Confederate Express (Kickstarted RPG) "postponed" while devs announce new game.

J

JDSN

Banned
The game looked really good, with the fake 2d elements and setting, the game reached its goal by 397% and this is what Maksym Pashanin said in return:
After a long wait, we are very excited to finally reveal the sister project we've been working on: Knuckle Club!


Knuckle Club is a real-time brawler with RPG elements set in cyberpunk era. With this game, we are featuring a brand new graphical API called FALSE 2D, which is a special toolset that simulates 3D conditions in 2D environments. With this API we are finally able to precisely adjust the lighting conditions of our scenes, giving us full control of the final product.

Unfortunately due to recent restructuring of Kilobite, the development of Confederate Express have been postponed, but as an upside it has received a graphical overhaul and now it fully supports FALSE 2D API. As an apology for the delays, we are offering every backer of Confederate Express a free reward pack from Knuckle Club! The reward pack chosen will be the closest to backer's pledge. We will be sending a separate email for every backer with specific details about the reward, so keep an eye on your inbox.

We have also prepared a series of exciting technical updates on Confederate Express to share with our backers, so please stay tuned! We are planning on unrolling the updates shortly after Knuckle Club campaign ends.
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This is what the game developer said about potential delays back in November:

Cliqist : Any fear of the over funding curse? That you’ll start obligating yourself to adding features that continually push back the release date?

Maksym Pashanin : One of our biggest concerns is delaying the release date. If we will get over funded drastically, the majority of that money will go towards hiring extra help to make sure we release the game on time.
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EDIT:

The new game they are working for is also being kickstarted., the only response to the flashback is this:

h5avgoI.png


Edit2:
Maksym Pashanin (whose status within his new company and owner of the engine being used to develop CE is unclear) has spoken about this issue:

Greetings everyone!

In this update I wanted to discuss Confederate Express as a project moving forward.

First of all, I wanted to clear some confusion up regarding an investment group that stepped in to fund ConEx stretch goals.

I have founded Kilobite in 2013, and during that period I have been working by myself whilst outsourcing most of the work via contractors. I have been scouting talent on the internet and offer them small jobs on a contract basis for my video game (Confederate Express). That was my business model - keep margins low and talent pool deep. Finally, when ConEx concept surfaced on Kickstarter, I have been contacted by a small investor group that was very excited about my new pixel art engine tech, and with their own project (Knuckle Club) nearing completion, they saw an opportunity to become the first game with per-texel pixel art post-processing technology (what a tongue-twister, haha).

That was when the investors presented me with an offer to purchase Kilobite and hire me as a their full-time employee; but the biggest concern for them was Knuckle Club becoming the first game with pixel art post-processing tech. That's where an offer for extra funding of my personal project (Confederate Express) and the non-compete clause restrictions came from.

But I have never seen the situation this way in my head. The only thing I wanted was to make Confederate Express the best game it can possible be, and being high on amazing feedback from the vast Kickstarter community, I have foolishly started chasing an impossible dream. Budgets got bigger and bigger, work kept piling up, and deadlines kept getting delayed.

A lot happened since; Kilobite is now employing a lot people from my collected portfolio on a full-time basis. They have also split my engine tech into a different brand (False2D API), and are currently planning to release it as an SDK toolset for Unity.

With recent update it was my lack of business expertise and poor decision-making that has led to a major outrage of ConEx backers, which have also affected my employer's reputation as a brand; I made an oversight by delaying my personal Kickstarter project in favor of getting extra stretch goals funding for it. I wanted to sincerely apologize from the bottom of my heart for an apparent lack of communication and poor planning on my part. I take full responsibility for recent events.

Moving forward, I am now focusing my efforts full-time on making sure Confederate Express gets delivered promptly. I am also keeping a record of every expenditure made, and notify backers accordingly in order to make my decisions as clear and transparent as possible. I am now aiming for a December 2014 release date, with a closed beta starting in November 2014.

In the end, it was my poor decision-making and lack of communication skills that led to this unfortunate situation, and I will do everything in my power to prevent such incidents from happening in the future. I apologize profoundly and hope to regain your trust by delivering the product I promised.

On a final note, I wanted to thank all of our backers for support and interest in mine and Kilobite's games! You are the sole reason of my motivation.

Sincerely,

Maksym Pashanin

P.S.: the next update on Confederate Express is coming up next week, please stay tuned!
Click to expand...
 
Eh, shit happens. At least backers will get Knuckle Club for free, it also looks really cool.
 
