Eurogamer: Yogscast Kickstarter-Funded Game Folds (Oh Boy..)

That is the only flaw with things like Kickstarter or Early Access; once devs get your money, they really don't have any financial incentive to finish the game.
I refer to this as "The Chucklefish Effect".
 
I just thought to myself, who the fuck would pay 10k just to have lunch with somebody. Then I thought who the fuck would ask somebody to pay 10k to have lunch with them? Who is worse in this situation?
 
Kickstarter occupies such a bizarre space in gaming

You can't trust (or must be incredibly wary of) small developers with big dreams, because they have no proven track record of handling projects of that scale. This problem is compounded by the sheer idiocy of "stretch goals", which can take an already bursting-at-the-seams project and layer it on like it's fucking poutine. It's literally crowdfunding feature creep, which btw is the #1 killer of all projects across all industries

So what then? Back only trusted developers? Well those dopes can probably get cash from publishers and investors elsewhere, so that seems out of alignment with Kickstarter's goal

Then it gets real messy when a big developer uses Kickstarter as a means to get even more funding from suddenly interested investors, but because of Kickstarter's model backers don't see any benefit or return of these actions, even as the developer realizes millions of dollars in capital without investing a cent of their own

It gets messier still when a developer keeps coming back to the Kickstarter well to draw even more water, all the while practically gamifying the concept of opening up PayPal - donate $20 and more of this map will be revealed showing what cool new features we're promising but cannot afford!!!

So Kickstarter can be used for the following:

1. Reviving dead genres (yay!)
2. Providing a completely risk free way for companies to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars with no accountability to actually make anything
 
njean777 said:
I just thought to myself, who the fuck would pay 10k just to have lunch with somebody. Then I thought who the fuck would ask somebody to pay 10k to have lunch with them? Who is worse in this situation?
Click to expand...

It gets worse with real celebrities. Some people like Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne make you pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars for 3 seconds with them at a meet-and-greet...no touching.
 
Timeaisis said:
I'll be the first to admit I have no idea about Yogcast, and I'm not defending them in the least. I'm just saying when people ask for money back at the end of a failed kickstarter it's very likley that this is impossible because the fundees went and spent it all.

In the matter of Yogcast, if you are right they do have that money, they should refund it as a gesture of good faith. As far as the game developer is concerned, I can almost guarantee you that it's all been spent (at least their half, anyway).
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I obviously don't know their financial situation but they are one of the biggest channels on Youtube. BusinessInsider recently estimated their annual income as somewhere between 195,000 to 1.9 million. They make deals with publishers/developers to feature games for a cut of the game's sales. While I don't know if they could just bounce 500,000 dollars back to the backers at a drop of the hat, they are certainly doing quite well for themselves.
 
SirPenguin said:
Kickstarter occupies such a bizarre space in gaming

You can't trust (or must be incredibly wary of) small developers with big dreams, because they have no proven track record of handling projects of that scale. This problem is compounded by the sheer idiocy of "stretch goals", which can take an already bursting-at-the-seams project and layer it on like it's fucking poutine. It's literally crowdfunding feature creep, which btw is the #1 killer of all projects across all industries

So what then? Back only trusted developers? Well those dopes can probably get cash from publishers and investors elsewhere, so that seems out of alignment with Kickstarter's goal

Then it gets real messy when a big developer uses Kickstarter as a means to get even more funding from suddenly interested investors, but because of Kickstarter's model backers don't see any benefit or return of these actions, even as the developer realizes millions of dollars in capital without investing a cent of their own

It gets messier still when a developer keeps coming back to the Kickstarter well to draw even more water, all the while practically gamifying the concept of opening up PayPal - donate $20 and more of this map will be revealed showing what cool new features we're promising but cannot afford!!!

So Kickstarter can be used for the following:

1. Reviving dead genres (yay!)
2. Providing a completely risk free way for companies to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars with no accountability to actually make anything
Click to expand...

There is a third, non mainstream games or new ideas by named developers like, revolution 1976. And a fourth studio's that run out of money before they finish the project and need some money to finish the game. And a bonus fifth give your audience a say and get free publicity
 
Let's see the original kickstarter:

Yogventures is going to be an open world sandbox game designed first and foremost as a multiplayer experience.
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Sounds good, let's keep reading

  • Beautiful, randomly-generated game worlds that are different every time you start a new Yogventure
  • Fully shapeable terrain - with the ability for players to raise a mountain range or create a vast ocean; you can effortlessly shape your world however you imagine it
  • A wealth of novel building materials, creatures, NPCs and items
  • A rich underground to mine and explore - bristling with rare outcroppings of gems and crystals, hidden tombs and dark underground terrors that drop rare weapons and loot
  • A fully-fleshed out crafting system
  • An in-game physics engine that will even effect the blocks you place in your creations
  • The ability to customise your own unique avatar or play as one of your favourite Yogscast characters
  • Easy-to-use in-game modding API including in-game scripting
  • Ability for modders to have a chance to get their work added to the game
  • Regularly released video updates from the developers including the latest feature additions
Click to expand...

