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Shards Online: Citadel Undaunted by Failed Kickstarter Campaign
BMunchausen
Staff WriterMMORPG.COM Staff Posts: 400
Crowd-sourcing might be game development's New Hope, but developers like Citadel Studios are discovering how difficult it can be to pull off. In the face of its failed Kickstarter campaign, Citadel this week sent out a gracious message of thanks and further expressed their determination to get their game made.
Inviting players to join them in community roundtables, the team is refocusing their efforts on three things:
Funding: We still need funding to get Shards Online to an alpha state. We are exploring multiple avenues and we will be sure to update you guys as we make progress.
Community: We are going to continue to work directly with our community. There are many ways you can help us as we move forward. From showing support, to feedback on our direction and vision, to playtesting and helping us build our knowledge base. We will involve all of you every step of the way.
Development: We are refocusing and working on a plan to get to alpha quicker and more efficiently. We are creating a development roadmap with tighter deliverables and more checkpoints along the way to release. This will actually be the topic of our second community roadmap (stay tuned for details on this)
For more information about Shards Online, visit the game's official website or follow the project on Facebook.
Comments
I'm no expert on this, but shouldn't this have already been prepared for months ago?
Please let me know if I'm wrong here. I mean, reworking a roadmap sounds understandable in the event that it failed but not having one before going to Kickstarter sounds unprofessional. Maybe I'm just misreading it.
I've got a feevah, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.
I'm positive they did have a roadmap they are just working on making it a "tighter" one and adding more checkpoints. What that means I'm not entirely sure as it's pretty vague but they are essentially reworking it due to the failed kickstarter.
They had one setup for the kickstarter and contingent upon it getting funded, now that it didn't they basically have to rework it so that they can get to an alpha state in a reasonable amount of time without the funding from the kickstarter. That means they wont be creating the 4 huge worlds for alpha they had planned but rather 1 world for example.
I've got a feevah, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.
This is a part of something I am writing in relation to another game which also failed it's KS campaign... continued anyway... and is now pretty much dead in the water (even though it's not a bad game) The same thing can be applied here.
Lessons:
If you plan to develop a game regardless (with or without community support) then don’t ask for community support/backing. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. In this case the ‘bad’ publicity of ... failed crowd funding attempts.
If you do go the crowd funding (community support) route and fail... then you should really be prepared to swallow your pride. You gambled and lost. Any professional gambler will tell you not to chase your losses.
...
Don’t underestimate the power of word of mouth. Crowd Funding and Viral Marketing work both ways. They can destroy the reputation of a product with poor community feedback (even if it is unjustified). With ‘early access’ products there is the added problem that the final product might be significantly improved from the product that attracted the early (bad) reviews? But the online community cannot be expected to know that, or believe that, and it is unlikely they will take the necessary time to find out.
Shards has failed. They should stop development now. Continuing is simply chasing their losses.
They may end up developing the game. It may even be good. But there are simply not enough people interested to make it worthwhile commercially.
And if it's not commercial - it won't last.
Vanguard is a great game... not commercial... closed.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
blaming a developers family for your lack of trust in crowdfunding when they game isnt even in alpha yet?
Sounds pretty extremist and or over sensitive to me.
Give it time, SC is a very ambitious game, it probably wont end up being all they want it to be, but I am sure it will still be a good game well worth the pledge. Assuming otherwise is just baseless at this point.
Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
I just don´t get it, why bother with KS if you can develop your game without it.
More money equals easier/faster development. I thought that was pretty self-explanatory.
By that logic Star Citizen released last month...
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Not even remotely. Completely different games, different development teams and a different scope.
In this case more money would have sped up development time significantly as well as given far more content for the alpha release. To say otherwise is just complete nonsense.
They ll done game for sure,no doubt , but I am sure they take donated money for personal stuff not only for game.
I heard they even bought beer with backers money ! If I didn't like beer so much myself I would of asked for a refund
Having tried to read between the lines, I think they also knew that even if the Kickstarter failed, the fact there was a large amount of backers anyway would be something to show potential investors as proof there is at least some interest for the project.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
They have stated in roundtable video that the KS was to be used to develop full scope of the game, as it was presented on KS page. (four worlds etc)
At this moment that full scope is off the table.
Platform development and limited content is happening though (again, see the video).
More details mid-july.
I am assuming "limited" to mean proof-of concept for all systems - especially user content creation and modding,
That doesn't work. I backed a game 2 years ago and the leader never managed to find any sponsor.
The game is now stuck with her writing a few lines of code each week since the KS money is long gone and she had to dismiss all her devs.
I can easily see this game going the same route.
While the KS campaign may have failed it did show that there was interest in the game. One of the mistakes was not building the community before the campaign. However the community built during and since have been extremely supportive. So we are continuing to develop but unfortunately we wont be able to do things like outsource asset creation to fast track.