Easy_D said:
Eh, shit happens. At least backers will get Knuckle Club for free, it also looks really cool.
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That is not what it says, the "pack" thing could easily game related stuff like DLC or some wallpapers, notice that they are gonna give the rewards based on the tiers. Which is completely irrelevant since the point is that a backed project is on hold so they can focus on a commissioned game.
 
JDSN said:
That is not what it says, the "pack" thing could easily game related stuff like DLC or some wallpapers, notice that they are gonna give the rewards based on the tiers. Which is completely irrelevant since the point is that a backed project is on hold so they can focus on a commissioned game.
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The reward pack chosen will be the closest to backer's pledge.
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It's how I interpreted the above part.
 
I'm a backer of Confederate Express, and I had forgotten about it until I received this mail yesterday.

I re-read it like 3 times and I still didn't really understand what the fuck was going on. They decided to stop working on the game I backed and instead made some other game, and to say their sorry I get some DLC for this other random game they decided to make?
 
My advice to anyone considering backing smaller projects: Don't back games with budgets under, say, $35,000 unless the money is going towards a specific external expense ("We have a completed game but need to pay our musician upfront").

If you back games at a $10,000 budget, you are not paying a professional team. You are paying an independent developer's rent while they work things out. That's OK, but you should expect the following:
- Scope creep
- Loss of team members when people have real stuff to do
- Inability to execute
- Another project is more interesting to me
- I got sick
- My family got sick

There are lots of counterexamples like Risk of Rain and Volgarr, but mostly if you can't pay someone a professional salary until completion of the game, you can't guarantee they are going to be working on the game.

For example, I backed a project with a ~$5,000 goal. The plan was to release the game for free. The person who made it changed the scope a bunch, learned a lot along the way, some team members who were volunteering their time stopped being able to, the person found new team members. The KS money is long-since gone and the game is nowhere near ready. It's still being worked on and the people working on it have a lot of passion. I'm not mad because I knew what I was getting into, but a lot of people would be because this is not a professional situation.
 
I feel like at some point the bubble is going to burst super hard on this, the Yogscast game was a pretty huge blow against this, too. Its a shame because Kickstarter has so much potential but it is being abused so frequently at this point by poorly managed projects.
 
Kyari said:
I feel like at some point the bubble is going to burst super hard on this, the Yogscast game was a pretty huge blow against this, too. Its a shame because Kickstarter has so much potential but it is being abused so frequently at this point by poorly managed projects.
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I feel like people have been saying this for a couple of years now. At this point I don't think crowd funding is going anywhere.
 
Kyari said:
I feel like at some point the bubble is going to burst super hard on this, the Yogscast game was a pretty huge blow against this, too. Its a shame because Kickstarter has so much potential but it is being abused so frequently at this point by poorly managed projects.
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There's no bubble to be burst.
 
So, bear with me... they used Kickstarter funds to make an engine (FALSE 2D, oh my god that name...) for their new game (Knuckle Club), then vow to port their first/Kickstarter game (Confederate Express) to the new engine at some point in the future, after they finish making the second game. Development of this "sister project" takes priority of course, because reasons. ...I think they'll have to explain this one a bit more.

One question, has it been said whether Knuckle Club will to be a free-to-play game with microtransactions? I ask because they offer "reward packs closest to the user's pledge" instead of just the game itself. Sorta weird.


This sort of news makes me strongly believe that Kickstarter really needs a sister site of its own. It should be called Kickscummy, and it can be where all of these misleading Kickstarters can go to die.
 
Honestly everybody should go into Kickstarter with their caveat emptor senses on high alert.

Heck even that's misleading because you're not buying anything or investing in anything. caveat patronus I guess because you're acting as a patron. The project you're backing might not come to anything and you have to be fine with that before you plonk down your cash.
 
LurkerPrime said:
So, bear with me... they used Kickstarter funds to make an engine (FALSE 2D, oh my god that name...) for their new game (Knuckle Club), then vow to port their first/Kickstarter game (Confederate Express) to the new engine at some point in the future, after they finish making the second game. Development of this "sister project" takes priority of course, because reasons. ...I think they'll have to explain this one a bit more.

One question, has it been said whether Knuckle Club will to be a free-to-play game with microtransactions? I ask because they offer "reward packs closest to the user's pledge" instead of just the game itself. Sorta weird.


This sort of news makes me strongly believe that Kickstarter really needs a sister site of its own. It should be called Kickscummy, and it can be where all of these misleading Kickstarters can go to die.
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They already have. All of this info is out there if you just go to A.) the kickstarter's site or B.) the company's site.

Knuckle Club is a game they took over after some undisclosed party offered to give extra funding to Confederate Express to hit all the extra stretch goals. Which, again, was posted last year on their Kickstarter.

