A year and a half after the reboot for the classic sci game System Shock had been revealed and funded 1.3 million dollars via Kickstarter, developer Nightdive Studios has announced that the project will be going on "hiatus" for an undefined amount of time. The CEO of the company, Stephen Kick, stated that issues within the team making the game had cropped up, and over-ambitious ideas had taken over the project, leading to what he believes is not a game currently accurate the original. Development on the reboot will be halted for now, so that the developers can reportedly "get things back under control", though there's no explanation on how they will go about this other than just taking a break and refocusing. System Shock's reboot was initially planned for release in December 2017 for PC, and was Kickstarted on July 29, 2016.

I have put the team on a hiatus while we reassess our path so that we can return to our vision. We are taking a break, but NOT ending the project. Please accept my personal assurance that we will be back and stronger than ever. System Shock is going to be completed and all of our promises fulfilled.

Source

 

[InsaneNutter]

I've never donated to a kickstarter and never will, every time I see/hear the word kickstarter it's followed by a horror story.

In the early days of Kickstarter I do think companies / people went on there who had the passion to make it work. Now Crowdfunding is mainstream you get everyone on there trying to make some quick money, knowing theirs no real comeback if it doesn't.

That said i've personally backed some great projects which have more than delivered.

Successful projects I've backed:

Carmageddon: Reincarnation - They still keep sending backers free stuff, I recently got some codes for GoG for DRM free copes of every Carmageddon game. That's in addition to the 2x Steam copies I got previously.

Veronica Mars Movie - The movie got released and backers got a copy of it.

Thunderbirds 1965 - The episodes were made and backers got a Blu-Ray of the episodes.

Somewhat successful projects:

OUYA - We got the console, then Ouya went bust a few months later. However it's still very much usable as a network connected Android box so i'm happy with that.

Failed projects I've backed:

N/A

Backing projects is not something I honestly make a habit of doing, as you can see most of these projects are from years ago. I only backed these projects as they were related to something I really enjoyed many years ago.

 

[Bimmel]

Veronica Mars Movie - The movie got released and backers got a copy of it.

Thank you for backing! Still need to watch this.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Thank you for backing! Still need to watch this.

If you enjoyed the TV series you will enjoy the movie I think. It's a good throwback to the series.

I've not seen it however their is also a spin off web series called Play It Again, Dick which looks to have got 8 short episodes in total.

 

[Steena]

So basically the initial success has gotten into their head, they got greedy, wanted to do more and in the end they lost control of what the game was supposed to be and/or used up too much money. Pro tip: If you want to do a Kickstarter, stick to your original plans.

it's very well possible those are their original plans. there isn't a single game that started with a specific budget and ended with that specific budget. a project that takes multiple years, let alone videogames that are all about trial and error development, needs to rely on investors pouring money in when it's needed because unexpected things happen all the time.
the problem with kickstarter is that kickstarter games need 10x the funding they publicly get, the KS is mostly used either as a PR campaign or a practical proof of concept to the investors to gauge public interest. it's also used as an effective preorder scheme because preorders are demonized among the community, yet KS preorders have this magical aura around them, despite it being a much, much riskier preorder.
most of the KS successes you see would have happened regardless; the concept became muddy and corrupted from the ideal of letting impossible games happen and be free of investor influence. now they are merely used by said investors to signal-boost their projects.
1.3m dollars buys you a gameboy advance port of system shock, certainly not the way the PC version looked like at the reveal. the public needs to be educated on budgets and get some real perspective in order to make this shit stop working.

 

[jumpman17]

Has any Kickstarted video game turned out well beyond Shantae: Half Genie Hero?

 

[Flame]

Has any Kickstarted video game turned out well beyond Shantae: Half Genie Hero?

shovel knight is the best Kickstarted... others was kinda meh

 

[jumpman17]

shovel knight is the best Kickstarted... others was kinda meh

I didn't know that was a Kickstarter game. Interesting.

 

[the_randomizer]

Remember when gaming studios could actually fund themselves and not beg people for money through a crowdfunding campaign? That's okay, I don't remember, either.

