Among hundreds of horrendous, flat-out laughable Kickstarter campaigns that fail to reach their stretch goals, there are always those few that seem to fail at getting fully funded, despite delivering on all fronts. What exactly are the reasons behind their pitfalls?
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to whip out our detective hats and throw out some speculations.
Today’s case features Sylvio 2 — a psychological horror game about ghosts, the paranormal and all sorts of creepy abandoned places. As such, you play as a ghost recorder/EVP specialist dealing with paranormal activities, with your only goal being to meddle with the unknown and discover the ghastly secrets of a burned-down family park. It’s not about jump scares, but rather about messing with your mind by turning ghost-hunting into unnerving, believable and tense gameplay. In other words — it looks bloody promising.
However, Sylvio 2’s fate is rather questionable from a financial point of view, there’s less than 3 days to go and the game’s Kickstarter campaign being about kr55,000 short of its goal of kr130,000. This fact becomes considerably weirder once you realize that the original Sylvio was actually successfully funded, then released in June 2015. It was also rather good, getting praise from RPS for being one of the best horror games of 2015.
Looking more closely at the current Kickstarter page, you’ve got pretty much everything required for a good crowdfunded campaign— a gripping teaser, enough gameplay-related information to satisfy your hunger, screenshots to get you hooked on the idea and an actual demo of the latest prototype. More important, you know that the developer delivers on his promises, at least judging by his latest work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYD3JOgou2g
However, things aren’t always so simple. They never are. Looking more closely, you will find that the original Sylvio was far from popular after its release; the very fact that there are only 31 reviews on its Steam page speaks a lot for how known the game is, no matter how well it might have been received by sites such as RPS or IGN, or even by users that ended up playing the game. Also, I haven’t seen or heard of the original Sylvio prior to now (sadly) – although admittedly in an overcrowded indie market full of other promising titles.
Still, Niklas Swanberg (the man behind the game) did manage to get a post about his game viral on Reddit a few days ago, managing to get over 450,000 hits on an Imgur album aimed at showcasing his inspirations behind making a horror game of this kind. That, mixed with a considerable amount of coverage coming from major gaming outlets (I say as I write this piece) — surely it would’ve been enough to stir the pot and get a lot of people excited.
Well, what if all of this is a prime example of people’s standards nowadays – expecting smaller projects to be bundled with dazzling visuals similar to an overly-polished, yet potentially hollow AAA release? Indeed, after checking out Sylvio 2’s playable prototype I can confirm that visuals and animations are not quite on the same level as other modern horror/mystery games (like SOMA, for example). Sure, it doesn’t look bad, but in the same time many people are expecting that extreme level of polish. I’m being the devil’s advocate here, but would people be “hyped” about No Man’s Sky, or Firewatch, if those didn’t already look impeccable?
Perhaps crowdfunding enthusiasts are starting to forget that Kickstarter, or IndieGogo, or any other crowdfunding platform, are usually places full of promising projects that are still mostly rough around the edges. But even then, Sylvio 2’s current state is damn good considering some other Kickstarter options right now. Are those really the problems stopping the campaign from reaching its goal?
What about the required currency? Not Euros, British Pounds or Dollars, but SEK (Swedish Krona). Is that the partial reasoning as to why some people might decide against backing Sylvio 2? Maybe not. But what about the actual required sum? The Kickstarter campaign for the original Sylvio wanted kr10,000, while this one bargains for kr130,000 — over ten times more — and mind you, this is for a sequel that is very similar to its recently released predecessor. In the same time though, a simple conversion would tell us that 1 Swedish Krona is worth roughly 0.12 USD. In other words, the overall goal of Sylvio 2’s campaign is only $15,295.
Quite the different sight, especially compared alongside the six-figure number of kr130,000.
Believe it or not, many would see the number and think to themselves, “oh man, there’s no chance this is getting funded”. Now I’m not saying this is a huge issue, but such nitpicks can sometimes make the difference when it comes to games relying on crowdfunding. If I had to be overly pessimistic, I would also say that there have been a tad bit too many horror games as of late.
In the end of the day, I’d still be stoked to see Sylvio 2 reach its goal of $15,295. But here I am, pondering over the struggles of some upcoming horror game at 2 o’clock in the morning.
What do you think?
I’ll be curious what others think, but the problems I see come down to three main thing.
– Time of year. December is always a rough time to launch a campaign. However, their goal is pretty modest, so you’d think this would be less of a concern.
– The whole monetary conversion this could be a big issue. It took me a while to get used to it when I saw it in other campaigns. However, the good thing is that Kickstarter auto converts it for you, provided your logged in. (in Chrome anyway).
– Their communications with backers seem to have really lessened over the past couple weeks. For a campaign that’s relatively close to the finish line there isn’t the usual flurry of updates and comments to folks trying to call backers to action.
I realize the odds are against them at the moment, but I think they’ll make it at the last minute.
It failed now, only reaching 64% of its goal, so you might want to update the article. On the other hand, the developer himself did read it, and posted the link to it in the Post Mortem update. He also mentions the currency conversion problem (which I admit is a thing, since I had no idea kronas are this low in value.) as well as it failing to get enough exposure since everyone in gaming press was probably on holidays. I’m far from surprised, and actually quite OK with this outcome.
Firstly, you’re being really selective in your coverage when saying “it was rather good”, and only referring to RPS and later IGN, to back it up. To be fair, the developer does the same thing in Post-Mortem, claiming “Despite getting great reviews and feedback, Sylvio never reached a big audience.” Neither of you mentions the Metacritic, which is the first place people tend to go to when they see an unknown game and want to learn more about it. Over there, there are currently 3 reviews: an 8/10 from KillScreen, 7/10 from Gamer.nl (which is in Dutch and so most can’t read it), and 4/10 from DarkStation. The userscore is similarly tepid 5.3 And on Russian Metacritic equivalent, Kritikanstvo, there’s only a single 3.5/10 review. Altogether, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it?
