Kickstarter - Video Games and Stretch Goals

Leviathyn has an interesting post about what the founder of kickstater said about stretch goals. The article takes a look at the the most successful projects.

Last week Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler posted on his blog about the inherent risks with adding stretch goals to a Kickstarter campaign. Although the website caters to any and all creative projects, limited only to its creator’s imagination and willingness to put themselves on the internet, Strickler’s post specifically mentions games as his example of projects that are in danger of abusing the system, “trading long-term risk for short-term gain.”

"For a typical stretch goal a creator will promise to release their game in additional formats or add extra functions if certain funding goals are met. But expanding a project’s scope can change the creative vision and put the whole project at risk. We’ve seen stretch goals leave some projects overwhelmed, over budget, and behind schedule."

The elephant in the room that immediately comes to everyone’s mind is the original trendsetter of the new wave of highly successful and vastly over-funded video games – Double Fine’s Broken Age. Originally asking for $400,000 (with half of that going to produce a Making Of documentary), the then untitled Double Fine Adventure reached its now laughably modest goal within the first eight hours of the month long campaign, eventually landing at over $3.3 million in funding.