
Kickstarter game project raises $10k, made using a DIY Platformer tutorial. - GabeN
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/ron-paul-kickstarter.php
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eykanal
What is the point of this article? The guy said he'd make a video game, and
people pledged money. He's pretty upfront about what he's making on the
Kickstarter page. The article author is upset because the fellow is using a
tutorial? Who the hell cares? So long as the supporters get their
"sidescrolling platformer action/adventure game, reminiscent of console
classics like Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog", like he promised
them, what's it your business anyway? They paid for a game, and he's
developing a game. What's the problem?

~~~
kamaal
I think the problem is something like this.

Vast majority of the people, slog till the calcium in their bones disappear to
learn the craft of software. HN'ers are full of Clojure learning, Python
beauty appreciating programmers who would happily burn a summer down
practicing exercises in Structure and Interpretation of computer programs.
They would never hire anybody who doesn't know how to sort a million integers
in a million different ways.

And yet after they learning how to do 22nd century algebra using haskell and
learning how to bend the skies with macros some one here comes along reads a
tutorial and builds an app to sell for a decent amount. This upsets their
whole belief systems and makes their expertise seem irrelevant to winning the
game.

This is called 'Holier than thou' attitude.

Anybody who doesn't go through the regime of K&R C -> Algorithm book -> DS
Book -> Haskell -> Lisp is considered shit.

He is not supposed to win, succeed or do any thing big with software.

This happens all the time. Anybody who doesn't have a CS degree and can't
handle the math/Algo quizzes is not supposed to win ever. And if he does, he
is considered undeserving, lucky or just evil.

~~~
reitzensteinm
I was tasked with porting Platypus to the Mac, which was probably the most
nightmarish code base I've ever seen. The entire code base consisted of
hundreds of arrays, and three or four, twenty thousand line long functions.
But the game was brilliant.

Anthony Flack, the creator, made a fantastic game. Absolutely brilliant.

I'm not saying you need technical chops to know how to make a game. I'm saying
you need to make games to know how to make games! There's not a game developer
alive that didn't play around extensively before finishing their first
project.

Using a tutorial is a smoking gun that the author has not had this experience.
It's literally like someone learning scales on the guitar, trying to write a
song.

Except he's _taking money_ on the _preorders_ to that song.

He's not successful because of what he's done, he's successful because of the
_promises he's made_.

If you don't see the problem there, I just don't know what to say.

~~~
kamaal
I got your point.

Lets say you develop a hobby for making furniture. You start developing
Tables. You read a DIY book and start making stuff. In the meanwhile, you make
mistakes, you don't put as many nails where there are necessary. You put more
gum than what is necessary. Your finished product is definitely a table, but
you've made is so badly it could hardly last for a couple of years.

A carpenter down the street comes down to you shop and gives a detailed
critique of what he thinks is wrong with your table.

Now you both go and try to sell your story, You have a table and he just has a
critique. The user comes and sees your table and listens to his critique. He
decides something that exists is better that just talk. Remember the user is
seeing the table only, he didn't see you making it. He decides to go with your
table despite the carpenters critique.

He orders 50 more tables from you to be made based on what you showed it to
him.

Now the professional carpenter can argue about how bad and how many technical
deficiencies exist in your tables. But you know what, the user won't even
understand that language.

Because, Shipping is a feature. And the one's who ship almost always win.
Sometimes even if they ship crap. That is what is happening here.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Look, if the guy wasn't taking money for it, I'd be completely supportive.
Trying stuff, MVP, and all that. Great angle for a game, great way to get
started. Clearly a smart go getter.

But to use your analogy, the man has ordered 50 tables, not knowing they're
likely to fall apart. The seller _never revealed_ his lack of experience. At
the end of it, we're just going to say caveat emptor?

That just doesn't sit well with me.

And I definitely agree with you that shipping stuff is #1, but I'm not sitting
around idly by criticizing the work of makers. Every dollar I've made in the
last 8 years has been from games, and only 2% of it or so from contract work.
My own attempt at building a community around preorders has been more
successful:

<http://www.underthegarden.com/>

And I'd made 12 commercial games, some that set me up financially for years,
before I felt comfortable being in a position to take peoples money before
they've played the product.

~~~
kamaal
Well actually I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just trying to show you how
the world is. We have to learn to live with this thing. The way programming
has evolved in the years is scary to say at the least. And we may see more and
more of this kind of stuff.

This is almost the same fury we saw when YC announced they would fund Ideas.
Although they are not the same, but YC really was ready to fund stuff which
wasn't really into material existence. While many who had working stuff might
not have got funded, many of them might have had good enough experience and
skill building stuff. At the same time there might have been ideas from non
tech founders.

Sounds strange ain't it? These days you can do a lot of things by just knowing
how to discover things and be a little productive.

