Let me know your thoughts on this one, did I miss anything? ( Please be respectful ) Check out and Support the devs if you like the work! www.kickstarter.com/projects/blazingstars/blazing-worldstars?ref=project_link
@@LostRelicGames I noticed this as well while editing my own videos on the primary pc sharing the same audio level (same speakers). I checked what was up and noticed this video was -12db, YT standard normalizes to -14db so this would be -26 overall. I do straight dialogue as well and aim for -17.5db but there's some personal taste involved. Try -20db overall volume, that would be the minimum I would ever consider for YT dialogue, unless you want to make people have to change their volume levels just for your videos.
I’m definitely not part of their potential audience because I’m not a furry. But one thing that strikes me as odd, is that they’re even on Kickstarter. The final game only includes four characters, they already have four characters in and fighting. What do they need $30,000 USD for? Seems like they could just release it.
A major issue I see with too many Kickstarter campaigns is not only do they list their stretch goals too soon, they end up showing a LOT of them, and the amount on the goals is many many times more than what the campaign is asking for. You can't ask for $40,000 and then have stretch goals showing $200,000 or more right off the jump. It just shows you probably need way more money than your initial ask, and when your campaign has only raised like $4000... having people see a $200,000 goal makes it look like the game isn't getting a lot of interest. Also your biggest reward tiers should NOT be 10% of your asking goal! Don't ask for $30k then have a reward tier for $3k because you're creating a situation where a SINGLE backer can cancel their pledge and set your campaign back by TEN PERCENT. I would say even having a tier at 5% of the campaign asking amount is borderline too high. I don't think most campaign creators take that into consideration at all. I think most just assume having really high reward tiers means they could get a lot of money from one backer.
Thank you for saying this Konitama, I’m the director for the game, so I didn’t exactly consider a certain goal on offer being too much when it came to what we offered for that tier initially. Most of my research came off of what we studied for other campaigns that did exist in this genre, the only issue we didn’t factor was that most of them were old and at a time more people were willing to support campaigns for a product in return. So this will prompt that we rework the higher tiers and offers for when we do try another campaign down the line after more development time.
@@BloodruneEnt. The entire world is different now. Money is tighter everywhere for people. I'm working on a metroidvania, so I'm thankful to see videos like this. We live and breathe through code right? I wish you and your team all the best! May your best times be ahead, LecomingBegend
I love this detective feel to these videos, where you trying to find any clues to why it did not succeed. I can only imagine, how much useful is this feedback to devs, hope they use it. Also not sure if I ever saw established game dev like you analysing Kickstarter campaigns and related game marketing before. Sounds like a great opportunity for video series. That said, if it should be a series, I would go for more condensed version (second half felt a bit repetitive), and maybe always compare two campaigns (or more), so there are clear dos and don'ts.
I used to do web design and I encountered the same issue a lot. I’m also a fan of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, and it comes up there as well. There seems to be this prevalent blind faith that exposure is always the biggest concern. You just gotta “get customers in the door.” But actually having a product people want is still king. This is especially true in the gaming world. Gamers are pretty jaded from years of flashy ads and fake gameplay trailers setting us up for disappointment. Almost every game I’ve ever played I’ve bought based off of reviews, recommendation, or word of mouth. I don’t actually think kickstarter is a good fit for first games, unless you have some other form of credibility backing you up. I also don’t really get what the 30,000 is paying for. If you already have a playable demo and only 4 characters. It’s not like fighting games have involved level or story development.
I noticed the $35 price tier is also limited (350 backers max). There is a second $35 tier that doesn't include the game. The next available unlimited tier to get the game is $45 USD. Pretty much hitting AAA prices now. They really need to rethink these tiers for next go around.
my guess is for a smaller audience, a patreon with very visible development would be a more viable method for funding development than a kickstarter. less money at once but more consistent, and it would be more clear and ok that it’s a work in progress. and then when it’s ready to launch give all your patrons a key. for the game i’m starting to work on that’s my plan. slowly build an audience with devlogs on youtube and make a patreon at some point for supporting it. a little money early in development would probably be more helpful than a lot of money when it’s basically done.
Hey man, I think you're an exemplary game dev. You offer a lot of value in your vids, you're very respectful, and you've got a positive atmosphere going on as a result both in your vids and in just the overall community. I just want to say I appreciate it, and I'm sure the vast majority of your viewers do too. Best of luck on your game, I'm definitely picking it up when you release it.
My experience as a fellow dev is most devs are pretty chill down to Earth people. Outside a few passionate discussions around certain elements most people in our industry just want to be good at what they do without causing drama for other people. There are some toxic cultures here and there where devs are expected to crawl over each other in a drag to the top, but overall most cultures aren't like that nowadays. It is a very competitive industry but most people treat each other with respect. Ultimately no one wants to work with an arsehole so the people who do well are the people who build bridges, not burn them
Great video! I feel like in this day and age, 9 planned characters is the bare minimum in a fighting game. For the demo they just need 3 super polished characters and 1 super pretty/polished level as a vertical slice. It is interesting how so many campaigns have such unrealistic expectations... Without any previous game success clout, you need your campaign/demo to be top notch.
I think there definitely is a sizable audience for this sort of animal fighting game, like you said its just getting them to see it and helping to put the project infront of tho-se people
Also, I'll just mention that on the first kickstarted campaign, that had failed....there was a typo in one of the first lines of the body. It meant to say "harkens back" , but instead it says "hardens back...".
I've watched a couple of these from you, and a few other videos from people talking about games that fall short on Steam or whatever, and it's incredible to me how frequently the advice has to be repeated to make sure your trailer/clips/screenshots are showing off your best.
4 characters is definitely not enough for a fighting game. SF2 World Warrior sets the standard, and you gotta have at least 8 characters. If 8 characters are too hard, then you gotta take short cuts. Such as making two characters that have similar moves (E. Honda and Blanka) or even two characters that are just color swaps with slight move differences (Ryu and Ken).
I keep seeing this mistake being made time and time again, not only here on the channel but also in the genre i work on. Im a solo, inexperienced developer making a game by myself and my direct competition sell their products all for 20$ and theres no chance im putting my game with that price, it would be commercial suicide. It's baffling how badly these developers fail when it comes to market research or just pricing their own game
I think a lot of indie developers are falling for the classic survivorship bias. They compare their games to the super successful and well produced games in their same genre and believe they are on the same level. When most of them (including myself) are still far below them at the amateur field and don't even hold a candle to the big dogs. It takes a lot of swallowing pride and it hurts to admit, but the stuff we work on isn't viewed by people nearly as valuable as we believe it is sometimes. For every successful kickstarter campaign there was a 100 others that failed. The failures are definitely way more important to conduct market research when trying to succeed on your own project.
Thing is with me as a massive fighting game fan the demo just felt off like it was a Flash game , thing with fighting games have noticed with the few i have seen in early access like with Terrordrome they add stuff ....but do not improve the things that really need improving so have no idea what their end goal really is. Also I remember with Skullgirls which was done right as crowdfunding was just for new characters 2d sprites were very expensive and time consuming to make though granted with Skullgirls the art and animation was a much higher quality
One thing that stood out to me was the games title. What is a 'Blaising WorldStar?' since they are fury characters why not something that fits the theme. Possibly 'Blaising WildStars' or something more animalistic.
