Kickstarting and Screaming

Over the course of April, I have gotten a request to plug someone’s Kickstarter literally every day.  That’s not hyperbole.  Sometimes I get more than one a day.  As of yet, I haven’t plugged a single Kickstarter, and I probably never will.  At the rate I get requests for it, my site, or at minimum my Twitter account, would become a dedicated Kickstarter alert channel.  This has been going on pretty much non-stop since Double Fine Productions asked for $400,000 and received over three million dollars during their Kickstarter.  You can practically see every wannabe indie developer walking around with dollar signs in their eyes since that happened.  Before Double Fine’s, I hadn’t received a single request for one.  Since March, I’ve had over fifty.  Developers also aren’t afraid to hound you by sending you requests several times a week.  In my case, they start getting uppity with me if I don’t immediately tell my readers to spend their hard-earned money towards funding the hobby of someone else for little or no return.

Let’s get something straight here.  You are NOT Double Fine.  They were able to raise money because they have a long, proven track record with the genre they were raising funds for.  You are a person with an idea.  Maybe a good idea, but that doesn’t entitle you to free money to attempt to realize it.  People could confidently give cash to Double Fine, because they know something will come of it.  Meanwhile, there are developers who have a history of abandoning projects before completion who are asking for some shockingly large sums of money.

Having a Kickstarter for an Xbox Live Indie Game seems especially dim to me.  This is a platform where a game is lucky to make $1,000, yet some people ask for ten times that, or more.  And what do they offer back?  XBLIG developers only get 50 tokens to pass out, and they can’t purchase more.  So not everyone will get a copy of the game.  It kind of throws out the whole “Kickstarter as a pre-order outlet” theory I’ve heard a lot of this week.  Then again, who pre-orders a game for $10,000?  Because that’s what some of these developers ask for pledges of.  That’s assuming they can actually program a game while wearing their straight jacket.

Granted, I don't think I could resist pledging for a sequel to LaserCat.

I have viewed a ton of Kickstarters (and some planned ones), and I don’t deny that some people genuinely have the ability to pull off the games they so ambitiously panhandle for.  That’s why I’ve come up with a list of some handy-dandy tips to make your Kickstarter stand out.  No sarcasm here.  These are genuine pointers.

#1 – Have a track record to prove you have the talent needed to make a game.

If you’ve never made a game before, don’t bother with a Kickstarter.  Make a game first.  A good game.  Show us that you’re talented enough and creative enough to see a vision through.  Go through the same ups and downs that any novice developer experiences.  If you have no talent, no amount of money will change your ability to create a good game.  Maybe you’ll find out that developing games is not what you expected it to be and move on to something else.

#2 – Explain why you need the money.

Having a good idea for a game doesn’t entitle you to free money.  People should know exactly what the money is being spent on.  High end work station?  Better programs for graphics?  To pay a sound designer?  People should know.  Don’t be vague about it either.  Account for every single dollar you need, and explain exactly why you need it and why you can’t do it yourself.  Do you need to hire an artist?  Find the artist, get a price quote, then include that person’s portfolio and cost in your Kickstarter.  Generically saying “we need to hire a graphics guy” doesn’t work for me, because whose to say you won’t just keep the money yourself, or give it to a novice who is no more qualified to do it than you or I are?  I want to know who you’re hiring.  I should know.  It’s my money.  When I ask what you need it for, saying “because” is not a good way to win me over.  Which leads me into the next point..

#3 – Prove you have the discipline necessary to use Kickstarter wisely.

When I asked one gentleman why he needed his Kickstarter money, his answer was shocking in its glorious stupidity.  “I need it so I can quit my job and devote all my attention to my game.”  That is an actual answer I have gotten from a developer whose previous experience was a couple non-successful (but critically well-received) games.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a career in independent game development is a long shot at best, so don’t quit your day job.  If you start a Kickstarter so that you can, you’re basically turning yourself into a digital hobo.  Asking people to use money they worked for so that you don’t have to work and can devote all your time to what should be a hobby and nothing else is so incredibly brazen and stupid that I have to chalk it up to some kind of mental illness.  Maybe video games do rot your brain.

I’m not interested in paying you so that you don’t have to work.  If you’re bound and determined to go down this path, my tax dollars will already be footing your bill when your game inevitably busts and you end up on welfare in the coming months.  Ethically speaking, I think giving you a head start on that sends the wrong message.  I want my money to go to someone who has their priorities in life straight.  That generally means someone who makes rational decisions based on their desire to not be on food stamps.

Lack of discipline rears its head in other ways.  When someone opens a Kickstarter, then tweets about their week-long benders and the massive amount of weed they can smoke, I think to myself “so I have to sacrifice my money for you, but you don’t want to sacrifice anything for your own project.”  One person sent me a Kickstarter that was asking for $2,000.  On their Twitter, they talked about a surfboard they had their eye on.  One that costs, you guessed it, $2,000.  Now, I’m not suggesting the person would use the money from their Kickstarter to buy the surfboard.  I’m not saying they wouldn’t either.  What I am saying is the person made it clear, they WOULD be buying the surfboard, yet they wanted an additional $2,000 to fund their other hobby.  So what is getting the priority?  Will you be focusing on the game, the one you’re begging strangers for money so that you can develop it, or the one that benefits nobody but yourself?  If the person had said “I love surfing, but I’ll probably be spending my time this summer finishing my project” I might have taken them more seriously.

