 just isn't enough money to produce a game, let alone a game and collateral merchandise. And the commitment to collateral merchandise for a project like this meant that effort that could have gone to making the game was committed to dealing with posters, printers and postage. There's a reason startups do…

Well I think people are getting the wrong impression here. They started this game in 2013 on their own money, got a subsidy to build a prototype that year, then in 2014 raised money from a loan in Belgium to finish the game. They communicated all of this in their Kickstarter. They then asked $50k I guess to finish up the game and expand the scope a little bit, and make some money on various rewards, but mainly I suppose as virtually all kickstarters nowadays: a presales platform.

In that regard they succeeded. The game is finished, it's for sale, and the backers got their game.

But the sales were also disappointing, and so they declared bankruptcy.

The issue here is that they created stickers, dvd crap, soundtracks etc... Kickstarter backer rewards. And they can't ship them as they're bankrupt. The problem obviously is that they didn't earmark funds ahead. I think that's disrespectful towards the backers and it's a genuine complaint, but I don't feel it's very significant in the scheme of things. Kickstarters know the risks. And the creators of the game put their heart and soul into it and ended up bankrupt, yet did deliver the game. I think that's a fair compromise for the backers of the game, even if they don't end up getting their rewards, like an artbook or wallpaper which can be pretty sweet but I doubt anyone will lose sleep over it, while the creators must've lost a lot of sleep going through a bankruptcy.

So this notion they raised $50k for 7 people to build a game in two months isn't really the case at all. Beyond that, your point on merchandise rings true but it depends on context. A soundtrack, artbook and wallpaper usually isn't a big deal. After all, the game has a soundtrack regardless, and they'd already produced tons of artwork in the process of modelling, you can see it on the kickstarter. The effort is printing and shipping it. But if someone is giving you a $20 premium to ship him a PDF you already have on your computer, would you say that's bad business? Not really, any smart indie will pay some highschooler $250 to take care of it, a small price to increase your budget by $10k or something to that effect. The issue is that some kickstarters go way overboard, and the reward/effort ratio plummets to below their IRR or even below 1. So it really depends, in this case I think it wasn't a bad decision as they promised rewards for things they already had laying around, they simply should've earmarked the funds.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#165

Post by agumonkey »

rockdoe wrote: post #132
agumonkey wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I didn't pay attention to most of the failed projects, but the matchstick guys seemed honest enough (they too took a road to difficult for them). Especially considering they'd refund everybody. Yet people seemed quite angry.

The internet is always angry.

Except when they aren't reimbursed.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#166

Post by [deleted] »

jeremiep wrote: post #157
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of meta, I absolutely loathe how the basic distinction between simplicity and ease of use has since become a meme so persistently associated with Rich Hickey. There is nothing I can really do about it, but it nonetheless annoys me to no end.

I myself learned it from Rich in the very talk I linked to a few years ago and I'm the first to admit I didn't make that distinction beforehand. I've met more developers unaware of the distinction than otherwise, which is why I'm curious as to why you think it has become a meme? Also note that english isn't my first language (I'm french Canadian) and even here in french the distinction is seldom made.

[deleted]

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#167

Post by dragontamer »

chx wrote: post #153
dragontamer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably enough for a loan however. Which is probably why the company folded at this time, because they ran out of funding and couldn't make it. With that said, I've been following Patreon and the financial models at Patreon just make more sense than Kickstarter. Various game development groups have constantly slipped their schedule, and backers respond typically by keeping the donations steady. As long as the…

Patreon seems awesome for one person teams: musicians, cartoonists etc. One of my favorites, Peter Hollens is above $7k/month now.

I don't think Destin (Smarter Every Day) is a single-person team, but he's making $6.8k/video, with two videos per month.

Patreon seems to work out for smaller-scale projects, like youtube videos or podcasts. Its a bit harder to map it to a video game, but I still think the Patreon model for video games is superior to Kickstarter.

Everything is crap though, some real innovation should happen in this space. Unfortunately, I'm out of ideas...

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#168

Post by vezzy-fnord »

jeremiep wrote: post #157
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of meta, I absolutely loathe how the basic distinction between simplicity and ease of use has since become a meme so persistently associated with Rich Hickey. There is nothing I can really do about it, but it nonetheless annoys me to no end.

I myself learned it from Rich in the very talk I linked to a few years ago and I'm the first to admit I didn't make that distinction beforehand. I've met more developers unaware of the distinction than otherwise, which is why I'm curious as to why you think it has become a meme? Also note that english isn't my first language (I'm french Canadian) and even here in french the distinction is seldom made.

In colloquial English, no.

The distinction between two main types of simplicity, those of parsimony and elegance, has been a long-standing philosophical topic [1].

In engineering, the so-called KISS principle (first coined as such in the early 20th century) has always had the implication of minimalism and implementation simplicity, in contrast to mere ease of use.

Fred Brooks wrote a famous paper in 1986 [2] perfectly describing the differences between accidental and essential complexity, and of the semantics of complexity management in software projects.

Hickey has said absolutely nothing spectacular, but his name comes up every time from the typing fingers of the historically illiterate whenever simplicity and ease of use are brought up.

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/

[2] http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBulle...

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#169

Post by IkmoIkmo »

michaelt wrote: post #33
dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

Also, the original kickstarter [1] was for $50,000 with $72,000 raised. I'm not an expert on the economics of the video game industry, but I can't believe that would pay a team of 6-10 people for very long. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/45588301/woolfe-the-red...

The game's prototype was funded and built in 2013, then by mid 2014 the entire game was already funded and close to completion, by September they finished the kickstarter and aimed to wrap it up by February. Consider that they're a game dev since 2002 and had other projects and income, too. So bridging September to February on $70k for a small team of about 5-6 people who are working on the project part-time, isn't crazy.

I think they failed to earmark the funds for rewards (they did ship the game, the issue is they didn't ship the art books, wallpapers etc, and went bankrupt), and mostly just failed to build an awesome enough game. They probably expected strong sales as they'd been hyped quite a bit, greenlit in a few days, featured at the E3 etc. But when the sales didn't happen and the loans had to be paid back etc, they went bankrupt and couldn't ship the merchandise rewards.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#170

Post by munificent »

candu wrote: post #124
TomGullen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "AAA Game" mean anyway? I'm a bit lost on the definition. Wikipedia says: > In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers. By definition, a budget of $75k + 6-10 people wont make an…

The video game industry makes ~2x as much as the film industry [1], so imagine production on a scale comparable to (or possibly even exceeding) that of big-budget Hollywood movies. [1] https://www.quora.com/Who-makes-more-money-Hollywood-or-the-...

...not including DVD sales, cable, streaming, merchandise, etc.
Post reply on HN