As we gear up for our look back at 2014 we’re putting together lots of info on what went right (and wrong!) over the past 12 months.  Before we get to that though, let’s take a look at how 2015 is starting.  The holiday dry spell is over, which means that we should be getting back to a steady flow of quality projects, right?  Hopefully.  One of the first projects of the year continues one of the more unfortunate trends we continue to see on Kickstarter.

The Dune MMO Kickstarter campaign aims to raise $1.2million to:

Help me bring Dune back!
Duna has been a major player in the videogames world.
But it dissapeared after westwood studio went bankrupt.
And that hurts gamers like me. After seeing the movie Jodorowsky’s Dune i got the idea that there must be a lot of people out there that want a new Dune game.
A new game built with a modern engine. A MMO that will bring the RTS genre back to life.
Get a good engine for thousands of units on screen at any time. Massive space battles. Politics on a galactic scale. 
Start the havester! (ill be writing more soon)

Want more detail?  That’s a shame, because that’s everything the campaign page offers.  That’s right, $1.2mil for an idea that could fit on a napkin during a New Years Eve party.  $1.2mil to create a game the campaign organizer doesn’t own the rights to.  $1.2mil to ‘do something or other that may or may not lead to something.’

Kickstarter continues to spiral into the hole IndieGogo dug for themselves long ago, one filled with projects that go through no vetting process other than to make sure the organizer has a way to pay them their cut should the campaign succeed.  Is it unreasonable to expect Kickstarter to at least glance at every project that gets submitted?  No.  I check out every game campaign that gets posted for at least a few minutes (obviously longer if we post about it), and I don’t even get paid for it.  If Kickstarter isn’t careful they’re going to find that 2015 is yet another year of declines as people struggle to sift through the “Help Me Buy A Computer!” crap that people associate with IndieGogo; and inevitably lose faith in the process.

Should you back the Dune MMO Kickstarter?  That’s entirely up to you.  Kickstarter seems to think that it’s worth your time, and I just spent 20 minutes writing about it.  Maybe we both need to check our heads?

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About the Author

Greg Micek

Greg Micek has been writing on and off about games since the late nineties, always with a focus on indie games. He started DIYGames.com in 2000, which was one of the earliest gaming sites to focus exclusively on indie games.

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