The Perils of Backing Kickstarter Projects: Code Hero

[Crazed Rabbit]

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/12/13/co...success-story/

"It's totally not abandoned," says Alex Peake, developer of Kickstarter project Code Hero, his face filling the screen of a Google Hangout window. Late on the night of December 12, Peake responds to comments on the Code Hero Kickstarter page, inviting backers and journalists to join him in a video chat if they have any questions, and apologizing for a lack of updates on the project.

In the chat, he answers our questions directly. "Code Hero is my reason for living. It's not like –"

One of Peake's friends jumps in. "I can second that," he says. "I can second that."

Peake continues, "No matter what, I will make Code Hero because that's why I live. That's my purpose in life."

Peake finds himself defending his commitment to Code Hero following a string of events that began when he established the Kickstarter late last year – events that, for his backers, represent some of the greatest concerns of Kickstarter funding.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/12/13/co...success-story/

Coding tool is still in production, but former developers claim they went unpaid
Former Code Hero developers speaking under condition of anonymity have told Develop that many of them were either unpaid, or not paid as much as promised.
Code Hero vaulted into the public eye and raised $170,000 on Kickstarter this spring, but news of the project became scarce after PAX.
Yesterday a group of backers lead by Dustin Deckard began contemplating legal action, citing rumors that the project was out of money and development had ceased.
While Primer Labs founder Alex Peake later confirmed that development was ongoing, phone conversations with former Code Hero developers revealed that not only had many been shorted pay, but two teams had fallen apart during the course of development.
...
"I'm putting all my hard effort into it, and I look at my check, and you know, it was not what I was promised," he said.
"I talked to Alex about it. You know the guy, the whole time when we were developing, he was just playing video games and then coming up with ideas.

He's posted an apology on his website: http://primerlabs.com/developmentcontinues

CR

[TinCow]

Last year was the feeding frenzy, this year reality will start to set in. It's going to be interesting to see what actual products get released out of all those funding drives.

[Husar]

I very, very often wondered how they could ask for say 150,000$ and post a picture with a team of 20 people, announcing a huge project that would take the team quite a while to finish. Either they had to have some other funding as well or they couldn't calculate as I doubt their average programmer would be happy with 500$ a month.

[Sarmatian]

Indeed. Backing first-timers with huge amounts of money is usually a bad idea. Even companies who had years (decades) of experience in video game industry tend not to do their calculations properly sometime, but I believe backing projects like Project Eternity or Wasteland 2 is pretty safe.

Common sense would be to only back modest projects from first-timers.

[Husar]

Or to only back projects that post a complete business plan instead of some enthusiastic blabla.

[Sarmatian]

Or to only back projects that post a complete business plan instead of some enthusiastic blabla.

Even that isn't really safe, as inexperienced developers tend not to anticipate possible problems and/or underestimate them.

So, while on paper it may all look great, reality is something different entirely.