Ashes of Creation Kickstarter Campaign Closes Big

Ashes of Creation has reaped Kickstarter success in a pretty big way.

Something about this logo says “Ashes of EverQuest Next” to me

The campaign brought in more than $3.2 million on a $750K ask, largely by running their campaign by the numbers… numbers which included a long run of pre-campaign news and updates and plenty of warning that the Kickstarter was coming.  The Choice/Change/Consequence message about the world they intend to create seemed to resonate as well.

The final tally when the campaign closed early this morning was:

• Amount Pledged: $3,271,809
• Total Backers: 19,576
• Avg. Pledge: $167

That is a serious haul, representing 436% of the campaign’s base goal.  That number puts it ahead of other such Kickstarter campaigns like:

• Camelot Unchained –$2.2 million
• Star Citizen – $2.1 million
• Shroud of the Avatar –$2 million
• Crowfall – $1.7 million
• Project: Gorgon – $74,781

I actually wonder what Ashes of Creation brought to the table that let it out-pace some of those campaigns.  Part of my view of such campaigns is that a big name in the industry is needed to get attention and bring in the backers.  Certainly the top four campaigns on the list above were driven by the names involved.

And then there is Ashes of Creation.

Let’s be honest here.  There is nobody listed on that campaign that has anything like the history or notoriety of Mark Jacobs, Chris Roberts, Richard Garriott, or Gordon Walton (and Raph Koster, whose name was tossed around during the Crowfall campaign).  They don’t even have a Brad McQuaid level of name.  Not even a Mark “Sad Trombone” Kern to hang their hat on.

What does this mean?

Is the star power of famous names overrated?  I have always assumed that having the draw of a known name was a key aspect to success, but what should I think now?  Do such names come at a cost?  Certainly both Mark Jacobs and Lord British had to spend time explaining away past mistakes during their Kickstarter runs. (Jacobs gave us a mea culpa with some blame for EA, while Garriott just pointed fingers at EA and NCsoft.)

Without a name did Ashes of Creation just do a much better job of laying the groundwork for success before launching their campaign?  Certainly there was a long string of articles about the project before it hit Kickstarter.

Is Ashes of Creation really offering something different, something that would spark this level of success?

Or has the environment changed?  For a stretch there was a whole cloud burst of MMORPG Kickstarter campaigns, including the five I listed out above and more.  Since then things have quieted down.  Was the market just ready for another run at the fantasy MMORPG holy grail?

Personally, I have too many undelivered projects to consider investing in yet another one, but clearly others were not held back.

Whatever it was, it was certainly op success.  You can go see the Kickstarter campaign for details or look at the campaign on Kicktraq to see how the funding progressed.

Now to see if they will have anything to deliver come the December 2018 date listed.

And, of course, we shall see how far their post-campaign funding goes.  The asking for money never stops with these projects.

 

Friday Bullet Points for a Warm Spring Day

Well, it has been warm in Silicon Valley this week, with temperatures up to 90 degrees at times.  After a wet winter that means that more than spring is in the air.  Pollen is a serious, palpable thing outside right now for those of us with allergies.  But a runny nose and a desire for some of those good old “makes you drowsy” allergy meds from my youth won’t stop me from at least doing a bullet points post.

Pokemon Go in the Grass

Bulbasaur knows what I am talking about!

Clearly in the spirit of my pain, Niantic is having a Grass Weekend mini-event for Pokemon Go.  Starting this afternoon and ending early Monday grass type Pokemon are supposed to be out in force.  In addition, lures dropped at Pokestops are supposed to last 6 hours rather than the usual 30 minutes.  Will that be enough to lure me out of the house?

Pokemon Sun & Moon Bean Collecting

Meanwhile, in Pokemon Sun & Moon, there is an in-game event around collecting Poke Beans at the Poke Pelago.  As with the Pokemon Go event, it runs until Monday.  The minimum and bonus thresholds have already been reached, so all you have to do to get some Festival Coins is register in the Festival Plaza, collect some beans, and then go back and update you status.  Details are at the link.  If you are a registered Pokemon Global Link player, you get double the Festival coins plus a level ball and some rare candy as well.

We’re well past the 6 million bean stretch goal…

Ashes of Creation Campaign Status

The Ashes of Creation Kickstarter that I wrote about earlier in the week seems to have hit the mid-campaign doldrums already.  After passing a million dollars in the first 36 hours, pledges have slowed down.  That is to be expected.  I will be interested if they have a mid-campaign plan after their very strong start.  Meanwhile, there has been some concerns about Intrepid’s Creative Director and CEO Steven Sharif and the depth of experience of the Ashes of Creation team.  Sharif has responded via an interview with Massively OP.

Activision Blizzard still Touting MAUs

The Activision Blizzard first quarter results were announced yesterday.  You can find all the data, such that it is, over on their investor relations site.  Blizzard and King were tied as the first quarter net earning powers, with King ahead it gross revenue but Blizzard having a higher margin.

