Can "feature-creep" from "stretch-goals" hurt a Kickstarter's success?

[Thermight]

tl;dr: My opinion: "Stretch goals can grow your Kickstarter's income linearly but you grow your project's complexity exponentially."

 

 

So far Kickstarters have had good success. We are still waiting with anxiety for the first big failure.

 

Obsidian and the leaders of this project really have built up a lot of credibility and have a great track record. No doubt Project Eternity will be great.

 

But there is something that worries me when I see more and more stretch goals added to a Kickstarter. As a kickstarter you pitch the project with a certain focus. You don't know how popular it's going to be aka whether you'll have money to build it. So, like Obsidian you pitch the general framework, promise some features and go with it.

 

In PE's case.... HUGE SUCCESS. Amazing flow of backers and money. Awesome!

 

So... now we need stretch goals. Yes. That's the way Kickstarters work. Need more inspiration to keep getting more money and make the project what everyone wants it to be.

 

But wait... Do you throw in crafting? Multiplayer? 3d steroscopic drivers? On-line PVP? End-game max level reward system?

 

I hope that as stretch-goals get added a company like Obsidian is very cautious about what will be promised as a feature. The more features, the more complexity. The more time it takes to get everything right. My best wishes to Obsidian to take care in this.

 

I really want this to be a fabulous game. There is a hole in my little gamer heart reserved for another game to come along and please it the way Planescape Torment did!

[SqueakyCat]

I trust Obsidian to have weighed all those concerns and are only setting stretch goals they feel they can accomplish well. After all, this is their dream game as well.

[Hypevosa]

I trust the money will be used to hire more people so the game stays on course but can get more features.

[Infinitron]

Obviously we don't know the answer to this yet. Wait for a large-scale Kickstarter game to be released first.

[edrst10]

I completely agree that I get a bit nervous with stretch goals, since sometimes they may have more money but maybe the stretch goal is too ambitious. In the case of Project Eternity, I think they have been quite cautous in that regard, while providing a good enough carrot. I know that I've gotten more and more excited with each update. I started with a $20 pledge, then $35, the $43 for the OOE $8 pextra pledge, and today I upped my pledge to $73 on the $65 dolar tier. But that has more to do with the updates and the information and not only the stretch goals.

[Kevin Lynch]

I think a developer like Obsidian would be cautious about adding in stretch goals that are too ambitious. I'd be more concerned about a group that didn't have any experience. There is some onus on the potential backers to weigh whether the developer can deliver on promises being made, too.

[Ieo]

Feature creep is truly awful... though my experience is primarily with productivity/enterprise software, but I'm sure this is a universal balancing act in SLDC between developer and client.

 

I didn't think it would be a problem with this, my first Kickstarter, until "stretch goals" started coming and at first I didn't know what they were. Now I see every stretch as merely a "risk reward" equation. Quite interesting from the software industry perspective, though. I know some people have complained that the stretches are uninspiring or whatever, but I'm personally rather glad that Obsidian has been, seemingly and so far, "keeping it real."

[DocDoomII]

Well, I'm good until I don't see stuff like "your every single choice will be carried over to the end of the trilogy"