At that price point for an indie title i would need them to have an established brand i.e. i've played their games before and am happy to support not just this game but the company as a whole. $35 for an indie game is expensive, especially when the scope is quite small. The $35 price point is normally when your moving into the medium sized companies that are technically "indie" but only barely like Egosoft or Piranabite
This videos are very useful for people that aspire to become game developers you can learn a lot from this kind of situations from how to create a kickstarter campaign what you should offer and also the importance of building a community of people that support your game. Great video :) Maybe in other videos have also some kickstarter campaigns that where successful. I think having example like this no and like this yes will help even more
I'm sharing this video with my team. Like. Our demo were going to send to publishers only has 2 characters for our shooter, but final release will have 10. And they're all the same as far as abilities. Just Skins because we are trying to make an old style shooter
Another great analysis and I hope the development team takes your suggestions to heart. Personally as a huge fighting game fan who used to compete at my local weeklies all the time; I firmly believe that making an indie fighting game is probably one of the most difficult genres to make a successful indie game in. Fighting games are pretty niche as it is and only have a small dedicated group of players compared to the rest of the gaming world. And those players are busy playing series that have been going on 20+ years with characters and mechanics they've been practicing and adore with for a good chunk of their life. To ask these players to stop their daily combo labbing with Sol Badguy or Sophitia and instead try out this totally new indie, unfamiliar world, and mechanics is a huge ask. Fighting game players are very loyal and dedicated to the series and characters that they are already attached to. Sure we've had Skullgirls and Punch Planet, but there's a ton more indie fighters that never got any traction. Still I sincerely do wish the best for the developers and hope they find their groove. But they definitely picked a treacherous and arduous path to find success in indie dev.
Awesome video as always! Good to know you are a fellow Tekken player as well, I used to main Baek Do San till T6 and current main is Lucky Chloe in T7. You have pointed out the faults in the kickstarter brilliantly. $35 for a fighting game that will have only 4 characters? That will most likely keep most of the fighting game community away. That price is kickstarter price and if we follow the usual logic that games cost cheaper during kickstarter then the actual game might be more costly when it is out. For a 4 character fighting game with the possibility to be more than $35 is most likely the main culprit for the kickstarter for not being backed. Anyway, awesome video as usual and Keep it up! :)
Stretch goals being mentioned early is the greatest warning sign I see with KS projects. These should not come up until you have a nice trajectory of the goal being reached early. Four characters is fine /IF/ the dev is planning on adding more post release, but I'd be wanting to see some unique mechanics demonstrated in the .gifs and descriptions. Yeah, $35 is also a heafty premium. The market is flooded, and at that price the acceptable standards are huge.
Fully agreed, never show imperfections when advertsing your game, make sure it polished and you're spot on with that first picture , presentation is very crucial and the pledges should be fair, on Mina the hollower you can get the whole game for $20, i hope they fix those problems you stated
Spot on analysis. I grew up playing most fighting games, SF, KOF, MK, etc. From my perspective I'll say the first major red flag is simply this: Furries. It's the elephant in the room. The whole furry thing, outside of that community, is generally viewed negatively. I can't put it more delicately than that and I wish it was more constructive. This is a reality that must be taken into consideration when you're putting a lot time and money on the line. There have been lots of niche games, many successful, but none I can think of at the moment with that kind of baggage.
We faced the similar issue about the demo executable with some of our tester on Steam. It seems to be an issue on some computer maybe antivirus. Be carefull
Could be, though I've not had this issue with any of the recent steam fest demos (or ever). I did look it up, steam forums mention it's related to the developers upload. Not sure.
Odd tip for a fighting game demo: NEVER make them play against the grappler or zoner characters first... they are the two archetypes that dominate with new games until players get good, and they are the two archetypes that frustrate players the most.
As an indie game dev myself, i completely agree. However, it isn't the fault of the game devs - the guys whose kickstarters this video was written about for example have been looking for help. The problem is that the help and the direction is very hard to to find :)
Love all your vids. If I may make one suggestion on your actual video production. Unless this is being recorded directly from some kind of live stream you are doing, maybe move the microphone out of the frame or at least mostly out of your frame. It takes up 1/3 of the screen. It's even obnoxiously in some of your thumbnails? Second, I would turn off the fan, it's very distracting as its moving around in the background and my eyes are drawn to it. You also got a cool blue light in the background, maybe darken the room, a bit, put a light on your face instead? These are just things that I noticed while watching your vids. Your content is great, love all of it just some little things I noticed that you might consider for future vids!
Great video, really interesting watching your break down. :) I think they clearly don’t understand who their target audience is, as personally don’t find the furry theme appealing (perhaps they could have a mix of different types of characters to accompany them). As you mention, they should be reaching out to that community if that’s their demographic. Also over valuing their game big time. $35 is near enough the price of a triple A game. What they’ve shown is a starting point for sure, but I’d expect at least 8-10 characters and their demo needs polish before it’s shown to the public, as your first experience was that it was bugged, as you couldn’t turn your character around. As other people have mentioned about their tiers, such as having a 3.5k; seems like a cash grab to me. I think your analysis was spot on, they need to take a step back and reevaluate their game. Also I’d advise they work on a better banner for promoting the game, as it seems pretty lacklustre IMO. Blizzard were known for their polish and attention to detail. They should think about what kind of game studio they want to be. A company known for polish and great content, or another EA that will push out a clearly unfinished game to make some Benjamin’s.
4 characters is definitely not large enough as a fighting roster. Killer Instinct for Xbox One started with 6 fighters, and that game got a lot of criticism for it. Remember that the first Super Smash Bros. has you start with 8 (with 4 more being unlockable). And the original version of Street Fighter II came with 8. So I would argue that 8 is a good minimum number, and a fighting game should ALWAYS have 8 available fighters at launch.
The amount of characters is certainly a letdown. I would say you need 6 minimum these days, kind of like Rivals of Aether, but I would strongly prefer at least 8.
For me it also feels kinda dishonest, when you actually show designs for more characters already made. I mean what stops you from adding them to game anyway, if you already have the code to add them. All you need is visual assets for animation, bit of audio for each character and bit of implementation. I would rather expect you give everything you already got out, and then promise to create completely new characters for stretch goals. You could even use that for including fans and let them come with character ideas and vote on best of them. Or provide some high pledge tiers with option to participate on their own character design (its not connected to any IP, so you can afford a bit of creativity).
Agreed. Even the original Mortal Kombat, which had quite a small roster, still had 7 fighters to choose from. 4 is a number I'd only ever expect to see in an alpha or beta.
Incentives are the biggest challenges. A free copy of a game in the world where there are so many new games doesn't seem to matter. Therefore, analyzing a successful campaign might be more educational.
This would be awesome if it was just an _exercise_ in game dev (e.g., a school project) that they decided to release to the public -- I'd be all over it if that was the case. As a _product,_ though, the game just doesn't deliver. It's another indie project that doesn't have any unique selling points: it doesn't do anything to shake up the fighting game formula, and it doesn't dabble with any fun or interesting mechanics (such as those you might find in Anime fighters) -- it's simply "Street Fighter, but less". That may sound harsh, but at the end of the day, they _are_ asking for your money (and not a small amount, either). It's on them to make sure you're getting value.
Balancing such a game must be hard, to not be lobsided to one character. Maybe using some kind of massive batch of automated AI fights to get balancing statistics.
At first glance I said to myself $20 tops, 10-15 for kickstarter. There's no chance I would back something like this for $35 and maybe never see the game. I'm not a huge fan of fighting games, but even I agree that 4 characters is not enough. I couldn't tell you how many other games of this style have, but 8 or 10 and higher feels like the starting point.
My thoughts: Its a bit of a stretch to think this will succeed because of the theme of the characters + a niche genre. A good assessment is wondering what the chance of someone buying this game over any of the other major titles. Theres nothing making this a "must have" even to fighting game genre fans. Im not a fighting game fan, but I assume that its a brutal space to compete in as a developer. Also, its also a stretch in any indie game to expect it to survive as a multiplayer/coop.
The game looks fun. I don’t know anything about kickstarter so I can’t comment on that. But I do wanna talk about the theme of the game: The title appears to be referencing “worldstar”. Which is a popular website that is known for posting viral fight videos and up and coming rap music videos. I think the choice to make the characters furries in odd, but interesting…But I would’ve like to see them lean more into that “worldstar!” theme. They did that a little, when the voice over says say “Throw hands!” (See urban dictionary if you don’t know the phrase) at the start of the fights. Maybe they should also have some trap/hip hop music instead of hyper colorful EDM and also dress the characters up in more modern urban fashion. Idk if this is what the game designer is referencing, If so, I see some missed opportunities
Hey there Duane, so the name of the game mostly came from an SNK theming for the title as it was more based on cultures around the world as KoF was the main inspiration for Blazing Worldstars, it’s the game series I grew up with playing. The Worldstar in the name being associated with Worldstar HipHop was more of a coincidence if anything, we choose “Throw Hands!” for round starts to keep things unique rather than fight. The character designs were made by me, hiphop is not the influence for them, every design mostly are slight references or have a cultural factor to them in mind, which I wish we could show far more of them in action, but at this time we don’t have a budget that could get more animators to work full time to make that happen as the real team size has been two people for about a year, we just grew to 5 this month.