#4 – When writing your Kickstarter pitch, at least pretend to give a shit.

I’ve seen Kickstarters where the developer couldn’t bother to do a simple spell check, capitalize words, or use punctuation.  Never mind all the points listed above.  If you can’t even bother to make any effort when asking people for money, why would I think you would make any effort when it comes to the actual development part?  I would assume you’re going to half-ass it, just like you did with your pitch.

#5 – Don’t make your pitch sound like a threat.

One developer who sent me their Kickstarter had made a semi-successful PC game.  They had an idea for another project, but their Kickstarter sounded more like a hostage situation.  It took a pretty snotty tone, something along the lines of “My idea for my next game is blah blah blah, but if I don’t get X amount of dollars, I’m not even going to bother with it.  It’s not worth my time.”  Yea, that makes it sound like you really care about your idea and will make the best effort to do well with it.  I know some game developers pride themselves on being aloof and irreverent, but when you make like you’re holding a knife to the throat of your own concept, I sort of want to tell you to go fuck yourself.  Really, there are thousands of games released every year.  I don’t care if you don’t make your game.  I’ll just play something else.

#6 – Do something original.

This is the final point.  I don’t want to fund something that is a clone of something already out there.  Nor do I want to pay for something that uses RPG Maker or some other lazy game creation tool.  I want something original.  Something weird.  Something one-of-a-kind.  Or especially something risky.  After all, isn’t that why Double Fine had to resort to a Kickstarter?  These are the guys who made Psychonauts and Brutal Legend.  Regardless of whether you liked them or not, they were considered under-performing games, if not outright busts.  So the likelihood of them getting any publisher to stake them on a dead genre like point and click adventures was probably slim to none.

Pictured: the man responsible for me adding the word "Kickstarter" to my spam filter.

I do admire the shit out of Tim Schafer.  I’m not necessarily a fan of his games.  I never even played any of his point and click adventures.  Remember, I’m 22-years-old.  Which doesn’t excuse me for never having played Psychonauts either, but that’s beside the point.  I admire him for being an entrepreneur.  And for Stacking, which was so overlooked.  I also think he needs to tell novice developers that they aren’t him, and to stop with the unnecessary Kickstarters.  For those of you who genuinely have a reason to ask for crowd funding, the six tips above were for you.  For everyone else, before asking for money to create yet another zombie game, put in long hours and work to improve your development skills.  You’ll know you’re ready when your dream project is in fact not another zombie game.

F*ck Nostalgia: Nintendo

July of 1998.  My parents take me to Toys “R” Us to scope out potential toys for my upcoming ninth birthday.  This included a trip down the video game aisle to see the latest and greatest PlayStation games.  At the age of seven, Santa Claus brought me my PlayStation, along with Crash Bandicoot.  Previously, my father had an NES and SNES that I occasionally played, but gaming was not a big deal to me.  That changed with the PlayStation.  Gaming became my favoritest thing in the whole wide world.  My forthcoming birthday would no doubt bring me to places I couldn’t even imagine.  What far out realms would my Sony device take me?

And then I saw Banjo-Kazooie on the Nintendo 64 demo display.  It looked way cooler than anything on PlayStation.  It had better graphics.  It had more stuff to do.  The worlds looked bigger.  I had to have it.  Low and behold, on July 11, Santa and the Easter Bunny gave word to their associate, the Birthday Badger, that I had been a good little girl and the Nintendo 64 arrived, complete with Banjo-Kazooie.  And I was totally hooked.  I became obsessed with finding every item that could be collected.  I spent the better part of two months doing it.  Then I beat it.  And I wasn’t happy about that.  In fact, I cried.

As a child, I wasn’t very expressive, and rarely emoted.  Crying was a super rare thing for me to do, and it broke my Mom and Dad’s hearts.  I remember my Father actually called the Nintendo consumer support number to find out when a sequel could be expected.  Mind you, this is only two months after the game came out.  Instead, we went to Software Etc. to find the closest Banjo substitute.  When we asked the clerk, he said that Banjo-Kazooie was really just a ripoff of Super Mario 64, and if I liked Banjo, I would love Mario.  What could go wrong?

Smaller levels.  Less to find.  Not as much stuff to collect.  Kind of easy.  Don’t get me wrong, still a great game.  But it was a huge letdown after Banjo.  If you ask people today which was the better game, they say Mario 64.  It wasn’t.  It was just the game they played first.  For most players, it was the first truly 3D game they played, and thus it created the best memories for them.  Some people actually have the audacity to call it the best 3D platformer to this day.  Really?  Over fifteen years later and the genre has never been done better?  That really makes you sound like you’re stuck in a time warp.

By the way, I treasure my memories of playing Banjo-Kazooie as a child, but I don't delude myself into saying it's a game that holds up to repeated play. I bought the Xbox Live Arcade port and immediately regretted the loss of $15. You know what? It's okay to say a game you loved from your childhood doesn't hold up today. If doing so spoils your memories of it, you probably know deep down you didn't like it as much as you thought.

