‘Launching on Kickstarter UK day one was a bad idea’

Launching his motion control-focused Kung Fu action game on Kickstarter UK the day the service went live was a major part of why the project failed to achieve its crowdfunding goal, the game’s creator has said.

Kostas Zarifis founder of Kinesthetic Games has criticised the service for its poor payment interface that greeted potential UK backers when the service first launched in November 2012.

“Launching on Kickstarter UK day one was a bad idea,” he told the audience at the Develop Conference today.

The conversion of currencies and a prolonged payment system meant that users were far less likely to pledge their support, and added that his studio would have avoided those problems if it had waited.

Kung Fu Superstar, a motion control fighting game originally intended for Kinect, he received lots of press attention with the launch of an early concept video, which Zarifis made in collaboration with his team and help from around the world.

However, Zarifis went on to say that he had overestimated the community and press engagement with the game. Interest in the title dried up and the project end with only half the money it need to reach its funding goal, which meant that the developers didn’t see a penny.

“Turns out that a ‘Like’ is not the same as pledging,” he said.

He went on to added that the tier packages they had created for what was already a “niche market” title confused users. The game was intended to be an open platform title to keep it on budget, with the promise of a console version down the line that users could reserve.

Zarifis said the offering was confusing for most people, which again resulted in a lack of pledges.

Zarifis persisted with his project despite the crowdfunding failure and has now been signed to do two projects.

“I don’t think there any scenario where you work on something, and if you truly believe in it, where it doesn’t pay off in the end.”