@@BloodruneEnt. The camera needs a bit more oomph, if a grab or special connects and will defeat the other player it should zoom in or shake a bit more since it won't affect the gameplay at that point. There is a moment where a grab finishes off the opponent, that is a good opportunity to put some cinematic movement/.
@@ty-xq7bl we could try the zoom in, but we already have the UMvC3 camera shake for hits already in, the main issue with that is how it actually does affect players getting ko’d by certain moves, there was too much shake and it lingered on screen after a fight ended for a few moments before we fixed it, the other we had to fix came from Tiger Press Palms having far too much of a shake affect that could’ve been seizure inducing. There was a lot to consider in terms of not flaring up health issues for certain effects on screen, but we’ll definitely consider the zoom in for KOs.
50K is premium? How would the raised funds be used? Because I'm just thinking about like an average software engineer low end salary is like 60K. So what would the money be used for if not paying those working on it?
Premium in the context of indie crowd funding campaigns, not developer salary. Which is why crowdfunding funds should not be relied on for primary production expenses.
The bear character in the demo looks very close to the Baloo character from the 90's animated series 'TaleSpin'. So they might want to redesign him if they don't want to be sued by Disney.
Hmm, all these tiers get confusing. Needs to be very clear. Maybe 3-5 tiers, and yes, must be obvious if you're getting the game :) Yeah, indies need to think carefully about project scope, genre, audience, market. Personally, $10-15 is a decent KS pledge, ie a small risk, and get the game $5 -$10 cheaper than release + get to follow its development. That feels right to me. Only absolute top tier stuff can ask for $35. Some slightly nicer art/images/anims on the page would be good too - I think the game itself has quality art, the KS page not so much. If they do both those things (price + better presentation), I think its a decent campaign. Your point about limited roster might ultimately be the issue, for fans of the genre though.
The main issue isn't the furry thing. Sonic the hedgehog has furries and works great. There's one glaring problem with this game. Color composition. There's no identity. I see purple, gray, blue, brown, orange... Very ugly to look at. If the characters and backgrounds had easy colors it'd have stood a good chance... Ryu s got the red headband and white gi. Ken's got a red gi with golden hair. Chun LI has pretty blue colors with her bright skin. Blankas got green with a scorching orange red. Just badass colors that go together. The main furry chick has orange hair, grayish brownish face?.. gray/black top... with an ugly purple bottom. No chance. Stick to red, white, blue, green and orange. Can't go wrong. Mix and match.
The game art needs *intention* . Each character should have a fighting stage designed to explain their lore. Some boats, a city, a dog on his phone, a mouse watching and a girl looking behind her back doesn't say anything about the lore to a new player.
I think people underestimate how much games actually cost to make. We did a case study in our games design course of a single developer who was making a puzzle platformer. It was polished and had about 15 hours or gameplay. It cost over $400,000 to make. I'm not saying that good games can't be made for less than that, but I've noticed that people are expecting AAA graphics, animations, sound/music and super polished gameplay for under $100k. It's just unrealistic.
The issue is Captain is that telling people the true costs is still not convincing for consumers, this can lead to an issue of programmers and other parts of the team getting underpaid for their work if a campaign only met the main goal. Consumers ultimately in the end end up having a final say in the price of the game rather than us the developers.
@@koktszfung It was a while ago and I had to dig it out of my archives, but the game is called Kine, it cost $420, 000 and it was actually only 6 hours long. But google any small indie game and have a look at how much they actually cost and it will surprise you. Cultist simulator: 130k, Shovel knight: well over 300k, Born punk: 130k... The fact that most people don't know that even simple, short indie games generally cost over 100k is extremely damaging to potential developers. You wouldn't know unless you tried to ship a game yourself. I have a team of 3 people trying to get a game ready to launch a kickstarter and before we have even asked for any money, I'd estimate we would have spent about 13k in wages in the space of a few months, if we were even paying ourselves. But we aren't. We are working for free. So spare a thought for the developers when they are asking for 50k. It wouldn't even pay for a single programmer for a year, let alone artists, musicians, marketing etc.
@@BloodruneEnt. And yeah I get it. But telling people the true cost is the start of fixing the race to the bottom for video game budgets. The reason why there is so much burnout, underpayments, cutting of corners, overworking and straight out unpaid hours is because people's expectations have become ridiculous. As a developer you would know you have to eat, keep the lights on and spend every hour you have on development. If people are as serious as they say they are about fixing the exploitation in game development, then consumers need to start waking up to how much games cost both monetarily, physically and mentally.
@@captainawesome2226 oh no, I’m not disagreeing with you on that matter. The only thing that deters them because of those expectations is that some contour the idea that someone out there can do it cheaper, better, as a one-man-act, etc. People have also grown trust issues over time from scammers, gaming outlets over exaggerate the details and features of games, giving consumers a lot of the wrong ideas (No Man’s Sky is a very strong example of this). Trust me, I’m all for being honest, but currently we are stuck within a world that doesn’t care if our passion projects cost far more than they really expect it should cost, mainly due to the fact their told to look at a product more subjectively in what they think it’s worth should be than caring about it’s true price tag.
I've seen many free games way better than this over the years, made by less people. I'm no expert here, but they should go over their budgeting again. I would expect a Street Fighter clone to sell for $5 on Steam. They also might want to change that bear character a bit unless they want to get sued by Disney. The animation looks nice so far, so that's something.
They have clearly put a lot of work into the game, and it looks great, but for kickstarter in 2022, unfortunately, it's not enough. You definitely need more than 4 playable characters. I do wonder how far you need to go into development before a game is kickstarter ready. Maybe to the point where you don't even need it anymore.
4 characters is currently the best we can offer for development for a project like this, most programmers and animators price tags are not small for fighting games and fighting game characters require more time to develop for depending on the style and the size of the team. Our team is really only 1 animator with the other animators being outsourced and the outsourced ones cannot make the time to be part of the project full time, nor can we really afford them without completely neglecting other important part of development in regards to the budget.
honestly, I don't agree with that at all. if you have a really great looking fighting game and you focused on making the best possible four characters to start with, that's much preferable than a dozen characters with a bunch of them feeling samey.
Just my opinion but it looks too much like Street Fighter. What I’ve learned in this short time of my journey is that the indie space is so saturated. You must find a way to be different
People hate furries. Artists even have to explicitely say they don't draw furry stuff on sites like Fiver. If you want success AND a full blown furry game, that just doesn't fly.
As an indie game developer this video is not really helpful for me. The mistakes the developer made in this video are so obvious that I think most companies wouldn't make them. It would be great to see a video on a game that did everything seemingly correct but they went with the wrong target audience or are in a heavily competitive market.
@@adamaze2920I’m the lead director, we had only one programmer for a year, we just got another this month that can dedicate time to the project. Not having UFE2 wasn’t the issue, our development team has been small for a long time and we were fortunate to get a new programmer on the team when other programmers that joined could not dedicate any time for the project or that our budget prior couldn’t cover for a programmer we did want to hire, we didn’t want to bring on someone we weren’t able to fully pay, that wouldn’t be fair for them, even if we’ve been looking for more hands to help.
@@adamaze2920 I wish that was the case, but unity developers are still very costly, so I’m not sure why you think someone from those countries work at cheap prices, especially for programming things as complex as fighting games.
