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There was too much ephermia - the rules were vagueish, their gameplay video was dire, d10s are evil to roll enmass, gameplay looked like infinity only worse with random proxies.
Nothing new or innovative was shown, only promises.

Bossk_Hogg wrote:

 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).

Disagree. It's the lack of an actual sample product. They were pitching a large scale miniatures game and still only have two of the actual products complete.

The pebble watch had a $100k funding level but had a ton of product info and made $10M

Penny Arcade had theirs set at $250K and had a very clear picture of what you got with your pledge. They ended at around $550k.

Gates had none of that.

 scarletsquig wrote:
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.

What do you mean by "board game"? Something like Sedition Wars (or better yet, a boxed skirmish game like Necromunda) might well be the way to go for an initial product - especially in terms of getting some models and content together upfront...

 Kilkrazy wrote:
£300K is not very much to write three new integrated rulesets,

Wait what 3 rulesets

I thought it was one book

Unless I missed something from their KS page....again

 Vaktathi wrote:
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.

Well, the "spoiled" thing would only apply if there were previous "un-spoiled" Kickstarter that made similar amounts of money by a different method. But there weren't.

The formula the CMON perfected (though certainly didn't invent) made them the first to breach that 500.000 USD mark that GoA were going for themselves, using the same platform (www.kickstarter.com) that CMON has used to their advantage.

If you want to aim for that level, it kinda makes sense to look at the best available comparisons. For that:

a - Miniature Games are better comparisons than .. dunno ... Music Projects
b - Miniature Games launched in the last year or so are better comparisons than those launched 25 years ago
c - Miniature Games launched on Kickstarter are better comparions than those withouth (um.. DZC) or on other platforms
d - Miniature Games Kickstarter in the 500.000 USD+ league (Relic Knights, DreadBall, etc.) are probably better comparisons than 20.000 USD Kickstarter
e - Sci-Fi Miniatures Kickstarters in that range (um.. Sedition Wars, DreadBall) are likely better comparisons than non-Sci-Fi Kickstarter,
f - etc..


People keep saying that GoA is oh so different, yet they always fail to provide better comparisons.

For an evidence-based-approach to developing a Kickstarter-strategy that raises this kind of money, there aren't that many precedents. You work with those that fit best (if, of course, always imperfectly). And these are the CMON Kickstarters (+ DreadBall, Kingdom Death... maybe OGRE?).

If you want to make a case that different strategies work and CMON is some form of corruption of something even better, you'd better give an example.

Just saying "these don't apply" without having a better benchmark to work with doesn't help.

I am genuinely disappointed, I think this game has alot of potential

 Pacific wrote:

Rolt wrote:P.s. Sorry for not embedding the video I'm not sure how to with vimeo, silly hipster stuff.

That's OK, the ability to embed videos here is known only to a select few. Known as 'The Quadrangle', their identity is known only to themselves, and should any reveal the secrets of video embedding, they are immediately hunted down and murdered most horribly by the hands of the other members.

Usually when one of the Quadrangle is approaching death, they will search for another to whom to pass on their secrets. The exact method of the choosing of the new members is not known, but it is thought that only those with a knowledge of the arcane and forbidden arts are likely to be selected. At times they are witnessed, wandering through the streets, their faces hidden by black cowls, their coming heralded by the passing of crows.


So, as a result not many videos get posted on Dakka.

Moving forward I want Pacific to answer all tech questions on Dakka.

 Spyral wrote:
...the rules were vagueish...

That's being rather generous.

So, are we officially sticking a fork in this one?

Vaktathi wrote: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.

Zweischneid has the right of it. You'll have a tough time finding a gaming that raises $300k let alone 300 GBP without a few things:
*The product has to be essentially done and visibly so (Reaper had a few concepts but otherwise was remakes of previous minatures).
*You also almost never raise that much without having another kickstarter first.
*You give a spectacular bargain.

Zweischneid wrote:

People keep saying that GoA is oh so different, yet they always fail to provide better comparisons.

My point is that...perhaps there isn't one? GoA is a much different game with a much different focus by a much different group of people with a different target market than say, Zombicide or Ogre, and given the heavy reliance on comparison with little acknowledgement of these facts I don't think was fair.

