As some of you might already know, I’d love to become a game designer. Sometimes I daydream about the day I create a kickstarter campaign that allows me to work full time on my idea and that launches my career as an indie game developer.
So, I regularly go on kickstarter to see how other people like me are doing. And sometimes it’s funny as hell. There are a lot of people who think that kickstarter is some kind of magical money machine where you say “I want to make a game” and BAM! you can work on your game. What you get are the most ridiculous campaigns you could imagine - people who don’t tell you what the game is, people who ask for a hundred thousand for an arkanoid clone, people who explicitly say they still need to learn to develop but they’re positive they can deliver a full game in six months, people who give the full game as a reward only for the top tier (like, 500$ or so).
For this reason I plan to link here the campaigns I find “interesting”… in a comical sense. Just as a reminder for myself on how not to create my first campaign.
Let’s begin with my first offender:
Where can I start? The video begins with “Title screen”, which is really not something that shouts “professionalism” out loud. Then it shows a mute demo of the current state of the game. I’m not here to judge the quality of what is shown, but… I’d have at least expected some voice comment on it.
For some reason, the author thinks it’s interesting for a potential backer to know that he wrote the engine in C++, which techniques he used, and (stated twice) that it runs at 110fps. Then: "here is an image showing the number of images per second", and shows an illegible screenshot of his development environment. What the hell?
Then again he adds that he can improve his engine (he really loves his engine), and closes the “risks and challenges” section with a sentence I’m still trying to decipher: “I planned to communicate for this game to avoid a too small number of sales/downloads”.
But the best part is the rewards.
Pledge 25 euro (out of 5500, somewhat reasonable when compared to other things I’ve seen) to receive… your name in the credits.
Pledge 50 euro to receive… your name in the credits. Ok. Oh wait, this one ships anywhere in the world, while the 25 euro doesn’t. I suppose USA will get a filtered version of the credits.
Pledge 100 euro to receive… your 
*beep*ing name in the credits. AGAIN.
Pledge 200 euro to receive… an image of the game. Actually, I quote, the reward above (oh, so I get my name in the credits… I was getting worried) and an email with a nice image of the game. It better be the nicest image I’ve ever seen.
Pledge 500 euro to receive… an image of the game. But this ships anywhere in the world.
Pledge 1000 euro to receive… ALL REWARDS ABOVE!
People, get your wallets ready, it’s time to pledge!
