Right I know I promised not to waffle on about anymore Kickstarter projects anymore, but I sort of have to waffle on about On The Lamb Games latest Kickstarter campaign. Why? Well it mixes many of my favourite geeky nerdy things. You see when I was a younge whipper snapper playing JRPG's on my SNES, PSOne and yeah Sega Saturn (come on Panzer Dragoon Saga and Grandia rocked!) there was a subset of JRPG that I became a little bit obsessed by... no not that type of JRPG you sick and twisted pervert! No I'm talking about the 'tactics' type RPG's. The ones that split the battlefields up into grids to move around, with height and obstacles to take into consideration. The truth is I loved those sorts of games as it wasn't just about being a damn fine administrator and keeping an organized inventory. They were more like the wargames I played. They actually had strategic decisions that needed to be made, and it wasn't just about when was best to use that health potion, and could I afford to speed that action on Haste instead?
So I guess it was almost inevitable that somebody would see the linkages between the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics, the Ogre games and Vandal Hearts to name but a few, and wargames / boardgames. It just so happens that it is On The Lamb Games. Now I'm going to be honest, I have yet to pledge for this campaign, this is because of two main reasons:
- I'm totally bloody skint, I have nary a brass button to my name right now.
- I want to see more of how the game will actually play, and a bit more of what the finished product might look like first.
The concept I'm sold on, and I'll be keeping an eye out for how it develops over the coming weeks, and if you guys loved your JRPG's as much as I did I'm sure it'll be of interest to you as well. SO I'd definietly urge you to take a look and make your own minds up about it.
In a break from conventional Kickstarter wisdom though On The Lamb Games have actually done a pretty decent thing and actually launched their Endless: Fantasy Tactics Quickstart Rules for free already either from Wargame Vault or via their website. So at least you get to see what the games like, I've only been able to give the game a cursory glance as I've been swamped trying to review games the last few weeks (it's a hard life). However, there's nothing that jumps out and makes me want to scream, which if you knew me, you'd know is actually quite a good thing.
Before anyone asks me I have no idea what the sweet spot pledge level will be, or even if there is a single sweet spot pledge point. As always there are a number of pledge levels, ranging from the nominal $10 pledge level that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside for helping out a bit, right up to $10,000's for a quick game and some pizza... I jest you get every release for three years as well, that pizza better be bloody good! The campaign has 30 days left to run left to run and has already raised roughly $11,000's of their $15,000 target. So I guess you could say they're bang on target, and I'd be a bit shocked if they didn't reach their final target. Any who here's the Kickstarter video:
Lets be fair we kinda knew the "no more kickstarter plugs" wouldn't last ; P
ReplyDeleteActually on that topic what do you think about it now being opened to the UK? It hasn't really seemed to stop those who were determined anyway but do you think we will see a British explosion?
I like On the Lamb Games and Emily Fontana I wish them all the best with this and will spread the word but its not up my alley ATM.
Ka kite.
Yeah, I'm surprised I've managed to keep them as low as I have though. There are a lot of projects out there that I personally think are worthy of attention.
DeleteNow it's open to UK companies I know of a few who are going to try and run campaign or were in fact just waiting for this switch to happen. Do I think it'll lead to an explosion of British products? Possibly, but I'm not so sure there will be many in our field of expertise. Truth is that most of our British wargames firms are too profitable / established to need to resort to Kickstarter. Even Mantic will soon be growing to the point whereby really they'll probably question whether running a Kickstarter is worth it. Just take a look at the successful game companies from the USA, FFG, PP and Wyrd, hve they done Kickstarters? Nope because they don't need to.
This game looks less like something for me. Which is good as it means my cutting back on kickstarter will stay in effect a little while longer :p
ReplyDeleteI did get a bit carried away with Maelstorm so one step forward, one step backward.
Still, I wish them the best of luck!
You wish who luck? Maelstrom or On the Lamb Games? Because Maelstrom probably need it more than On the Lamb Games right now. If you've got any outstanding orders with Maelstrom Games Aeria_Gloris, can I advise you to either make sure they're in packing and on there way or if not get a refund buddy. I'm not so sure Maelstrom Games will be around much longer.
DeleteAs you say both. Most are packing or on the way. A few are still processing, but those are all on in stock items. So we'll what happens with those.
DeleteWell that's good, just make sure they are on the way. Don't get burned.
DeleteStill, isn't it too late anyway? All I ever got when asking a refund was store credit and that won't do me much good now.
DeleteReally? Did they say why they couldn't give you a refund?
DeleteI've only asked a refund twice and both times they just increased my money-back. It was irrelevant at the time, so I didn't press the matter. Perhaps you have to explicitly ask, I don't know.
DeleteWyrd did the Evil Baby Orphanage and is planning on a KS for Malifaux RPG. I'm a little more curious on why some KS with low goals fail or never take off. My theory goes with online presence, managing your community and general appeal of the product. For me it's logical that the Corpsehammer KS is not doing good: new product, from a random guy with no built in community and very niche miniatures (to be kind). But Havoc Protocol from Tom Mason is only lacking on the community side of things... well things that occupy my mind while I witness that social experiment ks is evolving into.
ReplyDeleteI'd forgotten about the Evil Baby Orphanage! Having said that the idea didn't grab me.
DeleteAs to what makes a successful crowd funding campaign... well I think the first thing to note is in the word 'crowd'. I have done a brief look across a number of funding campaigns and it's actually quite surprising at how closely the levels of Facebook 'likes' for a company correlates with their total funds raised. Certain within product genre's, card games seems to have the strongest link, but boardgames aren't far behind.
So popularity or market presence certainly helps, as that means you've got a larger base of people to draw from. Product though is also important, no question I've seen some slightly iffy products not get funded, that I thought would be because of where they come from. Not in our hobby, but in other nerd pursuits. So if you don't have a product that people want to buy, well you're going to fail.
The other thing though is focus. I've seen a lot of projects that seem to lack focus, I mean in this article I mention 'sweet spots'. There is no question in my mind that those campaigns that focus their efforts and talk about their goals early on and sweet spots get a lot of initial impetus. Once this head of steam builds up in a campaign it sucks more and more people in as the stretch goals are smashed.
So I think there are number of factors that are clearly important in what makes a crowd funding campaign successful or not. But there are some clear indicators that can help.