 

[FAST6191]

What's this? A Kickstarter not working, filled with problems of over-ambition and a unrealistic budget? I'm shocked!

In what will probably only be able to be responded with "it is my one regret" you could have ended that with "What a shock to my system".

Has any Kickstarted video game turned out well beyond Shantae: Half Genie Hero?

Take a look at the review section here, just took a look through a list and what did not end up on PSN+ one month was probably crowdfunded. Elite: Dangerous did what it set out to do, Carmageddon was nice to see, Diamond Trust of London is an interesting one, FTL is probably the most well known of the successes (though I reckon memory of it might have faded and we have since got a bunch of even better takes on the gameplay style), as a throwback then the 2014 shadowgate does good things. A few things got remakes (something like organ trail) and localisations.

That said the swing and a miss rate is rather high when it comes to games. Equally I am not sure the world would be all that poorer a place for missing it all.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

At the very least those kickstarters should release whatever they have, as incomplete and as buggy as it is at least it's something; maybe even put the source code (I don't program is that the right thing?) out so someone else can continue what they abandoned.

Their reason for a hiatus is total bullshit because given the choice between releasing something that didn't meet expectations and releasing nothing at all, which everyone knows will happen, they decided to release nothing at all. The only thing that besmirches your name more than releasing a bad game is ripping people off.

I think they're of the mind that they can still pull this game off, and so they're taking a gamble trying to rebuild instead of delivering a disappointing game. Honestly, no one wants to put their name on a broken, buggy, and disappointing product, especially when they know it's broken. Many people would take the hiatus if there's a chance they can deliver a better game. May sound selfish to some who donated, but it's just how people are. To an outsider, their decisions might be nonsensical, but when someone's poured blood and sweat into something, they're doing it for themselves as much as for others. Since they're independent, they don't have corporate teams to hold them accountable. If you look at failed Kickstarters, it's almost always the same cycle. Overambition or dislike in their product, going overbudget, attempt to preserve ego and pride (in this case, going on hiatus to take another stab at the project later), zero accountability, and eventual failure. I think it's just the human risk that comes with the crowdfunding territory.

Also, it's a bit ironic for fans to ask for the release of an incomplete, buggy product because that would be "better than nothing" and then turn around to lambast Mighty No. 9 after Keiji Inafune said it was "better than nothing." It's a lose-lose, you see? So for the devs, it's actually more sensible to go into hiatus in the hopes of eventually delivering something good. Whether they can or not remains to be seen.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Remember when gaming studios could actually fund themselves and not beg people for money through a crowdfunding campaign? That's okay, I don't remember, either.

They can still fund themselves. Crowdfunding, however, allows for even more games and game studios to exist, dev teams that wouldn't have received funding otherwise. Also, crowdfunding enables studios to remain independent instead of being controlled by corporate overlords. And it's a dumb notion to consider crowdfunding begging. Begging would be asking for money with no return. Crowdfunding is asking for money with a return on investment in the form of a product. Honestly, it's been a really good way of growing the industry. Games like Pillars of Eternity or A Night in the Woods would not have existed otherwise.

 

[Silverthorn]

I didn't know that was a Kickstarter game. Interesting.

Some people already mentioned a few, but yes there were good results out of Kickstarter.
Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Banner Saga, Hyper Light Drifter, Divinityriginal Sin, Darkest Dungeon, Superhot.
I just don't think it's good to generalize that Kickstarter is simply good or bad, it's a gamble, where for the few successful there are many disappointments.
I haven't backed any project personally, much like I have set a rule for myself not to buy Early Access games (unless I don't expect anything more out of future updates of the game).

