Kickstarter Fraudsters is a new column here at MMO Fallout where we look at the worst of crowdfunding, particularly in gaming, with people who expect public funding for projects that they have absolutely no qualifications to reasonably create. I use the term fraudster because it fits like a glove. Many of these creators have never worked in the industry and likely barely handle the budgeting of their own personal expenses let alone having the knowledge to plan a multi-year development cycle for a massive video game project.
You’ll find throughout this series that a lot of these projects fall into essentially the same pits in terms of making the project look good, and
The first campaign we are going to discuss is Free MMORPG by creator Vermeulen Peter. Now this guy wants over sixteen grand to fund an MMO that has no title, no screenshots, or artwork to speak of. It does have a low resolution screenshot from a Dark Age of Camelot video that he pulled off of Youtube. Just in case the campaign lacking in the most basic of details isn’t sketchy enough, we’re going to show you a screenshot from another game and say “ours is going to be like that.”
Hopefully Vermeulen isn’t one of those gamers that thinks creating video games is easy because he’s played a bunch of them and thinks he can do the same thing but with none of those filthy capitalist ideas.
So i love gaming, and i know a lot of people do. But i hate the pay to win concept that’s been going on more and more these days. But also the pay to play. Thats only good if u can play all the time u get.
This is a statement that tends to come out of the most deluded sections of the gaming community, those who not only demand their media completely free but who regard content creators as effectively indentured servants here for our enjoyment and perhaps a smidgen of ad revenue if we feel generous and shut off our ad blockers. Perhaps Vermeulen should look up the numerous indie developers who thought that they could release their game for free and rely on ad revenue only to find out that it doesn’t pay a living wage let alone enough to sustain the servers.
I want to create an MMORPG based on Dark age of camelot (hence the foto) that is 100% free to play. No advantages can be bought, not even looks ingame.
You have to wonder at what point Vermeulen looked at the Kickstarter draft and said to himself “this makes complete sense.” The idea here is that he is going to crowdfund a game that is completely free and has no in-game monetization system. Even if you back the Kickstarter campaign, you get absolutely nothing. Not even a poorly made T-Shirt or wristband. If you back at one hundred Euros, you get alpha access to a game that has no more details than “it’s like DAoC.” Can I pay by check?
So what is the incentive to pledge? You can spend money and get nothing, or not pay anything and wait for the game to release after which everything will be free anyway. This is the problem with Kickstarters that treat the system like it’s a charity: They think anyone will care about a project that wants something in return for nothing. If you’re going to give everything away for free, good luck convincing people to pay you. Either your project releases anyway or it fails and they lose nothing, there are certainly enough free games available that your absence will not be missed.
Generally you want to give people a reason to pledge to your campaign, like a discount or swag. Everyone loves swag, you’d be surprised how many college students you can convince to sign up for a credit card by offering them a free beer cozy.
The more I read this, the more convinced I am that this campaign is funding a Dark Age of Camelot private server, and I’m not just saying that because none of the money is going toward actual game development:
All money is to get the hardware, startup the internet connection, and get legal software. Afterwards i will get my income with selling add space on my website.
I also have bad news for you, Vermeulen: Funding your game server through website ads is a failed proposition, not least of which because your intended audience who want everything for free and refuse to actively fund your game in any fashion? Those people are also likely using ad blockers. You also have to give people an incentive to visit the website, because once they have the client there isn’t much reason other than to check patch notes every now and then. Compare to a game like RuneScape where, out of the eighty thousand concurrent users logged in right now, forty five of them are using the forums.
The plus side of campaigns like this is that they are overwhelmingly likely to fail with maybe one or two backers total. If you’d like to waste your money and receive nothing in return, you have until the 23rd to back this campaign.
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