Kickstarter has added one more game to its list of runaway success stories, as the upcoming Homestuck adventure game has just become the third highest funded game in the platform's history (behind Double Fine Adventure and Wasteland 2).
The game, which is based on an interactive webcomic of the same name, concluded its Kickstarter campaign with more than $2.4 million earned, putting the game well above its original $700,000 goal. In addition, it surpassed the recently funded Planetary Annihilation, which ended its campaign last month with $2.2 million earned.
Homestuck is also the fifth game on Kickstarter to pull in a full seven figures, and it certainly won't be the last, as one more title is also about to achieve that notable landmark. Obsidian Entertainment's Project Eternity has 12 days left in its campaign, and already the game has earned more than $2.3 million in pledges.
I never heard of it before this became such a popular KS project. Then I looked into it and thought only "wtf?". I still am not the slightest convinced this project would be even worth the initially asked money... time will tell.
I really wonder what actually does come out at the end of a lot of KS projects. Both things like this, as others.
Have any notable KS games come out yet? Barring anything by established companies, I'm loathe to actually try and fund anything until it becomes pretty clear that funded projects are coming out in a reasonably timely manner.
FTL was shown off long before its Kickstarter campaign, and even had a playable demo during the campaign - which is not to say it wasn't important, but they had a "whole game" well into production before going to KS. I'm more interested in seeing what games who Kickstarted at pre-production, during concepting, or even earlier, manage.
While the game sounds dumb to me. I do have to admit, its nice seeing a game make over 2 million and not be based off of exploiting nostalgia and also not coming from industry veterans. I'm not trying to say those two qualities are negative, its just that it seems the only wildly successful games on kickstarter are coming from old blood. I want something new and crazy, not just games I've played back in the 80's and 90's.
I vaguely recall hearing about the comic a while back-I'm assuming it has some hardcore fan following that got the ball rolling initially, as there's nothing concrete enough in that KS to warrant funding it.
It's an established 6 years old "big name" property, just not on the classic circuit. But that still means an established fanbase willing to give money. It supposedly has 600'000 unique page views per day, so they just needed about 4% of their audience to give in order to reach the current numbers. It's not that much.
Given that Penny Arcade got half a million dollars to do essentially nothing, I'm not surprised to see a comparatively-sized webcomic (~60-80% as large, and with a much more active community) getting this much for doing something.
I will not say anything pejorative since I really never got the idea of this project, but that is exactly the problem. I did not feel at all that it reached out to newcomers; it mentioned Homestuck dozens of times and said it would be an adventure game, but beyond that I didn't have a clue on how it will be played. It might not be the sort of game I would play, but at least help an outsider see what would be worth contributing towards.
There is a great word game on KS right now but it isn't getting noticed as it's just some little Indie developer. It will be the next big word game and is around 80% coded already. It's called Gadzookery and will be ready for download before Christmas. Disclaimer - Yes it's mine :)
I really wonder what actually does come out at the end of a lot of KS projects. Both things like this, as others.
FTL was a KS project? I didn't know that, been playing it for the last few days.