No wonder yesterday there was thread on software engineers hitting dead ends
at 40. There is simply too much competition and tools are reducing the barrier
to entry opening a flood gate of people looking to make money here.

~~~
Lockyy
I think another problem might be how he claims "the game is designed,
programmed, conceived, and produced by me," and then it is revealed that he is
doing some pretty shady things with reusing sprites. Plus since he is
following a tutorial to make it is likely going to end up with code that is
pretty similar to the tutorials code, and that might have interesting
implications depending on what the tutorials author said could be done with
the code from it.

But this is all hearsay, this might all just be place-holder graphics, he
might just be using the tutorial to learn quickly and then remake everything
from scratch. We don't know yet. However, if it is place-holder graphics, why
remake Waluigi at all instead of just using him completely for testing...

------
twelvechairs
Pick on it because its a poor game, not because of how it is written. It
shouldn't matter to the backers if the guy was learning to program (how many
experienced programmers would be happy with $10k-expenses for 2 months work?),
or what tools he used to get the job done, as long as it does what it says on
the proverbial tin.

~~~
ajross
Actually, don't even pick on it because it's a poor game (and granted, it
looks like one whopper of a poor game and I'm as shocked as anyone that this
got funded). The magic of crowd funding is that decisions as to quality belong
to the backers. They felt it was worthwhile, it's their money, so it's none of
our business.

If it's fraud, then sure: Kickstarter would be on the hook for abetting it. If
he promised something he didn't deliver, there's a problem. But this doesn't
qualify. It's just a dud project. Projects fail regularly, that's why they
can't easily raise money from investors.

~~~
starwed
>If it's fraud, then sure: Kickstarter would be on the hook for abetting it.

I'm not even sure that's the case, is it? They provide a platform, and take a
cut, but I'd be a little surprised if that's enough to make them legally
liable.

~~~
ajross
Surely they'd have some level of liability. Safe harbor rules from laws like
the DCMA certainly wouldn't cover deliberate fraud. There would be enough to
file a case, anyway. And if it was filed and not tossed out, they'd probably
settle rather than risk all the bad press.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I don't know if they'd be liable, but they could take action that would reduce
the possibility of this kind of thing happening.

One very helpful tool would be setting a community expectation of weekly
updates from funding time to shipping time. They can't really enforce a rule
like that since they have no leverage over the project people once the money
is released, but they can certainly set the expectation that frequent updates
are the rule, not the exception.

There are some cases where frequent updates may not make sense, but for the
vast majority of projects, there's got to be some sort of news to share on a
weekly basis. It's surely not too much to ask of project people that they
spend a few minutes every week updating those who made their project possible.

If there's literally not any news to share, then maybe that project is in
trouble, and that too would be communicated if the standard was for weekly
updates and the project wasn't following that guideline.

Setting a standard along those lines is certainly better than the current
state of affairs.

------
starwed
Does this author not understand how prototyping games works?

You'd never spend the time drawing the assets and _then_ code up the
platformer... first you just grab a bunch of temporary placeholder art, so
that you can work on the actual gameplay. This is incredibly common in any
project like this.

This particular game might well end up being completely terrible, but the
whole post shows a crazy misunderstanding of game development.

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lonnyk
I really feel this is getting blown out of proportion. The game wasn't even
built yet and all of the assumptions the article makes are based on what they
found in open directories on the server.﻿

~~~
eps
It might actually be worth blowing this out of proportion to prevent this sort
of thing from happening again. I don't really want to support "I am going to
paint second Mona Lisa" and end up supporting guy's quest for learning how to
squeeze paint from a tube. This is not only misleading, but also damages
KicStarter's reputation in general.

~~~
lonnyk
I think the outrage should come after people actually see the finished product
and _not_ just from some random files that someone pulled off a public server.
The project isn't even fully funded.

Also, the outrage should be directed at Kickstarter and _not_ the person doing
the project. Directing the outrage to Kickstarter will encourage them to do
better vetting. Directing it to the person doing the project will only make
other people question if they should do a project.

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andypants
Don't forget, he'll also spend $3000 to produce and send all the t-shirts and
posters promised to the backers.

~~~
shimsham
Has he produced and sent t-shirts before?

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ghostfish
At first I thought that failed Kickstarters were a small minority of projects,
but I've come to think that failed projects (or at least greatly delayed) are
the norm, rather than the exception. Of 4 projects I've funded 1 was delivered
as promised and on time, 1 is currently on pace to be delivered only slightly
late (~1 month), one is 5 months late and still being designed, and one is
mostly content complete but over a year late for physical delivery. People
really, really don't seem to realize what they're getting themselves into with
these, and drastically underestimate time to completion.

~~~
cheebla
does Kickstarter post stats on these kind of things? Like what percentage of
funded projects are delivered?

if not, why not?

~~~
angryasian
probably because its not beneficial for them to publish these stats, but I
would love to see these statistics.

~~~
taude
Actually, found the blog article: it's 46% in 2011 (43% in 2010), but
whatever: <http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/2011-the-stats>

~~~
waterlesscloud
That's actually just the percentage of projects that hit their funding goal.
There is no indication of what percentage delivered.

I suspect someone could figure this out. To my knowledge, all funded projects
still have accessible pages. You could go through them all and see which have
updates that indicate shipping...

