Last year developer Epic Minds took to Kickstarter to gather funds for their upcoming Zelda-inspired game, Midora. Resembling A Link to the Past in art style, the game was quick to garner more than the allotted funding of $60k, ending up with just shy of $74k once all funding was complete.
The developer promised a Wii U and Nintendo 3DS version should the funding exceed $80k, but it never did. Now, the developer has issued an update to the Kickstarter page admitting that he knew the initial $60k funding goal would not be enough to complete the game. This has caused a lot of backlash from those who pitched in for the project, as they feel fleeced since the project manager knew the funds wouldn’t be enough. Here’s a short snippet from the update post:
The game is complete on paper and the team has nothing but talent. Money is all that we need. Nothing can happen without money. Money is our final boss.
On the subject of money, there are certain things that I will admit. I will admit that the amount needed to create this game was largely underestimated for the campaign. I knew that the game would need more than $60,000 to be made. However, like many others, I didn’t think for one second we could reach a goal higher than $60,000, especially after two failed campaigns and no prior advertising. With $60,000 in our hands, it would have been rather easy to create an Early Access and go from there.
So basically the developer admits that his Kickstarter goal would not be enough to complete the project, but rather he hoped the game could be put on Steam Early Access and the sales generated there could further fund the game. As anyone with half a brain knows, this is a pretty terrible business plan.
So how much money is needed to complete the game? According to the developer, more than twice the initial funding asked.
If you want to know exactly how much money we need to finish this game, I will tell you: between $120,000 and $150,000. The programming of the game can be done in a matter of 3 to 4 months if we get a second programmer on the team, while the art would take 6 months with the current artists, perhaps 5 if we hire a third talent. That is if everyone works fulltime and is paid fulltime.
So more than double the initial cost raised on Kickstarter is needed to complete the game. This is woeful underplanning on the developers part and the comments on the Kickstarter page are pretty vitriolic, but this just goes to show that Kickstarter is more of a gamble than an investment.
