Welcome to the Thursday Top 5, where everything is made up and the points don’t matter. Here at MMO Fallout, every Thursday I like to discuss the top five of something, and today I would like to go in a bit of a satirical direction and give aspiring developers tips on how to guarantee that your project won’t gather more than 5% of its goal, even if that goal is about the cost of a McDonald’s value meal.

Since this is another weekly edition that will use specific examples to critique Kickstarters, I will once again direct you to our lovely MMO Fallout Legal Expert: Schank Wellington.

The Thursday Top 5 series is purely the opinion of its author and is not to be used as a guide on determining your Kickstarter investments. For this topic specifically, we mean that if your Kickstarter fails, don’t come blaming it on us.

5. Don’t Explain Your Product At All

Offender: Main Street MMO

I saw the advertisement for Main Street MMO and my first reaction was: “this is pretty cool, but what exactly is it?” If you want to push your potential investors away, one of the best ways to do it is to focus on your gimmick and not explain the rest of the game at all. The premise for the world behind Main Street MMO is rather cool, the world is generated based off of satellite imagery of real locations. Otherwise I have no idea what this game is about.

Is it even a game, or is it supposed to be a simulation? What kind of monetary system are we talking about here? Is there a combat system? Looking at what little information talks about something other than the awesome simulation system that recreates the world, the game sounds like a way for local businesses to get a virtual presence. But for who? Do people walk around in the world? Can they level up? What is the point? Will I be able to raid Starbucks once I hit the maximum level?

At some point, hopefully founder Jon Brouchoud realized that apart from selling an interactive Google Maps, there is nothing on the Kickstarter Page that even comes close to detailing what the game is about, let alone making a product that sounds worth investing in.

4. Hiring Your Kid To Write The Description

Offender: Kingdoms of Mythic Might

How can you not want to throw ten thousand dollars (the limit) at Kingdoms of Mythic Might after reading this? The formatting and spelling has not been edited for this article.

Hey everyone! This game will be a unique blend of buildup stratagy and LIVE ACTION! This game will be free to play, will pay options however, unlike most games you CAN earn the buyable coins ingame via quests adventure areas. Please vote for a name if you don’t like the one I picked and, vote for if you wan’t the game to be flash based or 3D. 3D will be a bit hard unless I get MORE then my goal but, it could be “doable.” There will be 2 level systems. a standard level and a EPIC level system your epic level controls ability to own certain ammount of villages, unlock certain awesome troops, and allow certain command abilities and lots of other goodness. Standard levels increase basic stats like speed, intel, strength, and command/charisma. Pretty much the whole nine yards. There will be A LOT of features with this game, like making allies, becoming leader of a area, and brawling areas/ capture areas to control exta troop types like, cave trolls or goblind or wraiths etc. Last thing i’ll share “rest will be a (suprize)” is, there will be Classes and races. All giving boost to certain resource productions and skills. Like, Being a Undead mage would give you boost to your troop growth with small catpured ammount of enemies turning undead and joining your villages/army and you’d have ability to send a plague or a undead scourge etc. lots of goodness hope you like the ideas and hope to see you in the comment section! 🙂

It may surprise you to learn that Kingdoms of Mythic Might only achieved $105 of its $100,000 goal, a complete surprise given the $10,000 backer reward:

All the above PLUS these three things, Unlimited honor coins FOR LIFE meaning you’d be pretty much a god if you decided to play, Also, I’ll let you become a producer. a true part of the MAJOR desicion making. Also, I will fly out to you or you can fly out to me and we’ll descuss things. Maybe play some COD or, prank call some random people. OR, you know discuss the game I’ll show you concept art status up dates and you get to in person share concerns or, ideas.

This almost sounds like someone asked their ten year old kid what they wanted out of a game, transcribed his response, and then decided to fund a Kickstarter based on it.

3. Not Describing Your Product At All

Offender: A New World
Also: Prison World

Someone please tell me what A New World is about. Is it a fantasy game? Science fiction? Can I shoot guns? Do I wield swords? Is there a reason this only raised forty seven dollars in funding? I have no answers.

We are a company who is dedicated to making quality games, that keeps our fans happy. The happier our players are, the more likely they are to keep playing our game, as well as bring their friends with them. In order to provide the quality of work we want to we need funding so we can get all of our licensing done, and get all of our patents started.

Alternatively you could do what Prison World did and pepper your page with images from other developer’s games (and Black Ops 2) while talking about how ground breaking your game is because players chat to each other through chat and compete online in this online game and filling a very large paragraph while simultaneously saying nothing of value at all.

2. First Is The Worst Impressions

The sad thing about Treasure Hunter is that while this looks like it was put together in about twenty minutes from slightly altered stock models, the actual game does not resemble the picture above and including actual screenshots would have likely been the better alternative.

1. Absolutely Not

Offender: Visions –  A Christian MMO
Also: Web Based Ultima Online Clone
And: Ban Notice

Most of the items in 2-5 might have been good products but were hampered by poor presentation. These games were likely perfectly represented by their campaigns. A poor quality Kickstarter to fund an even worse quality game.