One of my favorite new trends over the past few years has been crowd-funding. At its best, crowd-funding – and sites like Kickstarter – help gather passionate fans (with a bit of spare change) to create something that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.
I love the idea of that. As a fan of tons of TV shows that have been canceled prematurely (Dead Like Me, Mr. Show and Futurama, to name a few), I would have thrown tons of money at crowd-funded efforts to resuscitate those shows, had crowd-funding been a thing in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. That’s one of the main reasons I backed the Veronica Mars Movie Project when it hit Kickstarter earlier this year – a show that I liked had a chance to come back, and I wanted to make that possibility a reality.
But what I find with crowd-funding, more and more often of late, is that my money is wasted, the rewards I’m promised aren’t delivered and communication between the company I’m backing and me is less than ideal.
It’s frustrating, and enough became enough. I’ve made the decision to (almost completely) stop crowd-funding projects… especially ones that have been way over-funded already.
Wasted Money, Missing Rewards
To date, I’ve backed nine projects: four video games, one video game console, one board game, one movie, one band and one website improvement. Of the nine projects, I pulled funding from one, had another canceled on me, had one-and-a-half fulfilled, with the rest left in-progress.
That’s not a good success ratio, at least in my eyes. Kickstarter is very up-front about the fact that your pledge may be completely wasted, though, so it’s sort of caveat emptor. You’re basically playing Russian Roulette with your money:
Who is responsible for completing a project as promised?
It’s the project creator’s responsibility to complete their project. Kickstarter is not involved in the development of the projects themselves. Kickstarter does not guarantee projects or investigate a creator’s ability to complete their project. On Kickstarter, backers (you!) ultimately decide the validity and worthiness of a project by whether they decide to fund it.
How do backers know if a project will follow through?
Launching a Kickstarter is a very public act, and creators put their reputations at risk when they do.
Backers should look for creators who share a clear plan for how their project will be completed and who have a history of doing so. Creators are encouraged to share links and as much background information as possible so backers can make informed decisions about the projects they support.
If a creator has no demonstrable experience in doing something like their project or doesn’t share key information, backers should take that into consideration. Does the creator include links to any websites that show work related to the project, or past projects? Does the creator appear in the video? Have they connected via Facebook?
Don’t hesitate to request information from a creator. You can always reach out before pledging via the “Contact me” button on the project page.
I knew this going in. Everyone does. There’s nothing stopping a major company from garnering millions of dollars in pledge money, then bolting for the door once funding closes. (As far as I know, this hasn’t happened yet.) But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been issues.
- The first project I pledged money toward was Double Fine Adventure. I’d loved a bunch of the company’s games and my $30 pledge ensured I’d get a full digital download of its newest game when it was done. But after the campaign ended with $3.3 million in pledges (after an initial goal of just $400,000), the game ran into trouble. The game was pushed back over a year as Double Fine’s founder Tim Schafer said he “designed too much game.” I have no doubt that whatever they ultimately churn out will be great, but we’re already nine months past the promised delivery date, and (apparently) another nine months or so from seeing a final product.
- The project that I pulled funding from was Ouya. I was drawn in by the allure of a new $99 toy, as well as my compulsion to be able to play the best games on every platform out there. I knew that if I didn’t have an Ouya, when that first “system seller” game hit the marketplace, I’d want to rush out and buy it. I pulled funding, though, because I already have enough games to play on other systems, and it seemed like the Ouya would be a yearly installment sort of thing. I’ll get one next year, I thought. I’m glad I did, as many Ouya backers still didn’t have their system when the console hit store shelves nationally last month.
- I pledged $50 toward the Shadow of the Eternals campaign – a sequel (of sorts) to my favorite GameCube game, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. After a few days, it was clear the campaign would come nowhere close to hitting its $1.25 million goal, so Precursor Games pulled the campaign off the market, promising they’d re-work it and come back stronger than ever. I didn’t lose any of the money (Kickstarter doesn’t charge your credit card until a campaign ends and is successfully funded), which is a good thing… especially since the company had its own PR nightmare brewing.
Poor Communication
The other problem with Kickstarter campaigns is the flood of updates you receive. I get that these companies want to be up-front with how they’re spending my money, but I don’t need 41 updates (thanks, Veronica Mars) to tell me every actor that joins the project or 28 updates for the ultimately canceled Shadow of the Eternals campaign. It’s not a big deal, but it’s annoying to get four or five updates a day.
Disaster Looms!, the board game project I backed, was supposed to send me an add-on mat (that I paid $25 extra for), but they still haven’t. I’ve reached out to them a few times, to no avail. I’m not going to lose sleep over $25, but that’s not accountability. Couple that with the fact that the instructions they sent out with the game were beyond confusing and I have a $90 investment on a board game I’ve yet to begin playing.
… The Rest is Still Unwritten
Aside from Penny Arcade Sells Out (to which I pledged $25, got all my rewards and saw the ad-free version of its site go into effect… a true example of crowd-funding done effectively and promptly), the rest of my funded projects are still in progress. My credit cards have been charged and the money has been handed over, so it’s all up in the air at this point.
I know that not all crowd-funding is marred with problems, and maybe I’ve just been unlucky with what I’ve backed. But the amount of issues I’ve had with the relatively low number of projects I’ve backed doesn’t bode well for my faith in the platform.
I love the idea, but the execution needs work. Maybe someone sound start a Kickstarter for a more effective way of crowd-funding?