Mission: FPS Wants Kickstarter Backers To Fund And Flesh Out Idea

Crowdfunding is rife with projects that, for one reason or another, won’t get funded. A personal pet peeve is developers who launch a campaign to raise money for a project they haven’t fully worked out. Even when the idea is good, it’s still missing so much that most backers won’t touch it. Such is the problem with Tipping Toast Media’s proposal for Mission: FPS.

You probably noticed that I referred to their Kickstarter campaign as a proposal rather than a project. That’s because so much about it is still in the pre-development “idea phase” that it’s difficult to pin down where it’s really going. While the developers ostentatiously claim this is intentional so that backers can decide the course of the final game, it reeks of an inexperienced team pushing a concept they haven’t fully developed.

Now, to be fair what little they have to show for themselves certainly looks nice. In the six months or so they’ve been working on Mission: FPS, the devs have managed to create 2 characters and an objective driven battlefield. Unfortunately, that is all the campaign brings to the table.

What’s In A Game?

Tipping Toast claims the idea is to allow backers to determine the rest of the game. Sure backers enjoy having a say in certain features or mechanics, but you can’t rely on them to develop an entire game based on a vague premise. Asking them to pay for the privilege just seems extra lazy.

I’ve written before about how crowdfunding supports actual projects, not cool ideas. Anyone can have an idea, but it’s a lot harder to turn that idea into a functional project. Just saying you’re going to make a cool FPS isn’t enough, you have to work out what makes it cool and how you’ll implement that.

Game development isn’t easy, but if you’re going to ask people to give you money you need to be able to show them where it’s going and how you’ll use it. If your project is still in the idea stage there is no way for you to predict those things. This makes the $50,000 funding goal for Mission: FPS especially perplexing since without an end-goal the developers have seemingly chosen this amount at random.

When you’re reduced to showing off walls, you might need more content.

Mission: FPS shows potential, as mentioned the characters and environment do look nice, but it isn’t close to being ready for crowdfunding. Tipping Toast Media needs to continue to build on and flesh out their idea before attempting to bring it to life.