The P.T.-inspired Allison Road has cancelled its Kickstarter, and will instead partner up with Worms developer Team17. The move will “give us the chance to make our game unhindered creatively.” The team is looking at ways to provide former backers with in-game rewards at a later date.
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10 responses to “P.T.-Inspired Allison Road Finds Publisher, Cancels Kickstarter”
Given the way that alot of kickstarted games go after funding, I’m actually a little more relieved that this happened…
I think I have to agree with you on that. I think it is better for everyone.
Funny, there was a time when Kickstarter was the platform of which aspiring devs would say that “give us the chance to make our game unhindered creatively”. I guess that it finally has dawned on some that money troubles and the uncertainty caused by having your all your “paychecks” for your project paid in advance hinders one’s creativity (and livelihood) even more than one middleman or two.
And a publisher is more likely to continue paying you a wage when you ask for a deadline extension than running another kickstarter campaign, saying, “We ran out of money and can’t fund our first dream project.”
‘Creative interference’ is bad and wrong when it means homogenizing or dictating creative decisions based on market research for what will sell.
‘Creative interference’ is NOT bad or wrong when a developer is dithering around in creative indecision or flightiness and needs someone to crack the whip or fail to ship.
Creatives aren’t normally great project managers and sometimes you NEED someone to say, “Yes, this feature would be amazing, but you’re going to have to save the for the sequel because we cannot implement it AND continue paying rent – you have to pick one.”
Any developer who thought that Kickstarter would free them from THAT level of control was or is utterly fucking deluded.
The only true freedom I can attest to with Kickstarter is that devs are using it to make games publishers would not greenlight; and since the devs get their go ahead through the platform they hit the ground running on a project that’s already built on their own creative control. So it indeed gives everyone the impression that they’ve cast aside the shackles publisher control, even if, as you say, an smart publisher would be beneficial.
Isn’t Team17 publishing Yooka-Laylee as well? These guys must love looking up games on Kickstarter.
Seems to be a pretty good strategy, really. You can see something’s got enough market support to be a viable product, and you can either let them get their funding in depending on what they’ve promised or take over early and make sure that they can continue drawing a wage and manage all the boring business stuff, help the developer out with publisher-type things like marketing and distribution. Gotta figure it’d be some decent peace of mind for all parties involved unless they’re of the firebrand school of idiocy that thinks ‘publishers are evil’.
True. But I am worried about what publishers will attempt with KS. The Shenmue 3 example is where publishers were always on the cards, but somehow needed ‘proof’ through a quasi-preorder metric provided by KS.
While something like Shenmue 3 being possible thanks to this is something I support, I’m wary about publishers using potential customers money to mitigate their own risk.
(does anyone else remember that rumour from an Obsidian dev when they were marketing Pillars of Eternity about how a publisher rejected a different project, telling them to ‘put to KS then come back’?)
This is a very real concern, but I think it only becomes a problem if the backers don’t get something of value for their contribution.
I’m not talking the ego-stroking, “This wouldn’t have been possible without you!” but if you’re treating the game as a preorder and collector’s edition, I don’t see a heck of a lot of difference between backing it on kickstarter or buying the publisher-takes-the-lion’s-share version, retail.
Interesting and exciting development. Considering Team 17 is also helping Playtonic with the Yooka-Laylee game I am rather reassured this is a good thing.
Even if I don’t get any reward for the Kickstarter, just knowing this game will be a thing is good enough.
Now I’m just wondering if Kojima is behind a curtain somewhere at Team 17 to help make this a big “fuck you” to Konami… 😀