deanlove

I think that's sensible, but it's risky to assume that the best way of achieving that is doing things the way they have always been done. Kickstarter games are inherently different. You have a huge built in audience that are more invested in the game, but paid you for it years ago so don't bring in any actual cash on launch day. The value of existing marketing is known to agree (except the 75k people most likely to be interested in your game won't be, because they already backed it) but there are other questions to consider. What would the value of giving backers access the same time as the reviewers, but ahead of the general public be? There's a lot of things that factor into that choice - the big ones being how reliant you are on that day-one patch for stability (especially if you're Obsidian), the other being if you plan on going back to Kickstarter for the follow-up next game, and if so, when. Other than the game itself, that launch is the last window to talk to most casual backers. I think it would be wrong to underestimate the effect on them of saying "as a reward for supporting us, you'll get access to the game a week before the general public". Is that expected? No. Are backers entitled to it? No. But is there value in doing that? Yes. Early review copies are handed around like free candy in the games business, especially smaller companies after any sort of coverage, but to the casual fan, getting that early copy can be super-cool. Even if they don't play it, it makes them feel special, it has a big positive effect on backer engagement. You're far more likely to get that backer back again for the next project. And there's the negative flip-side too. Backers that have forgotten about the project see all the videos and so on, get excited, but don't get a call to action. They don't need to pre-order, but they can't play it either. Currently there's not even a pre-load/key available. That inability to take any action can lead to the game being forgotten about again. Now, for all those pro points of releasing to backers early, there are absolutely drawbacks too. Does one outweigh the other? I don't know. My issue is that the impression I get from various responses is that no one really thought about it. They just did it this way because it's the way it's always been done. And that's where it can get dangerously short-sighted - to assume that your Kickstarter game, once you have the money, works exactly the same as any other game. There are differences, a lot of them aren't even fully understood yet, but they need thinking about, not ignoring. [As an aside, this is a more complicated case - PoE has publisher funding now too, and it's huge, and there are issues with spoilers... but the first time I encountered this sort of thing was backing an album from a musician. That was a lot more straight-forward: the backers literally paid for the studio time and production, and then the album was sent out to reviewers first. Backers had to wait a couple of weeks. ]

Damn I guess I should have sent it to a reviewer first...

The reality of the situation is you don't get to make games like this any more. And yet you did. You broke that reality, you went directly to the fans via Kickstarter and turned that reality on its head. If we'd all stuck to what the reality of the situation was three years ago, as to what the process was three years ago, this game would never have been made. It's sad to see you reverting back to the limits, restrictions and requirements you believe the market places on you now. "We have to do it this way, it's the way it's done" would never have seen the game made in the first place.

You see these sort of arguments a lot, and they're technically correct. But Kickstarter itself is not how the whole damn world works. Five years ago, had someone come to you and said "why don't we make a new Infinity-engine style RPG funded entirely by fans" you would have told me "that's not how the damn world works, don't be silly". Much like the OP and others are being told here. Kickstarter has changed how things work. The normal rules of sending review copies out to journos and streamers before others doesn't necessarily apply. Now that doesn't mean it definitely doesn't apply either. Just that this is a conversation worth having, as clearly some people are bothered by it. We can also look at it from a different point of few - you can bet that in the old publisher/developer paradigm, that the people funding the game there, the publisher, sure as hell got to play the game before release date. I mean, that's how the damn world works. If you have a publisher, they get the game as soon as it's done. Or at any point along the way. You wouldn't get far telling your publisher "oh sorry, you have to wait until release day, only journos get it at the moment." So there's a paradigm in which the request makes sense. It's also not a matter of 'making reviewers wait' - you can send to backers at the same time as reviewers, and then have the launch date a week later. Of course, that can cause its own problems (as seen with Double Fine). There's no ideal solution here, but I'm baffled at people that just think it's an easy answer - it's clearly bothering some backers, and just going "well that's the way it's always been" is completely ignoring the fact that Kickstarter funded games are not the way it's always been. And frankly, I find that approach kinda depressing. "We're going to use Kickstarter to raise funds, then do everything exactly how we did it before". That's not a sustainable model. That's not actually changing the system to allow games like this to come back. That's just using your fans for investment capital and then soldiering on as normal. A few games down the line, those fans are going to realise they can just as easily wait for the release.