Again, I'm not saying that they couldn't have done a better job. I do think however that people comparing Zombicide, Kingdom Death, Ogre, Sedition Wars, etc and not seeing what they expected, when, even if all *had* gone right, they shouldn't have seen the same things, and continually complaining about that that, was unfair, and did a lot to help keep the KS from becoming a success by continually posting about how "they should do this or that that X kickstarter did, funding expectations don't look good (over a month out), hey Zombicide did that why aren't they?" and the like.

decker_cky wrote:
Zweischneid has the right of it. You'll have a tough time finding a gaming that raises $300k let alone 300 GBP without a few things:
*The product has to be essentially done and visibly so (Reaper had a few concepts but otherwise was remakes of previous minatures).
*You also almost never raise that much without having another kickstarter first.
*You give a spectacular bargain.

Agreed here as well. GoA was shooting for all the high targets but had none of the big draws that helped other projects succeed to that kind of large degree. In fact, GoA had basically no concrete draws for me; it was significantly less appealing than the majority of sub-10k goal kickstarters and similarly had much less material than those same tiny company kickstarters. They went about it totally backwards and I did not bat an eyelash when they failed.

Comparing it to games like Zombicide, KD, and SW is a bit unrealistic because those are board games and not table top miniature games. They attracted different demographics. Ogre and Relic Knights are the only table top miniature games that exceeded $400,000. Even Mantic's Kings of War which followed the CMoN process to a tee didn't break that.

I will admit I didn't read all the pages in this thread, but was having Rick Priestly as the lead designer such a good thing? People have been griping about the imbalance in WHFB/40k since I started in the early 90's with WHFB 3rd and Rogue Trader. He openly admits WHFB 3rd was completely unplayable.

Basically this was a Kickstarter that was aimed at the table top miniature crowd that lacked on key item, miniatures.

A suite of coherent concept art would have been enough to get people excited with greens coming up during the project. We can talk forever about what they could have done, but it all comes back to asking for $465,000.00.

They potentially raised $150,000.00 off a name, his jotter of sci-fi concepts, barely a handful of pretty vague concept art, and two and a half models.
I think that says that there's a desire for at least part of what they were offering even if that's just "a new squad based sci fi TTG".
Let's see if Warzone eats that market before GoA can get it's act together.

I can honestly see this one revamped and coming back with some miniatures, as well as the painted gits.

Am intrigued by the concept, disappointed that it took over 35+ days to recognise that even if your a well known games designer, you can't come to the table without product in hand.

Best thing that happened for this is that I might even give it the time of day if they have the minis next.

They will go well with Sedition Wars/ Generic Scifi tabletop games.

 Grot 6 wrote:
disappointed that it took over 35+ days to recognise that even if your a well known games designer, you can't come to the table without product in hand.

I had started assuming that they were going to play the kickstarter out if only for the attention it was getting and dialogue it was creating. I was actually surprised that they pulled the plug when they did.

Something told me it was inevitable. especially when you see absolutly zero growth for over 20 days, and then start seeing the reversals that happened. I have no access to that data, but there will easily be a good look at how it played out.

Interested in the EVE on the tabletop slant that it seems to have, though. I'd like to see it evolve into something along the lines of campaigning and evolutionary exporations game, where as the factions start going off in thier directions and conquring plants and systems, they continue to add more and more to the game.

Wish them no ill will, however, irregardless of the outcome of this KS. If anything, they learned a few lessions that will come back and be dealt with on the revamp.

silent25 wrote:
Comparing it to games like Zombicide, KD, and SW is a bit unrealistic because those are board games and not table top miniature games. They attracted different demographics. Ogre and Relic Knights are the only table top miniature games that exceeded $400,000. Even Mantic's Kings of War which followed the CMoN process to a tee didn't break that.

I will admit I didn't read all the pages in this thread, but was having Rick Priestly as the lead designer such a good thing? People have been griping about the imbalance in WHFB/40k since I started in the early 90's with WHFB 3rd and Rogue Trader. He openly admits WHFB 3rd was completely unplayable.

Sounds like he's learned from his mistakes on that ruleset that was designed more than 25 years ago, no? Warmaster, Bolt Action, Black Powder, Infanticide all have pretty positive rules feedback.

Anyway, I thought WHFB3 was great. I was awfully disappointed when it was dumbed down in 4th and we lost things like cavalry wedges and so forth.

I was expecting that they'll plug the plug in these days. They were at stall and also losing pldegers lately...

To those of us who are game developers ourselves, with potential plans for crowdfunding projects ourselves, this is a salient lesson that bears careful study.