Only halfway through the video but wanted to give my thoughts on why it failed before fully hearing you out. The logo is bad, furries is a niche market, the voice acting is clearly done by amatures, 4 characters is unacceptably low (I would say it should have 8 minimum), and a lot of the visuals are extremely bland - like the "KO" is in 2 colors with zero depth. My guess is most people who visit their page won't get passed the video, because that was their one chance to show a perfected slice of their game and they failed to do so. This looks basically like a bunch of furries got together to try and make a game they don't know how to make, which is completely fine and understandable, but they can't realistically expect us to pay $30,000 to fund their passion project. Edit: Also, wow, $35 minimum for the game? There's literally no way that game is going to cost that much, so scamming the people funding it is just unacceptable. Your KS page should be giving a discount to the early customers as they're funding something not even out yet. Whoever set this page up clearly did zero research on comparable games.
At first I couldn’t read the logo, maybe they should have some more contrast between the color of the letters and background. Other than that I like the logo
Actually, director here, we did do research, but the information when it came to other fighting games when it came to Kickstarter fighting games were Skullgirls, Beast’s Fury, Cereal Killaz, etc. many of them which mostly offered that type of price for early reward access to their games with very few characters in their roster much like ours. Right now we’re working to patch out the bugs, no one gave us feedback that we likely should’ve lowered the offer of the game when it came to rewards would have that kind of effect, so generally we were flying blind without getting real feedback, so this really helps with price being too high for people to want to support it. So we’re going back into development here for a few months as we fix and add more since our team has been very small with the budget we’d been working with prior to these campaigns, now we do have more hands on deck to help flesh out the visuals and extra hands for programming to cover more bases since we mainly had only one programmer for a whole year. We would love to have more characters added in, but right now we don’t have enough of a budget to cover for more animators to make that possible since most animators either do not have the experience or can really dedicate the time to a project of this size.
@@BloodruneEnt. Right but if that's true then you should release into EA with 4 characters and promise more to come for free (plus you can have paid DLC after that too). Going into a full release with 4 characters is ratings suicide.
@@Squidmoto3 we are trying to offer more characters, we would like to get around to a beta with 14 playable characters on the roster and the final base roster containing 36 fighters total. We only have it as a demo right now since we are still working on the characters who are mostly complete at this point other than testing and having testers find any bugs we don’t catch, we didn’t know steam wouldn’t allow the demo to have patch updates for the game than going Early Access.
it has very furry characters but doesn't market itself to the furry community. furry characters to that extent will turn off anyone who's not a furry, they should have changed more of the other materials to cater to that demographic
From my perspective, it is mostly an exposure issue. There are tons of "cheap" games out there, in order to succeed your game really needs to instantly catch my attention, by showing something very cool or not seen in other games. That game unfortunately does not feel special. The backgrounds are pretty bland, the character designs not original, and the moves not very flashy. Add to that a low amount of characters and a high price and my limited interest for the genre in the first place is basically reduced to zero. If you can't convince a random gamer like me, then your campaign is niche and aimed at fans of the genre (which might be ok if that was your goal), so you need to get a lot of attention from the specialized forums/gaming communities and do tons of active marketing.
"Bring your audience with you"... you came so close to giving them a real economics lesson; it seems a shame to not follow through. When you scanned their followers through various platforms, the largest number was 175. Probably duplicates with some of the smaller platforms but let's round up to 200 active followers. And the ask is 40,000 AUD. So, if they got 100% pledges from just that pool, they'd need an average of 200 AUD. Extrapolate a few scenarios. 1) People get the game at 35AUD? So, they need 6x the pledges and everyone else is just pissing their money away for vanity's sake... they're never going to get to play the game. And those 1200 players aren't exactly going to reach a lot of people with their rave reviews even if they get 100% likes. 2) Counting on 100% pledges? is 20% even realistic? Multiply that pool by 5, so they probably need a pool of 6000 bare minimum. What it the realistic pledge conversion is only 5%? 3) Counting on Lurkers? They aren't even risking a pledge. To get even one lurker to queue up, how many views do you think they need? Confess. Their business plan is, "Magic. Magic will make us successful". My estimates are rough common sense approximations but they need to hit lightning in a bottle on all 3 vectors to even make their basic goal. Never mind stretch goals or going pro. Their focus HAS to be on building their community, building the buzz, and giving backers something they'll want. This stuff is HARD! Making games (or any product) is the easy part. Execution is what trips people up.
Seth Godin said Kickstarter should actually be named Kickfinisher. Reason being that you should only do a Kickstarter campaign once you have a large enough fan base, not the other way around.
I find the graphics to be a bit bland and uninteresting to be honest. The characters are all about the same level of contrast and saturation, and it's very mid range. There aren't pops of color, brightness or interest, and they seem to mostly be the same sort of dark brownish beige with clothes that don't stand out from that. Edit: the later gifs showed a bit more variety. The initial video did not seem to. Edit2: you don't even get the game for $25? WHAT. No way. Terrible choice. That game is maybe a $10-$20 game - MAYBE - less maybe if more than 4 characters.
they do yeah, though from what i notice you still need to have a quality product to draw people in. For example, furries are willing to spend thousands on a fur suit, but the reason they spend that much on a suit is because they are willing to pay for the labor since they can't do it themselves AND the quality of the suit. Same goes for art. Furries will spend a lot on commissions but you either have to fill in a niche and/or be really good at art for it to work. You're not going to have a long line of furries willing to pay for your art if you're pretty average and don't fill in a certain niche. This game is niche but i'd say the quality is so low that they don't want to fund it. Any furry that would be interested would probably just rather play a better fighting game even if it doesn't feature animal characters.
$35 for a furry fighting game that only has 4 characters, and you've got a broken demo. All the best to you, seriously, but it should be immediately obvious as to why you're game/Kickstarter isnt performing how you want it to.
One of the biggest things: Furries. I understand some people like it, but the furry aesthetic is instant turn off for me, and I’m not the only one. It’s very narrow target audience. EDIT: That is on top of all the amateurish and broken things
Let me know your thoughts on this one, did I miss anything? ( Please be respectful )
Check out and Support the devs if you like the work! www.kickstarter.com/projects/blazingstars/blazing-worldstars?ref=project_link
Audio is a bit low. The content itself is good, though
@@dukemagus will amplify it more for the next one 👍
Those characters are not furries! (I won't be watching your channel again!)
@@LostRelicGames I noticed this as well while editing my own videos on the primary pc sharing the same audio level (same speakers). I checked what was up and noticed this video was -12db, YT standard normalizes to -14db so this would be -26 overall.
I do straight dialogue as well and aim for -17.5db but there's some personal taste involved. Try -20db overall volume, that would be the minimum I would ever consider for YT dialogue, unless you want to make people have to change their volume levels just for your videos.
I’m definitely not part of their potential audience because I’m not a furry. But one thing that strikes me as odd, is that they’re even on Kickstarter. The final game only includes four characters, they already have four characters in and fighting. What do they need $30,000 USD for? Seems like they could just release it.
A major issue I see with too many Kickstarter campaigns is not only do they list their stretch goals too soon, they end up showing a LOT of them, and the amount on the goals is many many times more than what the campaign is asking for. You can't ask for $40,000 and then have stretch goals showing $200,000 or more right off the jump. It just shows you probably need way more money than your initial ask, and when your campaign has only raised like $4000... having people see a $200,000 goal makes it look like the game isn't getting a lot of interest.
Also your biggest reward tiers should NOT be 10% of your asking goal! Don't ask for $30k then have a reward tier for $3k because you're creating a situation where a SINGLE backer can cancel their pledge and set your campaign back by TEN PERCENT. I would say even having a tier at 5% of the campaign asking amount is borderline too high. I don't think most campaign creators take that into consideration at all. I think most just assume having really high reward tiers means they could get a lot of money from one backer.
This comment^ is pure gold. Thanks!
Good point
Thank you for saying this Konitama, I’m the director for the game, so I didn’t exactly consider a certain goal on offer being too much when it came to what we offered for that tier initially. Most of my research came off of what we studied for other campaigns that did exist in this genre, the only issue we didn’t factor was that most of them were old and at a time more people were willing to support campaigns for a product in return. So this will prompt that we rework the higher tiers and offers for when we do try another campaign down the line after more development time.
