We live in a curious age where politics affect the purchasing of games. A member of the development team says something controversial on Twitter and a certain crowd refuses to buy it, then another crowd buys it simply because the first crowd hated it. Meanwhile the content of the actual game goes largely ignored from both sides.

Can’t be helped of course, it’s a consequence of being able to interact with the artists on a daily basis where before they were faceless, neither saint nor arsehole.

Which one are you referring to. The Reviewer who gave it the most stars (jalixx3) or the reviewer who had the (most this was helpful user rating) (Hilander)

Hilander, the one who was quoted. Of course I didn't really contact him, I was just poking fun at Starmaker, he made it sound like GamerGate is some conglomerate interest group that decides on what games they approve or disapprove of, and not just a random mob of people.

Well, I literally can't make an argument if you're allowed to make up dumb rules like that whenever you feel like it. Good day.

But that was the entire point of the Kickstarter. They intentionally didn't plan anything in advance so that the entire game would be part of the process. They just named an amount that they figured would cover the small cost of making the game, and were blown out of the water with the response.
Would it make sense to make a small lo-res adventure game with the money they got? What would they do with the extra? Pocket it all? As a backer, I'm quite happy that they upped their intentions and goals, so the final amount they had wasn't "800% of the funding required". As Kickstarter clearly states, a pledge isn't a purchase from the customer (no matter if one of the reward tiers is almost always delivery of the product), it is am amount of funding. Whatever the case, I never did quite get the backlash against DF in this case- no promise was broken, except perhaps that of the timeframe, which I didn't mind, considering the scope of the game was so much bigger.

Also, as an aside, I'm not sure where you got the idea that making an adventure game is cheaper than making an equivalent RPG or FPS. An adventure game is almost all content- every screen has to be separately created, each puzzle separately designed, loads of unique animations for dealing with solving puzzles that are never reused- in contrast to RPGs or FPSes or such games that focus more on modularity and mechanics.

I think its a bit funny argument that kickstarter doesnt consider my pledge on ks as a purchase when my goverment does because they want their tax money.
Donations are free from tax but strangly enough Kickstarter is considered as a shop and kickstarter themself are complying to the rules/laws that you shoud pay vat on purchase.

All too often experienced when i got my reward in the mail
then suddenly the goverment want their money even if Kickstarter claim that i donated money to somone on their site.

Kickstarter is definitely a raw deal for the buyer from a purely selfish point of view 90% of the time. Beta access is more likely to make you tired of the game before it's even finished more than anything else, and the other perks are usually vanity perks that aren't really worth that much. The only real benefit is that sometimes Kickstarter allows things to be made when there wasn't a way to do it otherwise.

I Kickstarted Divinity: Original Sin and Rebuild 3. I haven't been burned by Kickstarting anything yet, though I completely understand gripes about DF9 being massively underdeveloped, and I wasn't involved in that one at all.

It would pretty absurd to give tax breaks to Kickstarter projects unless they were for a legitimate charity. It really is more of a straightforward exchange of money for goods/services more than anything else, even if it is done in a way that frontloads the money to the host before the product even exists, to the point of having a sort of "donation" feel to it. It's really not worth doing unless you really want to help the developer and/or are super excited about the end product. Even then, it can often be super risky if the developer has either no track record or a flawed track record.

Well must be different in Norway. In Australia donations are only donations if you don't get anything for it (though even some charities confuse this sometimes). So with kickstarter where you pretty much always get something even if it isn't much if the game isn't finished) they wouldn't count. We can also tax deduct donations, but only if they are on an approved list of charities for taxation purpose.

Crowd funding really is a kind of hybrid. You are donating to a cause, you might be hoping to get something out of it, you might be able to put in put into the process / development / whatever it is. But if you are understanding the process properly you also understand there are no guarantees and you risk whatever you put into it.

Yep governments will want money wherever they can get it. Ours is trying to establish tax on overseas web sites for digital goods sold to Australians as they feel they are missing out. I can understand that even though when it comes to my buying needs, local business isn't missing out due to cost differences (local business + tax = higher) as I'm mainly after things I can't get locally. No Australian GOG or Bandcamp.


I must admit I haven't really had a dud kickstarter yet. And I've backed around 30 project that got funded a couple of them were hardware the rest media like games or video. Most have delivered in line with my expectations or are still in progress even if held up. Since I'm patient it isn't a huge issue for me. Haven't had any outright failures yet.

Though I did steam early access DF9 after I saw the concept during Double Fine's Amnesia fortnight. Not the best of ideas backing that one. I now try to stick with kickstarters which generally are more open with their updates on what is happening or just buy the finished game from say a store like GOG.

As mentioned, a donation is hardly a charity, so it is conceivable that it'd be taxed. Dunno about Norway, but putting it as VAT is a bit funny, though. What if you pledged at a level that offered no reward?

Also, another side note, just to clarify in case someone thinks otherwise: Spacebase DF9 was never on kickstarter.

Exactly.

I think just because Tim Schaffer has an opinion his work or even his whole team should not be judged for this, right? Many of the ones that criticize Double Fine for this maybe later see conspiracies in the criticism to Destructive Creations guys...

Well he only ever mocked one side and the tweets were pretty clear on his stance.
I agree that Gamers Gate is blown out of proportion from both sides of the fence, generally in the "official" media it's only ever one side that get's bashed though, and Tim joined right in even if only mildly so.

Indeed it was but at first it was just a half game with a "season pass", never liked how that was handled, although I'll admit DF probably had little other choice at that point.

You're right it shouldn't and I hope that none of the proffessional reviews of the game take Tim Schafers opinion into account one way or the other.

But as a customer for a luxury product I can definitely decide whom I want to spend money on by any subjective reasons I feel fit.

I'll stream Massive Chalice in an hour (8pm CEST) on GOG's twitch
http://www.twitch.tv/gogcom
I didn't find as much time to play it as I would have liked but it'll be fun nevertheless.

I'll be there! At least for a short bit - I don't want to spoil too much LOL ;)

Let's hope I finishing sparging sooner rather than later... as it stands I'll probably miss the start. Good luck! Break a leg? And thank you much for your previous pointers.