The company's site lets you preorder Knuckle Club for 10 dollars, so presumably it is not a F2P game. The "matching reward tiers" likely means things like how most KS tiers give you things like art books, soundtracks, etc.

Not to say they aren't doing questionable things but people are acting like this is way more confusing than it is.
 
Stumpokapow said:
My advice to anyone considering backing smaller projects: Don't back games with budgets under, say, $35,000 unless the money is going towards a specific external expense ("We have a completed game but need to pay our musician upfront").

If you back games at a $10,000 budget, you are not paying a professional team. You are paying an independent developer's rent while they work things out. That's OK, but you should expect the following:
- Scope creep
- Loss of team members when people have real stuff to do
- Inability to execute
- Another project is more interesting to me
- I got sick
- My family got sick

There are lots of counterexamples like Risk of Rain and Volgarr, but mostly if you can't pay someone a professional salary until completion of the game, you can't guarantee they are going to be working on the game.

For example, I backed a project with a ~$5,000 goal. The plan was to release the game for free. The person who made it changed the scope a bunch, learned a lot along the way, some team members who were volunteering their time stopped being able to, the person found new team members. The KS money is long-since gone and the game is nowhere near ready. It's still being worked on and the people working on it have a lot of passion. I'm not mad because I knew what I was getting into, but a lot of people would be because this is not a professional situation.
Click to expand...


Needs to be sticked.
 
Corpekata said:
They already have. All of this info is out there if you just go to A.) the kickstarter's site or B.) the company's site.

Knuckle Club is a game they took over after some undisclosed party offered to give extra funding to Confederate Express to hit all the extra stretch goals. Which, again, was posted last year on their Kickstarter.

The company's site lets you preorder Knuckle Club for 10 dollars, so presumably it is not a F2P game. The "matching reward tiers" likely means things like how most KS tiers give you things like art books, soundtracks, etc.
Click to expand...

Huh. That's a really strange thing to do.

Mercenary development to further improve the game they want to make is probably a good idea overall, I suppose.
 
LurkerPrime said:
Huh. That's a really strange thing to do.

Mercenary development to further improve the game they want to make is probably a good idea overall, I suppose.
Click to expand...
Postponing the game isn't strange (it's to be expected due to the budget increase) but pimping the new game at the same time is a little tone deaf. Might be better to make that one free to backers.
 
Stumpokapow said:
My advice to anyone considering backing smaller projects: Don't back games with budgets under, say, $35,000 unless the money is going towards a specific external expense ("We have a completed game but need to pay our musician upfront").

If you back games at a $10,000 budget, you are not paying a professional team. You are paying an independent developer's rent while they work things out. That's OK, but you should expect the following:
- Scope creep
- Loss of team members when people have real stuff to do
- Inability to execute
- Another project is more interesting to me
- I got sick
- My family got sick

There are lots of counterexamples like Risk of Rain and Volgarr, but mostly if you can't pay someone a professional salary until completion of the game, you can't guarantee they are going to be working on the game.

For example, I backed a project with a ~$5,000 goal. The plan was to release the game for free. The person who made it changed the scope a bunch, learned a lot along the way, some team members who were volunteering their time stopped being able to, the person found new team members. The KS money is long-since gone and the game is nowhere near ready. It's still being worked on and the people working on it have a lot of passion. I'm not mad because I knew what I was getting into, but a lot of people would be because this is not a professional situation.
Click to expand...

Listen to the mad man! He's right!
 
I feel like the shadiest part is the fact that they switched project creators for their new project ("Maksym Pashanin" > "kilobite"). Is that normal?

Without that, I could almost believe that they had good intentions...
 
pretty tasteless. I backed them and regret it. Even if you have the nerve to put your KS'd game on hold and launch a new kickstarter -- even if you have those kind of balls -- you should at least have the good sense to know how incredibly likely it is to backfire. I do not understand this move.

Apparently they specialize in making gifs. Games -- not sure.
 
Well, the project creators are different for both projects. I haven't looked into this but there is no mention of that kickstarter on their website http://kilobite.com which is VERY odd. I am beginning to think that the new kickstarter that popped up might be fake. But I'm not sure. I am just letting you guys know not to exactly get the pitchforks yet.
 
naumov91 said:
Well, the project creators are different for both projects. I haven't looked into this but there is no mention of that kickstarter on their website http://kilobite.com which is VERY odd. I am beginning to think that the new kickstarter that popped up might be fake. But I'm not sure. I am just letting you guys know not to exactly get the pitchforks yet.
Click to expand...