@@BloodruneEnt. The entire world is different now. Money is tighter everywhere for people. I'm working on a metroidvania, so I'm thankful to see videos like this. We live and breathe through code right? I wish you and your team all the best!
May your best times be ahead,
LecomingBegend
^^^^ This guy would know!
I love this detective feel to these videos, where you trying to find any clues to why it did not succeed. I can only imagine, how much useful is this feedback to devs, hope they use it.
Also not sure if I ever saw established game dev like you analysing Kickstarter campaigns and related game marketing before. Sounds like a great opportunity for video series. That said, if it should be a series, I would go for more condensed version (second half felt a bit repetitive), and maybe always compare two campaigns (or more), so there are clear dos and don'ts.
I think you nailed it pretty well. Too expensive and for a niche audience.
And only 4 character.
I used to do web design and I encountered the same issue a lot. I’m also a fan of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, and it comes up there as well. There seems to be this prevalent blind faith that exposure is always the biggest concern. You just gotta “get customers in the door.” But actually having a product people want is still king. This is especially true in the gaming world. Gamers are pretty jaded from years of flashy ads and fake gameplay trailers setting us up for disappointment. Almost every game I’ve ever played I’ve bought based off of reviews, recommendation, or word of mouth. I don’t actually think kickstarter is a good fit for first games, unless you have some other form of credibility backing you up. I also don’t really get what the 30,000 is paying for. If you already have a playable demo and only 4 characters. It’s not like fighting games have involved level or story development.
Kitchen Nightmares is awesome. Good analogy.
@@error17_ thanks! Yeah, great show. I enjoy the British and American versions for different reasons.
@@atrus3823 The funniest one is the British version :D
I noticed the $35 price tier is also limited (350 backers max). There is a second $35 tier that doesn't include the game. The next available unlimited tier to get the game is $45 USD. Pretty much hitting AAA prices now. They really need to rethink these tiers for next go around.
This game is a piece of sНit from a delusional newbie developer
It smells like greed.
Start charging a consultation fee.
my guess is for a smaller audience, a patreon with very visible development would be a more viable method for funding development than a kickstarter. less money at once but more consistent, and it would be more clear and ok that it’s a work in progress. and then when it’s ready to launch give all your patrons a key.
for the game i’m starting to work on that’s my plan. slowly build an audience with devlogs on youtube and make a patreon at some point for supporting it. a little money early in development would probably be more helpful than a lot of money when it’s basically done.
Hey man, I think you're an exemplary game dev. You offer a lot of value in your vids, you're very respectful, and you've got a positive atmosphere going on as a result both in your vids and in just the overall community. I just want to say I appreciate it, and I'm sure the vast majority of your viewers do too. Best of luck on your game, I'm definitely picking it up when you release it.
My experience as a fellow dev is most devs are pretty chill down to Earth people. Outside a few passionate discussions around certain elements most people in our industry just want to be good at what they do without causing drama for other people. There are some toxic cultures here and there where devs are expected to crawl over each other in a drag to the top, but overall most cultures aren't like that nowadays. It is a very competitive industry but most people treat each other with respect. Ultimately no one wants to work with an arsehole so the people who do well are the people who build bridges, not burn them
The best thing about your breakdowns is how you remain respectful while giving valid points and advice
Love these breakdowns look forward to watching this later
Great video! I feel like in this day and age, 9 planned characters is the bare minimum in a fighting game. For the demo they just need 3 super polished characters and 1 super pretty/polished level as a vertical slice. It is interesting how so many campaigns have such unrealistic expectations... Without any previous game success clout, you need your campaign/demo to be top notch.
I think there definitely is a sizable audience for this sort of animal fighting game, like you said its just getting them to see it and helping to put the project infront of tho-se people
I love Kickstarter Deep Analysis day! 🤩
Also, I'll just mention that on the first kickstarted campaign, that had failed....there was a typo in one of the first lines of the body. It meant to say "harkens back" , but instead it says "hardens back...".
I've watched a couple of these from you, and a few other videos from people talking about games that fall short on Steam or whatever, and it's incredible to me how frequently the advice has to be repeated to make sure your trailer/clips/screenshots are showing off your best.
4 characters is definitely not enough for a fighting game. SF2 World Warrior sets the standard, and you gotta have at least 8 characters. If 8 characters are too hard, then you gotta take short cuts. Such as making two characters that have similar moves (E. Honda and Blanka) or even two characters that are just color swaps with slight move differences (Ryu and Ken).
I keep seeing this mistake being made time and time again, not only here on the channel but also in the genre i work on. Im a solo, inexperienced developer making a game by myself and my direct competition sell their products all for 20$ and theres no chance im putting my game with that price, it would be commercial suicide. It's baffling how badly these developers fail when it comes to market research or just pricing their own game
I think a lot of indie developers are falling for the classic survivorship bias. They compare their games to the super successful and well produced games in their same genre and believe they are on the same level. When most of them (including myself) are still far below them at the amateur field and don't even hold a candle to the big dogs. It takes a lot of swallowing pride and it hurts to admit, but the stuff we work on isn't viewed by people nearly as valuable as we believe it is sometimes.
For every successful kickstarter campaign there was a 100 others that failed. The failures are definitely way more important to conduct market research when trying to succeed on your own project.
Thing is with me as a massive fighting game fan the demo just felt off like it was a Flash game , thing with fighting games have noticed with the few i have seen in early access like with Terrordrome they add stuff ....but do not improve the things that really need improving so have no idea what their end goal really is. Also I remember with Skullgirls which was done right as crowdfunding was just for new characters 2d sprites were very expensive and time consuming to make though granted with Skullgirls the art and animation was a much higher quality
One thing that stood out to me was the games title. What is a 'Blaising WorldStar?' since they are fury characters why not something that fits the theme. Possibly 'Blaising WildStars' or something more animalistic.
I agree... "Animalistic" would been better, and I hate that name 😂
Furry fury
Attack animals
Ferocious Fighters
I can keep going 🤷♂️
Isn’t it a reference to the site Worldstar HipHop, which is (was?) famous for hosting footage of actual street fights?
At that price point for an indie title i would need them to have an established brand i.e. i've played their games before and am happy to support not just this game but the company as a whole.
$35 for an indie game is expensive, especially when the scope is quite small. The $35 price point is normally when your moving into the medium sized companies that are technically "indie" but only barely like Egosoft or Piranabite
Love these, I am not sure if I will ever use Kickstarter but it’s nice to see some research in the chance I need to use it on a future project
Great video m8
I wish you upload more devlogs on your game, I like these the most
On the way!
I would love to see you analyze a kickstarter campaign that isn't so obvious in its shortcomings.
This videos are very useful for people that aspire to become game developers you can learn a lot from this kind of situations from how to create a kickstarter campaign what you should offer and also the importance of building a community of people that support your game. Great video :) Maybe in other videos have also some kickstarter campaigns that where successful. I think having example like this no and like this yes will help even more
69000 dollars for four characters is delusional
I'm sharing this video with my team. Like. Our demo were going to send to publishers only has 2 characters for our shooter, but final release will have 10. And they're all the same as far as abilities. Just Skins because we are trying to make an old style shooter
Another great analysis and I hope the development team takes your suggestions to heart.
Personally as a huge fighting game fan who used to compete at my local weeklies all the time; I firmly believe that making an indie fighting game is probably one of the most difficult genres to make a successful indie game in. Fighting games are pretty niche as it is and only have a small dedicated group of players compared to the rest of the gaming world. And those players are busy playing series that have been going on 20+ years with characters and mechanics they've been practicing and adore with for a good chunk of their life. To ask these players to stop their daily combo labbing with Sol Badguy or Sophitia and instead try out this totally new indie, unfamiliar world, and mechanics is a huge ask. Fighting game players are very loyal and dedicated to the series and characters that they are already attached to. Sure we've had Skullgirls and Punch Planet, but there's a ton more indie fighters that never got any traction.
Still I sincerely do wish the best for the developers and hope they find their groove. But they definitely picked a treacherous and arduous path to find success in indie dev.
I really like these game critique videos, hope we get more in the future
Thank you so much for sharing this stuff!
