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I think it'd be good for a meatier article regarding game development costs to have it's own thread so that people not familiar with the Indivisible Indiegogo campaign can share their thoughts and discuss whether or not these misconceptions are giving crowdfunding a bad reputation. There is a lot more to read at the link below. We even get a little into the issue of publishers and demos/prototypes as a proof of concept.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-10-19-skullgirls-dev-explains-why-indivisible-costs-usd3-5m
http://indivisiblegame.com/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-10-19-skullgirls-dev-explains-why-indivisible-costs-usd3-5m
Earlier this month Skullgirls developer Lab Zero Games launched an Indiegogo campaign for a new action-RPG called Indivisible. The campaign is struggling as in its first two weeks it's only raised $349,920 towards its $1.5m goal. That's only 23 per cent, and it has 27 days left to make the rest.
Lab Zero suspects the lack of funds have been spawned by a handful of misconceptions regarding how much a game costs to develop, what Lab Zero's arrangement with publisher 505 Games is, and the difference between making a demo and a full game.
Lab Zero's Mike Zaimont addressed all these matters very frankly on YouTuber JBgolden's stream over the weekend.
"After a lot of negotiation we were able to convince 505 to be nice and put in $2m of the $3.5m that we need, which is slightly over half, and take care of a lot of the other development costs like localisation and testing and marketing and stuff," he explained. "That means the actual $3.5m can go toward game development. Not extra expenses like backer rewards and the things we needed it to go toward with Skullgirls."
"They are a publisher. They are not our publisher," Zaimont added. "They are not acting in the traditional publisher role of funding the entire thing and taking the entire profit. They have given us a pretty dang good deal on the backend."
One of the stipulations to this agreement is that Lab Zero still needs to raise the other $1.5 on its own. "They are not putting in money unless we can raise this money," Zaimont said.
"That prototype was the result of about three months and one week of super intense work by a very small team of people," Zaimont explained. "That does not translate into an entire RPG." He noted that the prototype has no cutscenes, no implementation of a plot, and only one unfinished level with a mere four playable characters. The final game will have "way the hell more."
"Having a prototype does not mean that the game is getting made in any way," he said. "It means that instead of spending three months making a campaign and trying to convince you that we could do something cool, we spent three months making something that we think is cool that you could play."
What do you guys think? Are full fledged demos/prototypes the way of the future when asking backers to buy into the vision or should campaigns go all in on marketing and conceptual work hoping that the final product turns out as promised? Have crowdfunding campaigns influenced your impression of how cheap or expensive game development can be? You can check the prototype below for yourself to see whether or not prototypes are up your alley for crowdfunding campaigns after all."I'm kind of annoyed that so many crowdfunding drives at this point have had like 90 per cent of their funding from investors already and have just used it as an interest gauge, because that basically killed our ability to say 'we don't have a publisher and this is not an interest gauge.'"
http://indivisiblegame.com/