Small World 2, Take 2
Relaunching is a fact of life on Kickstarter. Projects that fail to reach the finish line go back to the drawing board to tweak a few things in the hopes that the second time is the charm. Often as not they are right. While I don’t generally post about projects a second time when they relaunch, sometimes when a high-profile project cancels its funding to go again, it deserves a second look.
That happened just recently, with Smallworld 2 – lets see how their second bite at the apple is turning out.
Back in Mid-January, I wrote a post about how I was rather displeased with their decision to pursue crowdfunding for a project they had every intention of doing whether or not the project funded. I made some very specific criticisms, including:
- The fact they are going to make this project regardless, and this is just a cash grab.
- The lack of value in the project, as it seems that it would cost you less to buy the app, than to back it.
- The fact that they were taking this opportunity to sell an unrelated project: a high-end edition of the board game, and glomming it on to the app.
Please recall that I made these criticisms as a huge fan of their board games; I have spent literally hundreds of dollars, some of the fruits of which are pictured above, on this company’s products. Universally, I have been happy with my purchases. Has their relaunch addressed any of my original concerns? Not really.
The biggest changes seem to be just what they said they were going to be: a (successful) attempt to de-clutter and streamline the project. Many of the various reward levels have now simply become add-ons. This is as much as I am willing to say on the positive side. On the negative side, there are several points. The “deluxe edition” has now become a full on pre-sale for a product they plan on selling regardless, and are not funding with this Kickstarter. This is just a more blatant version of what they were doing previously, and not unexpected.
The big changes are two-fold. They have decided (presumably by separating the deluxe edition into its own thing) that they can shave a whole $40,000 off the funding target; Days of Wonder now seeks to use that $150,000 they would like to raise to launch their game on three separate platforms: iOS, Android (4.0+,) and Steam. This is sure to increase the appeal, though it certainly leaves me curious. How much of the funding is going to the other versions, and how much is going to do what they were going to do anyway.
At the very least they now have an argument that this Kickstarter will fund a project they weren’t already going to do, as so far Days of Wonder has show little interest in Android. That is all I will give them though. I hate to see another company going down the road of asking for money for what they would have done anyway. Though they are not as bad as Queen games is in this, it will break my heart if Days of Wonder starts pre-selling, I mean crowdfunding the board games they had planed on launching regardless.
Is anyone planing on backing this project? I’d love to hear your reasons.
Caffeineforge 
If this getting backed means they’ll actually start doing Android apps then that’s the biggest positive for me. I was sorely disappointed when i learned Days of Wonder did not support the creation of Android versions of their games. Though i will not be backing this project… Mainly because I have thus far not been sucked into the world of kickstarter funding as i know i wouldn’t be able to stop once i started.