Angry Birds Developer Criticizes Kickstarter Reward Concept for Old School RPG

Oskar Burman, who is the leader of the Rovio studio in Stockholm that created Angry Birds, has criticized the way various companies are adding personal-oriented rewards in order to get Kickstarter projects to the funding threshold.

Speaking directly about the new Old School Role Playing-Game project from Loot Droop, he stated via Twitter that, “Kickstarter turning devs into high paid escorts/circus animals. Pay enough and we deliver game in person/on a red pillow/cook for you/BFF.”

He added, “I have nothing against kickstarter per se, just some of these rewards are stupid.”

For Old School Role Playing-Game those who pledge 10,000 dollars (7,682 Euro) will get company leaders John Romero, Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall to come to Disneyland in California and present them with a copy of the game on a red velvet pillow.

Other successful projects also include high reward tiers with significant monetary contributions that also involve meeting the game teams or, for the recent Project Eternity from Obsidian, allow them to play a boardgame with them.

The high reward tiers allow teams that are seeking funding via Kickstarter to draw big contributions by offering rewards that can’t be quantified but might have sentimental value for some of their fans.

At the moment just one backer chose the most expensive reward tier for Old School Role Playing-Game and the game is about 10 percent funded, with another full month to go.

By contrast Project Eternity, which is being created by Obsidian, has three backers who were willing to give more than 10,000 dollars (7,682 Euro).

Most of the money for Kickstarter-funded video games tend to come from the masses of players who pay a much lower price in order to get access to the finished title and extra content.

Project Eternity currently has more than 52,000 backers.