Beyond The Gates of Antares - Official Kickstarter Thread

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**Herzlos**

I guess this makes sense. There's obviously a demand for the game, but I think the kickstarter was premature and too optimistic.

If they were looking for £30-50k to get the rules done and start adding factions as stretch goals it might have gone better. Or if they had more in the way of figures to show.

So hopefully this will just be a short delay allowing the team to get caught up and there will be a better kickstarter in the near future.

I have to admit it suits me at the moment as it's freed up a bit of money I can put into some other projects for now

**Bulldogging**

I'm disappointed, but hopefully they make a comeback sooner rather than later.

"Almost" Finished Hansa painting at least.

**cyphertheory**

Catyrpelius wrote:
It's going to be interesting to see what effect a failed Kickstarter has on the game in the long run...

hopefully a positive one regarding development. I'm not sure it will have any long term effect when it finally hits retail, but perhaps it will help with a new kickstarter as people who have pledged before will get in early.

imho the downfall of this kickstarter was the lack of shiny things to show.

**kenshin620**

Hansa looks great painted up, at least they'll have that if they're going to make a smaller/different KS down the road

**Commander Cain**

Good move. It seems silly for them to keep updating things, getting sculpts and painting done when it has been obvious for quite a while that they are never going to make the goal. I just hope they decide to keep all their plans going and come back in a year or so with some real stuff to show us.

**Rolt**

Update: Kickstarter Cancellation

After much consideration we have decided to withdraw our project from Kickstarter.

We’d like to thank you all for believing in us and backing us, GoA will still become a reality but through different means.

We will take the next month to reassess our plans, during this time you will still see us on the forums and we will continue to post updates to our website. Once we have a plan set we will let you all know what it is so that we can continue to build GoA together.

There are a lot of positives to take from this journey and we certainly don’t think of this as a failure, more a change in plans with actual direct feedback from the market, which should help us greatly in the future. One of the best things we’ve done is you guys. We managed to develop a thriving community in a very short time, which is bursting with ideas and support for the project and for that we thank you and we will continue to want and need your help in the future.

There are too many people to thank, but we’d like to take the opportunity to give special thanks to these guys (in no order!): Melcavuk, Krazus, Prototheca, Endtransmission, Karl Pedder, Gylan Hunter, Michael Musson, John Wigley, Des Hanley, Karol Rudyk, Bruno Lavallee, Angelika Rasmus, Andy Gibson (brandnewbadidea), Golem Painting Studios, James Sherriff, Tim Prow, Kev White, Wojtek Fils, Bob Naismith, Andrew Chesney, Paul Sawyer

We’ll talk to you all very soon

Thank you!

Rick, Rik, John and Co

TBH I'm really shocked this happened, I expected them to follow through till the end regardless of how bleak the outcome looked. I guess we can just hope they don't give up on this project and it comes back bigger and better in a years or so's time. I hope the failure of and how they ran this KS project doesn't cause a negative preconception towards them in the future, wargamers can be a fickle crowd sometimes.

Enjoy.

**Vaktathi**

Hansa's looking really nice, though that NMM look will be difficult for most people to replicate. Sad that the KS got cancelled, but it never got much of a chance from a lot of people.

**Bolognesus**

Vaktathi wrote:
Hansa's looking really nice, though that NMM look will be difficult for most people to replicate. Sad that the KS got cancelled, but it never got much of a chance from a lot of people.

Foremost amongst them the developers, I'd say

Shame - I liked a lot about it & was in for early feeder...

**scarletsquig**

Hansa looks amazing painted up, if only they'd had that pic right at the start instead of posting it alongside the cancellation notice, we'd have had a much different reaction.

You can't go into these things asking for £300k and not have anything to show for it.

If they come back with a more modest goal of around £60k just to produce the rulebook, with hansa thrown in as a bonus, and then take it from there with a £60k-goal mini-KS for each faction, similar to what RBG is doing, they can make this work, easily.

Unfortunately, people are trying to encourage them to take the CMoN route and release a "board game" instead.

**Pacific**

scarletsquig wrote:

Unfortunately, people are trying to encourage them to take the CMoN route and release a "board game" instead.

Who are these people? Did they even understand the concept of the game?

Herzlos wrote:I guess this makes sense. There's obviously a demand for the game, but I think the kickstarter was premature and too optimistic.

If they were looking for £30-50k to get the rules done and start adding factions as stretch goals it might have gone better. Or if they had more in the way of figures to show.

So hopefully this will just be a short delay allowing the team to get caught up and there will be a better kickstarter in the near future.

I have to say I still think GoA has a lot going for it. I use the present tense, as Rick has already put forward that (should the KS fail) they have other means of investing, and they are too far invested in the game in terms of effort to just give up on it. That they must have known the failure was inevitable at least two weeks ago, when the pledges started to plateau, means that hopefully they are already making preparations for another announcement.