I wasn't attracted to GoA from the start, but I'm poor, so that has to be taken into account. But I'll be picking over this thread and others to identify the apparent common points in order to better plan my own approach to Kickstarter (or whatever platform I use).

R.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I do think however that people comparing Zombicide, Kingdom Death, Ogre, Sedition Wars, etc and not seeing what they expected, when, even if all *had* gone right, they shouldn't have seen the same things, and continually complaining about that that, was unfair, and did a lot to help keep the KS from becoming a success by continually posting about how "they should do this or that that X kickstarter did, funding expectations don't look good (over a month out), hey Zombicide did that why aren't they?" and the like.

But on what basis do you think that?

You say they did worse for people comparing it to Zombicide. Perhaps they also did better for it instead (as in adopting "fake-stretch-goals" with their club-scheme).

We have no way of knowing other than personal preference or bias.

The only thing we do know is that the Zombicide-template DID, in the recent past, raise that kind of money, for games that do cater to vastly different audiences (e.g. Kingdom Death vs. Rivet Wars vs. Relic Knights).

Just saying I think this was a problem doesn't make it so. If you claim that the "Zombicide-template" is an inferior/corrupting approach to raising half a million dollars, there should be at least 1 Crowd-funding project somewhere that made that kind of bank while also complying to your standards of a "good" or "proper" Kickstarter.

If there isn't one, than the Zombicide-approach is, for all we know, not a spoiled/inferior/corrupting approach for crowd-funding 500.000,- + USD. It simply is the only approach for doing it (that we have seen so far).

If I had been running this Kickstarter, there would have been one vital difference: I would have had the first plastic kit ready to go. I would have set aside January as "develop the Wardrones month", and spent the time with potential customers brainstorming, drawing concept art, receiving critiques and sculpted the sculpts. Only once that was done would I start the Kickstarter.

This is important for two reasons: it gives people something to pledge for where they know what they are getting, and it gives people a living, breathing example of the development process for a race, so that they know how it will work when their preferred race is next in line.

 Vaktathi wrote:
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.

If so, the playerbase was spoiled years before Kickstarter existed. If you can't compete in an environment where potential customers can not just pre-order known models but buy known models off the shelf, you can't compete, period.

 AlexHolker wrote:
/.../ and spent the time with potential customers brainstorming, drawing concept art, receiving critiques and sculpted the sculpts. Only once that was done would I start the Kickstarter.

This is important for two reasons: it gives people something to pledge for where they know what they are getting, and it gives people a living, breathing example of the development process for a race, so that they know how it will work when their preferred race is next in line.

It also gives the producers an estimate of how much interest there is for a product, the size of the fanbase and its "investing potential", which should, ideally provide for a good idea of what could be a realistic goal to set from the get-go.

 kenshin620 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
£300K is not very much to write three new integrated rulesets,

Wait what 3 rulesets

I thought it was one book

Unless I missed something from their KS page....again

The game is designed to scale from a detailed RPG to a WH40K style large skirmish to a mass battle system, essentially by using the property of the base 10 system to scale up and down an order of magnitude.

Hence three rulesets.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Zweischneid wrote:

People keep saying that GoA is oh so different, yet they always fail to provide better comparisons.

My point is that...perhaps there isn't one? GoA is a much different game with a much different focus by a much different group of people with a different target market than say, Zombicide or Ogre, and given the heavy reliance on comparison with little acknowledgement of these facts I don't think was fair.

Again, I'm not saying that they couldn't have done a better job. I do think however that people comparing Zombicide, Kingdom Death, Ogre, Sedition Wars, etc and not seeing what they expected, when, even if all *had* gone right, they shouldn't have seen the same things, and continually complaining about that that, was unfair, and did a lot to help keep the KS from becoming a success by continually posting about how "they should do this or that that X kickstarter did, funding expectations don't look good (over a month out), hey Zombicide did that why aren't they?" and the like.

That said, the idea behind the project was for community involvement, and if critics kept pointing out flaws keeping them from pledging, perhaps that was a potentially valuable form of involvement. However they didn't have much stuff ready to release. It looked like they were scrabbling around to try and satisfy people, and gave an impression that nothing had been thought out in advance.

In my view as a wargamer and a businessman the key problems are:

A very ambitious goal with very little information to inspire people.
Saturation of the Kickstarter wargame genre means there is a lot of competition.
What they were able to show did not have enough of a Wow factor.