Hahaha. That bear is giving me Rugal Bernstein PTSD with the Gigantic press move spam.
On point analysis. Great stuff!
Great video! It's super interesting to see where you think they went right (and wrong)
Awesome video as always! Good to know you are a fellow Tekken player as well, I used to main Baek Do San till T6 and current main is Lucky Chloe in T7. You have pointed out the faults in the kickstarter brilliantly. $35 for a fighting game that will have only 4 characters? That will most likely keep most of the fighting game community away. That price is kickstarter price and if we follow the usual logic that games cost cheaper during kickstarter then the actual game might be more costly when it is out. For a 4 character fighting game with the possibility to be more than $35 is most likely the main culprit for the kickstarter for not being backed.
Anyway, awesome video as usual and Keep it up! :)
Stretch goals being mentioned early is the greatest warning sign I see with KS projects. These should not come up until you have a nice trajectory of the goal being reached early. Four characters is fine /IF/ the dev is planning on adding more post release, but I'd be wanting to see some unique mechanics demonstrated in the .gifs and descriptions.
Yeah, $35 is also a heafty premium. The market is flooded, and at that price the acceptable standards are huge.
Theres nothing wrong with stretch goals as long as the incentives are worth it
I watch these videos with a pen and a notepad :)
Fully agreed, never show imperfections when advertsing your game, make sure it polished and you're spot on with that first picture , presentation is very crucial and the pledges should be fair, on Mina the hollower you can get the whole game for $20, i hope they fix those problems you stated
Spot on analysis. I grew up playing most fighting games, SF, KOF, MK, etc. From my perspective I'll say the first major red flag is simply this: Furries. It's the elephant in the room. The whole furry thing, outside of that community, is generally viewed negatively. I can't put it more delicately than that and I wish it was more constructive. This is a reality that must be taken into consideration when you're putting a lot time and money on the line. There have been lots of niche games, many successful, but none I can think of at the moment with that kind of baggage.
We faced the similar issue about the demo executable with some of our tester on Steam. It seems to be an issue on some computer maybe antivirus. Be carefull
Could be, though I've not had this issue with any of the recent steam fest demos (or ever). I did look it up, steam forums mention it's related to the developers upload. Not sure.
@@LostRelicGames I'll continue my research on the subject ^^. Until now we only know one player who faced the issue.
I totally agree on the pricing issue. $35 is just too much to ask for an indie game, especially one that isn't completed or even in early access yet.
What is wrong with people? How you can ask for 50 000 dolars and not even have a video ?
Odd tip for a fighting game demo: NEVER make them play against the grappler or zoner characters first... they are the two archetypes that dominate with new games until players get good, and they are the two archetypes that frustrate players the most.
A lot of indie game studios are very clueless when it comes to marketing their indie games.
As an indie game dev myself, i completely agree. However, it isn't the fault of the game devs - the guys whose kickstarters this video was written about for example have been looking for help. The problem is that the help and the direction is very hard to to find :)
Love all your vids. If I may make one suggestion on your actual video production. Unless this is being recorded directly from some kind of live stream you are doing, maybe move the microphone out of the frame or at least mostly out of your frame. It takes up 1/3 of the screen. It's even obnoxiously in some of your thumbnails? Second, I would turn off the fan, it's very distracting as its moving around in the background and my eyes are drawn to it. You also got a cool blue light in the background, maybe darken the room, a bit, put a light on your face instead? These are just things that I noticed while watching your vids. Your content is great, love all of it just some little things I noticed that you might consider for future vids!
11:56 *confusion about when you get the game*
...there is a scroll bar, you could just look further down. Gotta say this part is super frustrating.
Great video, really interesting watching your break down. :)
I think they clearly don’t understand who their target audience is, as personally don’t find the furry theme appealing (perhaps they could have a mix of different types of characters to accompany them). As you mention, they should be reaching out to that community if that’s their demographic. Also over valuing their game big time. $35 is near enough the price of a triple A game. What they’ve shown is a starting point for sure, but I’d expect at least 8-10 characters and their demo needs polish before it’s shown to the public, as your first experience was that it was bugged, as you couldn’t turn your character around.
As other people have mentioned about their tiers, such as having a 3.5k; seems like a cash grab to me. I think your analysis was spot on, they need to take a step back and reevaluate their game. Also I’d advise they work on a better banner for promoting the game, as it seems pretty lacklustre IMO.
Blizzard were known for their polish and attention to detail. They should think about what kind of game studio they want to be. A company known for polish and great content, or another EA that will push out a clearly unfinished game to make some Benjamin’s.
As someone called Benjamin your last sentence caught me off-guard xD But I 100% agree with all you said
4 characters is definitely not large enough as a fighting roster. Killer Instinct for Xbox One started with 6 fighters, and that game got a lot of criticism for it. Remember that the first Super Smash Bros. has you start with 8 (with 4 more being unlockable). And the original version of Street Fighter II came with 8. So I would argue that 8 is a good minimum number, and a fighting game should ALWAYS have 8 available fighters at launch.
Very good analysis. Small details can ruin an overall good product. Unfortunately the price is really expensive for 4 playable characters.
They could of renamed this game Talespin Fighting. Because that bear is basically a color swapped Baloo
This would have been a dope game... 20+ years ago..
The amount of characters is certainly a letdown. I would say you need 6 minimum these days, kind of like Rivals of Aether, but I would strongly prefer at least 8.
Yeah, that was my thought. I'd say 8-10 is a good sweet spot for starting content. 4 is waaay too low
Considering how many new fighting games coming out with 20 plus characters, 12 may be the minimum to start with.
For me it also feels kinda dishonest, when you actually show designs for more characters already made. I mean what stops you from adding them to game anyway, if you already have the code to add them. All you need is visual assets for animation, bit of audio for each character and bit of implementation.
I would rather expect you give everything you already got out, and then promise to create completely new characters for stretch goals. You could even use that for including fans and let them come with character ideas and vote on best of them. Or provide some high pledge tiers with option to participate on their own character design (its not connected to any IP, so you can afford a bit of creativity).
Agreed. Even the original Mortal Kombat, which had quite a small roster, still had 7 fighters to choose from. 4 is a number I'd only ever expect to see in an alpha or beta.
2 years later and the game still has yet to release
Incentives are the biggest challenges. A free copy of a game in the world where there are so many new games doesn't seem to matter. Therefore, analyzing a successful campaign might be more educational.
Writing to you already is good marketing, if you present the project to a wider audience. Not bad in that regard.
For the algorithm~!
thanks AlDa! ;)
@@LostRelicGames Much love for remembering~!
😎Algorithmic sensations flowing through my body as I leave this comment 😎
This would be awesome if it was just an _exercise_ in game dev (e.g., a school project) that they decided to release to the public -- I'd be all over it if that was the case. As a _product,_ though, the game just doesn't deliver.
It's another indie project that doesn't have any unique selling points: it doesn't do anything to shake up the fighting game formula, and it doesn't dabble with any fun or interesting mechanics (such as those you might find in Anime fighters) -- it's simply "Street Fighter, but less". That may sound harsh, but at the end of the day, they _are_ asking for your money (and not a small amount, either). It's on them to make sure you're getting value.
i though it was about the music group... i almost concerned xD
just imagine the price comparison for a fully released game like Elden ring or any other games around 30-40USD ballpark.
Balancing such a game must be hard, to not be lobsided to one character. Maybe using some kind of massive batch of automated AI fights to get balancing statistics.
At first glance I said to myself $20 tops, 10-15 for kickstarter. There's no chance I would back something like this for $35 and maybe never see the game. I'm not a huge fan of fighting games, but even I agree that 4 characters is not enough. I couldn't tell you how many other games of this style have, but 8 or 10 and higher feels like the starting point.
Pledge money to a Kickstarter for a game and you don’t get the game? What?
My thoughts: Its a bit of a stretch to think this will succeed because of the theme of the characters + a niche genre. A good assessment is wondering what the chance of someone buying this game over any of the other major titles. Theres nothing making this a "must have" even to fighting game genre fans. Im not a fighting game fan, but I assume that its a brutal space to compete in as a developer. Also, its also a stretch in any indie game to expect it to survive as a multiplayer/coop.