Revenues on Slide 10 of the investor presentation

And yet the big “we’re doing good!” metric remains Monthly Active Users, or MAUs.  I have griped before that MAUs are meaningless without context.  The fact that the two net earners have wildly different MAU numbers (41 million for Blizzard, or less than Activision, and 341 million for King) seems to require at least some details about their disparate business models.

Meanwhile, the report also celebrates Overwatch becoming Blizzard’s eighth “billion dollar” franchise, making me strain my brain to come up with that many.

1. World of Warcraft
2. Warcraft
3. StarCraft
4. Diablo
5. Hearthstone
6. Overwatch
7. Heroes of the Storm
8. Lost Vikings

They must be slicing and dicing what constitutes a franchise to get eight billion dollar earners… or Lost Vikings was more popular than I imagined.  Also, I would argue that WoW is a continuation of the Warcraft franchise.  But marketing will segment how they see fit.

Anyway, back to the land of Benedryl for me.

Who is Backing Ashes of Creation?

What makes the Hottentot so hot?
What puts the “ape” in ape-ricot?
Whatta they got that I ain’t got?

-C. Lion

The Ashes of Creation Kickstarter seems to be a rousing success so far.

The ask was $750,000 and, with nearly a month left to go until the June 2 end date, they have already passed a million dollars and are talking about stretch goals and the like.  Op success.

One million dollars and change so far

And this didn’t happen by magic or anything.  Intrepid Studios went by the numbers for this success with a long build up over time and clear advance notice that the Kickstarter campaign was coming so fans of the title were ready to go.

You can go over to Massively OP and search on “Ashes of Creation” and see the series of articles that they posted about the game, like stepping stones leading to this day.

This is the way it is supposed to be done.  That whole, “Hey, surprise!  We have a Kickstarter!” thing is generally a bust.  Amateurs run out half cocked, professionals lay the groundwork so that the success which follows isn’t really a surprise.

And the team at Intrepid Studios has industry experience, even if they seem a bit young.  If you show me a dozen people and say something like, “There’s over 40 years of MMO experience here in this office…” I am going to point at a co-worker of mine and tell you the pair of us are past 50 years experience in our industry combined.  But youth can mean vigor and the desire to tackle problems and older hand might just dismiss with, “we tried that before, it didn’t work.”

The experience of the team seems to be a bit focused on SOE/Daybreak, which is probably why some of what they are talking about has an air of EverQuest Next about it.  Again, not necessarily a bad thing.  EQN certainly got many people excited back in the day.  And the whole “node system” also seems to have a bit of EVE Online null sec in its mix as well.

All of this adds up to an enticing package and ought to spark the embers of hope that maybe there will be something new under the sun when it comes to the Fantasy MMORPG genre.

So why am I not excited about this?  Why isn’t this helping me shake off the MMO malaise?

I have been watching that march of articles at Massively OP for a while now, yet the fact that the Kickstarter was on and doing well really didn’t hit me until Bhagpuss posted about it.  Maybe I just pay more attention to him than Massively OP? (Also, not many of the bloggers I follow have weighed in on the Kickstarter.  What does that say?)

Meanwhile, I think I may have had my enthusiasm for Kickstarter projects weighed down by past projects.  I need to do another summary post about my experiences with Kickstarter.  That might actually be a good one for next Wednesday due to the timing of a particular campaign.  It won’t be a tale of all sunshine and lollipops as some of the projects in my post from two years back are still not done, with MMORPG projects being the most likely not to have wrapped up.

Complex software projects are complex.  It is known.  So any dates given… and in the case of Ashes of Creation, December 2018 is being bandied about… are automatically suspect in my book.

And then there is my capacity for enthusiasm over long periods of time, which is essentially zero.  As I noted in a comment on Syp’s post about backing or not backing the project, I lack the wherewithal to pay close attention to/care about such a project as it winds its way through development, alpha, early access, beta, pre-release, and whatever other gyrations the creation cycle takes.  (Cue footage of me collapsing from feigned exhaustion at the idea of a project that has an “Alpha 3.0” target some six years into the development cycle.)

From my investment in the genre about a decade back to now I have regressed to the point where I really just want to exchange money for some entertainment.  Keep your development laundry to yourself.  I can’t even bring myself to pay much attention to expansions for games I follow,   You have to have something really, really, and I mean really, special to get me to jump on the pre-release bandwagon at this point.

But I am jaded and cynical and in that state of malaise I keep talking about, all of which tends to add up to a hammer of an emotion which makes every new MMORPG project look like a bent,  mis-aligned, and somewhat rusty nail.

So what is the fresh and enthusiastic perspective here?  Am I missing something special?  If you are backing this, what is the selling point for you?