That's quite an ambitious project, but let's have a look at the team behind it

Lewis and Simon can barely manage a simple jumping puzzle - so the Yogscast aren’t going to be doing any actual coding! We aren't programmers or artists but luckily we have close friends at Winterkewl Games who are.
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oh Winterkewl Games, let's see

This will be Winterkewl Games’s first title
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..um...

well...I'm sure they are asking a good amount of money, I mean a fully customizable open world game can't be that cheap or easy to make...

$250,000 goal
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Yeah, sorry about the people who backed this, but this did have all this problems written all over since the beginning.
 
Rapstah said:
Back in June 2013, Winterkewl games claimed the backer rewards were entirely in the hands of the Yogscast people:

The reason their game looks like a quick Unity tech demo is apparently because it was a quick Unity tech demo:
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Have you been able to navigate Reddit? I have no idea how that place works, and all I can find about how the money was spent was this:

http://np.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2apng1/yogscast_cheat_backers_for_567000_on/cixos9a?context=3
They didn't. As with all kickstarters, a large amount of the money never actually was paid by backers when the campaign finished. In the case of those backers, only 1 out of 5 of the $10,000 backers actually came through, and many more failed to pay at the medium tiers. The actual money received by Winterkewl was far less than indicated, especially after kickstarter took their cut.
Click to expand...

And this from a supposed copy of Winterkewl dev main(?) guy's post on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/yogventures/comments/29rduc/winterkewl_games_is_dead/
After the Yogscast have made an official announcement regarding their future plans for the game we will put out a detailed spreadsheet showing where all the funds from the Kickstarter were spent as well as the amounts that I personally invested once those funds ran out.
Click to expand...
 
ShadyJ said:
This is why I will never touch kickstarter, if your game is good I'll buy it when it's done.

Period.
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Some games won't get made without help from the fans. Imagine if no one put money towards the double fine kickstarter. Then they go under and Tim Schaeffer starts working part time at best buy.
 
Kind of shameful how hard Yogscast is trying to distance themselves from Winterkewl now that the whole project is on fire and the money is gone in order to recuse themselves from any legal responsibility tied to the Kickstarter itself. No mention of their personal cut off the top, how the project was originally presented as a partnership and why they had the power to request milestones and reject them based on quality. Don't believe much of what those folks will say on the matter at this point, as YouTube personalities that built their brand into a PR firm they clearly value money making ventures over integrity.
 
Kickstarter FAQ said:
Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?

Yes. Kickstarter's Terms of Use require creators to fulfill all rewards of their project or refund any backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill. (This is what creators see before they launch.) This information can serve as a basis for legal recourse if a creator doesn't fulfill their promises. We hope that backers will consider using this provision only in cases where they feel that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project and fulfill.
Click to expand...

This could become interesting.
 
LurkerPrime said:
Congratulations on having good judgement. Unfortunately, some people don't want to spend hours researching and calculating whether Kickstarter Tier X is the best of investments, and they would rather trust the people behind the Kickstarter. Call them naïve or idealistic if you want, but it's not unreasonable to expect Kickstarter themselves to enforce a gorram ounce of credibility to projects using their service, instead of passing everything through and just collecting the cheques.

And, to be clear, Yogscast licensed their name for the explicit purpose of promoting the Kickstarter, so it isn't just a case of the developer name-dropping for the sake of it. They paid for that privilege, and presumably for Yogscast advertisements of the Kickstarter itself.

If you truly want to avoid risk, just buy the finished project (as Stump suggests).
Click to expand...
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Kickstarter, or Yogscast with my post. I mean that whole little girl going to school to make a game kickstarter by a known scammer just highlighted how much Kickstarter just wants money without putting effort into verifying projects and even just enforcing the rules they already have. I also don't think Yogscast should have given their name to someone(Yes, I realise it was licensed hence why I'd argue Yogscast have some accountability too) who just wouldn't be able to deliver. Again, it seemed like Yogscast were in over their head, and just wanted the license money after they realised how much hard work it was going to be.

I was more defending other developers who are trustworthy. I don't think it's right writing off every kickstarter project because of this. There has been some great games from Kickstarter roots.

But yeah. The safest option is always to wait.
 
I can't believe people actually gave money for something like this...

Horrible especially for those who gave a lot of money :(
 
Aeolipile said:
That is the only flaw with things like Kickstarter or Early Access; once devs get your money, they really don't have any financial incentive to finish the game.
I refer to this as "The Chucklefish Effect".
Click to expand...
To be fair, most failed kickstarters that are this bad and warrant discussion come from KNOWN developers/groups. I really don't see as many unknown or fresh devs go down this path. Sure there are some shady campaigns, but most of the Kickstarter woes seem to come from established groups.

This is, of course, anecdotal - simply based on media coverage of campaigns gone south. I have no real vertical slice since one hasn't been made, much like your assumptions.

Its a gamble either way. I'd rather help fund a project that already has a few cut teeth from an unknown source vs a known unknown that exceeds its target by multiples and still begs for more money. That's just me though and I understand the counter-view.
 