The game looks fun. I don’t know anything about kickstarter so I can’t comment on that.
But I do wanna talk about the theme of the game: The title appears to be referencing “worldstar”. Which is a popular website that is known for posting viral fight videos and up and coming rap music videos. I think the choice to make the characters furries in odd, but interesting…But I would’ve like to see them lean more into that “worldstar!” theme. They did that a little, when the voice over says say “Throw hands!” (See urban dictionary if you don’t know the phrase) at the start of the fights. Maybe they should also have some trap/hip hop music instead of hyper colorful EDM and also dress the characters up in more modern urban fashion.
Idk if this is what the game designer is referencing, If so, I see some missed opportunities
Hey there Duane, so the name of the game mostly came from an SNK theming for the title as it was more based on cultures around the world as KoF was the main inspiration for Blazing Worldstars, it’s the game series I grew up with playing. The Worldstar in the name being associated with Worldstar HipHop was more of a coincidence if anything, we choose “Throw Hands!” for round starts to keep things unique rather than fight.
The character designs were made by me, hiphop is not the influence for them, every design mostly are slight references or have a cultural factor to them in mind, which I wish we could show far more of them in action, but at this time we don’t have a budget that could get more animators to work full time to make that happen as the real team size has been two people for about a year, we just grew to 5 this month.
@@BloodruneEnt. The camera needs a bit more oomph, if a grab or special connects and will defeat the other player it should zoom in or shake a bit more since it won't affect the gameplay at that point. There is a moment where a grab finishes off the opponent, that is a good opportunity to put some cinematic movement/.
@@ty-xq7bl we could try the zoom in, but we already have the UMvC3 camera shake for hits already in, the main issue with that is how it actually does affect players getting ko’d by certain moves, there was too much shake and it lingered on screen after a fight ended for a few moments before we fixed it, the other we had to fix came from Tiger Press Palms having far too much of a shake affect that could’ve been seizure inducing. There was a lot to consider in terms of not flaring up health issues for certain effects on screen, but we’ll definitely consider the zoom in for KOs.
50K is premium? How would the raised funds be used? Because I'm just thinking about like an average software engineer low end salary is like 60K. So what would the money be used for if not paying those working on it?
Premium in the context of indie crowd funding campaigns, not developer salary. Which is why crowdfunding funds should not be relied on for primary production expenses.
The bear character in the demo looks very close to the Baloo character from the 90's animated series 'TaleSpin'. So they might want to redesign him if they don't want to be sued by Disney.
Hmm, all these tiers get confusing. Needs to be very clear. Maybe 3-5 tiers, and yes, must be obvious if you're getting the game :)
Yeah, indies need to think carefully about project scope, genre, audience, market. Personally, $10-15 is a decent KS pledge, ie a small risk, and get the game $5 -$10 cheaper than release + get to follow its development. That feels right to me. Only absolute top tier stuff can ask for $35.
Some slightly nicer art/images/anims on the page would be good too - I think the game itself has quality art, the KS page not so much. If they do both those things (price + better presentation), I think its a decent campaign. Your point about limited roster might ultimately be the issue, for fans of the genre though.
The main issue isn't the furry thing. Sonic the hedgehog has furries and works great. There's one glaring problem with this game. Color composition. There's no identity. I see purple, gray, blue, brown, orange... Very ugly to look at. If the characters and backgrounds had easy colors it'd have stood a good chance... Ryu s got the red headband and white gi. Ken's got a red gi with golden hair. Chun LI has pretty blue colors with her bright skin. Blankas got green with a scorching orange red. Just badass colors that go together. The main furry chick has orange hair, grayish brownish face?.. gray/black top... with an ugly purple bottom. No chance.
Stick to red, white, blue, green and orange. Can't go wrong. Mix and match.
The game art needs *intention* . Each character should have a fighting stage designed to explain their lore. Some boats, a city, a dog on his phone, a mouse watching and a girl looking behind her back doesn't say anything about the lore to a new player.
Walt Disney probable eat this up!
I think people underestimate how much games actually cost to make. We did a case study in our games design course of a single developer who was making a puzzle platformer. It was polished and had about 15 hours or gameplay. It cost over $400,000 to make. I'm not saying that good games can't be made for less than that, but I've noticed that people are expecting AAA graphics, animations, sound/music and super polished gameplay for under $100k. It's just unrealistic.
The issue is Captain is that telling people the true costs is still not convincing for consumers, this can lead to an issue of programmers and other parts of the team getting underpaid for their work if a campaign only met the main goal. Consumers ultimately in the end end up having a final say in the price of the game rather than us the developers.
What game is that
@@koktszfung It was a while ago and I had to dig it out of my archives, but the game is called Kine, it cost $420, 000 and it was actually only 6 hours long. But google any small indie game and have a look at how much they actually cost and it will surprise you. Cultist simulator: 130k, Shovel knight: well over 300k, Born punk: 130k...
The fact that most people don't know that even simple, short indie games generally cost over 100k is extremely damaging to potential developers. You wouldn't know unless you tried to ship a game yourself. I have a team of 3 people trying to get a game ready to launch a kickstarter and before we have even asked for any money, I'd estimate we would have spent about 13k in wages in the space of a few months, if we were even paying ourselves. But we aren't. We are working for free.
So spare a thought for the developers when they are asking for 50k. It wouldn't even pay for a single programmer for a year, let alone artists, musicians, marketing etc.
@@BloodruneEnt. And yeah I get it. But telling people the true cost is the start of fixing the race to the bottom for video game budgets. The reason why there is so much burnout, underpayments, cutting of corners, overworking and straight out unpaid hours is because people's expectations have become ridiculous. As a developer you would know you have to eat, keep the lights on and spend every hour you have on development.
If people are as serious as they say they are about fixing the exploitation in game development, then consumers need to start waking up to how much games cost both monetarily, physically and mentally.
@@captainawesome2226 oh no, I’m not disagreeing with you on that matter. The only thing that deters them because of those expectations is that some contour the idea that someone out there can do it cheaper, better, as a one-man-act, etc. People have also grown trust issues over time from scammers, gaming outlets over exaggerate the details and features of games, giving consumers a lot of the wrong ideas (No Man’s Sky is a very strong example of this).
Trust me, I’m all for being honest, but currently we are stuck within a world that doesn’t care if our passion projects cost far more than they really expect it should cost, mainly due to the fact their told to look at a product more subjectively in what they think it’s worth should be than caring about it’s true price tag.
2:53 When you said furries i laughed so much, but you are absolutely right
Is there another Kickstarter campaign that does it right to see it?!
I've seen many free games way better than this over the years, made by less people. I'm no expert here, but they should go over their budgeting again. I would expect a Street Fighter clone to sell for $5 on Steam. They also might want to change that bear character a bit unless they want to get sued by Disney. The animation looks nice so far, so that's something.
They have clearly put a lot of work into the game, and it looks great, but for kickstarter in 2022, unfortunately, it's not enough. You definitely need more than 4 playable characters. I do wonder how far you need to go into development before a game is kickstarter ready. Maybe to the point where you don't even need it anymore.
4 characters is currently the best we can offer for development for a project like this, most programmers and animators price tags are not small for fighting games and fighting game characters require more time to develop for depending on the style and the size of the team. Our team is really only 1 animator with the other animators being outsourced and the outsourced ones cannot make the time to be part of the project full time, nor can we really afford them without completely neglecting other important part of development in regards to the budget.
honestly, I don't agree with that at all. if you have a really great looking fighting game and you focused on making the best possible four characters to start with, that's much preferable than a dozen characters with a bunch of them feeling samey.
The charather looks like some bad Spintale-bootleg
a game with fury artwork on the main page is as good as asking for trouble.
we'll talk soon.
16:33 LMAO wow what a fighting game. Just get spam grabbed by the ai over and over. And the creator wonders why it failed twice lol
For me, Unity means low perfomance and high CPU usage no matter what game it is.