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sylvio
http://www.kritikanstvo.ru/games/sylvio/
However, the part about it never reaching wide audience is certainly correct. In fact, you can look it up on Steamspy, to see that only around 2500 people own the game at this point, and that’s after the bump from Sylvio 2 Kickstarter. Before, it had like 1300. In the light of the reviews above, as well as the fact Steam is massively oversaturated with first-person horror at this point (just watch a bit of Jim Sterling on YouTube for proof) these numbers aren’t particularly surprising.
http://steamspy.com/app/362860
It might sound like I have a vendetta against the game, but I’m just annoyed you’ve plucked it out in order to collectively berate gamers for “expecting smaller projects to be bundled with dazzling visuals similar to an overly-polished, yet potentially hollow AAA release” essentially calling a whole lot of people shallow and such. Tell me, does Wanderer look like an AAA release? It might look better, but it’s still pixel art in the Gods Will Be Watching style, and it easily met its 70000 $ goal.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1231806848/wanderer-2/description
What about low-polygonal For The King?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fortheking/for-the-king-0/description
RPGMaker-like Pixel Noir?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixel-noir/pixel-noir-ps4-ps-vita-pc-mac/description
Or top-down, black-and white 12 is Better than 6, with minimum of detail in its drawings?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1926605606/12-is-better-than-6/description
I mean you can argue they all still look better than Sylvio 2, and I would even agree with that. But to say they’re over-polished or anything of a kind is laughable, and only shows how unprepared the developer was in comparison.
Thanks for the comment, I had a chance to read the update yesterday and am currently in the middle of writing a follow-up update on the situation.
On the issues you’ve discussed though, the thing about the games you listed is that they are highly stylized, and in their case people can hold on to some specific visual style with a very specific set or characteristics.
Personally, I’d always prefer a game like Wanderer in comparison to Sylvio, if talking strictly about visuals. I’m also a strong believer in the idea that every game needs a very specific and narrow art direction, otherwise it would just become insignificant and lost in the crowd (arguably the case of the first Sylvio, and this is us simply talking about visuals). You’ll also notice that the examples I noted in the article are exactly games possessing highly stylized outlooks, and coincidentally you’ve also listed such in your comment.
Of course, gameplay is a whole different beast, but sadly it’s often the graphics that sell. But yeah, you’re probably right in saying I shouldn’t have used the term “over-polished” and instead focused more on art styles needing to possess clear levels of personality and cohesiveness instead.
As for the Metacritic argument, I’d say that more and more people are resorting to YouTube and Twitch for gathering opinions on potential purchases, or any kind of financial involvement.
Personally, I’m also a huge opponent on Metacritic and the way it handles its scoring, but in the same time the only reviews that do end up shifting sales significantly are ones in big websites with millions of followers.
Even then, if we are to look at YouTubers covering games (ones that have 1 million+ subscribers), the actual bump in sales is quite low considering how many people watch those videos – Totalbiscuit has talked about this plenty in analyzing the sales of games after he’s covered them.
In the end of the day though, it all depends on a collection of aspects, doesn’t it? 🙂
Like I said, I also prefer the Wanderer’s look, and having a cohesive art style in general. I agree that having a strong art style gets more people to pay attention than otherwise. I don’t really see it as a bad thing though, because if a game creators have the skill to create a distinct art style and the effort to maintain it, it’s usually the sign they’re at least competent in other areas of design as well (though exceptions like Armikrog also exist, of course.) With the kind of indistinct 3D like what’s shown here, one is not even sure if a fair chunk of it just got taken from an asset store, which is extremely frequent in first-person horror games today (just ask Jim Sterling).
And of course, gameplay is a different beast, but while this has a different concept, it’s not enough on its own. Another horror, Nevermind, debuted a month or so after SOMA on Steam, and it apparently had physiological sensor support to make the game scarier. A revolutionary technology by all means, but it was very mediocre by everyone’s account.
Yet, Sylvio was apparently worse: RiotPixels.com, the website I trust because its writers all have around 10 years of reviewing experience, rated Nevermind 55, and Sylvio 35, because the story wasn’t really much, the open-world locations were either boring or nonsensical, and the ghosts in it weren’t scary, simply because their size made it impossible to miss them with player’s gun. It’s not some horror bias either, since SOMA got a (quite rare) 83% (same score as Pillars of Eternity, btw) and a website’s recommendation. They (well, the horror reviewer) also gave 70% to Stasis, and 40% to The Park, so it’s hard to say they’re just biased towards polished things.
Lastly, I do agree that the game has to figure out how it can grab its audience first, before worrying about professional critics and YouTubers alike. There are games on Steam that have no Metascore and little to no YouTube videos that nevertheless have 10,000, or even 100,000s of owners, and vice versa. Brilliant Technobabylon got high reviews everywhere, but only several thousand bought it at first, while some more just waited to sales, bringing it up to about 7000. the Magic Circle was given 85% by Riot Pixels, high reviews from others and recommendation video by Jim Sterling, yet is still only on 14,000 so far.
http://steamspy.com/search.php?s=the+magic+circle
http://steamspy.com/app/307580
[…] case you don’t remember, last week we went over a few potential problems that Sylvio 2 was facing in getting successfully funded. Like most Kickstarter submissions, there […]