@SAJ-99
Give us your gist/take on the kickstarter marketing mechanism.
I've experienced Kickstarter from an online gaming perspective. Yes, my attempt to exhale from the work grind. It's a brain dead, enjoyable separation from the daily grind and joined with others that age from 30-80
https://forums.oldtimersguild.com/
Over the decades of game creation, many developers of MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) have broken free of the Producer big name companies, such as Activision, Electronic Arts, etc, to venture on their own. Free of the whips that make them drive to release a game due to the demand of the almighty ROI.
These developers have found crowd funded games (Kickstarter, etc) as their $$$ to
correctly (developers intent) create and release an MMORPG. Example:
Experience an MMORPG where everything is permanently impacted by your actions – explore, trade, build, and let the world take form. From your imagination through your will and into everyone's reality, what you create will be the cornerstone of the next explorer’s ambition.
ashesofcreation.com
This is merely my observation of crowd funded games: Sure, it frees the developers from the chains of big company ROI demands to release, A.S.A.P. A game can be released under crowdfunding with many less bugs and cater a market desperate for the true niche of "Old School Gamers" versus the current cookie cutter, impulse desire players of current game models (New World, World of Warcraft, etc)
HOWEVER, what I've personally experienced, without accountability (corporate whip) to release, MANY MMORPG crowdfunded games are merely pipedreams of the developer because they don't have constraints to release... There is no actual demand to get the project completed with *
manageable bugs. Thus developers constantly fall on their own sword and those who paid into the game creation are left with eh, dust in the wind.
For instance, the above mentioned game, AOC, Crowd funding began in 2017. Intent to release the game 2019-2020. Now? They've halted projects for release date. AND they are STILL in Alpha One stage of creation (Base creation, Alpha 1, Alpha 2, Beta 1, Beta 2, Release)! What has happened? New visual engines created, new developer productions released to enhance graphics and computer gaming speed (FPS, etc.) They keep chasing those *
manageable bugs and find updates to improve the creation of their game.
In AOC's case, there's still a demand to see it completed, mainly attributable to the head honcho Developer, who's well respected from "Old School" MMOs (Dark Age of Camelot, etc) he's created under the big company's whip ROI. This demand is waining though as the release date is more and more distant...
Most crowd funded MMO games are pipe dreams that do not reach fruition because it lacks the share holder vested interest to release.
NOW,
IF there was a return of a percentage of crowd sourced funds, say, held in an escrow account, if creation intervals are not met by certain dates, I believe that whip would still be present AND developers would be driven to complete THEIR vision of a game, based on their timeline presented when initially soliciting funding.
Meh, my direct experience with crowd sourced funding.
First 12 hours: broke $750K with 19,000 people.
First month: broke $3.2 million.
This is from the start in May, 2017.
They halted Kickstarter once it exceeded $3.2million, now collect via in house funding. As it's not public, they do not share the total value collected to date.
I hope it releases though the majority of MMO's successfully released, as expected, via crowd source is pretty slim.
Long story though meh, YMMV.
www.grayshift.com
cellebrite.com
www.euronews.com
www.consumeraffairs.com
seekingalpha.com
