One Kickstarter Is Asking For US$275,000 To Build A Demo

People have gotten pretty accustomed to Kickstarter projects not always being able to deliver on their promises, and as a result more and more developers are paring down their ambitions and offerings to tailor.

But this latest Kickstarter project has taken things a step further. It’s called Broken. And if you fund the initial stage, all you’ll get is a demo.

It’s only been posted in the last 24 hours and according to developers Kollide Entertainment, the cost of developing a full game is so substantial that the first round of funding will only be enough to cover pre-production.

“Nailing pre-production is one of the single most important aspects of creating games today,” the campaign page reads. “It allows a development team to establish a tangible vision for the game experience that everyone on the team can get excited about and use as a guide throughout the rest of development.”

Here’s precisely what the pre-production round of funding — which is US$275,000 — will deliver:

In pre-production, we’ll lock down:
 
The complete script for each of the six episodes of the first season
Storyboards for each episode of the first season
Concept art for characters, environments, and major scenes that will be encountered in the first season
The overall in-game style for all visual and aural aspects of the game (environments, characters, animations, textures, vfx, lighting, cutscenes, sfx, music, major character VO, etc.)
A detailed production plan for creation of the entire first season
A vertical slice experience (playable demo) representing the full game experience in ~3-5 minutes of gameplay

A maximum of 5 minutes of gameplay; potentially less than 3. That’s a hard sell.

But I feel like the developers deserve some small measure of credit: they are at least presenting one piece of development that is often ignored. Gamers have become accustomed to seeing playable demos, teasers or gameplay footage when a Kickstarter campaign launches. It’s become the standard.

But those prototypes take time, and more importantly, money to develop. You don’t make something out of nothing for free. And Broken is trying to acknowledge that.

Question is: do people want to contribute to a demo worth US$275,000? And even if you only have to pledge $14 (rounded down from US$10 at the time of writing) for access, wouldn’t the developers have to make the demo publicly available to drum up interest for the second round of funding necessary to make the full game?


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