Kickstarter – Steam Bandits: Outpost

Today I bring you an example of how NOT to create a kickstarter project. Steam Bandits: Outpost is a social game similar to most Facebook games, despite the claim on the project to the contrary. Now I'm not saying that this project has no right to be made an won't be a successful or fun game, in fact I think it will probably do quite well financially and may well be a fun game to play with friends. However, I do think this kickstarter project is all wrong. The true downfall lies in the fact that there is no way to preorder the game since they have decided to make the game "free to play" with micro transactions. I have seen a number of other projects using this model, and I find it very hard for me to preorder micro transaction credits prior to even trying the game. In addition, people playing the actual game are likely to engage in impulse buying of cheap bonuses, but I don't believe kickstarter backers have the same sorts of impulse buying, especially when most of the rewards are just micro transaction currency. This game will be made regardless of the eventual funding level the project receives on kickstarter, and I find no reason to back it when they will eventually give me the game for free anyway.