 

[Deleted member 388531]

k thanks for the money

 

[the_randomizer]

I think they're of the mind that they can still pull this game off, and so they're taking a gamble trying to rebuild instead of delivering a disappointing game. Honestly, no one wants to put their name on a broken, buggy, and disappointing product, especially when they know it's broken. Many people would take the hiatus if there's a chance they can deliver a better game. May sound selfish to some who donated, but it's just how people are. To an outsider, their decisions might be nonsensical, but when someone's poured blood and sweat into something, they're doing it for themselves as much as for others. Since they're independent, they don't have corporate teams to hold them accountable. If you look at failed Kickstarters, it's almost always the same cycle. Overambition or dislike in their product, going overbudget, attempt to preserve ego and pride (in this case, going on hiatus to take another stab at the project later), zero accountability, and eventual failure. I think it's just the human risk that comes with the crowdfunding territory.

Also, it's a bit ironic for fans to ask for the release of an incomplete, buggy product because that would be "better than nothing" and then turn around to lambast Mighty No. 9 after Keiji Inafune said it was "better than nothing." It's a lose-lose, you see? So for the devs, it's actually more sensible to go into hiatus in the hopes of eventually delivering something good. Whether they can or not remains to be seen.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


They can still fund themselves. Crowdfunding, however, allows for even more games and game studios to exist, dev teams that wouldn't have received funding otherwise. Also, crowdfunding enables studios to remain independent instead of being controlled by corporate overlords. And it's a dumb notion to consider crowdfunding begging. Begging would be asking for money with no return. Crowdfunding is asking for money with a return on investment in the form of a product. Honestly, it's been a really good way of growing the industry. Games like Pillars of Eternity or A Night in the Woods would not have existed otherwise.

Too bad it's been marred by fiascos like this.

 

[Captain_N]

took the money and ran?

 

[Subtle Demise]

1.3 million dollars can go by really fast when you're paying a full dev team.
It's not that much money for a serious modern game at all.

Don't be surprised if they've already burned through it and are running for the hills, but not before they left a sign on the door saying, "be back soon, we promise!". lol.

Then these idiots need to actually do some research into how much these things cost before they go "ooh I wanna make a gaym i think $10,000 should be plenty!" only to surprise! run out of money before they even get out of the brainstorming session.

 

[Taleweaver]

Kind of a pity that any studio struggling to release their games face a shitstorm like this. It's almost like the regular game industry never faces delays, broken games on release or simply never come out. We've got to face it: creating video games is hard work, and seeing a release date is basically a gamble. For everyone.

It's also quickly assumed that Kickstarter projects are done only by amateurs, even though Google can sometimes quickly dispel that idea. In this case, it's actually about average. Nightshift studios is mainly a studio set it to rerelease older games (7th guest and system shock are probably their most known games), and they acquire the license for even more old games. Building a game from scratch, as they're doing here, is still new to them. And pretty ambitious, as system shock is a pretty complex game.
I just hope them work out the differences in the programming team and get back on track with this.

 

[Veho]

I've never donated to a kickstarter and never will, every time I see/hear the word kickstarter it's followed by a horror story.

That's because only the spectacular failures make the news. There's no point in reporting things like "after a moderately successful Kickstarter campaign, small team delivers obscure product to a niche market", which is how most projects end.

I've funded a few projects on Kickstarter and am pretty happy with what I got.

One of the projects I backed was the "Double Fine Adventure" (Broken Age). The campaign's original goal was $400,000 but it ended up raising $3.5 million. This allowed them to expand the project, but they developed a bit of megalomania (although I'm not sure Tim Schafer wasn't a megalomaniac from the start) and the project ran away with them to the point where they barely completed the game even with additional backing.

Turns out pure developers with no business experience can't be trusted with money and management does serve some purpose after all. Who knew?

It's pretty likely the System Shock team noticed this happening to them and their project as well, so they decided to take a step back.
I just hope they have enough money left to actually complete the project once they restart.

 

[jimmyleen]

*sigh* You all need to learn when to sue some one when using kickstarter or similar websites.

 

[huma_dawii]

People need to stop founding games on kickstarter they never deliver.
They delay, in most cases not even release the game lol.

The only product I backed from KS was Pebble Time, proud I did!

 

[DJPlace]

also only support games when they come out not through a kick starter IMO.