Jon Shafer's "At the Gates": a kickstarter game

[Hail]

the obligatory kickstarter link.

the game was a 4X strategy set in the Fall of Rome epoch. a mix of civ and colonization.

where it gets interesting is that the game appears abandoned. and it's all your fault. wtf?

so... Shafer went into the kickstarter campaign with a "fully-playable prototype", but after spending backers' money, he discovered that "Most of the planned big gameplay features are in, but what does it all add up to while you’re playing? Sure, you can explore the map, survey and harvest resources, migrate from one place to another – but why? What the heck are we trying to do here anyways?"

I do not have a statement without profanity. I am deeply disappointed.

mod(s) can relocate this thread where they (he) see fit.

[Bacchus]

Don't back one-man projects, that much has to be evident to any investor.

[Sullla]

Oh, it's worse than that. I've been following this project because it sounded interesting, and a number of years ago I exchanged some emails with Jon Shafer about this game when it was still in the very early design document phase. The Kickstarter for this game took place in 2013, under the assumption that the game would be ready in 2014. At the Gates was delayed again and again, until finally Jon issued a big project timeline in 2015 with a projected release date of Q1 2017. After that, he disappeared and stopped updating the At the Gates website for a full year, then popped up again for a single post in August 2016 to say that things were now back on schedule and there would be no more lengthy periods of radio silence. Then he disappeared again and has yet to post anything on the project since. Needless to say, it is now Q1 2017 and At the Gates still appears to be vaporware.

This is one of the most fraudulent Kickstarter projects that I can recall. Jon Shafer collected $100,000 and has delivered absolutely nothing that was promised. I liked a lot of the ideas that he had on paper for this game, but all of that is irrelevant if the project is never delivered to the customers. If anyone is wondering why I never back Kickstarter projects, this is exactly why. (Here's a link to the game's website if anyone is curious. Complete ghost town there.)

[Bacchus]

Wasn't there an alpha build rolled out to some testers?

In any case, Sulla, I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with Kickstarter, but Shafer's behaviour is only a part of what goes on crowdfunding platforms, there is also some excellent work. Crowdfunding puts the decision of what to fund on the consumer, and that really has to be a decision, you need to step into investor/publisher shoes and think about it. People who don't do so get burned, to be sure, but others also help great products come to life. In the boardgaming world, KS is now almost a standard platform for quality delivery, even established publishers use it.

[Hail]

Don't back one-man projects, that much has to be evident to any investor.

there were three of them - "The Conifer Games team: Jon, Jonathan and Kay (from left to right)." from the kickstarter link.

[antisocialmunky]

That's sad, I just had a game suffer the same fate. Clockwork Empire's developer ran out of money and the studio disbanded without telling anyone anything.

[Dp101]

That's sad, I just had a game suffer the same fate.  Clockwork Empire's developer ran out of money and the studio disbanded without telling anyone anything.

Damn, that sucks. I kept hoping that that game would eventually become good.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, it had a rather promising premise but it was too ambitious. But Rimworld and DF are still doing that genre right. Then you have Oxygen Not Included by KLEI (Don't Starve guys) so that should actually be quite fun to see progress.

[greenline]

Crowdfunding puts the decision of what to fund on the consumer, and that really has to be a decision, you need to step into investor/publisher shoes and think about it. 

Perhaps this is my general lack of disposable income speaking, but I have a hard time seeing how a reasonable consumer would think about it and make the decision to fund anything when the possibility of being completely ripped off (like absolutely nothing for your money's worth, not even a product that you don't like) is quite significant.

[antisocialmunky]

Its not really for the general consumer like you greenline, in my line of work we've seen that early stage adopters are willing to take more risks than regular consumers. Indeed, regular consumers have quite cautious spending habits that aren't really compatible with crowdfunding. Most of them tend to hang back and wait until the crowdfunded product has actually fulfilled before spending their money. Indeed, there's been some companies (especially in the board game space) that have managed to turn crowdfunding into their standard business model because they've proven to the general public that they can deliver with low or no risk of failure.

Another thing to keep in mind is about 90% of all new businesses fold within the first few years that they exist. Many companies bringing early access or crowdfunded products to market are new companies. Kickstarter and the like just give them exposure to the general public very close to their time of inception. In previous times, the general public would have no knowledge because the new company would have folded long before coming in the public eye so really not much has actually changed mechanically, its just that perception and the ability to spread information have changed.