It was only a matter of time before dissenters of the current Kickstarter model popped up. But Pocketwatch Games’ Andy Schatz who is currently designing, coding and serving as art director for indie game Monaco and his thoughts on why the “stretch goals” of Kickstarter aren’t the best for game design aren’t without sound reason.
Speaking to Penny Arcade, he states, “I have a little bit of an unpopular opinion of Kickstarter. I’m really glad for the people that have been really successful on Kickstarter, and don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea of free money, but I’m of the opinion that designing a game around a variable budget is a terrible way to design a game.
“To be frank, I think that stretch goals are total bullshit. This is the idealist game designer in me speaking now.
“When you’re designing a game, the way I think you should do it, and not everyone is the same way and I recognise that, but the way you should do it is you figure out what the game is, you figure out what the game needs, and you should make that.”
Schatz has also crowd-funded his game through Indie Fund, being the first game selected. It will receive $100,000 in funding but this is more of a grant – Pocketwatch will need to pay back the money through game sales. Schatz believes this works better for designing games, though he hasn’t ruled out using Kickstarter in the future.
Source: GIBiz