Just my opinion but it looks too much like Street Fighter. What I’ve learned in this short time of my journey is that the indie space is so saturated. You must find a way to be different
People hate furries. Artists even have to explicitely say they don't draw furry stuff on sites like Fiver. If you want success AND a full blown furry game, that just doesn't fly.
As an indie game developer this video is not really helpful for me. The mistakes the developer made in this video are so obvious that I think most companies wouldn't make them. It would be great to see a video on a game that did everything seemingly correct but they went with the wrong target audience or are in a heavily competitive market.
If you want to have a lot of good customers,
you have to have good ethics first. Second, produce a good product. Third, choose a good price.
Could I pay you to review my kickstarter please ?
dang... UFE2 only cost 499 ..
We are using UFE2.
@@BloodruneEnt. are u the dev for the game above?
@@adamaze2920I’m the lead director, we had only one programmer for a year, we just got another this month that can dedicate time to the project. Not having UFE2 wasn’t the issue, our development team has been small for a long time and we were fortunate to get a new programmer on the team when other programmers that joined could not dedicate any time for the project or that our budget prior couldn’t cover for a programmer we did want to hire, we didn’t want to bring on someone we weren’t able to fully pay, that wouldn’t be fair for them, even if we’ve been looking for more hands to help.
@@BloodruneEnt. look at developing countries like Indonesia or Thailand for programmers or artist
@@adamaze2920 I wish that was the case, but unity developers are still very costly, so I’m not sure why you think someone from those countries work at cheap prices, especially for programming things as complex as fighting games.
looks like the game got $500 over the past 3 months
Only halfway through the video but wanted to give my thoughts on why it failed before fully hearing you out. The logo is bad, furries is a niche market, the voice acting is clearly done by amatures, 4 characters is unacceptably low (I would say it should have 8 minimum), and a lot of the visuals are extremely bland - like the "KO" is in 2 colors with zero depth. My guess is most people who visit their page won't get passed the video, because that was their one chance to show a perfected slice of their game and they failed to do so. This looks basically like a bunch of furries got together to try and make a game they don't know how to make, which is completely fine and understandable, but they can't realistically expect us to pay $30,000 to fund their passion project.
Edit: Also, wow, $35 minimum for the game? There's literally no way that game is going to cost that much, so scamming the people funding it is just unacceptable. Your KS page should be giving a discount to the early customers as they're funding something not even out yet. Whoever set this page up clearly did zero research on comparable games.
At first I couldn’t read the logo, maybe they should have some more contrast between the color of the letters and background. Other than that I like the logo
Actually, director here, we did do research, but the information when it came to other fighting games when it came to Kickstarter fighting games were Skullgirls, Beast’s Fury, Cereal Killaz, etc. many of them which mostly offered that type of price for early reward access to their games with very few characters in their roster much like ours. Right now we’re working to patch out the bugs, no one gave us feedback that we likely should’ve lowered the offer of the game when it came to rewards would have that kind of effect, so generally we were flying blind without getting real feedback, so this really helps with price being too high for people to want to support it.
So we’re going back into development here for a few months as we fix and add more since our team has been very small with the budget we’d been working with prior to these campaigns, now we do have more hands on deck to help flesh out the visuals and extra hands for programming to cover more bases since we mainly had only one programmer for a whole year. We would love to have more characters added in, but right now we don’t have enough of a budget to cover for more animators to make that possible since most animators either do not have the experience or can really dedicate the time to a project of this size.
@@BloodruneEnt. Right but if that's true then you should release into EA with 4 characters and promise more to come for free (plus you can have paid DLC after that too). Going into a full release with 4 characters is ratings suicide.
@@Squidmoto3 we are trying to offer more characters, we would like to get around to a beta with 14 playable characters on the roster and the final base roster containing 36 fighters total. We only have it as a demo right now since we are still working on the characters who are mostly complete at this point other than testing and having testers find any bugs we don’t catch, we didn’t know steam wouldn’t allow the demo to have patch updates for the game than going Early Access.
Funny thing, if it had any porn in it would probably be over funded 5 times over, SFW furry is too niche
it has very furry characters but doesn't market itself to the furry community. furry characters to that extent will turn off anyone who's not a furry, they should have changed more of the other materials to cater to that demographic
From my perspective, it is mostly an exposure issue. There are tons of "cheap" games out there, in order to succeed your game really needs to instantly catch my attention, by showing something very cool or not seen in other games. That game unfortunately does not feel special. The backgrounds are pretty bland, the character designs not original, and the moves not very flashy. Add to that a low amount of characters and a high price and my limited interest for the genre in the first place is basically reduced to zero. If you can't convince a random gamer like me, then your campaign is niche and aimed at fans of the genre (which might be ok if that was your goal), so you need to get a lot of attention from the specialized forums/gaming communities and do tons of active marketing.
"Bring your audience with you"... you came so close to giving them a real economics lesson; it seems a shame to not follow through.
When you scanned their followers through various platforms, the largest number was 175. Probably duplicates with some of the smaller platforms but let's round up to 200 active followers. And the ask is 40,000 AUD. So, if they got 100% pledges from just that pool, they'd need an average of 200 AUD.
Extrapolate a few scenarios.
1) People get the game at 35AUD? So, they need 6x the pledges and everyone else is just pissing their money away for vanity's sake... they're never going to get to play the game. And those 1200 players aren't exactly going to reach a lot of people with their rave reviews even if they get 100% likes.
2) Counting on 100% pledges? is 20% even realistic? Multiply that pool by 5, so they probably need a pool of 6000 bare minimum. What it the realistic pledge conversion is only 5%?
3) Counting on Lurkers? They aren't even risking a pledge. To get even one lurker to queue up, how many views do you think they need?
Confess. Their business plan is, "Magic. Magic will make us successful". My estimates are rough common sense approximations but they need to hit lightning in a bottle on all 3 vectors to even make their basic goal. Never mind stretch goals or going pro.
Their focus HAS to be on building their community, building the buzz, and giving backers something they'll want.
This stuff is HARD! Making games (or any product) is the easy part. Execution is what trips people up.
Seth Godin said Kickstarter should actually be named Kickfinisher. Reason being that you should only do a Kickstarter campaign once you have a large enough fan base, not the other way around.
lol
I find the graphics to be a bit bland and uninteresting to be honest. The characters are all about the same level of contrast and saturation, and it's very mid range. There aren't pops of color, brightness or interest, and they seem to mostly be the same sort of dark brownish beige with clothes that don't stand out from that.
Edit: the later gifs showed a bit more variety. The initial video did not seem to.
Edit2: you don't even get the game for $25? WHAT. No way. Terrible choice. That game is maybe a $10-$20 game - MAYBE - less maybe if more than 4 characters.
But don't furries have a lot of money?
Why aren't they paying?
I don't understand.
they do yeah, though from what i notice you still need to have a quality product to draw people in. For example, furries are willing to spend thousands on a fur suit, but the reason they spend that much on a suit is because they are willing to pay for the labor since they can't do it themselves AND the quality of the suit. Same goes for art. Furries will spend a lot on commissions but you either have to fill in a niche and/or be really good at art for it to work. You're not going to have a long line of furries willing to pay for your art if you're pretty average and don't fill in a certain niche.
This game is niche but i'd say the quality is so low that they don't want to fund it. Any furry that would be interested would probably just rather play a better fighting game even if it doesn't feature animal characters.
Thank you for response.
I would love to play a game like Fairy Fighting if it had multiplayer.@@GwyndolinOwO
$35 for a furry fighting game that only has 4 characters, and you've got a broken demo. All the best to you, seriously, but it should be immediately obvious as to why you're game/Kickstarter isnt performing how you want it to.
Furys its an instant no for me
Fatal Furry?
One of the biggest things: Furries. I understand some people like it, but the furry aesthetic is instant turn off for me, and I’m not the only one. It’s very narrow target audience.
EDIT: That is on top of all the amateurish and broken things
Whats the venn diagram of people who like fighting games, like old school sprite fighting games, and are furries???
Seems like a glaring issue to me
it failed cause its furry