Of the four branches of the Unholy Quartet of Gaming Nerds, Nintendo fanboys are probably the most docile these days.  That’s probably because it’s tough to be a cheerleader for a company that puts out systems named after the babytalk word for urination.  At the same time, they seem to suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome.  They never want to grow up.  They’re stuck playing reskinned, repackaged versions of the same games for their entire life.  If any deviation hits, the fans shit a collective brick.  Take Zelda, for example.  Ocarina of Time was brilliant.  Majora’s Mask was gutsy, but still kind of the same game.  Then came Wind Waker.  It was still the same game as the rest, but the graphics were changed to make it look like a living cartoon.  This was simply too much for the fanboys, who were left inconsolable by this besmirching of their manhood.  In fact, the first time I remember hearing the term “gay” used to describe something outside of San Francisco was someone talking about Wind Waker.  Right.  Obviously Nintendo’s plan was to demasculate the American dweeb population, setting the stage for Pearl Harbor II.

Nintendo wanted to try something different.  Probably because stamping out the same game year after year gets old.  But no, fanboys couldn’t handle it, so we returned to more of the same old shit with Twilight Princess.  Ocarina of Time was my first Zelda, so I didn’t have the 2D games as a reference point to chart the deterioration of the series.  Having said that, I was a veteran of three Zeldas by that point, and I got bored about halfway through Twilight Princess and never finished it.  It never at any point had me.  Ocarina of Time did.  Majora’s Mask did.  Wind Waker did.  All three of them had me from the very start.  Twilight Princess felt like an apology for Wind Waker, but I didn’t think Nintendo had anything to apologize for.  Just like that, Zelda wasn’t fun anymore.  Then they came out with Skyward Sword, which felt like it had less content than any previous 3D Zelda, and it had horrible, delayed, boring, exhausting motion control tacked on.  Different?   Yes.  Fun?  No.  Nintendo isn’t likely to experiment with actual gameplay anymore.  Different, less intuitive control inputs?  That’s fine.  As long as there’s an elf with a boomerang and a grappling hook, the fanboys won’t throw their first-born into a bonfire.

Skyward Sword felt like a step backwards.  Nintendo has become masters of that lately.  They brought out two 2D Super Mario games over the last generation, and they just set the internet abuzz with word that a game is coming called “Super Mario 4.”  I’m hearing things on Twitter like “finally!’ and “I always wanted a sequel to Super Mario Bros. 3.”  I guess Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, New Super Mario, New Super Mario Wii, Mario Galaxy, and Mario Galaxy 2 just weren’t sequelish enough for them and their lives have been incomplete ever since Bowser crashed through the last brick at the end of Mario 3.  Let’s talk about the New Super Mario games.  The ones with “new” in the title, named as such because adding a “4” would suggest some kind of advancement and “rehash” was frowned upon by the guys in marketing.  Nintendo had a chance to show they still had it.  In my opinion, they didn’t.

They should call the next Nintendo platform the "Nintendo Microwave" since all they'll use it for is rewarming old stuff.

I first really played the original Mario titles when they were ported to the Game Boy Advance and I thought they were just swell.  But there’s something very telling about the ordering of them that Nintendo chose.  They didn’t bring the games out in the order they were originally released.  First came Super Mario 2, then they went to Super Mario World, then Yoshi’s Island, then Super Mario Bros 3.  This is Nintendo admitting that they never did better than Mario 3.  That’s why they saved it for last.  So Nintendo has clearly stated what the benchmark is.  Then comes New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS.  Not only did it feel like a gigantic step backwards from any of the four games listed above, but the real kick is Nintendo didn’t even try to make it better.  They were content releasing a stripped down, bare bones, no frills Mario game.  Sure, a whole generation of fans never were exposed to Mario, but even the fanboys beat themselves blistered over it.  The Wii version was the same way.  Both these games felt like deleted scenes from good Mario games.  Fans reacted to these half-assed efforts the only way Nintendo fans can: they made them two of the best-selling games of all time.  Gimmie an N!  Gimmie an I!  Gimmie an N!  Gimmie a T!..

Nostalgia should have a place in gaming.  But a company shouldn’t be able to live in cruise control based solely on it.  Nintendo can though, and it does.  And the fanboys treat every new Nintendo release like a reunion.  Maybe I’m not wired to be able to understand this.  I crave new experiences.  I can’t believe anyone out there anxiously awaits the announcement of yet another fucking Mario Kart that changes nothing.  “Oooh, which obscure character will join the roster this year?  I bet it will be Pauline from Donkey Kong!”  For real, show of hands, who here got bored and never finished Skyward Sword?  Mario Galaxy 2?  Metroid Prime 3?  New Super Mario Bros. Wii?  And be totally honest with yourself.  Were you having fun, or telling yourself that you were?  I’m not anti-Nintendo based on some kind of bizarre principle.  My favorite system ever is still the Nintendo DS, which gave me the most new and original experiences of any platform in recent history.  You know what though?  Fuck Nintendo.  What have they done for me lately?