And, let this be a lesson for other Kickstarters - no matter how big the name on the box (and arguably, there couldn't be a bigger name there in terms of wargaming - short of bringing HG Wells back from the dead) the project needs to start with a great deal of development already on the table. Want to take the 'player feedback' route of helping to formulate the rules and game concepts? Get them organised well before the Kickstarter begins - with Rick's name on the project, they had plenty of people already signed up - and get a solid collection of concept art, at least 1 green for each of the races, and considering one of the strongest selling point of the game, perhaps even a demo of the online mission and rule upload system. If these things had been done, and all of it with a polish on the top, I have no doubt we would be talking now about smashed KS records rather than a cancellation notice.

**Duncan_Idaho**

I think cutting it now, does help the game more than seeing it through until the last day.

If more minis like Hansa show up the next time there will bedefinitly a demand for the game.

**NAVARRO**

All delays in delivering content etc aside I think one of the major problems was the inconsistency on the sculpting, I mean you get 1 brilliant mini and 2 very crude amateurish ones, thats not a good start IMO.

**Zweischneid**

Duncan_Idaho wrote:
I think cutting it now, does help the game more than seeing it through until the last day.

If more minis like Hansa show up the next time there will bedefinitly a demand for the game.

But they can do that without the Kickstarter.

If they produce new sculpts with the KS still running, all mentions will be in relations to the huge gap they still have to cross.

If they produce a new sculpt now, (presumably) their community of fans will carry it out into the interwebs to be discussed on its own merits, free from the "shadow" of a looming Kickstarter-fail.

**Duncan_Idaho**

Exactly, and the time pressure is less.

**reppy**

Kickstarter wasn't really good so this outcome it's not surprising for me, but i think that with a better project they can make a good product. The mini, the game, the background, all was in little pieces and nothing stood out really. You can see something interesting deep in the idea, but it was really rushed and far fetched imho. I wasn't a backer but before the start of the kickstarter i was really interested in pledging, after only a couple of days i realized that there was really nothing exceptional or economically worth for me.

**Buzzsaw**

One of the biggest problems this project faced is that it was a unique and irreducible: that is, unlike, say, Sedition Wars or the Iron Core universe, Beyond the Gates was going to be built around the gimmick of the real-time, MMO universe. The inherent problem with that system is that you can't really make that system smaller: it's always going to need a pretty impressive infrastructure, one that can't really be scaled down or done piecemeal.

That said, the 300k funding limit was always the Achilles heel of this project: the infrastructure they needed for their on-line and the basic rules should have been the target, and as we saw, 100k was easily possible just on Priestly's name alone.

All of that said, let's not forget, sometimes the dogs just don't like the dog food. Just my opinion, but I never found the elements of the game all that enticing. The setting would constantly remind me of other things: the nanomachine-god-AI almost right out of Ringo's Council Wars series, the Mass Effect like Gate system (or Pohl's HeeChee, if you're more obscure), the parade of miniatures that all seemed lifted to one degree or another from other settings. And, frankly, I never really saw why anyone would want a table top game that requires at the same time paying close attention to something on-line (shades of Ex Illis).

**Cryptek of Awesome**

Buzzsaw wrote:
That said, the 300k funding limit was always the Achilles heel of this project: the infrastructure they needed for their on-line and the basic rules should have been the target, and as we saw, 100k was easily possible just on Priestly's name alone.

I don't think it was the 300k specifically although that was high... I think it was always the was the lack of content from day one. Like a lot of people have said - they needed their 3 or 4 four main factions up front and centre on the Kickstarter page on Day one.

You can't wait several weeks to have concept art and alien race descriptions start filtering in appearing down the page and scattered across updates - Kickstarter is a real pain to navigate.

Front page on day 1 needs to be:
*Boom* Main game
Army bundle 1
Army bundle 2
Army bundle 3

Then the stretch goals unlock more factions and more miniatures for everyone.

I want to say that at the end when I checked back again there was some nice looking stuff being posted about the races and the painted Hansa but that should have been day 1 stuff. By that point I didn't really feel compelled enough to go back and piece it all together and get on board... and I've backed about a dozen kickstarters over the last 10 months, the really casual gamer is long gone.

**agustin**

I guess this is a case study in how not to handle a Kickstarter. I think withdrawing the project was the right thing to do.

Some of the concept art, when it finally appeared, was really strong. Hopefully they'll lead with that direction next time rather than bubble skin man and Mr. butt plates.

**Kilkrazy**

£300K is not very much to write three new integrated rulesets, develop several factions with rules, army books and miniatures, and develop a web and app infrastructure to run an interactive campaign. And ship all of that to customers.

**agustin**

That's too large of a scope for the project to be kicked off with no real content to be displayed. Way too large.

Had they gone with:

One rules set. Some miniatures for a few factions. The web interface (including a mobile version until an app can be made in the future).