~~~
taude
Ahh, I believe you're correct. I optimistically read those stats...

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anthemcg
This is the second article I have seen in similar form criticizing a funded
project for being simple/theoretically easy to make or relying on prefab tech.

Every person on KickStarter has a chance to vet projects and decide for
themselves. Most of these people are not professionals promising a slick top
of the line product. They are just people who want to make something.
Sometimes its a team of well qualified professionals but a lot of the times it
is people who just have the desire to do it. Why are people bashing them?
Sure, the guy didn't throw it out there that he was not experienced but most
people wouldn't. He will probably deliver what he promised.

In my early days, I did more than a few tutorials to complete clients
objectives.I refined it and refined it before they ever saw it.But at the end
of the day, I learned it and made it my own. I think tech-savvy people tend to
judge here but a lot of these backers have no clue how to even begin thinking
about how to make a game. To them, it may not matter.

Besides who knows, I bet the backers are just aching for a Ron Paul platformer
and thats all they heard when they watched the video.

------
jimgardener
<http://nibruki.com/games/rp2012/core/screens/TitleScreen.js> now is
forbidden!

------
pablasso
I'd be interesting if you could actually invest in Kickstarter projects and
not just give away money.

~~~
jes5199
I thought so, at first, but I don't believe that anymore.

I think it's plausable that small projects with shareholders who want a profit
may actually be less stable than projects by independent groups who have
funding without oversight.

I'm happy to give money to projects I believe in. I spend a lot of money on
Kickstarter, and I'm happy to see projects succeed. Yeah, I hope I get a cool
wristwatch out of that one project, but mostly it's about living vicerally
through the experience of artists and designers and engineers being given the
opportunity to really realize their own vision. That's worth a lot to me, and
I'm willing to spend money on it, with no guarantee that I'll get mailed a toy
at the end.

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nullflux
Have these types of things happened on Kickstarter before (or has anyone
attempted to just completely game the system?) What types of recourse do
investors have? Any?

~~~
glimcat
Here's some snake oil for $270,000:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1047510073/remee-the-
rem...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1047510073/remee-the-rem-
enhancing-lucid-dreaming-mask?ref=category)

Kickstarter isn't particularly thorough about vetting technical projects.

~~~
SatvikBeri
There are a lot of lucid dreaming devices, and people report varying degrees
of success with them, but I've never heard that any of them are completely
worthless. Is there any particular reason why Remee wouldn't work?

~~~
mbell
> Is there any particular reason why Remee wouldn't work?

There is no reason it wouldn't work in the same way that there is no reason
that there couldn't be a giant teacup orbiting the Earth.

~~~
dcosson
Ok so you're a realist, fine. But I'm curious, do you not think lucid dreaming
is real? Or do you just not think it can be triggered with flashing lights?

~~~
mbell
I've had many lucid dreams, non of them involved flashing lights in my face.
More importantly of all the methods to induce lucid dreams, flashing lights in
your eyes isn't among the practices normally used in scientific studies. If it
were actually reliably effective, it is highly likely it would be used in
studies as a reliable method of initiating lucid dreams.

~~~
jonmb
It has been used in some small studies, like this one:
<http://www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/laberge5-3.htm>

But as far as I know, lucid dreaming in general is not something that is being
studied by a very large number of scientists, so we're not likely to find a
whole ton of studies like this regardless of how effective it is.

------
JVIDEL
Don't know about this project, but the problem with kickstarter is that once
you back a project is no longer your money, and there's nothing you can do
about it.

It's right there on their TOS: they are not responsible for the project, nor
to provide ways to keep the project's creators from running away with the
backers' money.

This "give money and something MAY happen, eventually" model is going to
collapse on itself.

~~~
jes5199
I actually think that this is Kickstarter's saving grace: if I give money to
somebody, I know it's a gamble. I'm not a venture capitalist looking for a
guaranteed return, I'm not going to pressure anyone to have a "exit strategy",
and I'm not a shopper who can demand my money back. I'm taking a risk with a
small, disposable amount my money - usually less than the cost of going out to
dinner at a nice restaurant, and I get to help give someone the gift of
working on a project they believe in, that I think the world would be better
off having. And sometimes - usually, even! - they give me a gift in return.

I find this to be way more optimistic and healthy than the traditional
investment model, where the VC are pushing you to sell your baby for parts so
they can get even richer.

~~~
JVIDEL
Since when is getting what you were promised the same than a VC ROI model? VCs
expect as much as possible, they want to hit jackpot. I give $100 for a watch
so I expect said watch, not a Rolex!

And getting jack shit is the exact opposite of what kickstarter says it does,
you could just press the donate button of any harebrained scheme on the
internet and get jack shit, you don't need kickstarter for that.

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djt
Considering what it costs to produce a new title, is it any surprise?

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deniszgonjanin
Fake it 'til you make it, kid

