One of the biggest issues that many crowdfunding creators tend to stumble over is an inability to update backers regularly. For whatever reason, they often seem to clam up and avoid saying anything – whether awesome or awful things are happening. Safe Zone is a Kickstarter game which was funded in July 2011. Basically, it was a lot like The Oregon Trail but players had to avoid succumbing to the zombie plague while travelling across the U.S. They actually started out doing well with updates, providing six during the rest of 2011 and 14 in 2012.
However, after a brief hello in 2013, developer Blind Eye Games went dark until July 2014 at which they notified folks about continued development and an impending alpha (an alpha which apparently still hasn’t materialized). Updates spun up for three months, then everything was silent again until this week. It appears that both creators went through a “rocky financial period” which forced Safe Zone’s development to grind to a halt. A lot more has happened as well. Basically all the original team members moved on, which makes sense. But now they’re committed back to their game and do not see any potential problems in their future.
Can we necessarily trust that they’re back to communicating on a regular basis? No, as previous “return” posts suggested the same thing. On the other hand, the fact that they’re still willing to post to Kickstarter at all proves they’ve not just run away with the money after four years of on and off again development. Did you back Safe Zone? What are your thoughts on this week’s Kickstarter update?
I didn’t back Safe Zone. It ran on Kickstarter before I joined the site. But, I do have to say that regular, or at least semi-regular, updates are pretty much mandatory to keep people in the loop. Whether it’s positive or negative backers generally have the right to know what’s going on. Otherwise they lose faith. They don’t have to post an update over every little thing but at least let us know when an important milestone is met (or not).
[…] editor and professional rugby philosophizer Marcus Estrada last wrote about Safe Zone almost a year ago in May 2015. He chastised the team for constantly going dark with their updates […]