At a lower goal amount, with some real content to show right from the start, they would have had success with their Kickstarter.

**Dentry**

So they're going to take a month to make a decision on what to do with the IP? I'm confused. Dark Space Corp have stated the game will proceed no matter what so presumably they should keep building the universe; the factions and races; technology; miniatures and ruleset; and work very, very hard on the wardrones.

They should take the time (more than a month, please) to organize themselves, produce materials and strategies for their next crowdsourcing attempt. Maybe they could set up a shell company or work something out where Kickstarter doesn't require credit card info to donate - served as a big deterrent for my even backing this project without assured success.

**H.B.M.C.**

Meanwhile the next Zombicide Kickstarter will probably make 300K in its first week...

**Zweischneid**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Meanwhile the next Zombicide Kickstarter will probably make 300K in its first week...

So what?

Isn't that the best thing about Kickstarter. It's provides rote-template to raising prodigious amounts of money that is (relatively) easy to replicate. The examples for "how to do it" are out there. Entrepreneurs or "I-want-to-make-my-own" wargame-people 5 or 10 years ago would've sold their grandparents to have such a convenient "by-the-numbers-approach" to raising start-up money.

All you need to do is copy-&-paste what Zombicide et al. did and you'll be playing Gates of Antares (or whatever) in no time.

Or, if in doubt, give CMON a call. I doubt they'd turn down Rick Priestley. By all I see, they are worth their money in the (Kickstarter-) marketing department.

[edit]

Also, CMON's Confrontation Kickstarter incoming this year. If they do it right, be prepared to see Reaper Bones dethroned.

**Vaktathi**

CMON was building entirely different games from an entirely different point of view with essentially completed products ready to go. You can't just point to CMON for everything miniature related and say "do that" because it's not applicable to every project. Zombicide and the like were finished and ready to go products where basically Kickstarter serves as a pre-order mechanism that helps cover/recover initial startup costs quickly. While that works for some things very very well, it doesn't necessarily translate to every project.

I feel in many ways the miniatures market playerbase was...I don't want to say "spoiled" but it's the only word that comes to mind, with projects that were essentially "finished on demand" where they're presented with what amounts to a fancy array of pre-order options for something that's largely already good to go, and now anything different is going to face difficulties.

NOTE: I'm not saying that they didn't make mistakes here, only that other projects created preconceptions that weren't necessarily translatable and judged this project on that.

**Bossk_Hogg**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Meanwhile the next Zombicide Kickstarter will probably make 300K in its first week...

Its the high funding goal that scares people off. There's a strong mentality not to back until something is funded, as people dont want to take the leap (not that it matters, you arent charged if the project doesnt get funded).

**PsychoticStorm**

I think they take a month off to decide how they will continue, not if they will continue.

Personally I am intrigued on the possibilities and even if kickstarter didn't go well, I will keep an eye on it.

I still believe it can succeed if it is better supported, by the developers.

**H.B.M.C.**

Bossk_Hogg wrote:
Its the high funding goal that scares people off. There's a strong mentality not to back until something is funded, as people dont want to take the leap (not that it matters, you arent charged if the project doesnt get funded).

Which makes me wonder why they started it so high.

**god.ra**

This is really annoying, I love that mini with the moustache. I guess I get my money back now! What to spend it on? I was gonna use him to lead the the cybertronic chasseurs from the new warzone.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/504794.page

**devilution**

This was easy to predict.

It's like I posted somewhere on their forums.

1. 300K GBP for basic rules, some lore, 3/4 sculpts and allot of AIR.
2. No real reason the pledge more than 30GBP (for Hansa and rulebook) Why pledge for an army that you don't even know how it will look like? Are the models discounted?
3. Metagaming = biggest cost of the project, they never said that but I am pretty sure that's why they need 300K GBP (I am software developer, so I do know the things they wanted to have in place take allot of cash) -> primary target audience = miniature wargamers => FAIL to satisfy the primary target = GAME OVER.

Solution:

Start with a small kickstarter 1 to 2 factions, each 5 to 10 models already sculpted. Skirmish rules (necromunda²) 20K GBP -> stretch goals : New minis / New rules / ultimate goal -> metagaming, maybe even do the metagaming in a big campaign with it's own kickstarter.

I know eff about marketing but just use some common sense, don't try to reinvent the wheel damn it :(

**Azazelx**

Sidstyler wrote:
Yeah, page says it was canceled 13 minutes ago. That's a shame. Hopefully it comes back bigger and better later, I'm still interested but there just wasn't a whole lot here to be excited about yet.

Kind of a shame, but not really. Better that they learn a lesson about crowdfunding and what you need to be able to offer to attract varying amounts of money, as well as get a clue about how to actually run a Kickstarter in terms of content. If they come back in 6 months with a better-thought-out campaign it'll only be better for all involved - us and them both - so good. If they come back in 6 months with a rulebook at retail, with Warlord as proper investors, then good.