Those of you who read this website know that I hate to kick a guy when he’s down, so let me just preface this by saying that I believe Brad McQuaid is a good person, that Pantheon is being developed with good intentions, and that the man behind it is overall a nice guy.
So without further ado, I won’t be writing any more news pieces on Pantheon crowd funding attempts, and hopefully you will all understand why.
Back when Pantheon first launched its post-Kickstarter private funding campaign, I just had to write up a piece on how unappealing the campaign looked to potential backers, not to mention how poor the rewards were. Visionary Realms wants $5 a month just to post on their forums and $15 a month to chat with the developers during live streams. Feedback, something most developers (especially those desperately seeking an audience) would accept for free. I also noted that these plans give you absolutely nothing when the game actually comes out, presuming it ever does, and suggested my own plan to get people involved in a way that gives them more reason to subscribe, fund the game, and hand out rewards that will make people want to pledge.
Well that idea wasn’t taken, and apparently the website funding isn’t going too well because the company has turned to yet another source of income: Patreon. Patreon, for those of you who have never heard of it, is a bit like Kickstarter except your pledge is recurring. Patreon has become a good source of income for people who want to cut the advertising and give their audience the chance to fund directly. For Pantheon, it is yet another sign that the audience might be there, but they aren’t exactly chomping at the bit.
I actually held off on this piece for a couple of days to see how the Patreon would go, and so far only three people have signed up to the tune of $17. This time the proposed rewards are even worse than the forum subscriptions. $20 a month minimum gets a message sent to you in chat, on a screenshot of Pantheon. For $100 you can have a screenshot sent of an NPC you name. For $200, well, you get your name at the end of the credits.
Furthermore, Visionary Realms wants one thousand dollars minimum just to release a monthly progress video, and judging by the reward tiers they fully expected that some people would throw in hundreds of dollars for the most menial of rewards, as opposed to simply heading over to the main website and donating there for game-related goodies.
There are a lot of problems with Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, but the primary one that I see is that Visionary Realms needs to stop treating it like it is already a hot commodity. This kind of attitude requires leverage, and at this point Visionary Realms doesn’t have any. The fact that even with its community, only three patrons have contributed ($17 total) should say everything about community enthusiasm.
MMOs need money, and money requires an active and loyal community. If you want money just to play ball, most people are going to go elsewhere, diminishing your active community and making your proposal look even worse to potential investors. When Pantheon does fade quietly into the dust, those same people who had been interested at one point will look back and say “boy I’m glad I didn’t pay anything into that.” Maybe by then Brad Mcquaid will look back and wonder how things would have changed if he had figured out how to bring in people rather than try to monetize them right at the door.
But then again, this is just my opinion.
MMO Fallout 