On the latest update the creator of the Confederate Express project is saying things like "We are planning on unrolling the updates shortly after Knuckle Club campaign ends" and " if you pledged $10 to ConEx you get $10 pledge from Knuckle Club for free, if you pledged $25 to Conex you get a $25 pledge from Knuckle Club for free" which certainly suggests a Knuckle Club crowdfunding campaign.
 
From the comments on the update (comment by creators):

Confederate Express release is delayed due to addition of stretch goals. The originally planned June release date was for $10k budget. We have scheduled a pre-release access for late 2014 and will notify backers accordingly if anything changes.
To clarify the announcement, we will match every Confederate Express backer's pledge with a free reward from Knuckle Club. i.e. if you pledged $10 to ConEx you get $10 pledge from Knuckle Club for free, if you pledged $25 to Conex you get a $25 pledge from Knuckle Club for free, if you pledged $35 or $50 you get a $40 Knuckle Club pledge for free, and so on all the way to $100 pledge. We have reserved the funds for the physical rewards and delivery costs in our marketing campaign budget. And to clarify once again, the funds collected from Confederate Express were not tapped into yet, so we have it secured in case of refunds.

Hope that clears things up and sorry for causing so much confusion!
Thanks a lot for coming by and leaving your feedback.
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I still think this is bullshit. (Not a backer)
 
zhorkat said:
On the latest update the creator of the Confederate Express project is saying things like "We are planning on unrolling the updates shortly after Knuckle Club campaign ends" and " if you pledged $10 to ConEx you get $10 pledge from Knuckle Club for free, if you pledged $25 to Conex you get a $25 pledge from Knuckle Club for free" which certainly suggests a Knuckle Club crowdfunding campaign.
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Ouch..

It is kind of shitty, they may have okay reasons for this but who knows. Its pretty obvious they were not completely open with their fans and that is the biggest mistake you can make with a crowdfunded game.

Just keep in mind.. 10k to 40k isnt a big budget. One professional software engineer can cost 40k to 70k (or more) in one year.
 
I had a friend at a smaller studio ask me about something similar to this once, about how after a successful KS campaign, did I think they could "cascade" a 2nd KS campaign if they had proper staffing, etc.

I still said it was a terrible idea because Kickstarter participants, by and large, are not industry professionals and will not conceptually understand whether or not you would have the capacity to develop two titles simultaneously-- it would simply be seen as a money grab.

In Kickstarter development, perception is reality.
 
If this is a scam, it's a pretty bad scam. I don't see why they would bother telling the backers of the first project what their second project was since that is only going to lead to the original backers warning everyone away from the second Kickstarter campaign.
 
I remember this game, looked promising, but didn't pledge.
Knuckle Club however looks extremely underwhelming in it's art, animation and gameplay. Looks like a brawler made by people who aren't even fans of the genre. How about a deep & rewarding combat system and tight animation to complement it, instead of destructible TV's and shit tons of items?
 
Herbspiceguy said:
I remember this game, looked promising, but didn't pledge.
Knuckle Club however looks extremely underwhelming in it's art, animation and gameplay. Looks like a brawler made by people who aren't even fans of the genre. How about a deep & rewarding combat system and tight animation to complement it, instead of destructible TV's and shit tons of items?
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Post-processed sprites should be blowing your mind and taking away all reason.

Behold their glory, and then lose all control of your faculties.
Knuckle Club FALSE 2D example gif said:
92d9a798aabd1da9f57bdba784932476_large.gif
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LurkerPrime said:
Post-processed sprites should be blowing your mind and taking away all reason.

Behold their glory, and then lose all control of your faculties.
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same idea as the spritelamp project, which is something I'm definitely curious about. It certainly can look cool on pixel art, but how cool might it look on high res painterly art? I may try it some day on my own project.
 
zhorkat said:
If this is a scam, it's a pretty bad scam. I don't see why they would bother telling the backers of the first project what their second project was since that is only going to lead to the original backers warning everyone away from the second Kickstarter campaign.
Click to expand...

Its not a scam they wouldnt have posted the other kickstarter if it was. They would have legged it with the money or started up the new kickstarter under a different name.

edit: OK they changed the name, might be a scam or a really stupid developer.

This is what you get with kickstarter with money flowing around with no consequences shit happens, lots of people whom dont know what they are doing, and others trying to con. All the Kickstarters I've pledged have worked out. I'm not worried if they didnt though. I look at Kickstarters pledges as money thrown away with the hope of something interesting blooming from it. With all the money that is thrown away on rubbish its nice to pledge some of it to something cool that might be made.
 
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