You people baffle me. Assuming the method is above board - once again it's just people paying over the odds because they're happy to do that. Personal choice, yada yada, everything you were saying yesterday. Now it's odd?

What's 'odd' is the Ponies.

For $300,000 can I fuck his wife?

For £300,000 you can keep her.

Does that include delivery? Can she cook?

I notice they're starting to ramp up the pennies they expect up front now.

This dick:

***SNIPPED FOR FUGLYNESS***

Wants to make an MMO. No business plan, no development experience, no developers, and you will still have to pay to play I expect. If it ever gets made. Ho. Ho. Want $1.1million. I notice they're starting to ramp up the pennies they expect up front now.

Pledge $10,000 or more
0 Backers

Reward #1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. In game currancy of 500 thousand gold.
Estimated Delivery: Jun 2014

Pledge $10,000 or more
0 Backers

Reward #1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8,9,10, 11. In game currancey of 1 million gold.
Estimated Delivery: Jun 2014

This dick:

Wants to make an MMO. No business plan, no development experience, no developers, and you will still have to pay to play I expect. If it ever gets made. Ho. Ho. Want $1.1million. I notice they're starting to ramp up the pennies they expect up front now.

Bad news for Kickstarted turn-based haunted house project, Haunts, as the game has ceased production. According to Mob Rules Games head Rick Dakan, both of Haunts' programmers have left the project, with the lead programmer moving on to Google, and the other taking a new job as well. Neither programmer is able to work on the project in their spare time.

Molyneux and Fucking Kickstarter

They will kill it.

Be in no doubt. These established industry veterans, who could achieve their goals through traditional paths, will kill Kickstarter with their greed.

“Greed” might seem harsh. But here we see Peter Molyneux, as established a figure as you can find in the games industry, asking his audience to take on all the risk associated with his new product. Here is a man who has over-promised and under-delivered for over a decade, asking people like me and you to pay up front for his latest venture.

Do you believe for even one second that Molyneux couldn’t find that financial backing elsewhere? I don’t.

Kickstarter has shown us many cases where creative people who can’t find the funding to realise their unique vision have been saved by like-minded people who want to see those projects happen. That’s a good thing. I’m not talking about those people. Small teams, great ideas, outsiders. That’s all good.

But these capitalist animals, Molyneux and Braben to name but two, are transforming Kickstarter into a shopping website for products that don’t yet exist. They package their products with ridiculous “bonuses” that the gaming audience are paying small fortunes to secure. This is the same game audience that, just a few years ago, was laughing Bethesda out of the room for charging a small amount of cash for horse armour. And we at least knew something about that game.

We are being exploited.

Molyneux and Braben have both used the same marketing trick too. Braben goes back to the space games we always wanted him to return to. Molyneux returns to the god games. They’re both saying “HEY GUYS, WE’RE GIVING YOU WHAT YOU WANTED! NOW LET’S DO THIS THING TOGETHER!” It’s a trick. Or maybe Molyneux would call it “an experiment”. What happened to good old fashioned investment, guys? You know, where we gave you some money and shared in the risk and maybe actually fucking GAINED from it somewhere down the line? What happened to THAT experiment?

What is going on is cynical, and it’s ugly. These established game designers have recognised that people have started to use Kickstarter as a thing that helps them to define who they are and what they love. When someone backs a project, it’s not entirely about the specific project. If you back a point and click adventure game, you’re telling the world that you love that genre. You’re saying that it matters to you. That makes you easy to exploit. It’s the easiest thing in the world for a cold fuck in a suit to exploit someone with heart.

It’s great to have people who like your stuff. It’s great to have support. What’s even better is you appreciating that THEY’RE the ones that YOU should be trying to pay back for that support. If people enjoy what you do and have made you in any way relevant in our culture, then YOU owe THEM something.

HEY YOU LOVE ME PAY FOR ME TO RECORD MY ALBUM!

HEY YOU LOVED ME YEARS AGO PAY FOR ME TO RE-DO MY OLD IDEAS!

HEY I’M KINDA SORTA FAMOUS PAY FOR ME TO DO SOME SHIT MAYBE I DUNNO WHATEVER!

You think I haven’t ever considered running a Kickstarter? You think I haven’t thought to myself - “Hey, I could Kickstarter this games blog, raise money to film stuff, raise money for better equipment, raise money so that I can spend more time on it all, raise money to indulge my own ego!”

But then you stop and ask yourself if you can do it on your own.

And if you can? Even if it’s a struggle? And you STILL start a Kickstarter?

Then FUCK YOU, Molyneux. And all who came before you.

And, depressingly, all those yet to inevitably fucking come.

Rab is a dick (IMO), and this reinforces that. Silly rant.

Surely he's got a point though?

Braben's a borderline case perhaps, but Molyneux pillaging Kickstarter for funds to make a game is taking the piss.

Surely he's got a point though?

Braben's a borderline case perhaps, but Molyneux pillaging Kickstarter for funds to make a game is taking the piss.

People don't have to give him money, you know. It's not like he's conning his way into a charity's coffers or anything.