The Perils of Backing Kickstarter Projects: Code Hero

[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.

[Husar]

Yes, but first of all, no investment is safe and secondly if you don't like that maybe you should not invest.
The business plan does at least show that you have a plan at all and it forms a basis for further scrutiny whereas a long story about how you wanted to do this since your childhood wouldn't even get you an invitation from most serious professional investors.

[Monk]

A great article was written on this very subject at the close of last month, and was featured on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Titled "Kickstarter Successes: Where are they now?" Looks at the triumphs, the failures, the mismanagement and the still-to-comes of the crowd funding site.

linky

I personally enjoy where the writer admonishes those who were putting their release dates super early after funding had finished when they hadn't even written a single line of code.

As for kickstarter itself it's a really tough pill to swallow for some, and I've always warned people to always expect the worst whenever they give their money to this stuff. Even the best plan can fall apart as life intervenes or problems arise that were never anticipated by the developers. Of course, the worst thing that can happen is you get scammed by someone who never follows through on their project and pockets your money, then plays the victim when called out on it. Which is happening quite a lot when Kickstarter is involved.

[Papewaio]

Well for $150,000 you can hire a contract project manager for 6 months.

150k could go a long way for developers in India, China or Hungry.

But really all $150k would be good for is helping publish a product that is ready to launch.

[Papewaio]

Well for $150,000 you can hire a contract project manager for 6 months.

150k could go a long way for developers in India, China or Hungry.

But really all $150k would be good for is helping publish a product that is ready to launch.