The creator of Monaco, Andy Schatz, had a number of unkind things to say about developing games through Kickstarter, especially in regards to the platform's stretch goals.
“I’m really glad for the people that have been really successful on Kickstarter, and don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea of free money, but I’m of the opinion that designing a game around a variable budget is a terrible way to design a game. To be frank, I think that stretch goals are total bullshit," said Schatz in an interview with the Penny Arcade Report.
“This is the idealist game designer in me speaking now,” he said. “When you’re designing a game, the way I think you should do it, and not everyone is the same way and I recognize that, but the way you should do it is you figure out what the game is, you figure out what the game needs, and you should make that.”
“If you are adding in some optional thing to incentivize people to give you money… there’s a difference between allowing your fans to have an extreme amount of input on the game, which I do, the beta testers have an incredible influence on the game, but letting them design the game in the sense of ‘if the budget is this, then I’ll do this, and if the budget is that, then I’ll do that,’ that to me sounds like the perfect way to make a game that’s insufficiently complete or bloated.”
His views may not be entirely out of sync with those of other developers. FTL's Justin Wa, whose aforementioned game was funded through the platform, holds similar views. In a previous interview with Polygon, Wa said that developing a game on Kickstarter was limiting to his freedom.
Via VG247.