Tripon said:
The Yogcast are scam artists or just incredibly naive businessmen because they took half the kickstarter money as their share claiming it was a 'partnership'.

That's incredibly slanted towards the Yogcast, and doomed the game from any hope of completion status.
Click to expand...

stevil said:
I already read this several times in this thread but is there any hard evidence that they did in fact do this?
Click to expand...

I'd like to know this as well as personally this is the most relevant information to me. Way too many posts from people who clearly don't know how kickstarter works, or who was actually behind the project.
 
Sounds like they were trying to make something like Project Spark which has probably cost Microsoft millions. Laughable really considering their original goal was 250K.
 
More and more I'm just believing that Kickstarter is another haves/have-nots division that illustrates the middle-class being cut off from being able to REALLY invest into something. It gives middle-class people the illusions of being investors when they really have no equity in anything but assume all the same risk of monetary loss.
 
KneehighPark said:
Well from what I understand (I called out the developers on Reddit, and learned a lot from there), around half of the money raised (which ended up being a bit less than $500K, after Kickstarter/Amazon fees and high paying backers not coming through), around HALF (yes half) went to the Yogscast folks, because they used their name.

The rest was split among around 6-8 people to work on the game. So all of the money is now used, Winterkewl is bankrupt, and the morons at Yogscast (yes they deserve to be called that) can't follow through on their project. What pisses me off is they never updated their KS page for nearly a year, leaving fans in the dark. I never watched Yogscast, but I will never support them now.
Click to expand...

Seriously that's beyond dickish. The time to collect their royalties is after the game is done and making profits, not pilfering half the games development budget and thereby causing the game to fail. Then again it's hard to say whether double the budget would have actually helped in this case
 
I'm going to have to jump in and agree with the people pointing the finger at Yogscast's sleezyness and or ineptitude, not Kickstarter. Sure the system is abused, but we also got Shadowrun, Divinity, and Wasteland 2 out of it. Also lets not forget some of the promising games like Star Citizen.

From all of the details we have about this it sounds like Yogscast used their fame to convince people that a project was legitimate. The question is did they do this to get the licensing money or did they do this because they thought the project was feasible?

Also, after watching 3 of their videos I am mind blown that they get so many views.
 
I'm also still not sure what anyone's legal responsibility is. After some discussion and thought (there was a good discussion following a tweet by Jim Sterling) I think the yogscast position is legally correct, but their PR is pretty bad. The developer is responsible for the project, not the yogscast. If some people want to put some moral obligation on them as they advertised or lent their name to the project they can do so, but I won't. If I was every going to fund a kickstarter if would be on the strength of the project, not base don 'celebrities' endorsing it.

With respect to the legal obligation of the developer some people have already posted kickstarters terms of use:

"Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?

Yes. Kickstarter's Terms of Use require creators to fulfill all rewards of their project or refund any backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill. (This is what creators see before they launch.) This information can serve as a basis for legal recourse if a creator doesn't fulfill their promises."

There is a distinction between a project and a reward. I've always thought that this meant that if you funded to a level that provides a reward the company running the kickstarter has to get you your reward or refund your money if you don't get your reward - but don't have to do so if the project itself doesn't finish (as long as you have your reward).
 
People using a few bad apples to dismiss Kickstarter completely are ridiculous.

For every 1 game that failed to deliver, there's been 10 more. Oculus Rift, Shovel Knight, FTL, Shadowrun Returns, Divinity, Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity and much more. Without Kickstarter we would never have the CRPG renaissance we're enjoying right now. But then again, topics on GAF are never made about projects that met delivered so by all means continue with the bad one-liners.
 
NewEraBlood said:
From all of the details we have about this it sounds like Yogscast used their fame to convince people that a project was legitimate. The question is did they do this to get the licensing money or did they do this because they thought the project was feasible?
Click to expand...

Good question, but probably not one they will dare to answer, since no alternative is a good one.
 
gngf123 said:
FTL, Shovel Knight, and Divinity: Original Sin say otherwise.
Click to expand...

I'll add Shadowrun Returns, Banner Saga, Republique, and Jagged Alliance: Flashback and there's more if you care to look.

Plus, not to mention upcoming games such as Planetary Annihilation, Dead State, Grim Dawn, Carmageddon, Hyper Light Drifter, Castle Story, Stonehearth, Shantae, Amplitude, Armikrog, Massive Chalice, Dreamfall Chapters, Kingdom Come, Star Citizen, Elite, Wasteland 2, Mighty No. 9, Tides of Numenera, and Project Eternity, etc.

Yeah this situation is something that can happen, and it is the worst scare scenario, but that doesn't mean that nothing good ever comes out of Kickstarter, you just have to be careful with what you give money to, just like any endeavor.
 
NewEraBlood said:
I haven't the faintest clue about during development but I would say after the huge success of FTL now they could at least upgrade to some Nongshim, lol.



I'm not really a huge indie guy but I've heard nothing but good things about those. Seems shortsighted to write them off.
Click to expand...

Yes I was wrong in my first statement

But indie stuff never interested me
 
From what I've read about the game it was destined to fail from day one. People were foolish to ever think that it was going to go places.
 
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