Let's say you took a leap of faith and pledged £25 on the thinking that you would get a set of rules by Rick Priestley and a nice character model, and if the whole game looked good you could buy the rest of it when it came out of development. At the worst, if everything went down the tubes, you would only lose your £25.

They needed 12,000 wargamers to sign up for that in order to reach the funding target.

silent25 wrote:
Comparing it to games like Zombicide, KD, and SW is a bit unrealistic because those are board games and not table top miniature games. They attracted different demographics. Ogre and Relic Knights are the only table top miniature games that exceeded $400,000. Even Mantic's Kings of War which followed the CMoN process to a tee didn't break that.

OGRE is very much a map and cardboard chit board game and not a table top miniatures game. Though there is a miniatures game version, that was NOT what the kickstarter was for.

CptJake wrote:

silent25 wrote:
Comparing it to games like Zombicide, KD, and SW is a bit unrealistic because those are board games and not table top miniature games. They attracted different demographics. Ogre and Relic Knights are the only table top miniature games that exceeded $400,000. Even Mantic's Kings of War which followed the CMoN process to a tee didn't break that.

OGRE is very much a map and cardboard chit board game and not a table top miniatures game. Though there is a miniatures game version, that was NOT what the kickstarter was for.

Noted and further stresses my point, then only ONE table top miniature game exceeded $400,000. The rest were all board games with miniatures. They set a very high bar from the start that was completely unrealistic and no similar projects to look to. You could argue then that Relic Knights was an outlier and should not be considered a realistic example.

 Azazelx wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
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.

What do you mean by "board game"? Something like Sedition Wars (or better yet, a boxed skirmish game like Necromunda) might well be the way to go for an initial product - especially in terms of getting some models and content together upfront...

I would pay cash money, big time, for a Necromunda type game! Something where you have a small amount of figures that "level up" with individualized gear. I think my hatred of GW started when they abandoned Necromunda. That and Gorka Morka were my favorites by them and they just up and quit them both.

silent25 wrote:
Comparing it to games like Zombicide, KD, and SW is a bit unrealistic because those are board games and not table top miniature games.

The main selling point of Kingdom Death and Sedition Wars were the minis. They might not be a "pure" wargame in your opinion, but they are soundly in the minis wargame camp (moving minis around the play area, rolling dice, killing other units). Letters to Whitechapel they aint.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That said, the idea behind the project was for community involvement

That was actually what put me off almost as much as the general lack of content. Design by committee is a sure fire way of producing homogenised drivel when said committee numbers in the thousands.

 His Master's Voice wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That said, the idea behind the project was for community involvement

That was actually what put me off almost as much as the general lack of content. Design by committee is a sure fire way of producing homogenised drivel when said committee numbers in the thousands.

Whereas with me my concern was the loudest voices would drown out all others, even if what they were shouting for was pap. I like Rick, he's a top bloke with a great flair for wargame design and can come up with some fun settings. If I want to know what The Internet can come up with, there are hundreds upon hundreds of free (Or cheap as free) rules and settings, ranging from the sublime to the terrible. I'm interested in what happens when Rick Priestley tries to design a game in a setting that's EVE by way of Iain M. Banks's Culture novels.

Oh well. It'll still happen, and I'll keep one eye on it, and will pick up a rulebook should one cross my path.

 His Master's Voice wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That said, the idea behind the project was for community involvement

That was actually what put me off almost as much as the general lack of content. Design by committee is a sure fire way of producing homogenised drivel when said committee numbers in the thousands.

How can a kickstarter asking for a half million dollars that "started" with nothing but a person's name, logo, and some vague ideas and videos fail? Especially when follwing updates revealed a 70's bromarine porn star spokesperson figure (which despite the sarcasm I kind of like), pages and pages of comments about space furries, and the creation of a faction named after an objectionable band that screams on stage while waving giant foam genitalia. That seems like a guaranteed forumula for success instead of the old fashioned working out the core details like rules and art concepts ahead of time like you'd have to with any other type of investor. /sarcasm.

While I don't think that Kickstarter should be used as a defacto preorder vehicle, I do think that companies without ready-made products need to treat crowdfunding like they would any other type of traditional investment presentation to a bank, venture capitalists, rich friends, etc. They should do their homework ahead of time prior to starting instead of just winging it as they go along like this failed effort did.