How Not To Crowdfund Your Game

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I seriously can't get my head around this. Does this even remotely seem like a good idea? :eek:

Where it has become common practice to offer backer rewards for those putting funding toward your game, Black Isle has decided this isn't necessary. If you pledge $10, you'll be granted access to a special Black Isle forum. If you put down $20, they'll even let you post on the forum.

There is no way to receive a copy of the game by pledging -- even if you decide to put down $10,000 -- because the money isn't actually going towards a game at all. In fact, the money will be used to build a prototype, which Black Isle will then show to investors in the hope of gathering up moolah elsewhere.
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Rofl, I think I'll remember this studio and not buy their game if it ever happens.
 
A point will come that all this kickstart/crowdfunding nonsense bursts like the 2000 dot-com bubble because enough people just dont give a crap anymore and it falls into the same landfill with nigerian scam letters and the rest.
 
Read about this a few days ago. Goes against the whole crowdsourcing spirit.... the dregs of businesses are starting to realise you can make money from all of this.
 
I found out a long time ago that most people get ahead by spending OTHER PEOPLES MONEY, not their own, and not by hard work. Maybe they work hard by convincing people to pony up cash for them but that is it.
 
How to ruin a bad thing.

I will crowdsource a game, promise everything, B&H for pleges of $1000 and more.

Pay myself a salary of $1,000,000.00 a year to build the game myself.

If I cant do it. I will just fold the company.

Sorry to be cynical on Xmas, but I had a shit day.
 
Crowd-funding is just like the lottery. You have to make it worth while for people to take a small risk for a huge reward. Sometimes, it works out but the majority of the time it is just a waste of money.

The very small amount of money I have put into kickstarter et al, I consider throw-away entertainment/gambling/starbucks/theatre money. I don't expect to get anything back.
 
It sounds like the desperate guys at Interplay (you know, the ones trying to hang on to the Fallout MMO license even though they clearly haven't done anything with it) are now trying to cash in on the Black Isle name. As far as I know, most of the people from the "original" Black Isle now work for either Bioware or Obsidian. They won't be getting anything from me.
 
Ya well this sort of thing was inevitable. Since crowd sourcing has been successful, it means stupid greedy people are going to try and get in on it too. They love the idea of money up front with no equity or deliverables required.

Hopefully people will ignore shit like this. If crow funding gets a reputation for only funding actual projects and not shit like this, it'll help there to be less crap in teh future.

Daedalus454 said:
As far as I know, most of the people from the "original" Black Isle now work for either Bioware or Obsidian. They won't be getting anything from me.
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A number work at inXile as well. That is Brian Fargo's current company, he was the head honcho at Interplay back in the day.

But ya this is just people trying to cash in on the name, which is rather shady in and of itself.
 
Why not have a pledge level equal to the value of the game? That's just stupid, screw 'em.
 
I can't find it on KickStarter.... >.>

It's too bad, I wanted to see if funding 1 cent was possible.
 
Well it is not unprecedented, Goblin Works (a spin off of Paizo Publishing) successfully kickstarted a technology demo for the same reasons as Black Isle. You didn't get the game, that is being kickstarted for a second time for extra cash to make it better and release faster. Don't think it is going to make the 1 million they want for this second one tho.

Still the Pathfinder MMO kickstarters have support in a large part due to a rabid fan base for the table top pen and paper Pathfinder RPG . It also had some good rewards.
 
I can agree with part of this scheme - that is, if you want to build a major AAA title, you can't do it with the 1-2 mil you might be able to collect from kickstarter. So building a prototype is logical.

I really don't understand why early contributors would not get a copy of the game? I thought we all had a firm grasp of how capitalism works.

Also Black Isle website looks half broken.

This project is a highly powerful and mysterious project whose mystery is only exceeded by its power
 
I got this email when I was sitting in the airport and puzzled over it for a while. I thought "surely, I'm missing something. They can't think people are that stupid."
 
I've help fund a studio album for a local band, got tons of merchandise as a result. Gave money to someone developing an interesting bicycle light, received said light after they went into production. Etc. You invest, you get something of value in return. That's the was crowdfunding is supposed to work. I don't know what to call this, but it clearly isn't that.
 
Fucking wow

This isn't anything like kickstarter

This is "Give us money for no fucking reason. What, you wanted something in return? We'll give you access to a website that costs less then $15 a month to manage, how's that?"

Its like that episode of Penny Arcade checkpoint "Good news, publishers fail to see how kickstarter works"
 
Aluisious said:
I got this email when I was sitting in the airport and puzzled over it for a while. I thought "surely, I'm missing something. They can't think people are that stupid."
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It is in their website, not kickstarter. Sadly it looks like there is no shortage of stupid people with disposable income.
 
I'm angry that they're using the Black Isle name to do this crap more than anything else. They probably will end up fooling a bunch of people into giving money just because Black Isle is (was) a good name.
 
I would rather give that asshole at the gas station money. At least he will go the fuck away.
 
Yet another scam by Herve Caen to dupe gamers out of their money. Herve killed Black Isle nearly 10 years ago, now he's dangling the decomposed corpse and asking for money like a macabre marionette sideshow.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
It is in their website, not kickstarter. Sadly it looks like there is no shortage of stupid people with disposable income.
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Ah. I saw that on their website, but I didn't see anything on Kickstarter... so they're doing a fake me out kickstarter on their fake me out site.

Funky.
 
What i think is funny is that, to me, the leaderboard is more like a race to see who is the biggest dumbass.
 
I guess they did manage to fool people into donating up to $150 :eek: According to their site anyway. Might be a fake list given how shady the whole thing is.
 
Down with Herve Caen, down with Interplay, down with Franken-Black Isle. I wouldn't trust this guy for a single second.
 
"There's a sucker is born every minute" ...as the saying goes.
 
Hornet said:
I guess they did manage to fool people into donating up to $150 :eek: According to their site anyway. Might be a fake list given how shady the whole thing is.
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Actually its worse than that. Turns out that interplay is using this thing called invested.in which has even less rules and controls than KS.

If you goto this link:
http://invested.in/projects/find
And search for V13, you can see the number of ppl and dollars. Its up to 121 contributors donating $3,829, which is an average of over $30.

Also, if you donate $10 you get READ ONLY access to the extra special top secret forum that doesn't seem to exist yet. You have to give at least $20 to get posting access. But apparently the ones who have donated prefer to give even more than that.

What I do like though is that they have public comments on the project page. And most people seem to have a clue what's being pulled here.
 
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