Punisher wrote:Chrisoc13 wrote:Yeah I'm a big fan of no stretch goals or exclusives and want to support projects like that. I've grown very weary of cmon type campaigns and I actively avoid those type now. Very cool to see a project do so well without manipulating backers the way cmon does.
I don't mind stretch goals I just feel like they are generally fabricated and not real.
Can you elaborate on this? I'm the opposite. I like stretch goals and exclusives... Makes me feel like I'm getting more bang for my buck. Yeah, since I came to KS late in the game I missed out on a bunch of stuff that I would have liked, but I do like getting extra stuff for free, now that I'm onboard.
Sure. Largely I echo what has already been said, but let me elaborate on my own opinion based on experiences and my thoughts on gaming as a whole with kickstarter and exclusives as well as stretch goals.
First of all I love kickstarter. At last count I have backed nearly 40 board games alone on kickstarter, and for the most part I have been very happy with them. There are games I have backed that never would have seen the light of day without it. Some of them very good, most of them... not so much. But I do love kickstarter for what it can offer. That being said, there are some practices that over time I have come to very much NOT appreciate on kickstarter. Some of which I initially really did like.
So here are my thoughts on these issues:
- First off exclusives. What exactly is the purpose of exclusives, especially game changing exclusives? The purpose is exclusion and manipulation. Exclusion from those who did not back the game so that the creator can use manipulation to try and get people to jump on the kickstarter in a limited window. Because if not... you either won't get the exclusive content, or they will cost you an arm and a leg on the secondary market afterwards. They use FOMO to try and grab more backers to back the game. The entire ploy is to manipulate backers into throwing money at an untested product in a short window of time out of fear of missing out.
Now there are some exclusives which are worse than others. Game changing exclusives? That's just flat out wrong in my opinion. In the long run these tend to kill the games though so these are becoming less common. Unique content only available as an exclusive that is game changing basically cannot end well (in my opinion).
Either:
A) The exclusive content is fantastic and the game suffers for everyone else that doesn't have it and therefore the game fails.
Or the more common scenario-
B) Since the exclusive material is just for the kickstarter it likely will not be as well play-tested, sometimes the rules are hard to find or are half-baked, and it makes for a worse experience.
And then the boring but least common in my opinion-
C) The extra exclusive content is somewhat pointless, but works. But late adopters of the game are left without the added variety which leads them to be more easily manipulated for the "Most spectacular mini game ever" (insert KS of your choice honestly) kickstarter version 2. The base game suffers as a result and isn't as well thought-out as it could be.
The vast majority of exclusive content is not game changing so much, as adding variety to the game (this is where CMON falls). More monsters nobody else will have, heroes nobody else will have, etc. But what purpose is this for being exclusive? So you can have something nobody else has? If it really is a good addition to the game I want other people to be able to enjoy it as well, and others having it does nothing to take away from MY enjoyment of the piece. See scenario A above. But often times it still falls under scenario B above, where the addition is somewhat half-baked and thrown together. Either way it's not an ideal situation to be in.
I see no purpose in exclusive material other than to make people feel special for backing the game. It doesn't help the hobby.
- Secondly streatch goals.
Not all stretch goals are created equal, but don't be fooled, almost every game backed on kickstarter there is no such thing as free stretch goals. Those stretch goals are all factored into the cost before it even launches. You are not actually getting free minis on CMON kickstarters. You are paying $100 for a base game that will be sold at retail for $65 and you are getting some extra minis thrown in, but you are paying for those. Not only that they were all pre-planned before the game even launched. Well you better at least hope for, because if not... then you run into the situation Hepcat talked about. Delay after delay, or worse... "uh-oh please send us cash we didn't realize mailing stuff was expensive and adding more weight would increase the cost of shipping!"
On top of that extra content to the game can actually make the experience worse in my opinion. More is not always better. Some of these kickstarters suffer from serious bloat just from throwing more and more stuff into the kickstarter. This can end up diluting the actual fun gameplay to just be a hot mess of too many mechanics and too much stuff. Want a good example? Try Zombicide on. I actually like Zombicide, but that game (due to CMON wanting to print money with it on kickstarter) suffers from a serious case of bloat. It suddenly takes up an entire shelf with some 5 boxes and too many varieties of zombies to even be fun. Even just a single season suffers from serious bloat. It doesn't actually increase the fun, it just increases the girth of the game, the complexity of the rules, and the storage space required. If some is good, more is not necessarily better.
That's just something I've learned about games in general though. I used to be a completionist (which is what KS creators are hoping to manipulate with exclusives) but I realized over the years that some games don't need more, and to create more is just silly. I don't buy big box versions of games anymore due to bloat, and stretch goals tend to just bloat games.
Another thing about stretch goals already mentioned is that often they were always meant to be part of the bast game yet they act like you are unlocking something special. It's artificial and forced.
The stretch goals I like more are upgrades to the game because at certain numbers they can afford to increase the quality of the game as others mentioned.
So to sum up:
- I don't like exclusives because they are exclusionary by nature, come with a myriad of their own issues, are used to manipulate backers. I don't even like game changing or variety adding promos for games outside of KS.
- I don't like most stretch goals because they are either artificially created, or they create real problems in the campaign or the game down the road.
If this sounds like I am angry about it, I'm not. I just avoid these kickstarters now and stick to ones that I see as treating backers fairly.
As a disclaimer I am not a minis guy. Yes my favorite game is X-wing but hordes of minis being thrown at me does not sway me one bit, and I don't care about the price of each mini being a "screaming good deal" as people will often say in big mini kickstarters. I don't collect minis outside of games, so I don't care how great of a deal the minis are if they add little to the game or the game is of little value.